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Ron Miscavige on JRE (scientology)

Roboramma

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Ron Miscavige, father of David Miscavige, who is currently the top guy in the Church Of Scientology, was on Joe Rogan's podcast this week. I didn't know anything about him before, but I guess at the age of 76 Ron Miscavige left Scientology. He seems to have a pretty interesting story to tell, but the real issue here is that Joe Rogan blows the interview.

For some reason he is a total jerk to the guy. When Ron is talking about the possibility of being held and interrogated Joe just cracks jokes as though there were nothing serious being discussed. When he talks about his experience escaping from the scientology compound ("Flag") Joe acts like it's no big deal. When he talks about working 12-16 hours a day for $50/week Joe again just cracks jokes. Worst all all (so far, I'm only about an hour and 10 minutes in) is when he tells Ron that he should take responsibility for the poor relationship he has with his son.

Oh, and then he accuses him of writing a book about his experiences in order to make money. "Why did you write this book? Did you write it for money?" "No, I wanted people to know about-" "That's the only reason I'd write a book." etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVVdCikBDQk

In spite of Joe's jerkishness the podcast is still worth watching or listening to as Ron Miscavige's story is interesting.
 
I Am The Scum said:
I haven't seen Ron's interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, but for an alternate take, I would recommend his interviews on The Thinking Atheist or Serious Inquiries Only.
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Nice, thanks I'll check those out.

I do think I may have overstated how bad the interview is. He isn't actually hostile. And Joe has done a good job with at least one former scientologist in the past when he interviewed Leah Remini, so you might still like to check this one out. But there is an undercurrent of sort of passive hostility that I don't really understand.
 
Trebuchet said:
Rogan is a moon hoax believer. I wouldn't take anything he does very seriously.
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Sometimes he gets pretty annoying, but he also has some great guests on and generally gives them a chance to talk. Recently Laurence Krauss was on and I think he did a good job with that interview. Both of Neil DeGrass Tyson's appearances were good. Then sometimes he'll get some dude who claims there was a nuclear war 10,000 years ago and take the guy totally seriously, mainly because he doesn't seem to know any better.

But the thing I like about Rogan is that while he doesn't always understand how to determine the difference between what's true and what isn't, he is actually generally interested in doing so.

Last week he got pretty upset at his friend Eddie Bravo* for believing in pretty much every conspiracy theory under the sun, particularly the flat earth BS. They argued about it for about an hour (which was very frustrating because Joe didn't actually understand enough about how we know that the earth is round to do a good job of making the argument and Eddie pretty much just dismissed every reasonable point that he did make). While Joe isn't the most well informed person in the world he actually is interested in science and the beauty of the natural world, which I think is more than you get from most people.

* I used to be a bit of a fan of Eddie's as his jiu jitsu is very good and he has a system that works well for me, but all his conspiracy theory talk is so over the top that I'm losing my respect for the guy. I've also noticed that his support for this stuff is influencing others (I have a friend who trained at one of his BJJ schools and who seems to have taken on a lot of the conspiracy ideas from this environment). Actually that's one of the issues that Rogan brought up: Eddie has a lot of influence and while he claims that it doesn't really matter if he is right or not, he is influencing a lot of other people to believe things that aren't true.
 
Trebuchet said:
Rogan is a moon hoax believer. I wouldn't take anything he does very seriously.
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He finally came around on the moon hoax thing, but that all the nonsense tainted him for me. He's quick to shoot down and ridicule the most outlandish conspiracy theories, but he's still way too credulous for my tastes. I'll listen to those episodes with the guests I like, but a lot of them fall flat, EG Lawrence Krauss where he doesn't really "get" what the interviewee is speaking about and it just goes into irrelevant/misguided tangents, which sounds like what happened in the Miscavige interview based on Robboramma's post.

I've had the episode queued since it came out and will listen to it, but that well is probably already poisoned.
 
Is Ron still a practicing Scientologist? What about Leah remini? I know some of them participate in apostate churches afterwards. Does that affect your opinion of them?
 
BobTheCoward said:
Is Ron still a practicing Scientologist? What about Leah remini? I know some of them participate in apostate churches afterwards. Does that affect your opinion of them?
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Ron didn't seem nutty in his The Thinking Atheist interview. More like the ex-marine he is. He claims all the good stuff in Scientology came from old books (which he has a list of in his book) and was stolen by Hubbard.

Maybe in that sense he's still drinking the Kool-Aid, but he didn't come off as against modern medicine or psychiatry. Mostly, his spin was that Scientology had some good stuff in it but was corrupted by his son into becoming a straight-up cash cow scam.
 
To give Rogan his credit, he used to believe some of the nuttiest stuff and has, over time, and through seeking out well informed guests, realized those ideas don't stand up. That's a good thing and shows he is open to reason. However, if anything he probably has too many guests and interests which run far and wide as he sometimes is ill prepared and might be doing a Serious podcast on the back of one with a comedian or martial artist. Occasionally he spends too much of interviews babbling on about his own pet theories or his anecdotes about how he and his mate Joey Diaz were smoking a joint or talking about when he had hair plugs.

When he had Lawrence Krauss on, what could have been an interesting interview was driven into a ditch when Rogan insisted Krauss explain Very Complicated Thing as soon as they were sat down. Krauss explains that it is Very Complicated and seems unwilling to lead off with that, but Rogan insists and Krauss proceeds to try while being interrupted by Rogan who wants to know how it also relates to Unrelated Thing. Krauss explains that that is not really his field and is then a bit tangled in his exaplanation. Rogan then says something like "dude, you've lost everyone!" Yeah Rogan, because of your poor hosting skills. Later Rogan comes up with some theories about the Bible and magic mushrooms, Krauss has to sidestep these things.

On the other hand, Rogan has beaten Brian Dunning in a debate when he came on and was unable to make his charges against Rogan stick.

I think Sam Harris, on the whole, thinks Rogan is a force for good as he has a large and wide audience who he can introduce people like Will McAskill to.
 
angrysoba said:
To give Rogan his credit, he used to believe some of the nuttiest stuff and has, over time, and through seeking out well informed guests, realized those ideas don't stand up. That's a good thing and shows he is open to reason. However, if anything he probably has too many guests and interests which run far and wide as he sometimes is ill prepared and might be doing a Serious podcast on the back of one with a comedian or martial artist. Occasionally he spends too much of interviews babbling on about his own pet theories or his anecdotes about how he and his mate Joey Diaz were smoking a joint or talking about when he had hair plugs.

When he had Lawrence Krauss on, what could have been an interesting interview was driven into a ditch when Rogan insisted Krauss explain Very Complicated Thing as soon as they were sat down. Krauss explains that it is Very Complicated and seems unwilling to lead off with that, but Rogan insists and Krauss proceeds to try while being interrupted by Rogan who wants to know how it also relates to Unrelated Thing. Krauss explains that that is not really his field and is then a bit tangled in his exaplanation. Rogan then says something like "dude, you've lost everyone!" Yeah Rogan, because of your poor hosting skills. Later Rogan comes up with some theories about the Bible and magic mushrooms, Krauss has to sidestep these things.

On the other hand, Rogan has beaten Brian Dunning in a debate when he came on and was unable to make his charges against Rogan stick.

I think Sam Harris, on the whole, thinks Rogan is a force for good as he has a large and wide audience who he can introduce people like Will McAskill to.
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I agree. ROgan is long way from perfect, but over all he has done more good then bad.
You have to be able to tell when ROgan is right and when he is talking our of his butt.
 
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