Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker.”There’s nothing more important about a person than their story. In a way, that’s who we are. And yet, memories fade and people die. So those stories disappear and the job of the journalist is to go out before that happens and accumulate the kinds of stories that are going to help us understand who we are, why we are, where we are right now in time, and try to thread those stories into a coherent narrative. In a way, you give it a kind of immortality. And that’s a big job. It’s a great privilege.”

Show notes:

@lawrence_wright

00:30 Longform Podcast #83: Lawrence Wright

01:00 God Save Texas: a Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State (Vintage Books • 2019)

01:00 The End of October (Penguin Random House • 2020)

05:30 "Back in Egypt" (The New Yorker • April 2002)

18:30 "The Plague Year" (The New Yorker • Jan 2021)

19:00 "Zawahiri at the Helm" (The New Yorker • June 2011)

35:00 Remembering Satan A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory (Penguin Random House • 1995)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices