l. ron hubbard. he is revered within the church. so, after the publication of this book, how is it bad for you? >> well, you know, you've been through the same thing. a lot of legal threat. but you know, no actual follow-up on that. they did publish one of their freedom magazine. "the new yorker" came on some anniversary issue. every year around valentine's day, new yorker has its original cover. an old man in the top hat in the monocle looking at a butterfly. the name is eustace tilley. that name of the care there. so, that was the issue in which the paul haggis profile appeared. so freedom magazine is a scientology magazine that came out other cartoon of eustace tilley that was me, with coming out. and it was a slam and even took shots at the fact checkers, which annoyed me a lot. but because i think there were feeling especially stone because the fact checkers at "the new yorker" are really good. there was one checker on the article full-time for six months. at the end, we had six checkers include the head of the checking departm

l. ron hubbard. is great book achieves on many levels one of the great accomplishments is the depth of information about l. ron hubbard. i've read a lot of stuff. i learned so much reading mary's book. it seems to me you clearly set out to do a biography on al ron hubbard and you achieve that. what drove you to drool down into him? why did you think i was so important and what were some of the moments you have a long year wrote a pursuit? >> i have a theory as a writer that in order to tell a story about a very esoteric, complicated world, you need what i call a donkey. a donkey sound disparaging term, but useful beast of burden. he can take you, the reader into a world that you've never been in and carry on his back a lot of information. so if you have a fascinating donkey, the reader will take that ride. i hate to read my book. mama spa haggis, the academy award-winning writer and director who dropped out of scientology after 34 years, who could tell me about the world of scientology in modern times

l. ron hubbard, the founder of scientology, realized that americans really do worship one thing for sure, and that's celebrity. and where is the capital of celebrities? hollywood. so scientology has become one of the major landlords in hollywood. and early on they set out to recruit celebrities. there was a church publication put out shortly after the founding of the church with a roster of prospective celebrities, and today included people like bob hope, walt disney, marlena dietrich, howard hughes, some of the most famous people in the world. but those are the kinds of people that they sought to use as pitch men for their new religion. and celebrities did come to the church. today built a celebrity center -- they built a celebrity center so the celebrities would feel at home there. and in some of the early people who came into the church were rock hudson passed through, apparently he got very upset when he was in the middle of an auditing session, and he needed to go put some money in the parking meter, and they wouldn't let him out of the room. so he stormed out and never came back. [

l. ron hubbard came up with the concept that if you could purge one side of your mind of all the knew row cease and fears and so on through scientology, you would become clear. in other words, you'd be kind of a superhuman. you would no longer get colds, your intelligence would be higher, and, you know, live forever. it was an interesting concept, but there weren't any actual clues he could produce to prove his case. >> host: how much time did you spend on this book, and what was it like researching the church of scientology? >> guest: you know, just as a repeated task it was really difficult because there were a lot of people that were quite frightened, and they were afraid of punishment by the church, or they were afraid of losing family members that would never talk to them again. and also something i'd never really run into like this before, so many key people had signed nondisclosure agreements with the church and were legal he obligated not to talk. it would cost them millions and millions of dollars to talk to me. some actually did. and many people who had never spoken before actua