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Welcome to the Slate Audio Book Club's discussion of Going Clear.

Lawrence writes book about Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief.

I'm Dan Coase, editor of the Slate Book Review, and I'm here in Slate's DC Recording Studio.

Joining me here is Hannah Rosen, Slate's Double X editor. Hi, Hannah. Hi, Dan. And coming to us from way out in Claremont, California, where she's spending the semester teaching at Scripps College, we have Megan O'Rourke. Hi, Megan. Hi, there. So as in all our audio book clubs, we recommend that you listen to us after you read the book since we'll be discussing going clear and Lawrence Rights Reporting in great detail and depth. The book is expanded from his 2011 New Yorker

profile of Paul Haggis, and it serves as sort of as both biography of Elron Hubbard and a history

of Scientology, and also an expose of some of the organization's most totally crazy abuses and offenses, as well as their cozy relationship with celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

So, all right, Hannah and Megan, it is time for me to assert control over you preclear's and increase your havingness.

I spent most of this book, you know, agog at like the paranoid weirdness of Scientology.

But a part of me kept going back to something that Wright wrote on the very first page of the book,

which is that, you know, the church declares or claims that it has 4.4 million new members worldwide every year.

But in fact, actual statistics suggest that there's only like 25,000 Scientologists

in the United States.

And so is this religious organization or cult or Ponzi scheme or whatever it is?

Is it really worth like 400 pages of Lawrence Wright's time?

That's so funny.

I thought that was such an odd decision in a nonfiction book.

I understood his loyalty to honesty at that moment, but it really was a downer for me because there's a barrier to entry. This book is absolutely amazing. I mean, I just bow down to Lawrence Wright. I cannot believe the feats of reporting that went into this book. There is no detail he leaves out

either about El Ron Hubbard's life nor about the institution itself. As I read it a second,

...