Danny Jones Podcast
#302 - Cult Investigator: Satanic Rituals, Scientology & Israel-Palestine | Lawrence Wright
12 May 2025
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
Full Episode
Mr. Lawrence Wright, it's really a pleasure to have you on here. It's been a long time coming. 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 documentary on HBO. And I was sort of blown away because this place is right in my backyard.
It sure is.
And I kind of grew up around all of it because I spent a lot of my youth in downtown Clearwater running around my friends and, you know, just, you know, goofing around. And I was born in Morton Plant Hospital, which is basically right across the street from the flag building. And I kind of never really dug too deep into them until I saw your film.
And then I was just like blown away that this was all right here this whole time.
Yeah, it's the headquarters. Back when L. 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, and they settled on Clearwater. And they wouldn't tell anybody at the time what they were. They were some sort of vaguely Christian organization, just let the word out. But when...
people in Clearwater found out, they were pretty upset, you know, and he was buying up a lot of the real estate downtown, which is still a part of the church catalog. It's a fascinating story. I mean, I was... You know, Scientology had kind of put this electric fence of legal threats and reputational threats around their story. And so the other writers had taken wax at it.
But I still felt that there was a great story on the ground to be told. And it was a fabulous story. I was... Despite all the, you know, we're going to get you sort of stuff that comes along with dealing with Scientology, it was always just a great story. And so, you know, you're always grateful as a writer to have that opportunity.
It's funny. Just recently I was having a conversation with my brother-in-law, and he works for one of the biggest Scientology-owned companies in downtown Clearwater. It's called Know Before. It's like an antivirus software for computer software. Yeah. And he's like, it's all Scientology owned.
And all of the higher end executives, like all the executives on the executive floor, they're all Scientologists. So there's like a Scientology floor and there's like a civilian floor. And it's like him and all of his buddies will always joke like under their breath or like make fun of the Scientologists. And like, you know, it's kind of like this weird dichotomy of.
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