Speaker 1: Hey friends, Eric here with some exciting news. I've been
Speaker 1: writing a book and it's about to be out in
Speaker 1: the world in April of twenty twenty six. The working
Speaker 1: title is How a Little Becomes a Lot, and it's
Speaker 1: all about how small, consistent actions, the kind that we
Speaker 1: talk about all the time on this show can lead
Speaker 1: to real meaningful change. Right now, the book is in
Speaker 1: the editing process and there's still some shaping to do,
Speaker 1: which is where you come in. I'd love your input
Speaker 1: on what to focus on, how to talk about the book,
Speaker 1: even what it should be called. If you've got a
Speaker 1: few minutes and a couple thoughts on what would make
Speaker 1: this book most helpful for you, I'd be really grateful
Speaker 1: to hear them. Just head to oneufeed dot net slash
Speaker 1: book survey. You'll also get early updates, fun giveaways, and
Speaker 1: to behind the scenes look at what it actually takes
Speaker 1: to make a book. Editing marathons, title debates, existential spirals
Speaker 1: and me questioning all of my life choices at two
Speaker 1: am over one stubborn see sentence again. That's one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash book survey. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being part of this. Your feedback really means a
Speaker 1: lot to me. Truly.
Speaker 2: She escapes by sawing off the ropes on our wrists
Speaker 2: on a serrated maple syrup can and running through the
Speaker 2: desert through incredible heat and also darkness and rattlesnakes, and
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, it's like she's the star of
Speaker 2: a movie and people just immediately had an issue with it.
Speaker 3: Wow, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great
Speaker 3: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 3: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 3: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 3: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: What if your so called flaws, your doubt, your cynicism,
Speaker 1: even your ambition or signs of failure, but fuel this
Speaker 1: week I talked with journalist Claire Hoffmann about Amy Semple McPherson,
Speaker 1: a woman who built a religious empire and faked her
Speaker 1: own kidnapping. But this episode isn't about scandal. It's about
Speaker 1: the tension that we all carry between our light and
Speaker 1: dark sides. Claire says, sometimes the bad wolf does good work,
Speaker 1: and honestly I get that as someone who's had to
Speaker 1: make peace with parts of myself I used to run from,
Speaker 1: whether that was addiction, cynicism, or even the days when
Speaker 1: Solitaire felt like an emotional support animal. I found this
Speaker 1: conversation personal, moving and honestly kind of freeing. This one's
Speaker 1: about embracing contradiction and finding grace in the mess. I'm
Speaker 1: Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Claire,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me back back.
Speaker 1: Yes, a long time back. I think you said nine
Speaker 1: years ago. Astounds me. I've been doing anything for that long.
Speaker 1: It's a career anomaly for me, for sure, to have
Speaker 1: continued in one line for this long. But you have
Speaker 1: also been a writer since then. Your previous book, we
Speaker 1: talked about you growing up in a transcendental meditation community.
Speaker 1: I guess you would.
Speaker 2: Say yes, a movement.
Speaker 1: Movement, Okay, a movement.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: And your new book is called Sister Sinner, The Miraculous
Speaker 1: Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Amy Simple McPherson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't seem related, but I think they are.
Speaker 1: Yes, And we'll get into that in a moment, but
Speaker 1: we'll start like we always do, with the parable. And
Speaker 1: in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their
Speaker 1: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild
Speaker 1: stops and they think about it for a second. They
Speaker 1: look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Eric. I mean, I had not heard that
Speaker 2: parable before we did the podcast together nine years ago,
Speaker 2: and I think it is just incredibly important and relevant,
Speaker 2: especially in terms of the ways that we sort of strive.
Speaker 2: And you know, a big part of this new book
Speaker 2: is about a woman who had incredible ambition and incredible
Speaker 2: desires to do good in the world, you know, like
Speaker 2: a very powerful good wolf, and she also had a
Speaker 2: really ferocious bad wolf inside of her. And I think
Speaker 2: for me, kind of thinking about my own journey and
Speaker 2: writing this book, I think that parable to me is
Speaker 2: about recognizing the value of both wolves. You know that
Speaker 2: the bad wolf does good work, you know, and sometimes
Speaker 2: you need a bad wolf. So I'm sort of interested
Speaker 2: in embracing the bad wolf.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by the bad wolf does good work?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I think with my first book,
Speaker 2: we talked about how doubt and cynicism had kind of
Speaker 2: led me back to meditation. It had been this thing
Speaker 2: that had pulled me away, and it changed my perspective
Speaker 2: on the world that I'd grown up in and taken
Speaker 2: me away from the beliefs of my community. And then,
Speaker 2: you know, as a young mother, I was just so
Speaker 2: sick of the voice, you know, I was so sick
Speaker 2: of the doubt, and I was so sick of the cynicism,
Speaker 2: and I was really looking for something else, and you know,
Speaker 2: that led me to going back to meditation. But in
Speaker 2: doing so, I also sort of accepted that that doubt
Speaker 2: and cynicism had played a really important role in getting
Speaker 2: me out, you know, and getting me into my own
Speaker 2: space and into you know, a set of beliefs that
Speaker 2: were more comfortable for me.
Speaker 1: I would say, Yeah, I think almost any quality can
Speaker 1: have its good and bad uses, depending on how we
Speaker 1: use it, when we use it, how much of it
Speaker 1: we use. You know, Cynicism in its original sense of
Speaker 1: the word is not a bad thing. Right. It's probably
Speaker 1: closer in its original use to what we would call skepticism.
Speaker 1: But skepticism is not a bad thing, and doubt is
Speaker 1: not a bad thing, right. It's questioning. In Zen we
Speaker 1: talk about the three essentials, and are there great faith,
Speaker 1: great doubt, and great effort? And so right there, you've
Speaker 1: got faith in doubt right next to each other, you know,
Speaker 1: because the doubt, the question what is this all about?
Speaker 1: Is what drives a lot of the endeavor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've spent six years on this biography and looking
Speaker 2: at Amy Simple McPherson's life, I think I see that
Speaker 2: she really bifurcated and divided, you know, the good and bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, at one point in her life. She said,
Speaker 2: I'm either you know, the most wonderful saint or I
Speaker 2: am a total sinner. It's only those two choices.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, there's your problem because you're both
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, they're done. There's your title,
Speaker 2: and there's the story. Is that you have created this division.
Speaker 2: And I think what I mean by saying embracing the
Speaker 2: bad Wolf is instead of alienating that darkness, kind of
Speaker 2: seeing the functional side of those dark feelings.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, I mean it's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that I based this show around a parable that
Speaker 1: you might imagine. Now I have read something like eight
Speaker 1: hundred times to people. I think. Ye had I known
Speaker 1: you're going to live with this for eleven years, I
Speaker 1: might have been like, well, is that the one I
Speaker 1: want to use? But here we are. But the thing
Speaker 1: that I really do like about it, that I think
Speaker 1: stands up through any different interpretation of it to me,
Speaker 1: is important is it normalizes that both of these things
Speaker 1: are inside of us, and they're inside all of us,
Speaker 1: And that to me is the important thing. Right, there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with us because as we have quote unquote
Speaker 1: what we might think of as bad or dark or
Speaker 1: negative thoughts, emotions, ambitions, like that's just what it is
Speaker 1: to be human. And we have all these beautiful aspects
Speaker 1: of ourselves too, And that's what I love about It
Speaker 1: is just unlike what Amy did, which is I'm either
Speaker 1: this or I'm that, it says we're all both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I feel like, you know, I mean, since
Speaker 2: after I did my first book, and I think this
Speaker 2: is why we have a shared landscape. I got so
Speaker 2: many letters from people who you know, work former Catholics,
Speaker 2: former Mormons, former you know, evangelicals, and of course you know,
Speaker 2: lots of people who had been part of the transcendental
Speaker 2: meditation movement. I see this real appetite for a conversation
Speaker 2: around embracing the positive things about you know, institutional or
Speaker 2: structured religion and the community of religion, and also recognizing
Speaker 2: all the kind of really shitty things that happen in
Speaker 2: these organizations and people really wanting to think that through individually. Right,
Speaker 2: this is the spiritual but not religious, giant chunk of
Speaker 2: Americans that we are, and I think this question about
Speaker 2: that dichotomy really is fundamental to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's talk about Amy Semple McPherson.
Speaker 2: Who is she I grew up in a sort of
Speaker 2: quasi Hindu meditation community, but it did mean that I
Speaker 2: became really interested in religion. And after journalism school, I
Speaker 2: went to Divinity School for a year, and you know,
Speaker 2: I thought, Oh, I'm going to study fundamentalism or you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of an anthropological look at religion. But instead
Speaker 2: I was really drawn to the history of Christianity in
Speaker 2: America because it's actually, I think it's a shared story.
Speaker 2: And if you're interested in these questions that we're talking about,
Speaker 2: the story goes back four hundred years. And looking at
Speaker 2: the way that you know, new faiths and religious beliefs
Speaker 2: are born and evolve and fight and die, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's fascinating. And when I was at Divinity School,
Speaker 2: I learned about Amy Simple Macpherson, and I was kind
Speaker 2: of fascinated that I'd never heard of her, because she
Speaker 2: was sort of celebrated as a twentieth century pioneer of
Speaker 2: American religion. She did not start Pentecostalism, which is the
Speaker 2: Evangelical Protestant faith that is the fastest growing religion in
Speaker 2: the world. A quarter of the world's Christians identify as
Speaker 2: charismatic and Pentecostal, and you know, it's this idea of
Speaker 2: a living Jesus, right that you have a personal relationship
Speaker 2: with Jesus, that Jesus connects to you and can provide,
Speaker 2: you know, the gifts of divine healing and seaking in
Speaker 2: tongues is really the signature Pentecostal faith. But Amy, you know,
Speaker 2: was a poor Canadian woman who felt called to spread
Speaker 2: the gospel. Her mother, since she was a little kid,
Speaker 2: kind of praised her as God's promise, and you know,
Speaker 2: she grew up in a religious household. She converted to
Speaker 2: Pentecostalism only like four years after the faith had started
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh six in Los Angeles. And Amy, you know,
Speaker 2: just had this incredible appetite and drive to share her
Speaker 2: story and share her experience and try and help other
Speaker 2: people experience this kind of living Jesus. And she endured
Speaker 2: unbelievable hardships, you know. I mean, she was a missionary
Speaker 2: in China, she lost her first husband, she had crazy
Speaker 2: health issues, and she kind of ended up living, you know,
Speaker 2: just before the World War on the road with her
Speaker 2: mother and her young children, preaching from town to town.
Speaker 2: And she just truly felt called, you know, I sort
Speaker 2: of imagine almost like a shamanic hippie or something, right, like,
Speaker 2: she just is like she just had this sense of
Speaker 2: like this was what she was supposed to do. And
Speaker 2: she comes to Los Angeles in nineteen eighteen. It's, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the centuries great success stories. She shows up with,
Speaker 2: as she said, ten dollars in a tambourine, and within
Speaker 2: you know, this span of five years, she builds the
Speaker 2: largest church in America, like truly every like brick and pew,
Speaker 2: paid for by altar calls that she raised with her mother.
Speaker 2: And she builds the Angelus Temple in nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 2: which is arguably the first megachurch in America. And she
Speaker 2: goes on to create kind of what was known as
Speaker 2: the best show in town, you know, I mean, fifteen
Speaker 2: thousand people coming on Sundays to see you know, kind
Speaker 2: of Hollywood style entertainment. So she's also considered sort of
Speaker 2: the founder of what we know of today as Christian entertainment.
Speaker 2: And she also started as one of the first Christian
Speaker 2: radio stations. So she was like just this incredible pioneer.
Speaker 2: But most people don't know about her because in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty six, at the height of her fame, she walked
Speaker 2: into the ocean and disappeared, and it was this national
Speaker 2: news story. Two people died looking for her, forty thousand
Speaker 2: people stood on the beach searching for her, like true
Speaker 2: kind of devotee style followers, And thirty six days later
Speaker 2: she walks in from the desert of Mexico in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night and tells a sort of unbelievable
Speaker 2: story of being kidnapped in broad daylight and held prisoner
Speaker 2: and threats of being sold into sexual slavery. Just a
Speaker 2: totally bizarre sty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the book is incredibly compelling. Five pages in, or
Speaker 1: maybe less than that, I was like, holy mackerel, right,
Speaker 1: because you very quickly set up how big of a
Speaker 1: deal she is, how famous she is, and then the
Speaker 1: fact that she just disappears, and the rest of the
Speaker 1: book is sort of setting up how she got to
Speaker 1: that point, and then kind of what happened after that
Speaker 1: point and before we go into the trial and whether
Speaker 1: she actually was kidnapped or what actually happened, and maybe
Speaker 1: we don't even know. I thought we could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about her before we get there, because
Speaker 1: there was one thing in the book that stood out
Speaker 1: to me a little bit, and it was that when
Speaker 1: she was doing what she seemed kind of born to do, right,
Speaker 1: she was just really good at it. Right, when you
Speaker 1: get that famous doing something, that's because you're good at it.
Speaker 1: When she was doing that, at least early on, before
Speaker 1: fame became its own monster, she seemed like she was
Speaker 1: a pretty happy person. But there's a point early on
Speaker 1: where she tries to become like a regular old housewife,
Speaker 1: and I mean she just falls apart, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredible. A contemporary biographer of hers called her
Speaker 2: a flamingo in a chicken coop, which I think is
Speaker 2: like just the perfect description right on all accounts. I mean,
Speaker 2: she's relatable, but she's also like a once in a
Speaker 2: century personality, you know. And she was just this incredible force.
Speaker 2: And I mean everything that was happening was happening at
Speaker 2: a time when the expectation for women was essentially just
Speaker 2: to be a mother, you know. I mean there was
Speaker 2: not a housewife. And you know, I mean when she
Speaker 2: started her ministry, I don't think women could even vote
Speaker 2: in the majority of states, or hold land or a
Speaker 2: bank account, or have a bank account. It makes all
Speaker 2: of these achievements of hers. You know, you really have
Speaker 2: to kind of underscore it that it was just incredible obstacles.
Speaker 2: But yes, she tried to live life as a normal
Speaker 2: person in a little apartment with her second husband and
Speaker 2: her two young children, and it was as if she
Speaker 2: was physically destroyed by it. She ended up having a
Speaker 2: couple of you know what she called nervous breakdowns, hysterectomy,
Speaker 2: incredible like internal bleeding, all these kind of awful things,
Speaker 2: and she sort of lost her mind. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess that's the definition of a nervous breakdown one hundred
Speaker 2: years ago. But she writes about like all the smallness
Speaker 2: of everything drove her mad, and her neighbors, you know,
Speaker 2: would say like, oh, she was a nice, you know, blonde,
Speaker 2: but you know, didn't seem to take her housework seriously.
Speaker 1: Yep. And then she gets back into preaching and seems
Speaker 1: to make sort of a miraculous recovery. And what captivated
Speaker 1: me about that was not just like her being flamingo
Speaker 1: in a chicken coop. And that's part of it, I think,
Speaker 1: the smallness. But the other part of it, I think
Speaker 1: is this being called by something that feels bigger. I
Speaker 1: know for me that when I am part of feeling
Speaker 1: like I'm contributing something to the world, like that was
Speaker 1: sort of the healing of my addiction to a large degree.
Speaker 1: And so I just was struck by that element of
Speaker 1: hers where once she got back to what she felt
Speaker 1: like was hers to do, she suddenly all better.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I feel like Amy, for all her
Speaker 2: ups and downs, there are some really instructional aspects of
Speaker 2: her life, and one of them is that she was
Speaker 2: totally unstoppable and she really did follow a sense of mission.
Speaker 2: She did not make herself small, and I think that
Speaker 2: chapter that you're talking about, it's really instructional to me
Speaker 2: of Like, you know, I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: make themselves smaller than they were meant to be. And
Speaker 2: for me, in some ways, I see religion as just
Speaker 2: the available runway for her at that moment, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, she was a true believer. I'm not questioning
Speaker 2: her faith. Religion was a pathway for her bigness, and
Speaker 2: I think she felt called. She was somebody who was
Speaker 2: meant to be public facing, and she had put herself
Speaker 2: into a corner and into a small life and it
Speaker 2: was absolutely unbearable. And I mean, I find myself an
Speaker 2: introverted writer, but like I sort of am like, okay,
Speaker 2: Like she got like really weird, Like she did some
Speaker 2: really weird stuff. Sometimes she was rewarded and sometimes she wasn't,
Speaker 2: but she would not be stopped. And I think that's
Speaker 2: something really admirable to see.
Speaker 1: One of the themes in the book, and it's one
Speaker 1: that you've explored through your right a few different ways,
Speaker 1: is kind of the cost of fame. You've written about
Speaker 1: Amy Winehouse, You've written about Prince, there are others, but
Speaker 1: you've really looked at this idea of fame, and I'm curious,
Speaker 1: do you see a point for her at which fame
Speaker 1: began to become a problem or is it really just
Speaker 1: much more gradual and nuanced than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it is gradual. But thank you for
Speaker 2: asking that question, because this is like my favorite thing. Actually,
Speaker 2: you know, if there were fame studies, that's what I
Speaker 2: would get like my PhD in because I find this
Speaker 2: whole question of people who are treated as gods on
Speaker 2: earth as just endlessly fascinating, and for Amy, I start
Speaker 2: to see evidence of it in the early nineteen twenties
Speaker 2: before she builds her temple while she's still on the road.
Speaker 2: But she's getting a lot of attention for being a
Speaker 2: faith healer, and she travels around the country and she
Speaker 2: starts to attract just wild crowds, huge crowds. You know,
Speaker 2: people come from surrounding states, and they you know, wheel
Speaker 2: their children and their sick relatives. I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: point in the book where people are like passing bodies
Speaker 2: through windows of a building to try and get their
Speaker 2: loved ones to amy to touch. Right, She's sort of
Speaker 2: treated as this like portal to you know, another realm
Speaker 2: almost and during that time, you know, I mean there's
Speaker 2: incredible pressure. She's working like twelve hours on the stage
Speaker 2: doing these healings. She kind of is dragged away at
Speaker 2: the end of the night, like covered in sweat and dirt.
Speaker 2: And I noticed, I mean, she wrote quite a few memoirs,
Speaker 2: as was her way, no personal letters, just lots of memoirs.
Speaker 2: She starts to write about herself and the third person
Speaker 2: in this kind of associated way, right, And I found
Speaker 2: that really interesting, like where she starts to have trouble
Speaker 2: seeing herself as an individual looking out in the world
Speaker 2: and is just seen as this kind of she uses
Speaker 2: the royal. We sometimes but like how she's seen by
Speaker 2: others starts to confuse how she sees if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned that you think that religion was a
Speaker 1: path for her, and not that she didn't believe in
Speaker 1: what she did, but that it was a way of
Speaker 1: sort of putting herself out. There were there things in
Speaker 1: her makeup her personality that you've seen in common with
Speaker 1: other people who are famous, as far as something that
Speaker 1: she needs from others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: certainly she was an incredible talent, So there's that like
Speaker 2: really you know, completely unique, totally messing right, Like she
Speaker 2: had an ability to capture attention. She was a show stopper.
Speaker 2: You know, she would get up on a stage, she'd
Speaker 2: stand in front of her tent and people just stopped
Speaker 2: and were mesmerized. And you know, I mean you think
Speaker 2: about Justin Bieber playing his music on the street in Canada.
Speaker 2: They were actually from almost the same exact place, which
Speaker 2: is just a fun fact. Or you know Amy Winehouse
Speaker 2: as a young woman going into record and that voice
Speaker 2: just kind of stopping everything right like these there is
Speaker 2: fundamentally a talent and I think There's also part of
Speaker 2: that talent is the experience that you get in the room.
Speaker 2: These are people who have the ability to transport you.
Speaker 2: They have the ability to stop your mind, stop your thoughts,
Speaker 2: and just capture your attention, so to speak, and everything
Speaker 2: that means. Right, That's why they call them spellbinding, mesmerizing,
Speaker 2: show stopping, right, like these these qualities where they just
Speaker 2: capture you, so to speak. In terms of you know,
Speaker 2: what she got from it, I think, you know, she
Speaker 2: had a real desire for an audience. She had an
Speaker 2: insatiable desire to be loved. The back half of the
Speaker 2: book kind of explores that dark side, you know, where
Speaker 2: the negative view that the world started to have of
Speaker 2: her kind of destroyed her in some ways because she
Speaker 2: was so attached to public perception of her.
Speaker 1: As I'm thinking through this and talking about it, it's
Speaker 1: thinking about the role of religion or spirituality, and in
Speaker 1: its practice, it's often intended and I don't mean this
Speaker 1: in a bad way to make you seem less special.
Speaker 1: In a way, right, it connects you to everybody else,
Speaker 1: and it ideally would reduce your ego and it would
Speaker 1: help you see your place in the greater scheme of
Speaker 1: everything right it and so to me it's almost the
Speaker 1: opposite effect of that. But she is an example of
Speaker 1: where that certainly didn't counterbalance the desire for fame. And
Speaker 1: we can certainly look at plenty of other spiritual communities
Speaker 1: where the leaders are clearly egomaniacs to some degree and
Speaker 1: where whatever the religion or the teaching is isn't actually
Speaker 1: working on them in that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting question because if you read about
Speaker 2: and I've included some of those in the book, her
Speaker 2: actual religious experiences, you know, I mean she's laid out
Speaker 2: on the ground, as you say, she's slain is the
Speaker 2: term that they use, right, Like, she's just laid out,
Speaker 2: laying in the dust, surrounded by others, weeping and crying,
Speaker 2: and it is that. Yeah, like what you're talking about,
Speaker 2: that kind of religious experience of like I'm nothing and
Speaker 2: this is everything right. So that does seem to be
Speaker 2: an element in her own religious experience, especially early on.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, absolutely she saw herself as
Speaker 2: divinely chosen. She saw herself as a selected vessel for
Speaker 2: God to bring the Gospel, and so there is a
Speaker 2: sense of specialness. I mean, she said time and again
Speaker 2: I want the largest microphone possible, and I want love
Speaker 2: like I want to be in love. That's what she wanted,
Speaker 2: So yeah, do without what you will.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take fame a slightly different direction here
Speaker 1: because I want to get to what potentially is so
Speaker 1: corroding about it. One of the things I often wonder is,
Speaker 1: as we have all become Internet personalities to some degree
Speaker 1: or other, right nearly everyone is on social media and
Speaker 1: is wanting to get more attention, more attention. Is there
Speaker 1: a connection to that and fame? Is fame corroding because
Speaker 1: of the way it causes you to seek out certain
Speaker 1: adulation or is it when you actually get it is
Speaker 1: when it becomes pernicious or probably both.
Speaker 2: In my experience reporting this book and reporting on famous people,
Speaker 2: what I have seen is a certain loss of self
Speaker 2: and even you know, reporting on the trans not meditation
Speaker 2: movement and our guru. In reporting that book, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd always thought like, oh, he took advantage of us, right,
Speaker 2: Like he was constantly raising money, He had these crazy schemes.
Speaker 2: You know, we were victimized by him. But in reading
Speaker 2: you know, private papers and private recollections of him, I
Speaker 2: also kind of saw him as victimized, like by our
Speaker 2: expectations of who he was supposed to be. And that
Speaker 2: really shifted things for me and definitely made me think
Speaker 2: about celebrities, you know, where they end up sort of
Speaker 2: caged by the audience. And I see that in Amy,
Speaker 2: and I worry about that for my fourteen year old
Speaker 2: when she posts stories on Instagram, you know, of Hoko, Like,
Speaker 2: I think, there is this thing where you stop having
Speaker 2: the experience for the experience, you stop being yourself for yourself,
Speaker 2: and you start performing and the performance takes over everything
Speaker 2: and the audience's expectation of you. So whether you're a
Speaker 2: guru and your audience expects you to be enlightened, whether
Speaker 2: you're a evangelist who people think is a living scene
Speaker 2: on Earth, you know, whether you're fourteen year old girl
Speaker 2: who's supposed to just look hot all the time, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. Like, I think I see the
Speaker 2: through line as like losing touch with your individual experience
Speaker 2: and having to just be projecting out an experience all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a term, and maybe you've heard it. I
Speaker 1: don't really even know where it comes from, but it's
Speaker 1: called audience capture. And the idea is that someone starts
Speaker 1: out doing something and they get an audience. That could
Speaker 1: be a huge audience, it could be a relatively small audience,
Speaker 1: and as you said, that audience starts to have some
Speaker 1: degree of expectation, and that person then finds themselves in
Speaker 1: that role, often not even quite aware of it, but
Speaker 1: oftentimes very aware of it, where they are living into
Speaker 1: the persona that they created, and as you said, they
Speaker 1: are not then being authentic to who they are and
Speaker 1: authentic to the ways in which they might change or
Speaker 1: develop different interests or be more complex than the simplistic
Speaker 1: facing story.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if I fast forward to the end
Speaker 2: of the book, at the end of Amy's life, I
Speaker 2: see so many parallels with Amy Winehouse, with Prince, with
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson. I mean, particularly Michael Jackson, where you know,
Speaker 2: he was living in sort of exile for reasons good
Speaker 2: and bad, and you know, I was struggling with addiction
Speaker 2: and had a dream of coming back and being a
Speaker 2: star and having it feel the old way. Right. So
Speaker 2: in the summer before Michael Jackson died, you know, he
Speaker 2: talked all the time about his comeback, right, he was
Speaker 2: getting ready for his comeback tour, and Amy had almost
Speaker 2: the exact same thing. She had been in conservatorship for years,
Speaker 2: every aspect of her life controlled by her accountant. You know,
Speaker 2: she had a nurse who was living with her full time,
Speaker 2: and I'm guessing she was on quite a bit of medication.
Speaker 2: She was estranged from her family, and you know, in
Speaker 2: the spring before she died, she got herself out of conservatorship,
Speaker 2: put her son in charge, filed papers to start, you know,
Speaker 2: what would have been the first religious television, making her
Speaker 2: the first televangelist, and she was getting ready for her
Speaker 2: tour to come back, you know, and there was so
Speaker 2: much energy and excitement and stress around that. And that's
Speaker 2: really where I sort of saw these like modern day
Speaker 2: celebrities that I've encountered towards the end of their last
Speaker 2: chapter where they they're kind of trapped in a two
Speaker 2: dimensional place where they're not who they were before, but
Speaker 2: they want to go back. And I think time is
Speaker 2: a bitch. I don't know if you can say that
Speaker 2: on this podcast.
Speaker 1: But you can absolutely say that.
Speaker 2: I could say even more, but I think, you know,
Speaker 2: time is an aspect in all of this, right, Like
Speaker 2: we're talking about ego, we're talking about experience, we're talking
Speaker 2: about you know, the expectations of others. But time is
Speaker 2: a big piece of this, right and in terms of
Speaker 2: change and transformation, And so I think, yeah, like these
Speaker 2: people get stuck in an idea of how they think
Speaker 2: things are supposed to be, but for a million reasons
Speaker 2: they aren't that way, and it becomes unbearable.
Speaker 1: Just to give people a little context on Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: you wrote his obituary for Rolling Stone.
Speaker 2: I did. Yeah. I spent the summer that he passed
Speaker 2: away covering every aspect of his death and wrote Rolling
Speaker 2: Stones big look back at what happened and investigating his
Speaker 2: death in the circumstances. So it really that surprised me
Speaker 2: when doing this book of like, oh my gosh, like this.
Speaker 2: You know, woman living in nineteen forties Los Angeles had
Speaker 2: such a similar story, you know, even down to kind
Speaker 2: of the language of like, oh, I'm going to get
Speaker 2: ready for my comeback and you know, a love of downers.
Speaker 1: Obviously, things for her start to go wrong after the disappearance. Right,
Speaker 1: she disappears, comes back, says she was kidnapped, and then
Speaker 1: is largely not believed by an awful lot of people,
Speaker 1: including the Los Angeles law enforcement who consider putting her
Speaker 1: on trial talk a little bit about what this suddenly
Speaker 1: not being revered as universally starts to do to her.
Speaker 2: It drives her crazy, you know. And I think she
Speaker 2: had spent a decade up into this point being a
Speaker 2: person who translated the world and the unseen and the
Speaker 2: unknown to other people. That was part of her gifts,
Speaker 2: you know, was like giving prophecies, articulating the divine, I
Speaker 2: would say, And so I think she had a real
Speaker 2: strength and palette as a storyteller. She came back to
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and you know, told pretty much the same
Speaker 2: story over and over of her kidnapping. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like a movie, Like it's a crazy story, and you know,
Speaker 2: she escapes by sawing off the ropes on her wrists
Speaker 2: on a serrated maple syrup can and running through the
Speaker 2: desert through you know, incredible heat and also darkness and rattlesnakes,
Speaker 2: and you know, I mean it's like she's she's the
Speaker 2: star of a movie. And people just immediately had an
Speaker 2: issue with it, and they could never find any evidence
Speaker 2: of the place where she said she was or the kidnappers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it seemed like that doubt in her just just drove
Speaker 2: her crazy, like she dug in her heels, and she
Speaker 2: began to see the world in darker terms. Right. Her
Speaker 2: ministry up until that point had been very warm, very accepting,
Speaker 2: very heaven oriented. I would say, you know, there was
Speaker 2: not a lot of devil in amy simple Macpherson's preaching.
Speaker 2: She was really about all the kind of beautiful, transformative,
Speaker 2: almost kind of feminine love aspects of Christianity and being
Speaker 2: born again. And yeah, after that her sermons got like
Speaker 2: very dark, and you know she would have you know,
Speaker 2: the devil depicted on her stage chasing her, and she
Speaker 2: called out, you know, the Catholics of the world for
Speaker 2: prosecuting her. And it really changed. And my theory is
Speaker 2: that this had to do with her mother.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we go down that you said when immediately
Speaker 1: people started to doubt her, there was very good reasons
Speaker 1: to doubt her, right, I mean, based on the evidence
Speaker 1: that was coming in. It sure seemed like she had
Speaker 1: made this story up. Now, she might have painted it
Speaker 1: as people were out to get her, and there probably
Speaker 1: were people who wanted to see her not succeed. Right,
Speaker 1: you talk about how the la underworld did not want
Speaker 1: her to do well, there were other preachers who did
Speaker 1: not want her to do well. There were forces aligned
Speaker 1: against her, but she wasn't blackballed for no reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's sort of why I love this story.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: When I first started looking into her, I assumed that
Speaker 2: she was falsely accused, you know, I, like any good
Speaker 2: kind of nineties feminist. I assumed that.
Speaker 1: She had believed the woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe the woman. I always believe the woman.
Speaker 2: And when I you know, started going into the court
Speaker 2: transcripts and all the newspaper archives, it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: like the evidence is really building up. But she also
Speaker 2: was right that there were people out to get her,
Speaker 2: and there were people trying to you know, take her
Speaker 2: down and use this opportunity to destroy her. I just
Speaker 2: love that, you know, where it's like she was a
Speaker 2: liar and she was right, you know, and all of
Speaker 2: it's a little bit of a world of her own making,
Speaker 2: which I think is just so incredible, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean it was just like the biggest scandal, and you know,
Speaker 2: all this drama ensued, and you know, she was screaming
Speaker 2: from the rooftops, you know, and on the radio every
Speaker 2: night about being persecuted, and she was right, and they
Speaker 2: were also right.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, in the midst of all that, there's
Speaker 1: a really maybe it means a lot, maybe it means nothing.
Speaker 1: You can let me know what you think. But there's
Speaker 1: a point where someone is talking about identifying her in
Speaker 1: another city and saying, like, I saw her in this
Speaker 1: other city, so she couldn't have been kidden all that,
Speaker 1: And how did you know it was her? Oh it
Speaker 1: was because of her fat ankles. Based on the way
Speaker 1: you tell it, it's almost as if she stops caring
Speaker 1: about being accused of lying of everything else and is
Speaker 1: obsessed with the fact that someone thinks she has fat ankles.
Speaker 1: I was just struck by how we all can be
Speaker 1: that level of insecurity or vanity. It's striking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is how I see her kind
Speaker 2: of like playing on different levels, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like she's telling the story over and over, and I
Speaker 2: truly believe she began to believe it, Like I think
Speaker 2: at some point, probably pretty early on, she did a
Speaker 2: version of it in her head and she lived it
Speaker 2: and that was her story. You know. The ankles is
Speaker 2: just hilarious and this, you know, it's a through line.
Speaker 2: It happens throughout that summer and fall. It happens in
Speaker 2: the courtrooms, you know, they ask her show her ankles
Speaker 2: that you know, I mean, it's unbelieve people are looking
Speaker 2: at their own ankles. It is, to me, kind of
Speaker 2: a perfect snapshot of the kind of ways that women
Speaker 2: were being judged and looked at and taken apart, and
Speaker 2: she was totally a part of that. So she resented
Speaker 2: it and was like it's unfair, but she was also like, wait,
Speaker 2: my ankles are actually not that bad, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean it's mind fuckery at its best mode.
Speaker 1: So yep. One of the things that's also wonderful about
Speaker 1: this book is that it features Los Angeles in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen tens nineteen twenties as a fascinating place, which
Speaker 1: it obviously is, a lot of books that I love
Speaker 1: have come out of there, like the noir tradition of
Speaker 1: crime writing comes out of there, Like La was like
Speaker 1: this amazing place and also a really dark underside to it,
Speaker 1: and so you're seeing the underworld and you're seeing how
Speaker 1: connected the gangs are in politics and how roped in
Speaker 1: the newspapers are, and it's just a really great portrait
Speaker 1: of a particular time.
Speaker 2: I think that if you were going to make the
Speaker 2: one You Feed video game, you would make it in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty. It's Los Angeles because they called it Sunshine
Speaker 2: and Shadows. I mean that is the definition of noir.
Speaker 2: Is a dream that is broken. Right. I love those books.
Speaker 2: I love that time. There's so much that comes out
Speaker 2: of it in terms of film and art and religion.
Speaker 2: It's so fascinating, and I think it is this time
Speaker 2: where people came to Los Angeles as they do now,
Speaker 2: to start over and to transform and to leave the
Speaker 2: past behind and become a new person. And whether that
Speaker 2: means economically or spiritually or cosmetically, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's the classic story and she was completely part of that,
Speaker 2: and her followers were totally part of that. But there's
Speaker 2: also a predatory aspect of that. First of all, you know,
Speaker 2: people act out, you know, they act out their addictions,
Speaker 2: they act out their dark side. And there's also a
Speaker 2: lot of people who take advantage of, you know, these
Speaker 2: people who are trying to transform or inside their dream.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a moment ago. I don't know what you say.
Speaker 1: It all came down to her mom. Was that what
Speaker 1: you said?
Speaker 2: Well, but I think everything.
Speaker 1: Does doesn't it always Yeah, mother's out there. What do
Speaker 1: you mean.
Speaker 2: I think her mother saw her as prophecied from the
Speaker 2: day she was born. You know, that's part of her story,
Speaker 2: and it was part of her success as her mother.
Speaker 2: She was an only child, and her mother, you know,
Speaker 2: took her when she was a baby to the Salvation
Speaker 2: army and said, like, this child is chosen by God.
Speaker 2: And that was just part of her legacy. It's how
Speaker 2: she opens, like all of her biographies, basically is this
Speaker 2: pivotal moment, and the book is reported, it's journalistic, it's
Speaker 2: it's based on factual accounts. But if you're asking me,
Speaker 2: like what I think walking away from it, I think
Speaker 2: that she was a normal thirty six year old woman
Speaker 2: at the height of her fame who was interested in
Speaker 2: her former employee and decided that running away with him
Speaker 2: seemed like a great idea at the time, and maybe
Speaker 2: immediately regretted it. Maybe maybe they got in that house
Speaker 2: after like five days and she's like, yeah, I'm good
Speaker 2: or whatever. Or she missed the fame and she missed
Speaker 2: the audience, and she missed her world, she missed her family,
Speaker 2: and she came back and I think her commitment to
Speaker 2: telling that story where she was kidnapped and victimized, where
Speaker 2: she hadn't been a sinner, so to speak, was about
Speaker 2: her mother and this idea that her mother held of
Speaker 2: her as being this pure being.
Speaker 1: I didn't research as fully as you. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I would arrive at the same conclusion, only in that
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of factors that go
Speaker 1: into her being in a cage. Right, Let's just say
Speaker 1: that before she disappears, she's in a cage, like she
Speaker 1: can do certain things and certain things only now she's
Speaker 1: able to do all kinds of things that other women
Speaker 1: at the time aren't able to do. But she's still
Speaker 1: kind of by paining herself, whether it was because of
Speaker 1: what her mother put into her head as a as
Speaker 1: you said, a saint not a sinner, gave her no
Speaker 1: room to move when, as you said, she sort of
Speaker 1: fell in love with someone outside of marriage and didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do about it. Okay, with all of that,
Speaker 1: you spent a lot of time in her world. You
Speaker 1: jokingly emailed me that you told me in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one you thought you were almost done with the book,
Speaker 1: and then you email me in twenty twenty five, So
Speaker 1: you were with her for a long time. Did writing
Speaker 1: about her change anything in you?
Speaker 2: I would say, you know, in researching the end of
Speaker 2: Amy's life and kind of where her legacy ended up,
Speaker 2: I feel like grace is a really important concept. And
Speaker 2: as I said, you know, I didn't grow up Christian, Like,
Speaker 2: that's not an idea that I grew up with, I
Speaker 2: would say, or have an attachment to you, And who
Speaker 2: knows if I'm even thinking about it, right, but I
Speaker 2: really kind of loved this idea and wished for more
Speaker 2: of it for her. To me, grace is like this
Speaker 2: beautiful notion of forgiveness and acceptance of our humanity. And
Speaker 2: I think it's it's missing in that way that a
Speaker 2: lot of religions and you know, society kind of divides us, right,
Speaker 2: like this divided self. And I feel like grace is,
Speaker 2: you know, just this beautiful concept and Christianity of like
Speaker 2: love and acceptance and embrace of the lightness and the darkness.
Speaker 2: And I've tried to give that to myself, you know,
Speaker 2: because I think that when we see the world that
Speaker 2: way as so divided, or we see ourselves that way
Speaker 2: like this is good behavior, this is bad behavior, it perverts,
Speaker 2: you know, for one of a better word, or deforms,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that it starts to cage us
Speaker 2: in a sense. And I see I mean again, as
Speaker 2: somebody who did not grow up Christian, who is not Christian,
Speaker 2: I find that notion of love and acceptance that is
Speaker 2: at the core of Christianity so beautiful, and that that
Speaker 2: love and forgiveness and that grace can kind of release
Speaker 2: us is just beautiful. I think it's really beautiful, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean part of writing about a I mean, as
Speaker 2: a sort of quasi Hindu married to a Jewish person,
Speaker 2: like Christianity is like not part of my life, so
Speaker 2: to speak, but so I feel like I can kind
Speaker 2: of admire it from the sidelines. I would also say, like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I am a person who lives in the
Speaker 2: world and reads the newspaper every day, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: Trump's pastor is a Pentecostal preacher and is working in
Speaker 2: the White House every day. And there's a part of
Speaker 2: me that I think it's important to look at what
Speaker 2: the predominant narratives are. You know, there's a majority of
Speaker 2: Americans identify as Christian, and I think it's really important
Speaker 2: to understand that faith and to think about these ideas
Speaker 2: and in a way that is empathetic.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, I love the idea of extending
Speaker 1: grace to other people. I think it's a beautiful idea.
Speaker 1: And I also find it hard to extend grace to
Speaker 1: people who are not doing the same thing at all.
Speaker 1: I'm not naming anybody here, I'm just saying in general,
Speaker 1: it gets hard to extend grace. I think it's why
Speaker 1: when a spiritual leader falls they fall so hard is
Speaker 1: because they've often really like they've done part of the
Speaker 1: painting of themselves as this way. But I do agree.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm obviously somebody as a recovering heroin addict, right,
Speaker 1: Like I'm glad there was grace in the world for me, right,
Speaker 1: I mean I was not a good person at one time,
Speaker 1: or let me say that differently. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of things that were that were not good, that were bad,
Speaker 1: and that were harmful. And so I'm glad that parts
Speaker 1: of the world extended grace to me and that I
Speaker 1: was able to extend it to myself. And because I
Speaker 1: do believe in second chances, and I do believe that
Speaker 1: people make mistakes and we shouldn't let a single mistake
Speaker 1: or a couple mistakes that people make be the entirety
Speaker 1: of their story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish that the conversation in Christianity and America
Speaker 2: was more about these ideas. And I think there are
Speaker 2: ways that Christianity has been so fundamental in the world
Speaker 2: of recovery, you know. I mean I have a friend
Speaker 2: who is recovering alcoholic who went and did rehab in
Speaker 2: the basement of Amy's Church like three years ago, And
Speaker 2: I mean he grew up in that tradition, so it
Speaker 2: was a world that he connected to and made sense
Speaker 2: to him. You know, he sees her church as fundamental
Speaker 2: to saving his life and saving his family. I feel
Speaker 2: like grace is so beautiful. I mean I say this
Speaker 2: as a person who got kicked out of high school
Speaker 2: for fighting. Like I'm not like that, Like I'm not
Speaker 2: that nice. But maybe that's why I like sort of
Speaker 2: romanticize it. Like I love revenge. I love revenge is
Speaker 2: the best. You know, I'm hateful. You know, when you
Speaker 2: think about forgiveness for when we do bad things, there
Speaker 2: is like that kind of soft wash feeling of like
Speaker 2: letting go, you know, and moving on. Yep, And you know,
Speaker 2: I think that's beautiful As a non Christian. It's something
Speaker 2: that I've taken away and I've thought a lot about
Speaker 2: in terms of Amy's story, because I don't think she
Speaker 2: was extended a lot of grace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that is a great place for us to
Speaker 1: wrap up. You and I are going to continue in
Speaker 1: the post show conversation because I would be deeply remiss
Speaker 1: in my duties to my friend Chris if I did
Speaker 1: not talk about you and your limo ride with David Lynch,
Speaker 1: because he's a huge David Lynch fan. I would be
Speaker 1: letting him down as a friend. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do that. So you and I in the post show
Speaker 1: conversation are going to talk about David Lynch, transcendental meditation,
Speaker 1: your experience with him. Maybe we get to Eckhart Tootlee.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but listeners, if you'd like access to
Speaker 1: this what's going to be mesmerizing post show conversation special
Speaker 1: episodes I create just for you and most importantly to
Speaker 1: support us because we can use your help. Go to
Speaker 1: one feed dot net slash join Claire. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to have you back on and in
Speaker 1: another decade, when you have another book. Now I'm teasing
Speaker 1: you and me, I probably will not be doing this
Speaker 1: in a decade, and you will write another one in
Speaker 1: less than ten years, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: I hope so I will be back, and I hope
Speaker 2: it won't be so long.
Speaker 1: That was not a very graceful way to end the interview, now,
Speaker 1: was it.
Speaker 2: I deserve it. We're speaking right to my soul there.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
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