PODCAST: Karen Pressley on Scientology's radicalizing of Tom Cruise

Karen Pressley spent almost 20 years in Scientology, and then turned her experience into a terrific book, Escaping Scientology: My Journey with the Cult of Celebrity Spirituality, Greed & Power.We’ve posted an excerpt of it in the past, but we wanted to check in with Karen because of her experience working at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre. This week, Scientology really took it in the shorts when Judd Apatow, speaking at the Directors Guild of America Awards this weekend, aimed some barbs at Tom Cruise.You no doubt saw reporting on it, but we wanted to go over Apatow’s zingers with Karen and ask her, how would Scientology, when she was at CC, deal with this kind of fallout? We think you’ll find her answers very interesting.Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in historyAvast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at seaOverheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a timePast is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientologyRandom Howdy: Your daily dose of the CaptainHere’s the link for today’s post at tonyortega.orgAnd whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyortega.substack.com/subscribe