#302 - Cult Investigator: Satanic Rituals, Scientology & Israel-Palestine | Lawrence Wright

Danny Jones Podcast

Danny Jones

Society & Culture, Documentary, Comedy

4.4 • 777 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 194 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Lawrence Wright is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of multiple books including "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief", and "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11". His newest book "The Human Scale" tells a story of an Israeli cop and a Palestinian-American FBI agent who join forces to solve the murder of an Israeli police chief in the West Bank. SPONSORS https://cash.app - Download Cash App today & use code DANNY10 http://evening.ver.so/danny - Use code DANNY for 15% off your first order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS The Human Scale - https://a.co/d/62tQUig Going Clear - https://a.co/d/d6csGr9 The Looming Tower - https://a.co/d/dfySVIo FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Scientology's Sea Org 19:04 - L. Ron Hubbard's deathbed confession 30:16 - How has Scientology survived? 34:26 - Jim Jones & the Jonestown Cult 43:36 - The Sisters of Mary Morning Star 52:39 - Fighting the death penalty 01:01:38 - Satanic ritual abuse 01:17:26 - Whitley Streiber's childhood experiments 01:22:58 - Jack parsons 01:26:34 - Why Lawrence gave up religion 01:36:40 - The new Silicon Valley ideology 01:44:37 - The Looming Tower 01:54:13 - Did the FBI allow 9/11? 02:06:32 - Where Bin Laden got his money 02:16:52 - 9/11 alternate theories 02:25:02 - The Human Scale 02:37:30 - American CIA vs. Israel's Mossad 02:44:58 - Israel's troubled history 03:03:47 - How Lawrence chooses projects Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mr. Lawrence Wright. It's really a pleasure to have you have you on here. It's been a long time coming. I've been watching, I've been watching and reading your work for a very long time. Not a very long time. I think the first time I discovered you was in 2015 when Going Clear came out, the
0:21.3	documentary on HBO. And I was sort of blown away because this place is right in my backyard.
0:26.9	I sure is. And I kind of grew up around all of it. Because I spent a lot of my youth in downtown
0:33.1	Clearwater running around my friends and, you know, just, you know, goofing around. And I was born in
0:39.5	Morton Plant Hospital, which is basically right across the street from the flag building. And I kind of
0:44.9	never really dug too deep into them until I saw your film. And then I was just like blown away that
0:51.5	this was all right here this whole time.
0:55.9	Yeah, it's the headquarters.
1:02.4	And, you know, back when El Ron Hubbard had taken to the high seas to avoid subpoenas and finally decided to come back to America and he sent a delegation around looking for the right place
1:08.1	and they settled on Clearwater.
1:10.1	Yeah.
1:10.5	And they wouldn't tell anybody at the time, you know, what they were.
1:16.2	They were some sort of, you know, vaguely Christian organization.
1:19.8	Just let the word out.
1:21.1	But when people in Clearwater found out, they were pretty upset, you know,
1:25.4	and he was buying up a lot of the real estate downtown
1:28.0	which is still a part of the church catalog it's a fascinating story i mean i i i was you know
1:38.6	the scientology had kind of put this you know electric fence of legal threats and reputational threats around their story.
1:48.0	And so the other writers had taken wax at it.
1:52.0	Yeah.
1:53.0	But I still felt that there was a great story on the ground to be told.
1:56.0	And it was fabulous story.
	...

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