The Music Man, Part 2: What Scientology has to do with a pricey online piano academy

Last week, Endless Thread introduced the spirited pianist behind an online piano academy that's all over Reddit for all the wrong reasons.

In Part 2, we investigate why some people think it's a front to recruit students to the Church of Scientology, and we talk to the man behind the piano himself.

Show notes

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Amory: Hey! This is part two of our story about Stephen Ridley…scientologist? Successful musical artist? Internet scam artist? If you did not hear part one of Music Man yet…you’re gonna want to check that out first. OK. Here’s part two.

Last week on Endless Thread.

[Stephen Ridley: My name is Stephen Ridley! I’ve been a concert pianist for nine years!]

[Stephen: This is the next evolution in piano education and artist development.]

Jennifer Pierce: He would say, you're going to fail, you're going to fail at times. But eventually, you'll become a professional, if you just keep on.

[Stephen Ridley: You want to learn the shortcuts of piano fast…free today.]

Grace: I learned nothing.

Lauren Sum: It just doesn’t sit right with me.

[Serge Ramelli: Yeah. I spoke to Stephen. He's a little more inclined to talk to you. Uh, he was really didn't want to, to be honest.]

Amory: Producer Grace Tatter is showing us a video from a musician who has built a brand that seems to be everywhere across the internet these days.

[Grace: Can you guys see my screen?]

Ben: It’s part of a trove of videos of performer Stephen Ridley. A finance-guy who rage-quit his day job in 2012 to become a musician. And launch an online Academy that he promises will teach you piano with a new method, unlike anything the world has ever seen.

Amory: But this Facebook video from 2018? Some of it feels less musical and more messianic.

[Stephen Ridley: What is life?]

Amory: Ooh, I'm lovin this already.

Ben: You see the man we now recognize as Stephen looking pretty down, going through the motions.

[Stephen: What does this mean?]

Amory: He's brushing his teeth.

Amory: He asks some more existential questions.

[Stephen: Is this all I’ll ever be?]

Ben: And then we see Stephen running through the rain. He looks distraught.

[Work, eat, sleep, sex, repeat. Is that it? Is that a life?]

Amory: And then... the screen fades to black...

Amory: Ooh, and then it says, Want more, want more? Scientology. org. Wow.

Amory: Alright. We’ve been on a mission to find out whether Stephen Ridley is a guy who wants to bring the world music…a guy selling piano lessons for a little too much money…or a huckster who wants to scam us all out of our cash…or into the church of scientology. And today? We’re gonna find out.

Ben: Let's do this. I’m Ben The Brock Johnson

Amory: I’m Amory The Skeptic Sivertson…

Grace: And I’m Grace Still Working on Getting an Interview With Steven Ridley Tatter… and you’re listening to Endless Thread!

Ben: We’re coming to you from WBUR, Boston’s NPR Station.

Amory: Today’s episode…Music Man. Part Two.

Ben: If you remember from last time, some of the posts on Reddit disparaging Ridley Academy don't just say that the music classes are a waste of money ...

Amory: They make a different accusation ... that it's a front to recruit people to Scientology.

Ben: If you don't know any Scientologists personally, you know OF some.

Amory: Scientology was founded by a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard. And from the time he started this new religion, he emphasized fame. He established “celebrity centres” that are all about getting famous people to convert.

Ben: The Church also uses the promise of fame and success to get people in the door, like offering courses it claims can help actors "make it" in Hollywood.

Amory: Some of Scientology's more high profile adherents include Elisabeth Moss. John Travolta.

Ben: Shout out Battlefield Earth.

Amory: And of course, Tom Cruise.

[Tom Cruise: I think it's a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist, and it’s something that you have to earn.]

Ben: And, according to this video…Stephen Ridley.

Amory: Scientology has a big emphasis on self-improvement and reaching your full potential.

[Video from Dianetics.org: What would life be like if all of the pain you've experienced no longer affected your abilities, emotions, and behavior?]

Ben: A lot of people who become Scientologists do so because of mental health counseling and self-improvement literature that the church offers. It’s also plagued by controversy.

There have been allegations of people – including children – in the church suffering physical and verbal abuse, being isolated from their friends and families, and spending lots and lots of money advancing through the different "levels" of Scientology.

And as a result of all of that spending – the Church of Scientology is one of the wealthiest religious organizations in the world. Journalists have estimated that it holds anywhere from one to four billion dollars in assets Almost all untaxed, because of its classification as a religion. The church denies all of these accounts of abuse, by the way and has dug into its deep, deep pockets to sue plenty of naysayers.

Amory: OK. So the work, eat, sleep, sex, repeat video from Stephen Ridley Grace sat us down to watch on Facebook…confirms that Stephen Ridley identifies as a Scientologist.

Ben: His business partner, Serge Ramelli – remember him, the guy who wrote a review about Ridley Academy while also working at Ridley Academy? – has also posted online about Scientology. And Serge's other clients include other public Scientologists.

Amory: Ridley Academy by the way is headquartered in Clearwater, Florida. So is The Church of Scientology.

Ben: The plot continues to thicken.

Amory: I thought we were beyond that, Ben, but I’m kind of glad we’re not.

Ben: But that’s not enough to say that the Academy is recruiting people to this controversial religion.
Amory: We DO know that Stephen has talked to some students about religion.

Ben: Remember Jennifer Pierce? The woman from our last episode who went through a lot of hardship in her personal life and felt like the Ridley Academy was an answer to her prayer? She told us Stephen DID direct her to resources from the church.

Jennifer: I have studied a couple of books because I went to him and I asked him, you know, how are you so positive.

Ben: Another student, named Zac Callaghan, we found in Australia, also told us that Ridley Academy had reached out with materials about Scientology.

Zac: There was maybe an email now that I think about it that was sent out that said that was like, you know, check this out or, or these people have been really helpful or maybe there was even an admin person that seemed like there was a bit of that happening.

Amory: But both Zac and Jennifer told us that they never felt like they were being recruited.
Jennifer: And I have read a couple of the books, but I wouldn't necessarily say I'm, I'm a Scientologist.

Zac: I just ignored it, to be honest.

Ben: And another Ridley Academy student we spoke with, Anna Hofmeijer, had no idea Stephen was affiliated with Scientology at all...and found the idea that the Academy is a religious recruitment effort...ludicrous.

Anna: Oh, that's funny. I will discuss it with him. (laughs)

Grace: I’m going to hop in here because…on the one hand, people share information about their religion or spiritual-adjacent practices all of the time, right? I have definitely had people in my life say a prayer when I’m eating with them, or tell me I just gotta try Transcendental Meditation, and it’s no big thing. But while I was briefly on the Scientology beat, I found this journalist Tony Ortega, who’s covered the organization extensively. And he says Scientology is different. So we gave him a call.

Tony Ortega: I've been writing about Scientology since 1995 and daily since 2011.

Grace:In 2017, Ortega broke the news about sexual assault allegations against the actor Danny Masterson, who’s also a Scientologist. Masterson was convicted on two counts of rape in 2023. And Scientology actually came up a lot in that trial.

[ABC 7 News: Masterson's accusers took aim at Scientology's connections to the LAPD and broke down, sobbing on the witness stand…]

Four of the women who accused Masterson of rape are also suing the Church for harrassing them after they reported Masterson to the authorities.

Grace: Tony told us that, as he sees it, there’s nothing casual about sharing materials from the Church of Scientology.

Tony: If Steven Ridley is handing them a Scientology book, he knows where that leads]

Grace: And what that leads to, according to Tony’s reporting, is vowing total loyalty to an organization that they’ve not only paid a lot of money to…but have shared a lot of personal information with, because of its mental health counseling.

Tony: They have this vicious retaliatory machine with the use of private investigators and lawyers. It's a totalitarian organization.

Grace: But again…the students we talked to said they didn’t feel any pressure from Stephen or the Academy around Scientology.

Ben: So…we can’t confirm the accusations that this is just a recruitment front.

Amory: Plus...all three of these students, on their three separate continents, told us that they were really happy with how the course improved their piano playing.

Zac: I was obsessed for, um, pretty much I do a couple of hours, three times a day, and was really just going deep into it, learnt heaps.

Anna: because if you calculate how much, um, you need to pay the private teacher, for example, or school, it's much more expensive, huh?

Amory: We also were able to run some of Stephen's videos by a longtime piano teacher.

Ben: My dad. He’s taught piano for 50 years. And, as we were reporting this story, he happened to be teaching my daughter the same four chords that Stephen talks about in the ad we played last episode..

Ben: Are you learning how to play the piano?

Ben's daughter: Yes.

Ben: What are you learning?

Ben's daughter: Away in the Manger.

Ben: And what else?

Ben's daughter: Jingle Bells.

Ben: And they're the same chords?

Ben's daughter: Yes.

Ben: I showed my dad this video, where Stephen talks about why he thinks a lot of traditional piano lessons just don't work.

[Stephen: We still have a subject mired, completely weighed down in rules and systems. It's still taught in Latin. Nobody speaks Latin! What are we doing?]

Ben: I kind of expected my dad to be more skeptical of Stephen, because Stephen is very skeptical of traditional music education, and my dad is a music educator. But he was into it.

Kit Johnson: I think he's fun and terrific, and he's probably got some really good teaching concepts that I have yet to see, of course.

Ben: He wasn't totally without reservations about the claims in the video I showed him…

Kit: I doubt if we can teach people to read music in two hours. We can get them started reading in two hours, certainly.

Ben: But over all, the idea that learning the piano can be fun and accessible? My dad’s all about that.

Amory: OK, we have happy customers. A tentative stamp of approval, pending some more information about teaching concepts, from Ben's dad. But what about all of the bad reviews online?

Ben: One of the most detailed critiques of Ridley Academy was published on a website called Pianoers.com, shortly after we started reporting this.

Ben: It details a lot of the claims we’ve seen on Reddit threads – that come up prominently in google search results for Ridely Academy. And say Stephen Ridley lacks the credentials and the expertise to charge so much for the course.

Amory: It also speculates he’s funneling money from the course to The Church of Scientology.

Ben: The author of this post identifies themselves as Katarina and says they graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in music.

Amory: And that they’re a member of the National Association for Music Teachers…which doesn’t seem to exist.

Ben: Could be a typo. But, at any rate – Katarina proved to be impossible to reach. And Grace really tried

Grace: K-A-T-A... No, sorry. That's a first name.

Amory: Grace even talked to a nice person in the registrar's office at the University of Missouri, who looked through all 68 Katarinas who have graduated from that school, to see if any of them matched this author’s bio.

Grace: Yes, with a BA in music.

Amory: No dice.

Grace: Okay. Got it. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know it was a weird ask...

Ben: OK so despite some real gumshoe work there…Grace couldn’t find Endless Thread an unhappy customer. So… if the people who are actually paying for the product are happy with it...and its critics are all anonymous…might all of these posts calling Ridley Academy a scam be their own kindof scam? Trying to take down a guy doing good work?

Amory: It turns out that what makes a scam might be as subjective as what makes an artist.
Ben: Yeah I mean…I don’t think Puddle of Mud is going to stay on many best-of rock band lists. And at the same time I don’t know how many people recognize the genius of Tenacious D. Who sang about scientology!

(singing) Dianetics, not better than Krishna

Ben: OK. So whether you think puddle of mud is great, or tenacious d is great…at this point, we’re thinking that judging whether or not Stephen Ridley and the Ridley Academy’s advertising is great…is also gonna be tough! I mean… we don’t have a lot of ways to measure Ridley’s beyond testimonials from people who took his class.

Amory: But there are some objective criteria. From the Federal Trade Commission.

Ben: THE FTC and that rhymes with P which stands for POOL!

Amory: We gotta get more music man references than that one song.

Ben: And we gotta get Grace to get Stephen Ridley on the phone!

Grace: Patience. We'll get him.

Ben: Will we get him?

Amory: In a minute.

[SPONSOR BREAK]

Ben: So we’ve been trying to find some of the people who have criticized the Ridley Academy for being a scam…and accused Stephen Ridley of trying to hoodwink people into joining the church of scientology. Without much luck! Even though producer Grace Tatter tried mightily.

Grace: I did!

Ben: But the LEAST we could do is take a hard look at some of the advertising practices of the Ridley Academy. And Grace did succeed in finding someone who could give a perspective on that.

Grace: I did.

Laura Smith: Hi, I'm Laura Smith and I'm the legal director for Truth in Advertising, or TINA. org for short.

Amory: Truth in Advertising is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization devoted to weeding out deceptive marketing and false advertising.

Ben: So basically, Laura Smith's job is to know the ins-and-outs of "no-no's" for companies advertising in the U.S.

Amory: No-no as in ...

Laura: Legalese for don't do it.

Ben: One thing we asked Laura about is this sense of urgency we see in a lot of ads for Ridley Academy, and in the masterclass.

Stephen Ridley: Click on the button below and join me for this free online piano masterclass. And be fast, because maybe this is the last time you ever see this ad.

Amory: Dear listener, this was not the last time we saw this ad.

Ben: But mostly this sense of urgency comes into play with the price. The idea that if you don't buy the course RIGHT NOW, the price will go up, and you'll no longer be able to afford it.

Amory: This is something Grace heard in both of the free masterclasses she attended — even though, if you look at an internet archive of the site…the once-in-a-lifetime discount is actually offered…pretty much every week. Which makes it less of a discount…and more…the actual price.

Laura: A false sense of urgency is a commonly used dark pattern. It's deceptive. Companies shouldn't use them, and the FTC has indicated that it will be focusing on dark patterns.

Ben: A dark pattern sounds like some Harry Potter-ish, but it's more legalese.

Laura: I would describe a dark pattern as a tactic designed to trick users to take certain actions and to encourage people to act against their own best interests.

Amory: We also asked Laura about some of the claims made in the ads — like that you can learn 40 songs in an hour.

Laura: It looked like from that video that Ridley is proposing to teach a handful of commonly used chords or chord progressions that are used in many songs. That's not an entire song. And so that should be made clear to consumers.

Ben: Laura told us that she — and the FTC — put themselves in the shoes of what a "reasonable consumer" will understand from a claim.

Laura: Something can be true, but still deceptive.

Amory: The other thing the FTC cares about is whether the results advertised are typical. So when we hear Stephen claim something like this...

[Stephen Ridley: I can teach you piano more than a hundred and fifty times faster than the way I did it. I can teach you with just three minutes practice per day.]

Amory: Laura wonders...

Laura: Whether they're simply the results of a few outliers or exceptionally quick learners. If it's the latter, if they're advertising the results of a few outliers, then advertising those atypical results is deceptive, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Ben: Remember how the Ridley Academy masterclass website has a section that says "as seen on," and it lists publications like Vogue and the Financial Times? And how the Financial Times said they'd never covered Ridley Academy?

Laura: So it is possible, and I don't know for certain if that's the case here, that Ridley could have taken out ads on those publications, and is then using that action to be able to say that they were featured on those publications. Um, again, we would put ourselves in the shoes of a reasonable consumer and try to determine what message is implied when they say they are featured on those media outlets.

Amory: So the marketing of Ridley Academy is at least flirting with violating FTC guidelines.
Ben: But to really understand the veracity of some of the claims...we'd need to talk to Stephen himself. Which has proven DIFFICULT! But not too difficult for producer Grace Tatter!

Grace: We got him y’all. We got him.

Amory: And finally…two months after our initial interview request…our man Serge came through! Stephen agreed to talk.

Stephen: My name is Stephen Ridley. I am the founder of Ridley Academy. I'm a British artist and I help other people unlock their artist and that's what we do.

Amory: Here are some undeniable things about Stephen: he’s energetic. He’s passionate. He loves music.

Ben: He is vigorous as hell. He’s down to chat! About anything!

Stephen: The nature of being an artist is I'll be an open book. And if you want to ask me, I'll tell you. And if you want to talk about poop, I'll tell you about it. And if you want to talk about sex, I'll tell you about it.

Ben: We didn’t have any questions for Stephen about poop. We DID want to know about his own musical education. And he told us that it was rigid. Not a lot of room for playfulness or joy.

Stephen: My dad was a very big disciplinarian. He really forced me to work hard at school more than I wanted to. And, uh, he was a threatening guy and a scary guy to me at that age. So I just did what he said reluctantly. And it was the same with piano. I, there were so many times I didn't want to play and he was just. You know, he was, he was the ball and chain and whip and everything.

Ben: Stephen’s dad died when Stephen was a teenager.

Stephen: And when he died, there was this vacuum of like, well, I don't have to do it anymore. And there was no disciplinarian in the house. And finally, I can give up these boring lessons. And I did.

Ben: But he didn’t quit for long – because he actually loved the piano. Just not all of the strict rules.

Stephen: I just wanted to find those moments of connection. I wanted to find those moments of, you know (plays piano). I mean, just that it's like. It's the best kind of therapy. And so I was doing it for me all of a sudden, I was doing it to find that and to find those moments. And I discovered in doing that, that so much of what I was learning was completely unnecessary and completely irrelevant to that experience. And for me, that's the core experience that people want to have on piano.

Amory: When he talks about creating the Ridley method so more people can learn the piano…he does so with conviction.

Stephen: I'm gonna play something which sounds badass. (piano playing)
That's really, really, really fun to play. And most people, when they see that, go, Oh my god! That looks so complicated. And the main point that the Ridley method is based on is just this: The illusion of complexity is created by doing many simple things at once.

Amory: The Ridley method, he says, is all about distilling piano playing to its purest tenets, so anyone who wants to learn to play, can.

Stephen: You know, there are people who have been sitting there. We have students, this one lady, she's 92 years old, all of her life, she feels like she can't learn. Imagine the explosion of energy. When like that snap moment occurs when, Oh, she has a winner. Oh, she starts to play her first song and it, Oh, and it's simple. And she's getting it after years of failing and trying different teachers and it not working.

Ben: But that mission to create artists…was hard for us to square with the price for the complete piano masterclass.

Amory: Since we started reporting this in November…the listed price almost doubled… from $3,000, to $5,000. Stephen kept insisting that that’s just the price of doing business.

Stephen: I don't want it to be 5, 000. Like I'd love it to not be 5, 000, but if it wasn't, we'd be out of business.

Ben: He also said that while it seems like the course is on perpetual discount…one of the legal no-nos we talked about with Laura Smith from Truth in Advertising…it’s not.

Stephen: and I do these free classes as often as I can. And in those free classes, as, as often as we're able to, I'll try and make discounts, sometimes incredible discounts, and when I do those discounts, I'm very, very clear that, Hey, yo, this is a discount. So if you want to get it at a cheap price, here it is.

Amory: Stephen says he knows some people find his marketing annoying.

Stephen: They confuse enthusiasm for pushiness. I'm pushy because I know it works and if you want to do it, you should do it. But I also appreciate if you're sitting there, and you've, you've had some lessons in the past that didn't work, and you've tried other stuff that didn't work, and you went on YouTube and wasted hundreds of hours of your life watching lights going down a screen, then probably this guy jumping all over the screen might be full of crap.

Ben: But basically Stephen said…look, the marketing…it’s effective.

Stephen: It's not to sound blasé, but I stick with what works. And it's a foundational principle of this school. Like, I just, I, I will take something that works and I will drop stuff that doesn't work. And right now I have more people trying to come every single week to a free class than I can deliver by a dramatic proportion.

Amory: We asked about some of the other things that stuck out to us from the website…like the similarities to the MasterClass website…the much bigger company with all of those celebrity instructors.

Stephen: I mean, to be honest, it's a massive compliment if you're telling me that this is, if, if you think that's my inspiration, I'm going to say yes.

Amory: And that list of fancy publications listed on the site…

Ben: We noticed that on the website your master class course, um, was sort of listed as being featured in a bunch of publications like CNN, Vogue , Marie Claire, Financial Times. But –
Stephen: Me. Stephen Ridley's been featured in those places.

Ben: Basically, he was like – Ridley Academy wasn’t featured in those publications. I was. But not necessarily the English-language versions.

Stephen: So I was randomly famous in Russia and, um, well, that's where every great story starts…

Amory: Stephen says he’s been in Vogue Russia. Which counts, I guess…although we weren’t able to verify this.

Stephen: It'll often happen where I'll go into a country and you get what's called local support. So if you're going to do a show, for example, in, I don't know, a small city in France, you know, they'll send – Large publications will do localized publications of those things just to expand their reader base. That’s basically just the nature of music.

Amory: And the claims about how fast you can learn with him? Stephen says…he really believes that with his method, you – yes, you – can learn the piano much faster than you would almost any other way. That these results are indeed what the FTC refers to as “generally achievable.”

Stephen: Now whether it’s achieved is based on the desires of the person, and something I've learned through teaching many thousands of people now is what I might want for the person is very different from what they might want for themselves and something that's very interesting in my program is a lot of people will get to a certain point and that's what they wanted. ‘You know what? I just wanted to …’ (plays piano). They’re not interested in playing Rachminoff’s fifth movement. They don’t care! They just wanted to do that. If you finish my course, you can absolutely play Rachmaninoff's fifth movement, if you choose to.

Ben: About the Scientology…Stephen says he just talks about his religion when it comes up naturally.

Stephen: By virtue of the fact that I'm quite an energetic person, a lot of people like to ask me, where'd you get your energy from? What are you doing on that? What's your personal development? What's your, and I'm an open book as I'm hope you can see, like, I'm willing to talk about it. I'm willing to share it. It's got nothing to do with learning the piano and it's got nothing to do with what the Academy does.e I'm here to teach music. I'm not here to teach you religion and spirituality. That's not what we do here.

Ben: Does revenue from Ridley Academy go from the Church of Scientology?

Stephen: No. Not at all. Not even in the slightest.

Amory: Stephen took umbrage at the idea that his religion should define him.
Stephen: Not that I mind, and this is what comes from being an open book, and I was the one who decided to be this way, but I don’t need to know your religion…You’re making great podcasts, you’re doing a great job, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you.

Ben: Because of the history of the religion of Scientology, and these allegations of abuse…the comparison to Buddhism feels like potentially a stretch. But point taken.

Amory: Another thing that I kept coming back to was what felt like to me a real emphasis on fame. Which is…another similarity to scientology. This idea of becoming your most successful self.

Ben: Anna – the student in the Netherlands – told us quite plainly that she was looking for celebrity.

Anna: One day I'm going to become famous. My music is going to become famous. Yeah, I'm going and that's also thanks to Ridley Academy.

Amory: And Jennifer…who felt like Ridley Academy was the answer to her prayers…ALSO hopes to make a living making music – which isn’t the same thing as wanting to be famous…but in this day and age, it’s harder and harder to pay the bills with music without some level of notoriety.

Ben: A lot of Stephen’s ads focus on his experience as a concert pianist – with footage of screaming crowds from places like Uzbekistan. So we asked Stephen…is part of what he’s selling a promise of “making it”? But, he insisted…unlike the church he belongs to…he is not selling a course to “make it big.”

Stephen: Broadly, the mission of the school is not to make these super nuanced music geeks that are high class professionals. So I'll show as many people as possible that it can be simple, that you can learn. And this is how you do it. And, and, and, you know, if they want to go further than that, then I'm going to try and help them as well, because it's something I've done.

Ben: He kept reiterating that he wanted to make a difference with his Academy.

Stephen: I want you to play all the songs that you want to play. And I'm not going to tell you what to play. I'm just going to show you how to play and how to play cool and how to have confidence as an artist.

And, and really just connect with this beautiful instrument and get beauty into your life. And I think if I do that on a big enough scale, that creates a more beautiful planet.

Amory: And I agree with that sentiment! More connections with instruments, prettier planet! But I just wonder – how many magical connections can really be made for the price of five thousand dollars a pop?

Ben: Stephen told us that he’s had 20,000 paying students. So even if they paid far less than that new sticker price – he’s pulling in tens of millions of dollars.

Amory: If his mission is really to create a million artists…I kept wondering why he doesn’t establish Ridley Academy as a non-profit, so he can make a living AND make the price more accessible. Or hell, offer it all for free.

Ben: We know something about making content that’s free

Amory: But you know…right when we were signing off with Stephen, he had a question for us.

Stephen: I wanted to ask your experience of this like it's super daunting to me the idea that I could put out a bunch of stuff and nobody listens, but I could also like what you guys are talking about the nature of me. I already know what it's like as soon as I communicate I like red all these people that like blue are going to come and attack me and write all these bad things about me, but how do you navigate having an opinion and having a podcast?

Ben: Listen, Stephen, I'd love to tell you, uh, the preliminary course costs 5, 000. I'm here for it.

Stephen: It's worth it. If it's got meaning, I'm in. (laughter)

Ben: Should we start charging more for making meaning?

Amory: Sure. Let’s double the price from free to free.99

Ben: In all seriousness…Stephen talked about how the secret to the Ridley method is breaking down the illusion of complexity, in music …how good piano playing, really, is just a lot of simple things happening at the same time.

Amory: We started this journey because we wanted to know more about the guy in all of these ads on YouTube, and check into all of these claims online that he’s a “scam.”

Ben: And at various points…the answer seemed pretty complex.

Amory: But maybe there are just a lot of simple things going on at once.

Ben: Stephen Ridley is a Scientologist.

Amory: He has a genuine passion for music and a genuine belief in what he’s doing.

Ben: And sometimes, he employs marketing tactics that, frankly, seem disingenuous.

Amory: The main course that he’s selling is really expensive.

Ben: And there are also a lot of people who are willing to pay for it.

Amory: These days, it feels like the definition of “scam” has expanded a lot. It’s not as straight-forward as someone selling you music lessons when they can’t play an instrument, or tricking you into giving out your social security number. People call dating apps a scam.

Ben: Or paying rent. Or taking out loans for college. Or working for you know, most of your life, also feels kind of scammy.

Amory: It’s almost like…scam is coming to mean a feeling about being misled or taken advantage of.

Ben: OK. Amory. Remember Grace’s friend George? Whose real name is Ben? And remember Grace? Who finally got us an interview with Stephen? Props to Grace!

Amory: For real Grace! Don’t think about how much time you spent chasing deleted internet commenters accusing the Ridley Academy of scamming…or Ridley himself. You definitely couldn’t have learned a bunch of piano during the time you spent on this.

Grace: I'm not sure about that y´all.

Ben: So knowing what we do know now…would you all tell George or really anyone that they should take the Ridley Academy class?

Grace: Well. I’m really glad that the students we talked to had a good experience with Ridley Academy.

But…I still can’t get over all of the sales gimmicks. It just seems like if you have a product you really, truly believe in, you don’t need to stretch the truth to manipulate people into buying it.

Ben: Amory?

Amory: You know, I don't know. I, I think you could spend 5, 000 in far worse ways than trying to –

Ben: Oh my god, you're so right.

Amory: – than trying to begin a musical education. I think some people probably spent Um, close to that much on college courses that they maybe slept through, um, or didn't complete most of the assignments for. So, uh, I, I generally believe in investing in yourself and your happiness.

Ben: And investing in music too, right? Like, investing in music, like, that's a pretty, you know, there's not a lot of evil in that zone.

Amory: I would hope not. I mean, I'm, this, file this under experiences, not things. And therefore, it automatically becomes far less worrisome to me than 000. On, say, I don't know, what even costs 5, 000 these days?

Ben: A slip and slide, a very fancy slip and slide.

Amory: Do those Google glasses, the Apple Vision? Google Glass. Is that 5, 000?

Ben: It's pretty close. It's about 3, 000. So, you know, it's pretty close.

Amory: We'll round up a couple grand. But you know what I mean.

Ben: Yeah. No, I'm with you.

Grace: Wait. I am not with you guys.

Ben: Uh oh. Grace is dragging us out of the scam.

Grace: I mean… think about the Scientology piece of this. A lot of Redditors pointed to Stephen’s affiliation with the church as a reason not to take the course. I know Stephen addressed some of those concerns when he told us that none of the millions and millions of dollars Ridley Academy makes goes to the Church of Scientology.

But I keep thinking about a 1972 Scientology directive that was cited in the Danny Masterson case. “MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY.”

Given some of the disturbing allegations I’ve read about the Church, I personally don’t want to risk contributing to that money making.

And finally…I still don’t understand why it costs so much. Like sure, private instruction can cost a lot, and college courses cost a lot. But in those cases, you’re getting individualized instruction. It’s not creating one course that can be accessed a million times.

So if Ben-George, or another friend, wanted to take this course, knowing everything we know – I wouldn’t stand in his way, because I believe people HAVE learned the piano from Ridley Academy. It’s not a scam in The Music Man sense, where he’s selling something that’s totally fake. But if I ever return to the piano bench, I’m going old school.

Ben: You can give my dad a call. That’s a great point.

And I think it's, you know, it's hard. Like, I feel like I came to this being certain, absolutely certain that Steven Ridley was a scammer and that this is a big, it's a big old switcheroo on us. And like, it's, it's a little more complicated than that, I guess, you know?

Amory: Another thing that people say about capitalism.

Ben: What's that?

Amory: Something's only worth what people are willing to pay for it.

Ben: Oh man. And so if you're willing to pay 5, 000 for the hope, the dream of learning an instrument, then do it, man. It's music. Music is beautiful.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. And 76 trombones led the fah fah fah, da da da da da da.

Amory: Learning an instrument never made the world worse.

Ben: Oh man, ain't that the truth.

Amory: That's how I really feel.

Ben: All right. So go learn an instrument and pay whatever you think is worth it.

Amory: And then we can all start an Endless Thread band.

Ben: Oh, I would love that.

Amory: With 76 trombones.

Ben: Tubas. Um, we need some tubas in the endless thread band folks. So if you've got a tuba, let us know.

Amory: Or if you're feeling really strong. A sousaphone.

Ben: A sousaphone.

Amory: How about that?

Ben: Oh man. I was always jealous of the sousaphone players in a way, in a weird way. If you play the sousaphone, let us know. Endless thread at WBUR.org.

Ben: Send us your sousaphone photos.

Amory: Just for fun.

Grace: Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was written and produced by me, Grace Tatter.

Ben: And co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

Grace: The rest of our team is Paul Vaitkus. Matt Reed. Samata Joshi. Frannie Monahan. Dean Russell. Cici Yu. And Katelyn Harrop.

Ben: See you next week. Now let's go tickle some ivories.