On the one hand are the hagiographies that emphasize her influence on American worship and minimize the scandal.

And then on the other hand, you have these books that paint her as this just absolute con artist, right? Who was calculating and scheming, and every move she made was a fraudulent one.

And she was, you know, an absurd trickster, and so is not taken seriously as a figure in American religion, not taken seriously in terms of her faith.

And so I honestly, I'm just, m- my book is kind of like, "Hey, I think both of these things are true." I like a feminist path breaker who's not perfect.

Like, I think she's, she's kind of, she's good and she's bad.

Like Sister Sinner.

You could see how a dramatist would create a scenario where she feels forced into a corner, like this is the rational thing to do somehow.

You get the sense that she's psychologically a complex [laughs] figure, you know? Like, and she's, she seems psychologically different.

And while those combination of words generally conjure a very specific type of macho architecture, she built this structure to mirror her femininity.

It looks like a wedding cake to me.

It's got a lot of gilded, soft floral edges to it.

It's a version of power, you know, like a, you, you know, you see some buildings and it's obvious that they are supposed to be signifying like power and permanence, but I think there is this thing where you don't see that many buildings that have so much money poured into them that are so female.

Aimee was the preacher.

You know, and, and just to pause, like, the outreach is incredible.

You know what I mean? There were, uh, there was a year in the early 1930s where she spoke to over two million people.

You know, she was, uh, you know, the Angelus Temple and Aimee were at the center of public service during the Great Depression.

Yeah.

And he was, like, five years older than her, and she was like, "I'm, I'm in.

Everything he said is true." Um, but she...

I think that it...

I- I just pause there because, like, for her, that, like, romantic feeling seemed to always be part of her ministry, you know? Like, she always kind of spoke in this romantic, um, rhapsodic way about, about religion, you know, and about Jesus.

Like, it was just very sort of a lot of love language.

So anyway, I will just speed up and say that she goes through a couple of husbands and becomes an itinerant preacher and sort of tries to be a normal person, and it doesn't work out.

She's a complex character.

... um, that was a transcendental meditation community, right?

Yeah, so, uh, my parents met at a transcendental meditation retreat in the early 1970s near Riverside, California, actually.

They were ...

My mom was from New York and my dad was from Santa Cruz, but they met and kind of instantly fell in love, and they were both, to different degrees, kind of followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was this guy that The Beatles were super into and who was teaching this transcendental meditation technique to a lot of college students all around the world, and especially in, in American universities.

That was sort of their evangelical technique, so to speak.

They really ...

It was like $35 to learn to meditate.

Can you paint the picture of just, like, everyday life? Like, what are you doing in the trailer park day to day?

And while those combination of words generally conjure a very specific type of macho architecture, she built this structure to mirror her femininity.

It looks like a wedding cake to me.

It's got a lot of gilded, soft floral edges to it.

It's a version of power, you know.

Like, uh, y- you know, you see some buildings and it's obvious that they are supposed to be signifying, like, power and permanence, but I think there is this thing where you don't see that many buildings that have so much money poured into them that are so female.

Aimee was the preacher.

You know, and, and just to pause, like, the outreach is incredible.

You know, I mean, there were...