Categories
podcast

What’s a Scientology auditing session like? What does an e-meter do?

Former Scientologist Chris Shelton spent thousands of hours using the e-meter to “audit” fellow members of the Church—but what does the device actually measure, and why do Scientologists trust it as an infallible guide to the truth? Chris takes us inside a typical auditing session, explaining the personal questions auditors ask, the needle movements they watch for, and what they believe those reactions reveal. We compare the e-meter with the polygraph, explore how relentless questioning can produce false memories and confessions, and examine how auditors can sincerely believe they are helping even when their methods become coercive or abusive. If you’re interested in Scientology, interrogation, or behavior reading, this is a fascinating look at how a simple machine can acquire enormous power through belief. For more on this topic, check out Chris’s podcast Speaking of Cults.

A transcript is below.

Episode links:

Resources related to this talk:

TRANSCRIPT

(transcripts are generated automatically and will contain errors)

Chris Shelton (intro clip): “The preclear has no voice in the matter and no authority in that room. So when that door is closed and locked, if the preclear wants to get up and leave, he’s gotta get through the auditor, and the auditor is trained to resist and stop him. They actually do practice drills and role-playing to stop and manhandle a person back into the chair… and demand answers to the questions that they are asking…. And as the auditor you’re trained to know that anything this guy is doing that’s resisting you is not him. It’s his reactive mind…. Sometimes people will be badgered into false confessions… This is the place where people start making up answers ’cause they need to come up with some answer ’cause they can’t get out of that room until they do.”

Zach Elwood: That was a clip from my talk with Chris Shelton, who was in the Church of Scientology for 27 years and who has spent thousands of hours conducting so-called “auditing” of fellow Scientologists. 

This is the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. You can learn more about it at behavior-podcast.com.

I was recently doing some research on the polygraph, aka the lie detector, and that included having a couple polygraph examiners on this podcast. This led me to get curious to learn more about the Scientology e-meter, which measures galvanic skin response, basically the level of moisture and conductance in the skin. Galvanic skin response is generally considered the most important measurement that the polygraph measures.  

I wanted to ask Chris some questions. What exactly are Scientologists doing with the e-meter? What do they think it is telling them? What kinds of questions are they asking and what kinds of information are they trying to find? What e-meter movements are they looking for and what do they think those movements mean? How does a typical audit happen? How similar is it to a polygraph examination? Do false confessions sometimes happen? 

Those are just a few of the topics we cover in this talk. If you’re interested in Scientology, or in interrogation- and behavior-reading topics, I think you’ll enjoy this talk. And note that if you want to learn more about the e-meter, Chris has a longer more detailed history and explanation on his youtube channel; that video is titled “Scientology’s e-meter demystified.” 

A bit more about Chris Shelton: he’s an author, anti-cult activist, and former Scientologist who spent 27 years in the Church of Scientology, including 17 years in its Sea Organization. He holds a master’s degree in coercive control and hosts the podcast Speaking of Cults, which explores cults, manipulation, and recovery. I’ve appeared on Chris’s podcast a couple times talking about behavior-reading myths and about the large number of deceptive behavior “experts” who spread silly and harmful information. Chris is also the author of the book Scientology: A to Xenu and a recently published book What Now? A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult. That new book is not just about getting free of cults, but about getting free from coercive, psychologically abusive partners, where the mental dynamics can be quite similar to those found in cults. Chris has also appeared in and consulted on the movie Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. 

Okay here’s the talk with Chris Shelton: 

Zach Elwood: Hey, Chris. Thanks for joining me.

Chris Shelton: Hey, thanks very much for having me. It’s always fun, fun time talking to you.

Zach Elwood: Yeah, for sure. Uh, how’s the… I was curious how the, uh, book launch and promotion is going for you.

Chris Shelton: Yeah, my books, yeah, they’re going great. Um, now I’ve, now I’ve got books. Mm-hmm. So I wrote this book about Scientology 10 years ago, and now I’ve written a new book about cult recovery, and it’s selling, uh, and going great, and we are putting a workshop together that where people will be able to meet with me, and we’ll be able to go through the chapters, and it’s just been a lot of fun, uh, and I’ve been getting some great feedback.

Zach Elwood: Nice. You wanna hold it up, uh, for pe- Oh, yeah … anybody that’s watching? Let’s do it. Um, yeah. Like this? And I, and I actually just, uh, so it’s about getting out of cults, but as you mentioned, uh, it’s also theoretically good for people that are, are getting out of coercive, uh, controlling relationships and trying to think about what’s next.

Is that right?

Chris Shelton: That’s exactly right. Yeah. This is a book that is 20 chapters of advice, information, education, all the things I wish somebody had told me when I first got out of Scientology. Literally, everything I wish somebody had told me is in here. Originally, it was only gonna be 10 chapters, but it just kept growing ’cause I was like, “No, I need to know about this and this and this.”

So I got stuff in here about critical thinking, emotional intelligence. Obviously, there’s a whole chapter in here on coercive control and what it is and how it manifests. There’s a chapter in here on, um, yeah, emotional intelligence, on morality, on religion, on ethics. There’s a whole slew of stuff that people need to deal with when they come out of a destructive cult situation, which also happens to be a lot of the same stuff that people have to deal with when they come out of a domestic violence situation.

The predator-prey dynamic is the same, whether it’s in a domestic partnership or whether it’s in a destructive cult. In fact, one of the first things I learned about this years and years ago was that we call these d- these abusive domestic partnerships a cult of one. ‘Cause it’s the same behavior dynamics- Mm-hmm

and that’s, um, that’s where the coercion comes in.

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. That’s great. Um, yeah, so maybe that’s a good segue. Uh, your, what was it? 26 years in Scientology is the reason that you know a lot about E-meters and how they work. Maybe you could talk a little bit about why you, uh, have a lot to say, uh, about how E-meters work.

Chris Shelton: Absolutely. The E-meter or electropsychometer is a religious artifact in the Church of Scientology, which is really just what’s called an old Wheatstone bridge, uh, electronic device. It’s just a very, very, very simple circuit design that measures, um, skin resistance. That’s all it’s measuring. And it- and yet this has the character and quality of, of ultimate truth, and as I mentioned, it’s a religious artifact.

That’s how it’s registered with the government. Uh, it’s– which is a little bit like registering your calculator with the government as a religious artifact. It’s a little bit silly, uh, ’cause there’s nothing religious about this device. But the E-meter is something I was trained to use when I was in Scientology.

There’s a whole class on how to use it that you have to do, and I spent thousands of hours behind an E-meter using it on other people the way, in the various ways that it is used. It’s not an electronic shock device. There’s nothing like that. It’s such an imperceptible amount of electricity being run through, from the E-meter through a wire to a can that you’re holding in one hand, and then the electronic signal goes over your skin and to the other can in the other hand that you’re holding, and then back to the meter.

So the whole thing completes a circuit, and that circuit is a very, very minuscule amount of voltage, but it’s enough to get over your skin. It’s not piercing into your body.

Zach Elwood: Hmm.

Chris Shelton: And that re- and the resistance to that electronic flow is what shows up on the needle of the E-meter. And you’re, and there’s a couple dials you adjust to get the needle onto the, onto the, uh, panel so you can read it.

But really, it’s the needle movements and the general range of where the dials are at that are used in scienti- Scientology diagnostically to guide the Scientology practitioner in the questions they’re asking of the person that they’re working with. And that’s the very, um, neutral way of describing what the E-meter is about.

But I used it for, for… I, and I trained other people in using it. As a classroom supervisor in Scientology, I trained other Scientologists in this device, and it’s a very technically Uh, it’s a very simple electronic device that has an awful lot of mythology built up around it that makes it appear far more complicated than it really is.

So it gives Scientologists like me, and when I was in, a very inflated idea of what knowledge they have about people when a lot of what’s happening with the E-meter, I’ve come to learn, is really random. Um, and it’s… And, and there are techniques in Scientology that you do with the meter to disguise that randomity, to make it look like you’re causing something which you w- are not in fact causing.

So there’s a lot of rigmarole connected with this device, and one of the biggest things I’ve found in dealing with ex-Scientologists about it is they hold on to Hubbard’s explanations for this thing because they just don’t understand how else to think about it. And it’s been challenging to explain, “No, it’s really not complicated.

It’s actually very simple, and it’s not doing any of those things that you think it’s doing,” because they’re so sure. “But it must. I spent years on this thing. It, it, it must work, right? And there must be something to it.” Uh, not- You s- … not really so much, but we can talk about all the specifics.

Zach Elwood: And you see that even from, even from people that have left Scientology that still think there must be something to this thing, huh?

Chris Shelton: That’s right.

Zach Elwood: Uh, so, uh-

Chris Shelton: That’s, that’s… Yeah.

Zach Elwood: Do, do, uh, do you m- know much about how… Because I understand, you know, the polygraph, the, the so-called lie detector, that, that measures a few things, but skin conductivity, you know, galvanic sp- skin response or electrodermal activity, AKA, um, that’s one of the main things it measures.

Is, is it true that the E-meter is basically just measure… That, that’s all it’s measuring is just the galvanic skin response, the condu- conductivity? Is, am I getting that right? There’s nothing much else to it. You, you

Chris Shelton: nailed it.

Zach Elwood: Yeah.

Chris Shelton: That’s exactly what it’s doing. It is one-third of a polygraph. A polygraph is called poly ’cause, a polygraph ’cause it’s graphing three different things.

It’s graphing rep- respiration, uh, heartbeat, and, um, skin response- Right.

Zach Elwood: Right …

Chris Shelton: uh, to an electronic flow. Very, very, very much like what the E-Meter is doing with, with, you know, running a circuit over the body and running that electronic circuit over it, and then graphing it on a continuous strip of paper rather than manifesting it on a needle on a dial that is- Mm-hmm

read in real time. In, on a polygraph it’s read over time-

Zach Elwood: Hmm …

Chris Shelton: uh, on these, on these graphs, and that’s why it’s called that. Hmm. But yes, it is a basically just one-third of a lie detector. And it, for anybody, um, just to get this out of the way right away, and I’m sure you know this, um, the lie detector is not a detector of lies.

Hmm. It is a detector of body states. It is registering states of your body. Mm-hmm. And from that we make assumptions or inferences about what that means when it comes to, uh, subjective truths about you.

Zach Elwood: Yeah, and I have a d- I have a previous episode, um, about the, um- weaknesses of the lie detector for anybody that’s- Yeah

curious about that. Um, so I was reading the Wikipedia entry for the E-meter, and one thing that was kind of confusing to me, uh, was that it seemed like there were various patents filed for this, which seemed confusing to me considering, uh, that it just seemed to be, you know, how basic the machine was. But I- maybe that, maybe that’s mainly about how easy it can be to get a patent for something too.

Like, you just change something about the machine and you have a patent for it. But do you have any thoughts or knowledge about that?

Chris Shelton: Oh, no, very much so. Yeah. Cool. Um, this was actually has to do with control and, and, and the, um, money that can be made from E-meters. Back in… I’ll just give you a real quick history lesson here.

This’ll be really fast. Um, th- there’s, there’s tons to know, but the bottom line is that L. Ron Hubbard did not invent the E-meter. A guy named Volney Mathison did, and he was a chiropractor and, you know, kind of along the same lines as Hubbard. He was a little bit of a let’s get rich figuring out how to help people know things about themselves that, you know, th- nobody can really know, and we’re gonna come up with these devices to do this.

And Mathison had come up with the meter as a, uh, in response to a lecture that L. Ron Hubbard gave in 1950. Hubbard talked about how wouldn’t it be great if there was a machine or a device that could measure, you know, this, this, this mental phenomena that he was talking about with Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, that book that he published back in ’50, 1950.

So Volney listens to this lecture, goes home, uh, breadboards up a, you know, a circuit design and, um, comes up with what he calls the Volney or the Mathison Electropsychometer. And, uh, this device was this big, big kind of boxy thing, and it had the cans on the, on the leads, and you would, you know, give it to somebody.

And Hubbard, uh, got hold of this. Mathison gave it to him in 1951, and they started going to town researching, quote unquote, “with this thing” and that was how Hubbard got his hands on it to start with. But over the years, Mathison wanted to… He was the one actually manufacturing and distributing them and getting all the money, and Hubbard was the one saying, “Hey, you need to get this E-meter because this is, we’re using this in our s- in our Dianetics techniques.”

And once Scientology started in 1953, it rolled right over into Scientology. Now, by 1954 Hubbard had had a falling out with Volney Mathison over what? Money and distribution of these meters, right? Hubbard wanted a bigger share or something like that. Um, it’s a little waffley as to exactly precisely what happened, but they had a falling out and in 1955 Hubbard was actively telling Scientologists, “We’re not using E-meters anymore.”

Zach Elwood: Mm.

Chris Shelton: And for two years they couldn’t because Volney owned the patent and he wasn’t going to let them be distributors, the churches of Scientology. He wasn’t gonna give it to them.

Zach Elwood: So- And before, and, and before the E-meter l- uh, Hubbard was doing auditing without the E d- E-meter, he was just doing auditing with, uh, you know, no device involved, right?

Chris Shelton: Correct. Yeah. That’s exactly right. He would sometimes use, um, te- body techniques like having his hand on the person’s pulse or- Mm … watching the, the, uh, you know, the dilation of the eyes and stuff like that. These were, these were really hypnotist tricks that Hubbard was utilizing ’cause- Mm … Dianetics is ultimately hypnotism.

Zach Elwood: Mm.

Chris Shelton: The, the device helped sell the, the validity or the science-ness of the process because when you put an electronic device on the table and put cans in somebody’s hands, now suddenly it’s, it’s, it’s gone up a level in terms of the authority and, and seriousness with which we are developing or- It’s high,

Zach Elwood: it’s high tech.

It’s, uh- Oh, look at- … yeah, futur- futuristic, you know?

Chris Shelton: That’s right. Yeah. And this is all 1951. Yeah. This is a long time ago. Yeah. People had way different ideas about electronics back then, right? They thought the human brain was a computer and blah blah blah and everything was electronics. And so, so there was a lot of science fiction and science-y fiction- Mm

to glom onto with this. So Hubbard gets rid of the meters though for a couple years, but then here’s where the patents come in. So Hubbard could never get the patent for the meter. He didn’t own it. He couldn’t distribute it. He couldn’t take the money and so he, since he couldn’t control it and Mathison wouldn’t give it to him, he just said…

He took all his toys and, and went home. But then in 1957 a guy named Don Breeding who was a Hubbard, uh, acolyte and electronics guy figured out how to replicate Volney’s circuit design using a transistor. It had just been invented. S- Volney’s design had used the old, the, uh- The, um, circuit boards and everything were those big light bulb-looking things that you’d plug in- Hmm

the vacuum tubes.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: And in ’57 they had this little transistor circuit. The transistorized circuit had just come into play, and this is what they patented- Ah … before Matheson could think of it. They di- and they patented the transistorized E-Meter. Hmm. Same design, same concept, same purpose, different manufacturing process.

Hmm. And also much more compact. Hmm. It became the Hubbard electropsychometer, not the Matheson one now. Hmm. And this is why the patent exists.

Zach Elwood: Just interesting that you can patent, like, what’s basically just a galvanic skin response thing, you know? Like-

Chris Shelton: You can …

Zach Elwood: I, yeah, I, I, I guess that’s- You can … m- maybe it’s just- ‘Cause it, ’cause it-

easy to patent things at some level …

Chris Shelton: it, well, if you, if you take the circuit design of a basic Wheatstone bridge, and you put it in a box, and you put a dial on it, and you put a couple, you know, uh, uh, a, a needle registration plate there-

Zach Elwood: Hmm …

Chris Shelton: and a sensitivity knob and a little trim knob-

Zach Elwood: Hmm …

Chris Shelton: nobody else is doing that.

That’s a device- Right, it’s got its own unique- …

Zach Elwood: you have invented It’s got its own unique structure and design

Chris Shelton: and such. That’s right. Yeah. Nobody else has exactly an E-Meter.

Zach Elwood: Even if the

Chris Shelton: underlying- Although, again- …

Zach Elwood: technology is- …

Chris Shelton: functionally speaking, your polygraph is basically a E-Meter.

Zach Elwood: Yeah, so even if the underlying tech is similar, I guess it’s the structure that gets the patent or something, right?

Chris Shelton: You got it.

Zach Elwood: Uh.

Chris Shelton: You got it. Okay. ‘Cause I, I think patent has to a- uh, don’t quote me on this of course, but I think it also has to do with, like, purpose and function too, not just-

Zach Elwood: Hmm …

Chris Shelton: how it’s

Zach Elwood: designed- Like, yeah- … but what it’s- … you’re using it for some psychology-related thing. Yeah. Whatever, whatever, uh-

Chris Shelton: You got it

Zach Elwood: the value- You got it … yeah, is. Um, yeah, so, yeah, what, what is it that, uh, this might be a big question, but-

Chris Shelton: Sure …

Zach Elwood: what is, what is it that Hubbard or Scientologists now claim that the E-Meter is reading?

Chris Shelton: This is actually pretty simple, but it’s- Okay … crazy as hell, so it- Yeah … so it might be a little weird to hear this.

But here’s, here’s the deal, right? Um- Put simply, the Scientology religion or philosophy states that you, me, thee, we’re all spiritual entities. We’re spiritual beings. We’re ghosts. We’re souls. We’re spirits. We’re not bodies. This body is just a suit of clothes you’re wearing. It’s not who you really are. Um, this whole universe that we are in, this physical manifestation of reality called the physical universe, is something you and I are mutually creating together.

We’re all responsible for this as living spiritual entities. Not through our bodies, but spiritually we are manifesting the reality of this universe and therefore it is real. We all agree to its reality, therefore we’re all living in it. And in fact, we’re trapped in it. Now, that’s as far as I’ll go into the Scientology philosophy stuff, but you need to know that to know that in Scientology you are an immortal spiritual being.

And this immortal spiritual being doesn’t have physical life. It’s, it’s, it, it’s life without physicality. It goes from body to body to body and it inhabits these bodies. It takes them over at birth. There, there’s a young body gestating in the womb and the thetan who has just d- died, uh, left a body, right?

His body died off ’cause it got old or got killed in an accident or whatever. Now he’s floating around and he needs another body. Nobody can hear him. Nobody can talk to him. He d- he can’t ev- he can’t relate with anybody. He needs to get a body so that he can interact with other- It’s like a hermit crab

people. Yeah. And of course scient- yeah, and Scientology says that you are compelled to get another body because this is a h- this whole thing is actually a big trap that we’re all caught in. We can’t just step out of it. We’re, we’re compelled, brainwashed you could say, to go get another body. So, so this cycle of life after life after life is not a choice or free will matter, it’s something we’re caught up in and can’t get out of.

And this is b- parallel in some ways I suppose with, you know, the Buddhist cycle of suffering or wheel of suffering or something, this, this endless thing that you’re c- sort of stuck to. It’s, it’s similar to this concept. Um, now that all being said, I had to tell you all that so that you would know that the thetan, the spirit, the, the entity, they call them thetans in Scientology don’t just go from life to life as happy little spirits.

They’re carrying all the baggage of all the trauma that they experienced in every single life they’ve ever had. And at this point now on Earth in 2027, 2026, right? Um, that’s a… There’s millions and millions and millions of years of baggage that we’ve been carrying around. Hubbard says that, that, that, that, um, this is a, this is crazy.

Like I said, this isn’t gonna make a lot of sense, but- Right … Hubbard says that we have been doing this, occupying bodies in this universe for four quadrillion years.

Zach Elwood: That’s a lot of baggage.

Chris Shelton: It’s a long time. So we’ve accumulated an awful lot of trauma, and we carry it around, and you could analogize it or think about it kind of like Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol.

He’s got these chains of all these sins he committed in his life, right? That he has to drag around with him, uh, in the afterlife. It’s like that in Scientology. You’re carrying all this baggage from one life to the next to the next, and you, and you’re only accumulating it. You aren’t getting rid of it.

Zach Elwood: Hmm.

Chris Shelton: The whole crux of Scientology is to get rid of it all We’re gonna- All that baggage … we’re gonna erase and remove all of those Jacob Marley chains. We’re gonna- all that trauma, all those deaths, all those murders, all that violence, all that crap you engaged in and had done to you over all these quadrillions of years, we’re gonna get rid of all of it and you’re gonna get back to this rehabilitated, happy, spiritual place where you’re em- re-empowered at full potential.

Like you’re gonna be back to godhood. You’re gonna be back to supercharged, superpowered Thanos level being, right? You’re gonna be like, you know, that level of thing. So-

Zach Elwood: And that’s, and that’s clear. That’s-

Chris Shelton: And that’s clear and the higher levels of Operating Thetan or OT.

Zach Elwood: Mm.

Chris Shelton: So if you’ve read about the whole volcano thing and the Xenu thing, all of those are stepping stones to getting to this godhood state of O- of Operating Thetan is what it’s called.

OT. Mm. Operating Thetan, right? You’re not just a thetan, you’re an Operating Thetan. You’re back to battery, you’re ready to rock. And right now you and me and thee who are listening to this right now are absolutely not ready to rock. We are not lifting things up with our minds. We are not, you know, moving planets.

We don’t have the force. We don’t have anything, right? We’re not, we’re, we’re, we’re not Neo. We wanna be Neo.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: Scientology imagines a future where we’re all Neo from The Matrix, right?

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: So that’s- Quick, quick- … the kind of- Quick question … delusional fantasy that they’re living in. Please go ahead.

Zach Elwood: Um, I don’t know if I’m jumping ahead, but when, when they talk about, uh, you know, thetans latching onto you, are those other thetans like yourself or are those- Yep

some other kind of thetans?

Chris Shelton: Nope. They’re all the same. Bo-

Zach Elwood: Okay …

Chris Shelton: body thetans are thetans. Those are called- Body thetans are thetans … BTs in Scientology, body thetans.

Zach Elwood: Yeah. So they’re other beings- Body … spirits like you fighting over your body or something?

Chris Shelton: Uh, they are actually a little bit different. Um, body thetans, uh, and this all comes out of the OT III stuff, the volcano stuff.

Um, the body thetans are super, super, super secret in Scientology. Nobody talks about it. Nobody, you know, has conversations about it ’cause it’s upper level confidential stuff. You’re, you know, knowled- knowledge of that before you’re ready is supposed to have a very detrimental effect on you. Oh,

Zach Elwood: okay.

Interesting.

Chris Shelton: Yeah. So the body thetans though are just thetans like you and me. But they have been so overwhelmed by their experiences that they are in a comatose sort of semi-conscious state, and that’s why they’re clustered, glommed onto you. They’re not– They- their- they- their thoughts con- are confused with your thoughts when they are awake, but they’re sleeping most of the time or they’re unconscious most of the time.

They’re not really- Hmm … fully operational. At least you can run a body. They’re not even doing that much. They’re just stuck to you, right? So they’re- Yeah, they’re like

Zach Elwood: mind mental parasites of some sort.

Chris Shelton: I- I was gonna say it’s more like parasites. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that’s kind of how the relationship works.

Hmm. So that’s upper-level Scientology stuff, which is neither here nor there as far as the meter goes, but it’s very, very interesting stuff. The… Getting back to the meter now, I had to give you all that spiritual Scientology look at it because it’s not a soul that’s going off to heaven. It’s not that concept.

The spiritual entity of Scientology is an independent life unit that thinks for itself, motivates itself, influences itself. It’s fully operational. It can do its own deal, and it can go off and live by itself if it wants. It doesn’t need anything or anybody. But it’s in a state after all these quadrillions of years of being pretty fucked up, right?

And so– And it doesn’t even know itself. It doesn’t realize what it is. You know, we don’t even… We, we, we put all of our faith in these, you know, in, in God, which is basically a, a, a thetan, right? Rather than realizing we are gods. I mean, you know, Scientology has this very, very self-aggrandized kind of philosophy.

The meter comes in because when you’re doing the Scientology work of de-traumatizing somebody, let’s say, right? Taking all this trauma away from them, you’re– The idea is that this trauma has physical universe substance. It’s an energy. It’s a kind of condensed, uh, energy that is literally adhered to your body.

Not the same way the body thetans are. They’re kind of stuck to you spiritually. I’m talking about sheets of energy that Hubbard says constitute your mind. Your mind is made up of sheets of energy that are storing pictures of stuff you’ve seen in the past. You don’t just have memories, you have these, you have these constructed, um, memories that are, that are real.

They’re physical, they’re tangible, and you and I can’t feel them or put our hands on them, but they can be detected with an E-meter.

Zach Elwood: Hmm. Okay So the meter in

Chris Shelton: Scientology is not just measuring resistance to this, to this flow. It’s stating in Scientology that the reason for the resistance in the first place is not because of muscle tension, sweat, or any physical factor.

They nullify all of that. They say, “No, no, no, no, no, no. None of that has anything to do with why the meter is reading,” because the meter is somehow calibrated by Hubbard to tune out body reactions. There’s no way to do that, but they say in Scientology they’ve done that. So that or minimize the body reactions so that you’re only reading the thetan.

But what that means, you’re not really reading the thetan ’cause it’s– there’s nothing to read. The, the thetan is not tangible, but the thetan has these, these things it produces, these mental image pictures is what they’re called in Scientology, that are sheets of energy, and that energy impinges on the body And that’s what alters the flow of the electronic signal.

Hmm. And I had to say all that crap just to get to that place, but that’s-

Zach Elwood: Right …

Chris Shelton: where it all comes from.

Zach Elwood: And so am I understanding that part of by, by trying to go clear, are you also trying to get rid of the thetan producing? Are, are you trying to get rid of those sheets of energy it’s producing too? Is that what’s going on?

Chris Shelton: Yes. You are literally erasing them from existence.

Zach Elwood: Ah.

Chris Shelton: Hubbard says you have in you a Buck Rogers laser beam that you can just beam over these, you know, you can, you can… Uh, not literally. I’m just saying, you know, like, like, it, like functionally. Your attention and the process of Scientology auditing, the, the, the procedure they do, is supposed to direct your attention to these sheets of energy through remembering the incidents of the past.

You don’t perceive them as sheets of energy. You close your eyes and think of a picture, right? Hmm. You have memory. But that memory is not in your brain, and it’s not behind your eyeballs. So what, what are you looking at? Well, you’re looking at a, a, a created picture that has energy connected to it, and that energy is, is, is impinging on your body and can cause you to have chronic physical pain, chronic conditions, disease, right?

Bent over back, messed up arms, arthritis, all this stuff that bodies do when they start degrading and getting worse off, Hubbard lays at the feet of these energy sheets. These, the, the, the mental mass that you’re carrying around with you is how they call it in Scientology, or they’ll call it charge.

That’s a charged item. That’s a memory that has charge connected to it because it can be read on the E-meter, right? Hmm. It’s got electronic charge connected to it. Hmm. So that’s the big explanation in Scientology for what the meter is reading. All of what I just said is complete delusion. There is no sheets of energy.

None of that is real. It would be measurable if there were. There are electronic devices that have been run over bodies to read, uh, you know, the energy field around a body. This is understood science. This is not like weird mystical places we have to go. But I- Yeah … gotta debunk it as soon as I say it or people will think I’m serious, right?

So-

Zach Elwood: No, yeah. I think most people- Yeah … know that you’re, you know, a former Scientologist, so, um- Yeah,

Chris Shelton: former Scientologist. That’s right … but

Zach Elwood: unless, unless they come into the middle of it, but yeah. That’s right. That’s right. So it may be good to remind people occasionally. Um- Yeah … but I’m curious, uh, I mean- Yeah

one thing I’ve always been curious about is like- W- w- take it, take us inside of a, an average, uh, audit. You know, what, or i- is it, ’cause I imagine, I mean, my rough sense of it, and I haven’t looked too deeply in it, into it, but it seems to me it, it kind of bears some resemblance to, like, a polygraph session in the sense that they’re, like, d- digging for information and they’re like, “We’re getting a reaction there.

Are you telling, you know, are you telling, uh, you tell us more things?” But maybe you could, maybe I’m way off base on that. Maybe you could, maybe you could describe what an average audit session-

Chris Shelton: Absolutely … is like-

Zach Elwood: Well, I’ll tell you- … or was for you.

Chris Shelton: Yeah, no, I’ll tell you all about it. Um- Yeah … and in fact, I’ve actually made a video showing this, and showing the E-Meter, and showing the way that the meter is used in Scientology auditing because there are a few different methods or techniques involved with an E-Meter.

Um,

Zach Elwood: and, uh- What’s that, uh, video? Uh, if people wanted to find that longer video, how, how can they find it?

Chris Shelton: Yeah. Well, I’ll g- I’ll send you the link to it- Okay … uh, so you can post it in the show notes ’cause I’ve broken this whole thing down from A to Z, from beginning- Yeah … to end, um, on what the meter’s history is, what it’s really doing, what Scientologists are told it’s doing.

And I literally, my wife and I sat down with an E-Meter and we actually showed what, how it, what it looks like when the meter is used. And again, basically- Oh, I gotta

Zach Elwood: watch that. And s- sorry I didn’t watch it before this. I’ve just been so busy. No, it’s great. But I gotta

Chris Shelton: see this. And it’s, it’s fine. It’s, uh, but I just wanted to let your audience know it’s there.

Yeah. It’s one of the few places on the internet you can actually see-

Zach Elwood: That’s great …

Chris Shelton: excuse me, what Scientology auditing looks like.

Zach Elwood: Yeah.

Chris Shelton: That’s

Zach Elwood: great.

Chris Shelton: Um, so basically the meter is used to watch for the needle on the dial to read. It has to respond. And what you’re looking for is you’re calling out items or, um, talking about topics or asking questions, and this is most often how it happens, is in Scientology procedures or auditing processes, they are in the form of questions.

You are being asked questions or you are being given commands. One of the two things is happening. Often repetitively. Remember the basic of– the basic thing about Scientology auditing is that it is hypnotic. It is inducing trance states, and those trance states are induced through repetition, just like with mantras and chanting and meditation.

Same concepts. So in Scientology, though, you have an operator, the auditor, who has the meter in front of him and the preclear, the person who’s getting auditing, they’re called preclear because they’re not clear yet. And even if they do get clear, we still call them preclears because very few people run around calling people pre-OTs.

It’s preclear just rolls off the tongue better . So everybody in Scientology who’s getting auditing is basically called a preclear and, uh, or PC. We’ll call them a PC. And, uh, and the PC is sitting there holding the cans. The PC cannot see the meter, can’t see the dial, can’t see what’s going on. That’s very important.

Um, they’re not supposed to be distracted by it. So the auditor is asking these sharp and pointed questions. Now let’s say you’re doing a confessional. This is the easiest one to demonstrate. So Scientology confessionals are infamous because they are so, uh, rigorous and because they demand full transparency out of the person that you’re sec checking or giving a confessional to.

They also call it– Sorry, I slipped there. It’s also called security checking. So they call it sec checking, right? So if you’re getting a sec check in Scientology, you’re getting a confessional. And let’s say you’re being asked sharp and pointed questions. So the auditor will go into session with you and put you on the cans, and you’re sitting there in the chair holding the cans, and they do some setup stuff, uh, with the meter to make sure that you’ve eaten and slept and all that.

Um, we don’t have to get into all the minutiae of this or we’ll be here all day. But basically then the m- then the session actually gets going and I’ll have as the auditor, as the confessor, I will have a list of questions that I’m going to ask you. I don’t just make them up on the spot. Um, this is a directed, guided activity.

There’s another person called a case supervisor who usually is the one who’s writing these questions, and they– Worksheets are kept during the course of the auditing session, and they’re kept in files. So you have a dossier, a PC folder, and you have lots of them. Over time, you will accumulate many of these folders because everything you’re saying is being written down Let’s say the first question on the list, on the confessional question is, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

We’re doing a confessional about your marriage, let’s say, and I got a lot of questions here, and I’m gonna ask you all kinds of sharp and pointed questions about you and the state of your marriage. So the first question’s gonna get right out of the gate with, “Have you cheated on your wife?” Right? And I ask that question, and the needle goes boom.

“Have you ever cheated on your wife?” Boom. Needle responds. That’s when you’re looking for the registration.

Zach Elwood: Have you- Are we answer… Uh, you know, would, would the pers- the preclear be answering the question verbally also?

Chris Shelton: We’ll get there. Yes. Oh, okay. Okay. Um, the meter has to respond before the auditor will take up the question with the PC.

If the question is asked, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?” And the needle’s just sitting there doing nothing, question has not read. There’s no read, so there’s nothing to take up because there’s no charge there.

Zach Elwood: Hmm.

Chris Shelton: See? And you’re looking for charge. You’re looking for those sheets of energy, right?

You’re looking for that charge to manifest itself on the E-meter. So there’s no charge on this question, but do you just let it go? Hell no, you don’t. You have a whole set of tools to bring to mind, to bring to bear, to get that needle to read. And there’s two things you’re looking for. You’re either looking for a read, where it responds with what’s called a fall.

It, it, it moves over to the, to the right. Um, I, I’m using my finger here, but it’s really a needle on a dial. Um, and it has to fall to the right. That’s a fall. If it’s going to the left, that’s called a rise, and nobody cares about rises. You only want falls. So you ask the question, you don’t get a fall. But you also– The other thing you’re looking for that would indicate that there isn’t any charge on this question, and we can just move on and ignore this question, is called a floating needle A floating needle, again with my finger, is when the needle is just rhythmically sweeping back and forth idly, rhythmic sweep of the dial at a slow, even pace of the needle back and forth.

No big deal. The person doesn’t have anything on their mind. They’re not upset. They’re not frantic. They’re not anxious. They’re just sitting there holding the cans going, “Yeah, whatever, dude. I, no, I didn’t cheat on my wife” right? Doesn’t- it’s not, it’s not, it’s not triggering them in any way. Hmm. It’s not causing any kind of like, “Oh my God, does he know?

Does he find out? Is he gonna find out? Oh, no” right? Does- Like, those kind of reactions are not happening. The needle is floating. Does the fall- That’s what you’re looking for … does

Zach Elwood: the fall, uh, correspond to, like, a s- uh, an increase in electrodermal conductivity or? The fall indicates a random moment of resistance to the electric signal.

Right,

Chris Shelton: which- But in Scientology-

Zach Elwood: Oh, it’s resistance, not,

Chris Shelton: uh- It’s resistance, right? Not

Zach Elwood: increase,

Chris Shelton: not- That’s all it’s registering.

Zach Elwood: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Shelton: That’s all it’s registering.

Zach Elwood: Okay.

Chris Shelton: So you don’t know what a fall means. That’s in- a- in fact, the entire point of where everything goes off the rails with this. Hmm. The fall happens, and all you know is that electric signal was interrupted very, very briefly at that exact moment in time.

Registers in real time on the needle. So something just happened. In Scientology, it is assumed that if that read happens at the exact moment that you end the question verbally, they literally call it an instant read. You’re not just looking for a read, you’re looking for an instant read. It has to be at the exact end of the statement.

So that’s the, that’s the control factor that’s entered in, in reading an E-meter. It’s not… You don’t just take any random fall. It has to be in response to something you’re saying, or- Hmm … less often, something in response to what the preclear is saying. Maybe the preclear goes, “Oh, yes, I did cheat on my wife.”

Boom. There’s- Hmm … the fall. Ah, there’s the fall. Okay, good. Right? There’s the response. So you can have an instant read based on what the person is saying, but more often it’s the auditor paying attention to what he’s saying. And until the read happens, you’re not taking up the question. You’re not dealing with it.

You’re not assuming yes until you see the read. Once the read happens, I… “Okay, you cheated on your wife, now I’m gonna get all the goods.” Right? “Now you’re gonna tell me about how you cheated on your wife.” And the auditor’s gonna look at the preclear now and go, “Okay, so have you cheated on your wife?” Right?

And the guy goes, “No, I never cheated on my wife.” “Well, the meter says different.”

Zach Elwood: So, so the meter is saying, like, e- even in this context, i- is it analogous to the, the polygraph in the sense that the, the Scientol- the auditor is taking that as some sort of activity that means some deception or stress? Is that fair?

Chris Shelton: Yes. The, the auditor is trained that when the meter reads, you have a hot question.

Zach Elwood: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Chris Shelton: You have a charged question.

Zach Elwood: Hmm. You have some emotion

Chris Shelton: there. And that charge is there- Or energy. Yeah. That energy is there for a reason. Hmm. Right? And the preclear, and here’s the, here’s the, here’s where it gets gross The preclear may not yet be aware of the fact that that charge is there.

But the fact that it read indicates that he can find it, and the auditor is there to help him find it, direct his attention to get the answer to the question so that that charge can be relieved.

Zach Elwood: So,

Chris Shelton: uh- It’s all based on the assumption that if the meter responds at that exact moment in time, that charge exists and the auditor’s job is to dig it up and get this person to confess to what they did.

And they may not remember right away, so you might have to work with them. You don’t sit there and assume the guy is sitting on something and actively not telling you on purpose. But you do assume there is something there to be dug up. And even if he says no, you just assume he doesn’t know what he’s talking about yet, and you’re gonna work with him to dig it up.

W- w- The meter is believed 100% of the time over what the preclear is saying. Even if an hour or two later you’ve been working this question over trying to get this guy to tell you and he’s like, “Dude, I have not cheated on my wife and there’s no way I’m gonna say I did.” And the guy, “Well, we got something here.”

You have to sort that out, and until you’ve sorted it out, you’re not leaving that question

Zach Elwood: And what would it look like in that… What would that look like if the guy was innocent? And, like, is there a, is there a, a path in that world where the auditor believes him based on something the E-Meter shows that he’s innocent?

Like, what does that look like?

Chris Shelton: Basically, i- in a nutshell, ’cause I don’t wanna get into all the technical crap that you end up doing, there are checks you can do. There are additional questions you can ask or check over and over and over again as needed to get that read back to make it happen again to direct the person’s attention to what it is you’re looking for.

And it’s, again, assumed that if the auditor is sitting there and sees the same reaction again or something approximating it, that, that, what’s that thought? What’s that right there? The, the needle is kind of, like, used as a guide to direct the person’s attention. Looking for that read again. Now, this is all up to the skill of the auditor and his ability to observe is that actually the exact same read, and if it is, does it even mean anything?

I mean, let’s address this for a second because the fact of the matter is there is a very, very, very strong assumption being made by the Scientology auditor that if the read happens, there is something there to be found or there is some answer to the question. My assertion at this point with my understanding of it now is that’s total horseshit.

That read was basically just randomly timed to it happened at the end of the guy’s statement. I put no stock whatsoever in the fact of the timing of a read on an E-Meter at this point, but I’m stressing it because Scientologists go so crazy about this. This is what they’re trained to do. Right. So it doesn’t really mean anything.

But in the Scientology context, it means there’s a hot question, and now I have to drag the answers out of this guy by hook or by crook. Maybe he cooperates, maybe he doesn’t. And this is the place where people start making up answers ’cause they need to come up with some answer ’cause they can’t get out of that room until they do.

And they can take an hour or two or three. I’ve done all of those, and I’ve been at both ends of this where there is no answer. There was legit no answer in the real world. This guy didn’t cheat on his wife, and he’s not gonna tell you that he did, although sometimes people will be badgered into false confessions.

Hmm. In fact, it happens all the time in Scientology. But if the badgering isn’t working and if the guy is sticking to his guns, there is eventually a way to establish whether it was a false read And you can check, was that a false read? Doink. Oh, wow, it was a false read. Okay. And after, you know, two hours of messing around, you know, when, when once you start asking false read, this guy starts getting really anxious.

“Yes, it was a false read. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes” Right? So you’re gonna see all kinds of responses. So that kind of is one way that it could go. Hmm. But false reads are not supposed to be your default position. The, the confessor, the, the Scientology security checker, there’s a special class you have to take to be able to do Scientology confessionals.

You don’t just learn how to use an E-meter and then get cut loose. There’s a whole training to this, and you are taught to be what Hubbard calls swinishly suspicious. So when somebody says no to you in a confessional session, you’re super skeptical. “Really? No, huh? Well, the meter says a little different, so I’ll tell you what.

Why don’t we just go ahead and explore this territory?” And at that point, the auditor can start saying or doing anything to get this guy to confess. He’s got a hot question, right? The read is there. His ticket is punched. This guy is gonna confess. So now my job as the auditor is to get him to do it.

Zach Elwood: Hmm.

Chris Shelton: And I’m gonna, and I’m gonna, again, by hook or by crook. And most of the time within the world of Scientology, it’s a cooperative effort. It’s not a, it’s not a loggerheads thing.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: But if it hits loggerheads and you’re really at an impasse and you’re stuck The auditor’s skill and persuasion and ability to smooth talk this guy is all he’s got because he cannot let that person out of the auditing session, out of that room until that read is cleared up.

That’s the whole point of being there.

Zach Elwood: What’s the context for people getting these sessions in the first place? Like, why would Scientology auditors care about the specific things they ask about? Like, how does it come about that they’re asking those questions? Is, is it sometimes on the part of the preclear that wants to talk about it, or who’s directing the subjects that get talked about?

Chris Shelton: Yeah, no, it’s directed by this case supervisor person, and what they’re doing is following L. Ron Hubbard’s master program for every single person who goes into Scientology. It’s called The Bridge to Total Freedom, but it’s really a program of indoctrination, and it’s layers and layers of it. You, you climb this ladder.

They call it a bridge, but they might as well call it a ladder of these levels, and each level consists of or is thematically aligned to some particular thing you’re gonna deal with. So at level zero or gr- sorry, grade zero, I should say grade zero, you’re going to address communication issues. Every auditing process and thing that you’re doing on level zero has to do with difficulties and problems with communication Interpersonal communication, communicating to yourself, communicating to others, you know, you to groups, groups to you.

Like every single way you can think about communication happening, there are Scientology auditing processes that address communication, right? And address your difficulties with it. Again, using the E-meter to find those charged areas. We don’t want what you think is wrong. We want where the charge is ’cause that’s how we know what’s wrong.

This is the whole theory underlying the Scientology auditing.

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: You don’t know what’s wrong with you. If you did, it wouldn’t be wrong with you. Right. So we’re really not very interested in what you have to say as to your explanations of what’s wrong. Right. We already know what’s wrong. You can’t communicate, you have problems, you commit sins, you don’t like change, and you are trying to make yourself right and other people wrong all the time.

And those five things I just laid out are the five grades that you go through in Scientology. Communication problems, sins or overts as they call them, change, and making yourself right and other people wrong is the, is the final level, grade four. Those are the steps you have to go through, those grades you have to go through to get to the state of clear.

Zach Elwood: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: And then once you’re clear and you don’t have that reactive mind anymore, which is a complete artificial construct, but once you supposedly don’t have a reactive mind anymore, then you’re set up for those OT levels where you’re gonna then get into some super-duper stuff addressing, um, um- Body thetans and all that confidential stuff.

I

Zach Elwood: mean, it seems like, um, correct me if you disagree- Yeah, yeah … but it seems like it does have a lot of, uh, similarities to the polygraph environment in the sense that my understanding of the main way that polygraphs get information from people is not because they can detect lies, because we know they aren’t good at that.

But the fact that you’re just using it as a way to basically probe people and be like, “Oh, we got a response. You know, you, you gotta give, you know, give us an answer about why it’s getting a response.” It’s basically just used as a tool for manipulating people into coughing up more information. So it seems like there’s a lot of similarities i- in both those cases.

Would you, would you agree with that?

Chris Shelton: I would.

Zach Elwood: Okay.

Chris Shelton: This is where the difference comes down between ethical and unethical polygraph use. Let’s talk about that for a second ’cause it’s important. Um, there have been interviews with, with ethical professional polygraph operators who have, say, for example, operated in the CIA or Secret Service, stuff like that, right?

And they have very interesting things to say because when they talk honestly about how they use the polygraph, what happens is when you’re doing this for job security clearance issues, let’s say, which is about as analogous in real world, you know, examples to what I just explained with the president- Yeah, ‘

Zach Elwood: cause they even call it security, uh, checking in, uh, Scientology, right?

So…

Chris Shelton: That’s right. Yeah. That’s right. So let’s say you’re at the… You’re the polygraph operator for the Secret Service, and here’s a job applicant, and he comes in, and his job is to protect the president. Well, your job is to make sure he’s not an enemy plant, a mole, a s- a pervert, a spy, all kinds of things.

That’s your job. And your polygraph is the tool you have, right? So how do you use this thing? Well, if you’re honest, then when there’s a reaction, all you know is there was a reaction That reaction could have come from nervousness, anticipation, anxiety, sc- fear of not getting the job, nervousness about the whole process.

Mm-hmm.

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: Nervousness about being falsely registered. Mm-hmm. Right? Anticipation of an injustice happening to you. Yeah.

Zach Elwood: The same amount of- All- The, the same, the same factors and noise that, that make it hard to read, or nearly impossible to read, like small behavioral cues, right? So

Chris Shelton: You got it. Yeah.

Exactly. This is why this is our territory, right? Yeah. Because all you know is the thing reacted. The polygraph operator’s job is not to assume, “Oh, I, I got a reaction, therefore this guy’s absolutely guilty.” It’s more of a, “Ding, ding. Wait a second. What’s this? Let’s call some attention to this. What is this?”

Mm-hmm. “And what’s going to clear it? What’s gonna sort it out so I don’t keep having this problem,” right? Um, and if it’s nervousness or whatever, good. Let’s get that. Good. Tell me about the nervousness. Tell me about the this. Tell me about the that. Let’s get it all off your chest. Good. Now I’m gonna ask you this question.

Now, when I ask you this question, look, it’s still getting… I don’t know, man. There’s still something on this. I’m not sure what we’re looking at, but you wanna, like, start coughing? And of course, this has led famously to, um, cases where people were, you know, pedophiles or involved in secret sex stuff or online activities they shouldn’t have been involved in, and they end up having to confess this stuff during their job interview basically.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: Because the polygraph operator is just like a little, you know, they’ve just got that thing in there and they’re just not gonna let it go. Right. And that’s their job. The auditor, the difference between that scenario, which I will call ethical polygraphing, right, or ethical interviewing, because you don’t know and you don’t assume you know.

You don’t assume you know anything. All you know is you got a reaction and you gotta sort it out. In Scientology, as I explained, it’s a very different thing. The assumption is absolutely, positively you got an answer to this question and my job is to dig it up. And it’s never gonna be your nervousness, your anxiousness, your worry or this or that.

That I don’t even wanna hear it. I don’t- we’re not going there. That has nothing to do with this. That’s not why the meter read. In Scientology, nobody would believe that was why it read. It read because I asked you a question and there’s charge on that question, and we’re gonna find out why.

Zach Elwood: Yeah, even though you said there was- You know, maybe you didn’t- You said there was like a, a path to viewing it as a false read, but you also said that that was a rarity and that was not-

Chris Shelton: Yeah

Zach Elwood: the default. That’s- That was like a ra- a rarity, yeah …

Chris Shelton: that’s after two hours of like just banging on the guy. Yeah. And the, and it’s all to, and, and it’s all up to the auditor. Ag- ag- again, may- maybe as, as, as subjective as polygraphs because it’s all up to the polygraph operator too. But I, but I really wanted to stress that basic fundamental difference in assumption because it’s a very, very important one.

Um, the auditors are trained to assume this. They’re, they’re trained to know that meter is 100% reliable and never makes a mistake.

Zach Elwood: Mm.

Chris Shelton: Right? So if you’re reading it wrong, well, you’re reading it wrong, but it’s not the meter, it’s you, right? You, you, you, that meter is 100% reliable 100% of the time. So that’s a very different assumption.

Zach Elwood: Yeah, I guess, I guess to s- to summarize or, or tr- to try to summarize what you’re saying, it’s like you can imagine polygraph, uh, examiners not believing in the polygraph and still using it as kind of a tool to try to get information, whereas like a Scientologist firmly believes that this is a magical, you know, very h- powerful instrument, right?

So I guess

Chris Shelton: that’s- That’s right …

Zach Elwood: that’s two ways to, to view it, yeah.

Chris Shelton: Um- That’s right. And also the fact that when you’re in an auditing session, there is an environmental factor here which needs to be commented on too, which is when you’re in an auditing session in Scientology, um, just to paint the picture for anybody who doesn’t, doesn’t know ’cause I, how, how would you?

Um, I mentioned that there’s a desk, there’s the pre-clear holding the cans, and there’s the auditor looking at the e-meter. The door, the entrance door to the room is behind the auditor. 100% of the time it is behind the auditor, and that auditing session is not done and we are not taking a break until the auditor says we are The preclear has no voice in the matter and no authority in that room.

So when that door is closed and locked, if the preclear wants to get up and leave, he’s gotta get through the auditor, and the auditor is trained to resist and stop him. Hmm. They actually do practice drills and role-playing to stop and manhandle a person back into the chair-

Zach Elwood: My

Chris Shelton: gosh … and demand answers to the questions that they are asking.

And they feel completely free to do this in- ’cause this is the standard practice of Scientology. You force yourself, you force those answers out if you need to because you know as the auditor you’re trained to know that anything this guy is doing that’s resisting you is not him. It’s his reactive mind.

It’s his case. It’s this other stuff. It’s his body thetans.

Zach Elwood: Hmm.

Chris Shelton: It’s not him. You’re actually doing him a service by manhandling and abusing him back into that chair, see?

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: And that’s the viewpoint of the Scientology auditor is he is there doing a service for this person. So they are trained to abuse in the name of help.

Zach Elwood: Hmm.

Chris Shelton: Wow. And that’s the key, key difference between the attitude and approach of a Scientology auditor versus a polygraph operator who’s just doing a job. “I got questions. I gotta ask them to you. If I get responses, I’m gonna ask you about those, but this isn’t life or fucking death.”

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: Right? “This is just an, this is just a polygraph interview.”

They have a much clearer perspective of what they’re doing than a Scientology auditor does.

Zach Elwood: Um, how many audits sessions would you say you, you did over is that, can you estimate that? Oh, me? Yeah.

Chris Shelton: Oh, thousands. Thousands. Oh, yeah. I have, I probably had something like 75 or 80 PC folders-

Zach Elwood: Wow …

Chris Shelton: of my own, right?

And, um, and I ca- you can’t look in them. You don’t get access to your own folders, so I, I never did see inside mine. But I certainly saw inside lots of other people’s and, you know, I, I knew people who had 200 folders.

Zach Elwood: Huh. Wow.

Chris Shelton: Um, there’s a lot of auditing that happens in Scientology to get up to those OT levels and get through all those grades and stuff.

These are not once and dones. Uh, these are it takes hours and hours and hours just to get through one grade.

Zach Elwood: Yeah. Uh, h- so how did your, you know, how did you feel after doing these sessions back then when you were a true believer? Did you feel like you were badgering and interrogating people? Did you feel good about it afterwards?

What, what was your overall sense back when you were a believer?

Chris Shelton: It was a, it was a varied experience, um, because people have lots of different reactions to this. You know, when you lock somebody up in a room and start, you know, demanding answers out of them, people will respond in lots of different ways.

It’s a co- like I said, it’s a cooperative effort, so it’s not a thing of, you know, you’re in there pugilistically duking it out the whole time and the preclear doesn’t even wanna be there. That wouldn’t work at all.

Zach Elwood: They usually wanna be

Chris Shelton: there. The, the, the-

Zach Elwood: Yeah …

Chris Shelton: right? The preclear very much wants to be there.

Yeah. They’re paying a great deal of money to be there, in fact.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: So it’s, it’s, so they’re very much in the mood of cooperating with the auditor. They don’t wanna fight. But when they’re faced with a question of, “Well, shit, I just don’t have an answer to this question,” and the auditor’s like, “Well, I got a read on this, so we’re gonna be pursuing it, and I need you to dig, and I need you to look, and I need you to remember, and I need you to find it And if we gotta go into your past lives to find it, we’ll do so, right?

But, but most of the time, especially with confessionals, we’re looking for this lifetime stuff to start with. But eventually we’ll go earlier in time to your past lives. So there’s an infinite number of answers possible in an auditing session, whereas in a polygraph you’re not going into a person’s past lives, right?

They’re not gonna… Have you ever, you know, f- misfiled a report? You know, if you ask somebody that on a polygraph or, you know, are you working for a government, uh, you know, a, a, a, an enemy government agency and they go, “Uh, uh, well, I don’t know. I think I was a Russian KGB agent, uh, 1940 in my last life.” Yeah, that, that ain’t gonna fly in a, in a polygraph session.

Zach Elwood: Yeah. Does the, uh… Quick question on the past lives thing. It- Yeah … it seems to me like, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like some of the way that comes about is, like, you’re, the person’s getting a hit for this specific question or topic but they have no conscious recolesh- rec- recollection of it.

So then is that where they start, like, being like, “Well, there’s something there, so let’s…” You know, and then maybe they start creating it o- on their own? Or how- Yeah … is that kind of, like, how some of it comes about?

Chris Shelton: Absolutely. It’s false memory syndrome-

Zach Elwood: Yeah,

Chris Shelton: yeah … uh, up and down, right? Yeah. Just up and down.

Yeah. You are… If somebody demands a memory from you and starts giving you the content of that memory, your brain is almost automatically universally going to start remembering things that didn’t happen. Mm-hmm.

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: Um, this is studied stuff, right? I don’t have… I’m not, I’m not, I’m not making this up and this isn’t my opinion.

Um, people’s memory is incredibly malleable- Yeah … and very, very rocky and uncertain. We do not have photographic perfect memory. Hubbard talked in- endlessly about how the ideal state of people is to have perfect 3D memory of your entire, you know, life and past lives, and Hubbard himself claimed to have this kind of eidetic memory but it was all bullshit.

He… I couldn’t even remember y- what happened yesterday, much less, you know, what happened 40 million years ago. So Scientologists have this standard laid for them after a while. They don’t come in on day one learning this, but, but after a while of getting, you know, acculturated to Scientology they start picking up the lingo and picking up the attitudes and realizing past lives are very, very much part of this picture.

You will be prevented in a confessional from what’s called diving into the past track, is how they call it, right? They, they, they want you taking responsibility for the crap you’ve done this lifetime and they want the goods on you from this lifetime. So they’re not gonna let you jump straight to, you know, 1783 when you, you know, uh, a, you know, assaulted some poor maiden.

Um, that’s not how the Scientology confessionals work exactly. Um, but- past lives are eventually through the course of the auditing. What happens, uh, uh, d- since I brought up the floating needle thing, let me just say. Let’s say you ask the guy, “Have you ever cheated on your spouse?” And the guy goes, “Yeah.” Uh, you, you finally get an answer.

“Yeah, I cheated on my spouse by giving somebody fuck me eyes. You know, when, when, uh, just, you know, right after our honeymoon, I saw some hot woman, and I, I, I flashed her some, you know, hot looks, and she flashed me back. And yeah, I felt really guilty about that, and I was kind of cheating on my wife.” And maybe you come up with an answer that way.

Um, but the needle doesn’t float. You get all the specifics, you get all the stuff you’re supposed to do about getting all of the what the guy did, and the needle’s not floating. You’re gonna ask at that point, “Is there an earlier similar time you cheated on your wife?” Right? Earlier similar time you did whatever it is that you’re being asked about, and you then go earlier in time.

Hmm. Was there something else you did to cheat on your wife before that time? This lifetime you’re looking for, but once you’ve gotten to this lifetime off, you can dive past life.

Zach Elwood: Hmm.

Chris Shelton: And I did plenty of that when I was in Scientology.

Zach Elwood: Huh. Yeah, and getting back to the, you know, how you felt doing that stuff back then- Yeah

was it, I imagine, I mean, it most, mo- I’d imagine it mostly felt good. You felt like you were doing good things, good work. Like it, at, at the end of the day you felt like that was a, that was a, that was a day of, uh, good hard work that did good things. Is that mostly how you felt?

Chris Shelton: Mostly, yes. Yeah. Auditing is the central activity of Scientology.

It’s the therapeutic aspect of Scientology. It’s the, it’s the, it’s where you get the awe-

Zach Elwood: Hmm …

Chris Shelton: and the euphoric experiences. Where the peak experiences tend to come from is- Hmm … Scientology auditing. Because you’re also not really allowed to leave the room until you’re euphoric, right? Oh. Until you’re like, “Ah, this was great, I feel so good.”

Oh, interesting. And you feel floating and- Yeah … you’re so happy. Huh. There’s, there’s four conditions you have to meet in order to get the hell out of that room. And, and so the floating needle is one of them, and feeling really great is another one. And, you know, some sort of epiphany or realization about your life.

That’s called a cognition in Scientology, and they want a cognition out of you before they let you leave. So they’ll keep going until you produce these phenomena, and, uh, that’s how you know you’re done with a session. And, and it does feel good- Hmm … for about five minutes, you know, and then you’re carrying on with life again.

It’s, it’s the, it’s not the feelings that are the problem with Scientology auditing. It’s, I want to be clear about this because maybe I haven’t been clear in the past when, you know, on other shows or whatever and I’m misunderstood on this. But it’s important to understand that this is all deception and trickery.

This is all smoke and mirrors, right? They’re hypnotizing you, putting you into these trance states, indoctrinating you to achieve this end result of, of a peak experience, and you know you’re not getting out of that room until you have a peak experience. So you become inured or habituated to creating your own peak experiences.

But I got to tell you from experience after 27 years of that, those peak experiences really aren’t the same over and over and over again. They, they start losing their shine, you know?

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: Um, that gold isn’t so glittery after a lot of decades of it. And that’s because you’re the one making all of it.

Hmm. Nobody’s, nobody’s magically taking all your trauma away, and you’re not really changing spiritually. So there’s this whole sort of- Put on show that you also end up doing as a Scientologist, but you honestly don’t even realize you’re doing it. Mm-hmm. You’re meeting social expectations and obligations, but it doesn’t real- you don’t think about it that way.

You know? You don’t experience it that way. Mm-hmm.

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: Um, because you’re such a true believer. At least this is all me, right? This is all how I experienced it, so.

Zach Elwood: Yeah, well, there’s all these, you know, similar to when I worked in, uh, for this neuro-linguistic programming guy for six months. You know, they do these

You and I had talked about it, where they do the exercises. Yeah. Unusual psychological things where you’re, like, staring into each other- other’s eyes and doing unusual psychological experiences which l- can lead to these, like, strange and euphoric feelings. And, you know, that’s- Yeah … the, the, the, there, that plays a role in a lot of, uh, cult-like dynamics where you’re just reaching these kind of peak exciting states, and then if they start wearing off, you might want, like, to seek them in a more, you know, you might try seeking them in more extreme ways to try to keep the feelings up and all these kinds of things.

Um, yeah, it seems like it has some- That’s

Chris Shelton: right …

Zach Elwood: similarities there. Um-

Chris Shelton: That’s

Zach Elwood: right … I was curious, I was curious about the, um, because it does seem like because the E-meter is, you know, measuring skin conductance, it seems like theoretically, in the same way that you can, you know, train yourself to be less reactive on a polygraph s- on the getting those spikes, it seems like theoretically people would change how they respond after getting a lot of auditing sessions.

Did you see that with people becoming less reactive, like spiking the needle less or, or did you see things like that?

Chris Shelton: Well, the needle is not under your conscious control, and you can’t see it. And those two factors are pretty important in terms of understanding how to control an E-Meter from the pre-clear side.

There are body things you can do to create certain effects, but because you can’t see the needle, you’re never really sure what’s going on with the needle. Oh, right. You

Zach Elwood: can’t see it, so you’re not-

Chris Shelton: Mm-mm … sure.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: No. Yeah.

Zach Elwood: I see.

Chris Shelton: I forgot about that part. And if you sit there and squeeze the cans, it is distinctly different from what they call mental phenomena.

They shouldn’t call it that. Right. They should not ever call it that.

Zach Elwood: Yeah.

Chris Shelton: All of it is physical phenomena.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: But-

Zach Elwood: It’s, it’s like, it’s basically like… And we maybe we should have talked about that earlier, ’cause I, I actually- Yeah … have an episode about what skin conductance measurement is, like, what that…

You know, it’s basically like you’re… It can, it can be… Maybe it’s due to other things too, but it’s mostly, like, due to, like, your skin, like, randomly producing moisture or not, like, slight variations in the moisture- That’s right … which causes the conductivity to shift, right? And maybe it’s due to- That’s right

some other random fluctuations too, and, like, you know, electrical con- you know, whatever. I, I, I don’t really… I haven’t looked into it fully. But, like, it’s either, like, the skin conductance based on, like, slight sweating patterns, or maybe it’s, like, also random things too. Yeah.

Chris Shelton: Well, I’ll tell you, I mean, if you’re holding a can, and they’re roughly about the size of my Coke can here, right?

You’re holding it in your hand Couple things to point out is, one, your, the, the palms of your hands have more sweat glands than anybody, any other place in your body, right? Your pits and the bottoms of your feet and the, and the palms of your hand- Mm … are your major, major sweat areas. And we’re talking micro sweat glands.

Right. Right? We’re talking small, small, small amounts. You, you wouldn’t run your finger over your hand and always feel all the sweat. Right.

Zach Elwood: Right? You can- We’re talking, like, micro variations. Like, you’re, you don’t- Micro

Chris Shelton: variations …

Zach Elwood: you’re not, like, thinking you’re sweating or anything, it’s just, like, slight-

Chris Shelton: Exactly

Zach Elwood: shifts. Yeah.

Chris Shelton: And even more is micro tensions.

Zach Elwood: Mm.

Chris Shelton: Little, tiny muscle movements of- Ah. Right. Right. Almost imperceptible at the finger or palm level can also cause reactions. You don’t feel it. Right. You don’t even feel it. Micro- Right? Like micro- Yeah, you’re not

Zach Elwood: aware of it. Yeah.

Chris Shelton: Yeah, you just don’t even feel it.

Then there is, of course, the fact that the electrical signal is going over your whole skin, not just your hand. Your pits can change the, the resistance, right? Ah, yeah. Because of the sweat. There’s so many factors. Other muscle movements can affect- Yeah … the, the change. Moving your hands around affects the needle.

So many factors. So micro movements of your body can affect the needle. Right. And these are all imperceptible- Right … and not repeatable or under your conscious control. And so people get really, really, you know, confused about that because they’re kinda like, “Yeah, but what about when you’re tracing a read and, and tell that, that.

What’s that right there? What’s that thought?” Right? The person’s thinking something, and it keeps reacting. No. You don’t know that they’re thinking the exact same thing over and over again. This is never, not once, has this been the topic or s- or subject of scientific study.

Zach Elwood: Mm.

Chris Shelton: So you don’t get to sit there and tell me that the same read means the same thought.

You don’t know that.

Zach Elwood: Oh,

Chris Shelton: yeah. And even if it did, you don’t know that it’s actually reading on a thought. It’s reading on a physical manifestation or downstream consequence of a thought. So, you know, so to tell me that, you know, it’s automatically reading your mind, I think that’s a very gullible statement, right?

Mm-hmm. I think that that’s not- Mm … very grounded in the reality of the situation. And I don’t sit here claiming to have a full explanation for every single phenomena that happens on an E-meter.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: My point mainly is it’s a lot more random than Scientologists imagine it to be.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: You know?

Zach Elwood: For su- Yeah, I think we

Chris Shelton: can- And let me give you an example-

mostly agree on that … of why I, why exactly I can say that with some certainty. Let’s say, I mentioned earlier techniques to get the meter to read. Have you ever cheated on your wife? Needle doesn’t go anywhere, right? Needle’s not doing anything to respond instantly to that question. I now have a list of 20 what are called buttons that I can put in on that question, and here’s what it looks like.

Have you ever cheated on your wife? On the question, have you ever cheated on your wife, has anything been suppressed? On the question, have you ever cheated on your wife, has anything been invalidated? On the question, have you ever cheated on your wife, has anything been misunderstood? On the question, have you ever cheated on your wife, is there anything you’re protesting?

On and on and on. There’s 20 of these buttons that I can put in on the question. That gives me… Each time I ask that question And put in a button. Technically, when I- procedurally, this is how it works in Scientology. On the question, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?” Ding, there’s a read. It could happen right there.

Or it could happen on the question, “Have you ever cheated on your wife? Has anything been suppressed?” Ding-

Zach Elwood: Yeah, you’re giving yourself- …

Chris Shelton: there’s another opportunity …

Zach Elwood: many opportunities to ding- Ex- … ding for that question basically,

Chris Shelton: yeah. That’s right. I’m looking for a random E-Meter response, and I am telling myself I’m causing it by asking questions over and over again.

I have watched, and I have participated in asking a sec check question three times through with all the buttons, which means I ask that question 60 times-

Zach Elwood: Hmm …

Chris Shelton: before I could leave it, before I finally got something that looked a little bit like a floating needle. Good, we’re done. It floated, right? We’re gonna move on.

Wow. Right? Or I finally get that reaction I’m looking for, and I can finally take it up with the guy. Wow. So that’s why I say these guys are just fooling themselves, thinking that they’re producing a response instantly when in fact they are not.

Zach Elwood: Um, do you have any interesting anecdotes that stand out from your auditing days that you care to share?

Like, you ever had to fight anybody that was trying to leave the room? Any, any, anything that makes the most memorable, uh, stories for you you care to share? I’ll tell you a

Chris Shelton: story, I’ll tell you a story that kind of encapsulates a lot of what I’ve been talking about. It’s actually my dad’s story, um, ’cause this never happened to me as such.

I had a lot of auditing I delivered to other people, and I never had to restrain them. Um, the circumstances of, of, of it were never such that I had to do that, which I was more than happy with. But there was one time when my dad was giving a sec check to somebody, and the guy got so pissed off over some question he was being asked that he threw the cans down just like, “Fuck this,” and my dad wouldn’t let him out of the room.

So the guy went over to the window and was just standing out there with the window, “I’m gonna fuck this shit. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck this process. Fuck all this shit. Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah,” right? And my dad’s just sitting there calmly going, “Well, look, man, uh, it’s your dime.” You’re paying for this, so, you know, I’m, uh, we’re not going anywhere until I get an answer to this question.

So might as well just come back over here and sit down, right? And all based on the premise, of course, that my dad was not about to let this guy out of the room.

Zach Elwood: Mm.

Chris Shelton: Right? ‘Cause that’s just not an option. Mm-hmm. It’s literally not an option. I mean, I really wanna get that across to people, that auditors are trained very carefully.

This is not a, this is not a… Uh, I used to train them, and this point was not a, a, a small point. The auditor is 100% responsible for what goes on in that auditing session, including getting the pre-clear through the process. Mm-hmm. And they truly are trained to believe that all this badgering and abuse and let not, let them out of the room and false imprisonment is actually helping this person.

It’s that twisted up, right? That’s why I talk about how cults weaponize our empathy.

Zach Elwood: Mm.

Chris Shelton: We think we’re helping, but we’re actually abusing, right? Mm-hmm. We- it’s all twisted up.

Zach Elwood: Right.

Chris Shelton: And the meter is such a wonderful device to enable that kind of behavior. Mm-hmm. Because what could give you more certainty than a scientific instrument that’s validating everything Hubbard had to say, right?

Mm-hmm. Because he twists it all up to make it that it all makes this very simple, logical sense- But when you get out of that head trap and you look at what they’re actually doing, you end up seeing the stuff I’m saying. They’re locking the room, they’re keeping you in, they’re, you know, all the stuff that no therapist anywhere would ever get away with.

Zach Elwood: So And then they also theoretically have files on you that some people theorize are used for, you know, blackmail. Some people have theorized that’s, like, why Tom Cruise is so tied to them, these kinds of things.

Chris Shelton: Yeah. I’m here to tell you that, that the power of belief is much stronger than the power of blackmail.

Zach Elwood: Yeah. I, I agree. I, yeah, all the supposition- Yeah … the, the theories about Tom Cruise, that being an ex- explainer for Tom Cruise, I’m like, I think he’s just a true believer ’cause that, it wouldn’t explain his, like, hardcore commitment to, you know, like, seeming, uh, expressing the commitment and such. But, uh- That’s right

who knows? But, uh, you know, it- No,

Chris Shelton: I, I, I, I’ll

Zach Elwood: go- I think, I think people under-

Chris Shelton: I, I- Yeah … I

Zach Elwood: think

Chris Shelton: I know.

Zach Elwood: They under- I think I know … they undervalue the, the power of, uh, commitment. Yeah, you probably have stories that maybe you can’t talk about on that front, but they may, that, maybe that’s an interesting topic

Chris Shelton: too.

Yeah. Tom Cruise is a true believer, and I think that’s all we need to say. Yeah. If you read a book, if you read a book called True Believer by Eric Hoffer, um, that will really break it down for you. Mm. And, um, and Cruise fits that mold exactly. Mm. He really very, very, very much is a true believer.

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: Um, and that’s pow- that’s more power than you’ll ever have blackmailing somebody.

Blackmail is a one-shot deal. Yeah. You only get to do it once.

Zach Elwood: Yeah. It doesn’t- Um,

Chris Shelton: Cruise is not- Yeah, it d- Yeah.

Zach Elwood: Doesn’t make somebody enthusiastic to, uh, do anything for you either. Um- No … do, do you care, do you wanna carry, uh, care to share any more anecdotes before we go? Um, or-

Chris Shelton: I’ll say that, um, I’ll say that one time…

This is, this is kind of embarrassing, and I’ll just put it out there ’cause I’m an embarrassed person, but, um- When I was in Scientology one time, I was getting this auditing session and I was going backtrack, as they say, right? Back into the past life stuff. And for some reason, this is the kind of thing that would happen to me, is my imagination would go into overdrive.

But it would also meld with, and this happens over and over again with people, it would also meld with existing thoughts and books and fantasies and movies and shit that you see already, right? That you grew up with. And I was a voracious reader when I was a kid. I read thousands of books, so I had a well of stuff to draw on.

And 2001: A Space Odyssey of all things comes to mind one time when I was in an auditing session and I was recalling some past life thing of being in outer space saying, “My God, it’s full of stars,” right? Which is this quoted line from the end of, from, from 2001. And I th- I don’t know. You know, for me at the time and the moment of it, it was this sort of beautiful moment and I was like, “Oh, wow, and it coincides with this 2001 thing and isn’t that cool?”

And it was this big peak experience, and I look back now and I am just sharing that with you in, in utter embarrassment, uh, that I ever thought anything like that was actually reality. Um, but I did.

Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris Shelton: You know, I was really high- I was, I was highly trained in this thing, and I was highly trained in all the other parts of Scientology.

So I, I really thought it was this coherent system of therapy and spiritual address and that we were, we, we were becoming freer, you know, and, and better versions of ourselves. And I, I just can’t stress enough how we were not doing that and how badly we were lied to, how many layers upon layers of lies led me to that head space where I thought I could, you know, reenact Dave Bowman’s, you know, moment in my own past, right?

Like what kind of, what kind of nonsense is that?

Zach Elwood: That’s exciting, yeah. So

Chris Shelton: that’s- It’s easy to see why

Zach Elwood: it’s exciting though. Yeah, it’s like-

Chris Shelton: Very, ve- it, it- Yeah … like I said, peak experiences. Yeah, yeah. It’s real. I don’t use words like euphoria lightly. I mean, it’s- Mm … it’s heady stuff. Yeah,

Zach Elwood: yeah.

Chris Shelton: And when you think with an E-meter, this is the real crime of this, is this, this bloody E-meter is the simplest, stupidest thing you could ever imagine as far as an electronic device.

But they not only classify it as a religious artifact, they raise this thing to a standard that It’s an unbeatable truth detector, and it’s, and, and Hubbard writes about it and uses it that way. And they really enable so much of the Scientology abuse with that E-meter, and it’s something we don’t talk about a lot, which is the m- main reason why I was so keen to, to come on your- Yeah

show and talk about it.

Zach Elwood: Yeah, no, thanks Chris, and thanks for sharing your story and, uh, sharing your, uh, embarrassing stories too. Very much appreciated. Um, helps other people, that kind of stuff. So- Absolutely … uh, yeah, thanks a lot. Um, I, I guess we’ll, we’ll end it here unless you, unless you wanna share anything else about what you’re doing now.

Chris Shelton: Um, no, I would just like to say that, um, I hope that if, you know, if this was interesting and, and you like the way I’m explaining the Scientology stuff, I’ve, I’ve got over 1,000 videos on my YouTube channel that, that breaks down Scientology every which way you can possibly- Yeah … approach it. And I also talk an awful lot about cult recovery, which is why I ended up writing this book about cult recovery.

This is not just about Scientology. This is all cults. This is everything. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I’m, I, I am an expert in Scientology, but I’m also an expert in coercive control, and I really hope that, um, that the work that I’m doing can more broadly help people than just in the ex-Scientology space, and that’s really what I’m gunning for at this point.

So I, and I, and I just love talking to Zach because he and I are on s- so much the same page when- Yep … it comes to exposing psychological nonsense on the internet. Yep. Is, is Ch- is Chase Hughes still going, still at it?

Zach Elwood: Oh, yeah. We don’t, we, we, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we won’t get down that rabbit hole, but, um-

yeah, I appreciate it, Chris. Uh, uh, thanks a lot. I’m gonna, I’m gonna hit the stop button.

Zach Elwood: That was a talk with Chris Shelton, former Scientologist and host of the Speaking of Cults podcast. This has been the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood.