good morning. i have to say one thing that's really nice. i was the editor of the book review for quite some time and i was never allowed to express my opinions about a writer, so i'd have to be studiously neutral.

so it's very nice now that i'm no longer in that position, to be able to say how much i love lawrence wright's work, how much i admire it, and it and i'm very excited to talk to him. so thank you all for here and larry, most people probably have read at least one of your books here, but i just to name i'm not even going to name all of them, a few of them to give people a sense of the breadth range. you wrote about al qaeda and the looming tower. you've written about twins, you've written about scientology and going clear 13 days in september, about the camp david accords, remembering seton, about memory, the plague year, about a certain plague. also the end of october, about an imaginary. the novel god save and a book called in the new world coming of age from the to the eighties. and i know that i've left a number of things out and i've left out your plays and i've left out your music and, your

movie and tv adaptations. last night at dinner, i asked larry, like, how do you do it? how do you do it? let them know a little bit? well, it's a long list, but i'm really old, so there is that. and then i have a very regular day and it's you know, i usually work by nine and work till five and then exercise and play the piano. and then we eat dinner. it's you get a lot done if you just keep doing that. but also i can't stand to be still. i mean. and my wife would tell you that if i'm unoccupied it's horror for everybody but especially for me i just feel, you know, i've driven to explore and i'm to have a craft that is so

commodious that i can have my curiosity leads me in any direction there's always a place for it. yes. your wife said that it was nice having you as a kind of stay at home parent, except when you weren't home because you were off reporting something. so when i list all these books, sounds like very ranging, but one thing that struck me as possible throughline and correct me if i'm wrong, is that it seems? that in many of your works the animating question is why and do people come to believe what they believe? you know you think about recovered memory which is going a ways back but that's such a fascinating subject. how do people come to believe that? never actually occurred? of course, the looming tower, you wonder, how do people come to believe in the ideology of alqaeda? of course, scientology is an obvious one. it's not something that you think about. yeah, it's been a continuing

theme in my work as you observe. i've wondered about that and why. you know, i was religious, a teenager. i was pious of it even say and so i've had the experience of believing and and lost it but you know i think oftentimes a reporters you know we spend a lot of time writing about politics and my observation that a person can have strong political and it won't affect his behavior at all. and you all know people i'm that fall into that category but if you have strong religious views it dictates every moment of your life. and so i think we don't pay enough attention to that because people are motivated by, strong beliefs. now then where do the beliefs come from? because a lot of times these beliefs totally absurd and and even i going to sound like i'm slamming some particular but

let's take mormonism for instance is it if you read the theology you think jesus lived in south america? you know, i mean, it just but it's a beautiful culture the same thing is true of the amish. i've written about the amish. you know, they have some very cruel practices of disconnection that are similar to scientology. but the culture itself formed around this body of belief is in some respects, exquisite. so i find myself enchanted by the duality of belief and how it can lead to alchemy or nazi ism. and and it can also to, you know, amish farmers in pennsylvania know it's it's it's it's and i just don't think that as a culture and as a profession of journalism, we are quite as

interested in the origins of these beliefs as we should have. you come up with any answers. well i think partly people like me who are writing, who are investigators, i say we're skeptical by nature. and when we run into people who have deep seated beliefs, you tend to disregard them, you to tend to pity them because they're captive of their beliefs, you know, and and there's this how could they question that tends to turn off a switch in your mind. i think and i that's a mistake you lose empathy. yeah, you lose empathy. you become superior. it's in this you know, let's say we can compare trumpism something a lot of people in my

profession just despise and, can't understand. and so they don't it they don't attempt to they just, you know, they they derogate it. and that's all there is to be said about it. so you said you lost your faith and you've also just yourself as a skeptic i'm assuming those two are related. how did you lose your faith and how did you then become the skeptic or observant writer that you are? oh, well, i guess, you know, i was i grew up in dallas which was when i grew up, it had the largest baptist, methodist and presbytery. and churches in america. yeah can you imagine one town having all that at same time? it had the highest homicide, the highest divorce rate, you know, just and so there was a contradiction. and and, you know, people who had the cadillacs, the parking lot were the ones that were blessed. and there were there were a lot

of things that i observed as a young person in that church. and then in high school there was a kind of intense highly religious group called young life and it was i was not popular high school, but when i got into young life, there was a community of people. and one of the things i observed is that you can advance in a religious or let's say, a belief system by believing in more i term this piety. and it's a very dangerous thing because you're competing for position and i was a pretty good piety and a favorite of the leaders and so on and i developed some esteem in this group and but it was all built i

think my inadequacy my failure be popular in high school. i don't think i would have been drawn into it had i not had this and i had an alternative if i were on football team or something like that, it might have been a different path for me, but at some point when i was, because i was as being the big intellectual in the group, the leader of the we had a debate. you know, we're getting ready to. go to college you're going to meet people who don't believe as we do and so, larry would you take the position of being the skeptic and this sort of thing? boy, did i find myself in trouble, you know, i devastated all the audience and and i thought, who have i been kidding? and so by the time i got to college, i was already, you know, taking a big away from that.

but i got caught in existentialism and kirkegaard was my you know, was a bridge away from an absolute belief. i'm going to read something, an excerpt. this is from the opening of one of my favorite book reviews ever to run in the new york times book review, written by michael kinsley. and this was a review of your book going clear on scientology continuing a little with the belief theme here. so this is how that review opened that crunching sound you hear is lawrence wright bending over backward. to be fair to scientology, every deceptive comparison then with mormonism and other religions is given a respectful hearing. every ludicrous bit of church dogma served up deadpan. this makes the book indict. the book's indictment that much more powerful open almost any page at random. that tape of ron hubbard scientology's founder that

wright quotes from quote it part of a lecture hubbard gave in 1963 in which he talked about the between lives period where are transported to venus have their memories erased unquote. so delivered without. here's my question what do you think about this notion of fairness of thought when as a writer and is it how important is it to you? i think it's very and you know, i. one evidence of it is how distrusted the press is now. and, you know, we have to find a way to navigate ourselves back into a place of trust. our readers and i think it's yeah, you know, i had had a conversation ted cruz once and and he's he that trump has broken the press and i thought that was a fair comment that it

which version of ted cruz was not when did you talk to him. he asked me to have lunch. i don't know why. it was totally bizarre and but with 4 hours in the four seasons and it was it was an you know, it was kind of like fantasy to be able to sit down and talk to like that, that i'm not interviewing, you know, and this is totally off the record, although i'm going to tell you, no one's listening. go on there never said to be off the record. but i remember saying, ted, climate change, come on, you know? and i said, well, larry, you know that are satellites in space that have observed a change in temperature in years? i said, well, there are thermometers on earth. but they have kind of freewheeling exchange was it was

a lot of fun. it was a very sporting so to get back to that notion fairness what does it to you to be fair to your do you think about fairness to the reader, to the subject, to some abstract truth? what does it mean to you as a writer? be fair. i mean, i'm going this right now. we're closing on a piece that's going to appear at the end of the week on the austin and new yorker and it's, you know, there people inside the the the story that are controversial and that are you know, liberal and some are that are very conservative. then new yorker happens to be a very liberal magazine. and so part this struggle is to make sure that, you know, that we negotiate the same terms of fairness to people on both sides

of that picture that's the way work i try let the reader come his own conclusion but it's easy to get caught in you know smearing someone slightly by association by you know the fact that he's a republican. he must have those views and, you know, but he may not. you're just assume those things and so stop that's not a tribute to him things that might be true of his group in general but you know that's the kind of thing that i feel like we to have to imagine how the person you're writing about is going to respond it. i've had my phone buzzing with people are asking me to tinker their quotes and you know, not going to do that. but at the end of if if we were to try to be fair to people, even when you fail you know, if you make an effort i think the

readers sees that and then the reader feels more trusting of everything that you say. but if they think that you've got a stake in the political stake or, you know, you know if you haven't disclosed some kind of and these are your friends which in my case, there are a lot of my friends in the story. so i have to let those let that be known as well. so i mean, one of the ways in which this came up for the media obviously has come up and continues to sort of trouble us is the question of donald trump right? how can you be fair to a subject perhaps may not many consider be unfair? and i don't want to get into a whole trump conversation. so i'm actually going to go back to ted cruz because i was going to ask you about him anyway. i mean, how how would you be fair to a subject like ted cruz, where it feels like he's sort of constantly be moving, shifting.

if you were to profile him, it's not easy because you you know, so many of the things that he stands for, i feel opposed to. and so i have to try to understand. and to what extent might he be right about something? i i've been in this game long enough and i've lived long enough to realize that i've been wrong. you know, i've had strong views. i was totally wrong about an example is lyndon. you know, i grew up texas. i was deeply ashamed of lyndon johnson, you know, and i didn't like the way he talked, you know, because i talked like that and i hurt myself for the first time ever. and spanish language class. and i said that like lbj ordering a plate of enchiladas. you know, i just i was i just didn't want to have anything do with him. he represented me in a way that and it turned out to be, you know, one of the great presidents of our era.

and, you know and i didn't see he was accomplishing. i was only seeing things that i opposed. so this was a vietnam war era. johnson i was drafted and yeah, that was all of those things were feeding into my prejudice against him, but i wasn't noticing the, you know, the voting rights act, the civil act, you know, the all this the school higher education act, just one thing after another, the great society, he was himself since fdr, the consequential set of accomplishing in our history. and i didn't see it and i know it humbled me the same thing i could about nixon. you know, he was a liberal. and you look at him in context, you know, you opened the to china. it took us off the gold standard wage price controls of just one thing after another. you say this guy is a screaming

liberal and, yet i just hated him so much personally. it was very difficult for me to at him with kind of objectivity and so i try when i'm writing about somebody like ted cruz to remember to write with some humility, given the fact that i might be wrong to something that ted cruz probably knows very little about. i know i would agree with that. what did you find out about him from that lunch that you wouldn't have suspected? you wouldn't thought possible? he's got a very strange nose. he very carefully i actually i want to dwell on texas and i know you're doing think a whole panel on texas but maybe this whole if you're having trouble deciding to go to the texas panel or something else this will clarify it because we're going to talk a little bit about it. so i should say up front. that i'm one of those liberal new yorkers that you you write about in god save texas as a

kind of predisposition. the state and, one of the things you spent some time sporadically throughout the book kind of comparing california and new york sorry, in texas, we're in california, so we're going to stay that subject. you write the fear in texas of i'm going to mispronounce this because there's a tv show with a slightly different california, california, california, californication. okay. there you go. so since we're here in california, what you see as the major differences. well, first of all, tell us you what what texans mean by that. well, it means liberalism, basically. and, you know i think it fascinates, you know, a country we have, you know, united states, each of the states has their own system. and california, texas, number one, and number in terms of size and economy.

they are seesaws when i was a kid, california was all and texas was all blue and i mean, as the california was as red as it is blue now and texas and vice versa. and it changed. the the the values that are reflected in each state are are similar i mean, we want good education sort of thing. we have totally different means of going about it. and weirdly enough, with very different policies. the outcomes are often extremely similar to our demography are practically identical. know we're both majority minority states as all of us will be. we're pioneers in that regard. but, you know, we've adopted

entire different models and. i'd have to say right now, texas is succeeding in a way that california is not because people are leaving california. and there's this massive into texas, into austin, specifically but also dallas, fort worth and austin is the fastest growing city, america, and it's the 11th largest city now. and it was little college town when we moved there in 1980. so been neck snapping to watch the changes have occurred in the time that we've been there and. in 2050, by 2050, texas will have in size at which time given tarrant current trends it will be the size of new york california combined. it'll be the single most powerful political entity and

economic entity in the country. it's going to rule america. and i don't think that i know that's a shock to lot of you, but it's a shock to texans. and we haven't taken it on yet that we have this responsibility. texas has always had this sense of being an outsider. and and there's a kind of privilege, a kind of like a victim claiming, you know, we don't have that power all on the east coast. this is, you know, the east and the west coast, the elite it is a fiction we've been living under for decades now. where's the true power? the growing power is in texas, for good or ill so. this book, god save texas, which you wrote a lot about that. exactly came out in 2018. and presumably you'd been researching it for at least a few years before then. and we're now years away from that. what has changed since you've written that book? well, the politics haven't changed a bit you know, i had

hope at that point that we would have nuance in our political system having some kind of balance and playing the parties. but this is, again, example of texas and california here, the republican party has just collapsed you know, it's not an entity know worth conjuring with. and i was interviewing beto o'rourke the festival and in austin a couple of months ago before the election and i said many are losing. can the democratic party in texas go through before it becomes like republican party in california? and he didn't directly answer that, but he was angry he said the democratic party didn't spend a day or a diamond. so they you know, this it's not healthy for either of our to have an absence of another voice

a counterbalance. and i hoped when i wrote the book that we would seeing some of that at least in texas. but i haven't seen yet. i mean, what happened to that texas of molly ivins and ann richards and you know everyone was saying texas is going to turn blue, it's going to turn blue. you look at the demographics, you look at the latino population. why hasn't it become more democratic? i think it will turn blue or at least at some point demographically he is headed that direction and that. and if and when happens, it's going to be very difficult for the republican party to find a path to the white house. but it is why hasn't happened yet. let's start with the hispanic vote. here in in in california and in texas. we almost exactly the same

proportion of hispanic, anglo and you have elected statewide leaders are hispanic in in we have never done that and we've never had a can and it then was charismatic charisma black hispanic who could appeal the same people are now turning republican because they don't feel like they have a voice the democratic party so there's never that figure. also, you know texas a right to work state and i think the going back the grape grape acres and cesar chavez the unionization of the. brought people into politics haven't been enlisted in texas so you know there's there are

distinctive events like that that have kept texas from turning. i think that the hispanic vote been kind of misunderstood hispanics that move into the cities become democrats and those who are living the suburbs and in rural areas are typically more conservative. and that's just like the anglos. it seems to be less about than it does about geography is. it also structural. i mean, the the way in which the districts the, voting districts and everything is sort of the manipulated in texas gerrymander. yeah gerrymandered to the extent austin has now got congressmen it's you know they these districts they send out you know way off here you know from top north austin to weatherford

which is north of fort worth. and then you have another one that goes almost all down to mexico. so and, you know, it's and so out of that six congressmen, we have one democrat. this is probably the most liberal city in the southern tier of the united states. and so that's you know, it's clearly manipulative texas gain. two electoral votes in this past sentence sentence census of california lost one but of we would have had three if the if the governor and the republican leadership had been more avid in letting people counted but they were afraid that the census would show a stronger hispanic and liberal constituency they wanted to allow to be seen. all right. my segway here is speaking of, twisting paths. i want to give a sense of i want to talk a little about structure and form and how you write.

because in god save texas, you cover an enormous amount of territory and you do it in offensive uprising ways, sort of give people an example in a chapter on houston, you started off writing about a civil rights monument. then you pivoted to sam houston and then to oil, then to the astrodome and air conditioning, to hurricane harvey, and then back to the diversity of the city and its culture. so i'm curious how you think about structure and if if it's different in terms of the kinds of books you're doing some this sort of interconnected essays versus a narrative like the looming tower or even a very, you know, tight narrative like 13 days in september, every book teaches you how to write it and you have to realize that each is a different entity. you know, the looming tower. i wanted to write the origins of al qaeda and the failure of american intelligence to stop

it. then, you know, and so i've when 911 happened, i immediately knew i was going to have to write about but i didn't know how to go about it so i have a a lot of kind of crackpot theories about how write and then you know, i rely upon and i've never nobody's ever taken me up on these ideas but give this one all right. in order to humanize something like 11, you need. people that that the reader identifies with you to bring it down to a human level. and i call those people donkeys and sounds, you like i'm denigrating that. but a donkey is a useful beast of burden who can carry the into a world that he's never seen and

take a lot of information on his back. i could have written the looming tower without any characters at but. and wouldn't have cared about it. but if you like with. the american intelligence when after 911 i was trying to find individual who had perished in the in the towers and looking for a donkey. and i found john o'neill on the washington post. it was an obituary three days after 911. he had been pushed out of the fbi because he had classified information out of the office. that sound familiar? and so he got a job as the head of security at the world trade center and and his friend said, john, be safe now because they bombed the trade center in 93. and he said no they'll come back to finish the job so when i

thought about it initially when i first saw you know his obit i thought. this is know like you're a farce in a way that he was guy that was going to stop al qaeda and instead of getting bin laden bin laden got him. but i began to realize it was like a greek tragedy. he was going to meet his fate. if you're writing about the fbi and his failures and you have such a flawed, fascinating human being as john o'neill, it glues readers to the page. and i have a lot of, you know, tricks that i use. something a friend of mine called a rubber band theory,

which is, you plant an idea and it's sort of you ask your question and then you don't answer it. and he did this in going clear and in the looming tower, it's almost like a tv thing, right? you like you you throw people in and then you go and pull back. it's what makes the pages turn. you know, this suspense and that sometimes you have to refresh you know, oh, by the way, you don't know the answer to this. know you keep going, but i've learned a lot from i also write movies and and and they have no narrative at all it's all characters and scenes those are a really powerful tool for any writer in any form. and, you know reverse wise, you know the skills that you learned from writing nonfiction and and finding out what's really true, not just something you saw on tv you know, that makes, you know,

the plays in the movies that you might write more compelling because they have they are of reality you write i mean in those books especially the looming tower, it's kind of like this is what should have known back then. and there's often a kind presence in your work i want you to tell the story about a dream that you and then what happened on a bus the next day. oh, that's weird. okay. this was back. i was in high school and. we lived in dallas and we were going to take a trip to mexico and we we're going to go fishing in in this little fishing in tacloban and the pacific coast. and so to get there, we had to fly to el and then take a mexican and chill vince's this

line down the red cross or to a train that takes you over this mountain range to, the pacific. and the night before we left, i had this dream that. we were. it seemed like we were in a bus or train or something like that. and i was suddenly up in the air and i was and luggage was flying around and i was, you know, wondering what was going on and. i look back and i saw my mother and, her head came off and and i, you know, there's more of those dreams you really remember, you know. so what i told my sisters it and they were like, should we go? you know? and so but it was a dream. and we flew into el and we, we

got on the bus and then we went successfully first and that sort of thing came back on the bus and we were going really fast. it was raining and i remember i was trying to sleep and the sound of the brain on the window was and suddenly the bus went off road. it just left road and we later found out that the driver who was his sixties had only had his driving for a few weeks. and so he'd neglected to take his foot off the accelerator as he drove through this prairie. and we were bouncing around, you know, and then he turned the bus back towards the highway and there was a an arroyo with a covered it and i don't know how fast he was going when he hit that, but we went way up over road and smashed the other side

of the highway. it was bizarre, but we were up over then. i was suspended in midair. my mother's wig came off and. everybody over 30 broke their back and my sisters. i were shaken, but we intact. but we had quite an adventure to get my parents home from the hospital. because if you're in a wreck or something that in mexico at least this was true, then it's a criminal offense and i somehow you are implicated in have to stay around and testify and know you might be liable in some way and so we had i learned a little bit about having to negotiate in a in a foreign country with, you know, with people that have totally different system.

i mean, i just have to dwell on this a little bit more because your parents are both in the hospital and what are you and sisters doing and how did you get involved? it was strange. i had i. first of all, had to sure that they were getting care and so end with we were the the mexican hospital was in juarez was was fine you know they they put them in body it looked like mountain peaks and and i called our family doctor, you know, and robert cox, and he he said he was going to get the republic bank plane, fly down there and get them out of there and. so and he and he said, then find me a find me a medicine. you know, he's six, seven. so, you know, give me a big bed. i'll be dead three one. everything in texas, huge okay.

so he flew down and he he spread around some money and and we got clearance to, you know, that made warrant go away. and we flew back to dallas. i feel like that has to be that whole thing has to be another book at some but i bring up this idea don't believe i don't believe in psychic powers and yet you did a pandemic novel the end of october right before? a pandemic. so just explain that all. well, you know, i want to say this whole prophet stuff is overblown. know, i wrote a movie called the siege with washington about what would happen if terrorism came to in 8898. i wrote it and it would be in new york and it was islamic terrorism. and what would happen this is a question i posed and i

researched what we would do and you know torture and, all that sort of thing was a part of it. and so it was bust as of when it came out. but it was the most rented movie in america. 911 you're not helping with prophecy like debunking. all i'm saying is it was started just with a question. it wasn't i wasn't. i see a tragedy coming, you know, it was what would, you know, here in paris, in new york and, you know, in tel aviv, you had terrorist attacks all the time. what would happen if it happened in our country and with with with the plague year and with the end of october that actually started ridley scott, the filmmaker, asked me to write about, you know, a screenplay about the end of civilization, which i thought would be fun and i, i thought, well, how would

civilized nation end? and i thought, well, you know, nuclear bombs, where would you have a hero in that? and i as a young reporter, had written some articles and we lived in atlanta. i wrote some articles out the center for disease control, and i really admired the people that i met there at the it was the most impressive government office i'd ever seen. i thought that people that worked there were noble and brave and and they they the cdc almost a holy entity. so i reflected on that and i thought, well, pandemic would do pretty good job and, and i had, you know, so i had had some experience writing about pandemics. and i thought, i'll just do that. so that's how that came about. it wasn't i don't recommend writing a book that comes out during a pandemic when all the

bookstores are closed. so, so i got a lot of credit for it, for writing for my precious, but not for my wisdom. there was a lot of research, that book or it seemed to be. i mean you have a huge segment of the book that takes place at mecca. you have a lot about indonesia also a long submarine sequence. were you did you go to all places? i didn't go to indonesia, but i did. i after 911. i spent a lot of time in saudi. i actually worked at a newspaper there because they wouldn't let me be in as a reporter or saudi arabia, but they me in to be a mentor to young journalists. it was great. and i had a lot of insight into saudi arabia and we used to live in cairo. so i spoke some arabic, you know, i had some familiarity with the submarine. this is one of the joys of being a writer. you know, you can call up the

navy and say, i'd like to go on a submarine and know then they'll take you seriously and so i got to go down to southern georgia king kings, but the king of kings bay king, is that right? kingsbury and that's where we keep the boomers as they're called and they're called boomers because they are they each have 24 nuclear intercutting mental missiles on them, each of them with ten warheads. and each of the warheads many times greater than hiroshima on one submarine. and there are, you know, 14. and they can destroy the world without even leaving the harbor. and it was very to me and so they were doing a drill when. i was going on the boat and i think taking around to see, you

know, this here's where the crew quarters are with the crew quarters are by the way between the missile silos and so you're kind snug up to these silos they're all painted this lipstick red and and this is the targeting room this is where the trigger is. oh, where is the trigger? you know, it's here and it was it's like it looked like a pistol grip attached to a coil of wire and they handed it to me and said, would you like to. we're still here. so but it was it was a it's quite a feeling to know this would be what would you would expect experience if? you're the man who destroys the world. that's what it felt like. so when the pandemic happened, everyone who was writing a book

or had a about to come out thought, oh, no, what does this mean for the book? so i'm just curious like, what was the conversation like when the pandemic happened and you had a novel about a pandemic? well, did you think like, oh no or this is good or. let me just say this. i wasn't, i wasn't surprised that we a pandemic because i had done this research for the novel and i'd interviewed all these experts and, you know, and they was there all saying it's not a matter of if it's going to happen and it'll probably happen soon. we're overdue. and so we first heard about what was going on in china. i thought, oh, we're for it. and and it was weird to see the the denial that was so common in our country. i think had kind of smugness that it wouldn't get to. it always gets to us it just,

you know, it's disease and it's going to travel the world and the danger that we face that now, the world was so small that you could have you could have this instantly and we were lucky. we had a few a few just, you know, not very long before it was all on top of us. i'm tempted to ask you like, but also a little nervous. like, what's going to happen next. so but i, i, i'll just ask what is next for you? what are your upcoming projects projects? the way you frame that makes it sound really dangerous. i actually i have i've just finished reading the copy edit of a novel that's coming out and in october about texas politics. it's a tragedy and but i had a lot of fun writing that and the

and then on monday i'm going to israel and palestine to research a detective novel which sounds pretty eccentric, but i is a murder mystery set in hebron and the and then i've been working on a musical also about texas politics and i've had a lot of fun. think if it's right you're happy unless you're constantly occupied. yeah, well, that was, you know, unexpected delight. that was really a lot of fun. all right. well, if we want to find out what happens in the 2024 election, we can just read larry's next novel. larry, thank you so much. i'm honored. thank you.