Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for&nbsp;The New Yorker&nbsp;magazine. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 book&nbsp;The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Most recently, filmmaker Alex Gibney directed an HBO documentary based on&nbsp;Wright's&nbsp;reporting in&nbsp;Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Unbelief. Much of&nbsp;Wright's work is&nbsp;about how&nbsp;religious belief animates personal action&nbsp;and political conflict. He has documented the Jonestown massacre, explored allegations of Satan worship, profiled brimstone-tinged gospel preachers, and, of course, tracked the histories of al-Qaeda and the Church of Scientology. Regarding the latter, he isn't necessarily sympathetic to the Church's claims, but he understands its appeal. "People don't go into it because it's a cult, they go into it because they're looking for something," says Wright. "It's like going into therapy;&nbsp;people do benefit from it." "But it's one thing to get into it, it's another thing to get out of it."&nbsp; &nbsp; Originally aired April 14, 2015See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.

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