In this episode, Claire Hoffman explores the idea behind how our flaws, doubt, cynicism, and even ambition aren’t signs of failure, but can be used as fuel. She tells the story of Aimee Semple McPherson, a woman who built a religious empire and faked her own kidnapping. But this episode isn’t about scandal. It’s about the tension that we all carry between our light and dark sides. Claire says sometimes the bad wolf does good work. This conversation is about embracing contradiction and finding grace in the mess.
Key Takeaways:
- Claire’s book: “Sister Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson.”
- Aimee Semple McPherson’s duality of character, embodying both “good” and “bad” traits.
- The impact of McPherson on American religion and her role in establishing one of the first megachurches.
- The complexities of fame and its effects on personal identity and mental health.
- The concept of “audience capture” and its implications for public figures.
- Societal pressures and judgments faced by women, particularly in the context of McPherson’s life.
- The significance of grace, forgiveness, and personal transformation in the human experience.
- Reflections on authenticity, compassion, and the challenges of extending grace in a judgmental world.
Claire Hoffman is the author of the memoir Greetings from Utopia Park and a journalist reporting for national magazines on culture, religion, celebrity, business, and more. She was formerly a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. She is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz, and has an MA in religion from the University of Chicago and an MA in journalism from Columbia University. She serves on the boards of the Columbia School of Journalism, ProPublica, and the Brooklyn Public Library. Her new book is Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson
Connect with Claire Hoffman: Website | Instagram
If you enjoyed this conversation with Claire Hoffman, check out these other episodes:
How to Embrace Your Authentic Self with Carmen Rita Wong
Faith, Identity, and Finding Your Voice with Dante Stewart
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Episode Transcript:
Eric Zimmer 00:02:22 What if your so-called flaws, your doubt, your cynicism, even your ambition weren’t signs of failure but fuel? This week I talked with journalist Claire Hoffman about Aimee Semple McPherson, a woman who built a religious empire and faked her own kidnapping. But this episode isn’t about scandal. It’s about the tension that we all carry between our light and dark sides. Claire says sometimes the bad wolf does good work. And honestly, I get that as someone who’s had to make peace with parts of myself I used to run from. Whether that was addiction, cynicism, or even the days when solitaire felt like an emotional support animal. I found this conversation personal, moving, and honestly kind of freeing. This one’s about embracing contradiction and finding grace in the mess. I’m Erik Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Claire, welcome to the show.
Claire Hoffman 00:03:21 Thank you for having me back.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:23 Back? Yes, a long time back. I think you said nine years ago.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:28 It astounds me. I’ve been doing anything for that long. It’s a career anomaly for me, for sure. To have continued in one line for this long. But you have also been a writer since then. Your previous book, we talked about you growing up in a transcendental meditation community. I guess you would say.
Claire Hoffman 00:03:48 Yeah, we say movement, but the movement. Movement.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:51 Okay. A movement? Mint? Yes. And your new book is called Sister Sinner The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson.
Claire Hoffman 00:04:04 Yeah. It doesn’t seem related, but I think they are.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:08 Yes. And we’ll get into that in a moment. But we’ll start, like we always do, with a parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:31 And the grandchild stops. And think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Claire Hoffman 00:04:47 Thank you Eric. I mean, I had not heard that parable before we did the podcast together nine years ago, and I think it is just incredibly. Important and relevant, especially in terms of the ways that we sort of strive. And, you know, a big part of this new book is about a woman who had incredible ambition and incredible desires to do good in the world, you know, like a very powerful, good wolf. And she also had a really ferocious bad wolf inside of her. And I think for me, kind of thinking about my own journey and writing this book, I think that parable to me is about recognizing the value of both wolves. You know that the bad wolf does good work, you know, and sometimes you need a bad wolf.
Claire Hoffman 00:05:42 So I’m sort of interested in embracing the bad wolf.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:46 What do you mean by the bad wolf does good work.
Claire Hoffman 00:05:50 I mean, you know, I think with my first book, we talked about how doubt and cynicism had kind of led me back to meditation. It had been this thing that had pulled me away, and it changed my perspective on the world that I’d grown up in and taken me away from the beliefs of my community. And then, you know, as a young mother, I was just so sick of the voice. You know, I was so sick of the doubt, and I was so sick of the cynicism, and I was really looking for something else. And, you know, that led me to going back to meditation. But in doing so, I also sort of accepted that that doubt and cynicism had played a really important role in getting me out, you know, and getting me into my own space and into, you know, a set of beliefs that were more comfortable for me.
Claire Hoffman 00:06:45 I would say.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:46 Yeah, I think almost any quality can have its good and bad uses, depending on how we use it, when we use it, how much of it we use. You know, cynicism in its original sense of the word is not a bad thing, right? It’s probably closer in its original use to what we would call skepticism. But skepticism is not a bad thing, and doubt is not a bad thing, right? It’s questioning. In Zen, we talk about the three essentials, and they’re great faith, great doubt, and great effort. And so right there, you’ve got faith and doubt right next to each other. You know, because the doubt, the question what is this all about is what drives a lot of the endeavor.
Claire Hoffman 00:07:34 Yeah, I’ve spent six years on this biography and looking at Aimee Semple McPherson’s life, I think I see that she really bifurcated and divided, you know, the good and bad. I mean, at one point in her life, she said, I’m either you know, the most wonderful saint or I am a total sinner.
Claire Hoffman 00:07:54 It’s only those two choices. Yeah. And I thought, well, there’s your problem because you’re both. You know what I mean? They’re done. There’s your title and there’s the stories that you have created this division. And I think what I mean by saying embracing the bad wolf is instead of alienating that darkness, kind of seeing the functional side of those dark feelings, I would say.
Eric Zimmer 00:08:20 Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the reasons that I based this show around a parable that you might imagine. Now, I have read something like 800 times to people, I think. Yeah. Had I known you’re going to live with this for 11 years. I might have been like, well, is that the one I want to use? But here we are. But the thing that I really do like about it that I think stands up through any different interpretation of it to me is important, is it normalizes that both of these things are inside of us and they’re inside all of us. And that, to me, is the important thing, right? There’s nothing wrong with us because we have, quote unquote, what we might think of as bad or dark or negative thoughts, emotions, ambitions.
Eric Zimmer 00:09:07 Like, that’s just what it is to be human. And we have all these beautiful aspects of ourselves to. And that’s what I love about it is just unlike what Amy did, which is I’m either this or I’m that. It says we’re all both.
Claire Hoffman 00:09:24 Yeah. And I feel like, you know, I mean, since after I did my first book and I think this is why we have a shared landscape, I got so many letters from people who, you know, were former Catholics, former Mormons, former, you know, evangelicals. And of course, you know, lots of people who had been part of the Transcendental Meditation movement. I see this real appetite for a conversation around embracing the positive things about, you know, institutional or structured religion and the community of religion, and also recognizing all the kind of really shitty things that happen in these organizations and people really wanting to think that through individually. Right. This is the spiritual but not religious giant chunk of Americans that we are. And I think this question about that dichotomy really is fundamental to it.
Eric Zimmer 00:10:25 Yeah. So let’s talk about Aimee Semple McPherson. Who is she?
Claire Hoffman 00:10:31 I grew up in a sort of quasi Hindu meditation community, but it did mean that I became really interested in religion and after journalism school. I went to divinity school for a year. And, you know, I thought, oh, I’m going to study fundamentalism or, you know, these sort of an anthropological look at religion. But instead I was really drawn to the history of Christianity in America, because it’s actually I think it’s a shared story. And if you’re interested in these questions that we’re talking about, the story goes back 400 years and looking at the way that, you know, new faiths and religious beliefs are born and evolve and fight and die, you know, I mean, it’s fascinating. And when I was at divinity school, I learned about Aimee Semple McPherson, and I was kind of fascinated that I’d never heard of her because she was sort of celebrated as a 20th century pioneer of American religion. She did not start Pentecostalism, which is the evangelical Protestant faith that is the fastest growing religion in the world.
Claire Hoffman 00:11:42 A quarter of the world’s Christians identify as charismatic and Pentecostal. And, you know, it’s this idea of a living Jesus, right, that you have a personal relationship with Jesus, that Jesus connects to you and can provide, you know, the gifts of divine healing and speaking in tongues is really the signature Pentecostal faith. But Amy, you know, was a poor Canadian woman who felt called to spread the gospel. Her mother, since she was a little kid, kind of praised her as God’s promise. And, you know, she grew up in a religious household. She converted to Pentecostalism only like four years after the faith had started in 1906, in Los Angeles. And Amy, you know, just had this incredible appetite and drive to share her story and share her experience and try and help other people. Experience this kind of living. Jesus. And she endured unbelievable hardships. You know, I mean, she was a missionary in China. She lost her first husband. She had crazy health issues.
Claire Hoffman 00:12:54 And she kind of ended up living, you know, just before the World War, on the road with her mother and her young children. Preaching from town to town. And she just truly felt called. You know, I sort of imagined almost like a shamanic hippie or something, right? Like, she just is, like she just had this sense of, like, this was what she was supposed to do. And she comes to Los Angeles in 1918. It’s, you know, one of the century’s great success stories she shows up with, as she said, $10 and a tambourine. And within, you know, the span of five years, she builds the largest church in America. Like truly every like brick and pew paid for by altar calls that she raised with her mother. And she builds the Angela’s Temple in 1923, which is arguably the first megachurch in America. And she goes on to create kind of what was known as the best show in town. You know, I mean, 15,000 people coming on Sundays to see, you know, kind of Hollywood style entertainment.
Claire Hoffman 00:14:02 So she’s also considered sort of the founder of what we know of today as Christian entertainment. And she also started one of the first Christian radio stations. So she was like just this incredible pioneer. But most people don’t know about her because in 1926, at the height of her fame, she walked into the ocean and disappeared. And it was this national news story. Two people died looking for her. 40,000 people stood on the beach searching for her. Like true devotees style followers. And 36 days later, she walks in from the desert of Mexico in the middle of the night and tells a sort of unbelievable story of being kidnapped in broad daylight and held prisoner, and threats of being sold into sexual slavery. Just a totally bizarre story.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:01 Yeah, the book is incredibly compelling. Five pages in. Or maybe less than that. I was like, Holy mackerel. Right. Because you you very quickly set up how big of a deal she is, how famous she is, and then the fact that she just disappears and the rest of the book is sort of setting up how she got to that point and then kind of what happened after that point.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:24 And before we go into the trial and whether she actually was kidnapped or what actually happened, and maybe we don’t even know. I thought we could talk a little bit more about her before we get there, because there was one thing in the book that stood out to me a little bit, and it was that when she was doing what she seemed kind of born to do, right? She was just really good at it, right? When you get that famous doing something, it’s because you’re good at it. When she was doing that, at least early on, before fame became its own monster, she seemed like she was a pretty happy person. But there’s a point early on where she tries to become like a regular old housewife, and I mean, she just falls apart, right?
Claire Hoffman 00:16:16 Yeah. It’s incredible. A contemporary biographer of hers called her a flamingo in a chicken coop, which I think is like just the perfect description, right? On all accounts. I mean, she’s relatable, but she’s also like a once in a century personality, you know? And she was just this incredible force.
Claire Hoffman 00:16:35 And, I mean, everything that was happening was happening at a time when the expectation for women was essentially just to be a mother. You know? I mean, there was not a housewife. And, you know, I mean, when she started her ministry, I don’t think women could even vote in the majority of states or hold land.
Eric Zimmer 00:16:52 Or a bank account.
Claire Hoffman 00:16:53 Or have a bank account. It makes all of these achievements of hers. You know, you really have to kind of underscore it that it was just incredible obstacles. But yes, she tried to live life as a normal person in a little apartment with her second husband and her two young children, and it was as if she was physically destroyed by it. She ended up having a couple of, you know, what she called nervous breakdowns, hysterectomy, incredible, like internal bleeding, all these kind of awful things. And she sort of lost her mind. I mean, I guess that’s the definition of a nervous breakdown 100 years ago.
Claire Hoffman 00:17:33 But she writes about, like, all the smallness of everything drove her mad. And her neighbors, you know, would say like, oh, she was a nice, you know, blonde, but, you know, didn’t seem to take her housework seriously.
Eric Zimmer 00:17:45 Yeah. And then she gets back into preaching and seems to make sort of a miraculous recovery. And what captivated me about that was not just like her being a flamingo in a chicken coop, and that’s part of it, I think the smallness. But the other part of it, I think, is this being called by something that feels bigger. I know for me that when I am part of feeling like I’m contributing something to the world, like that was sort of the healing of my addiction to a large degree. And so I just was struck by that element of hers, where once she got back to what she felt like was hers to do, she suddenly all better.
Claire Hoffman 00:18:33 Yeah. I mean, I feel like Amy for all her ups and downs.
Claire Hoffman 00:18:37 There are some really instructional aspects of her life, and one of them is that she was totally unstoppable, and she really did follow a sense of mission. She did not make herself small. And I think that chapter that you’re talking about, it’s really instructional to me of like, you know, I think a lot of people make themselves smaller than they were meant to be. And for me, in some ways, I see religion as just the available runway for her at that moment. You know what I mean? She was a true believer. I’m not questioning her faith. Religion was a pathway for her bigness, and I think she felt called. She was somebody who was meant to be public facing, and she had put herself into a corner and into a small life, and it was absolutely unbearable. And, I mean, I find myself an introverted writer, but like, I, I sort of am like, okay. Like she got, like really weird. Like she did some really weird stuff.
Claire Hoffman 00:19:46 Sometimes she was rewarded and sometimes she wasn’t, but she would not be stopped. And I think that’s something really admirable to see.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:55 One of the themes in the book, and it’s one that you’ve explored through your writing a few different ways, is kind of the cost of fame. You’ve written about Amy Winehouse, you’ve written about Prince. There are others, but you’ve really looked at this idea of fame. And I’m curious, do you see a point for her at which fame began to become a problem, or is it really just much more gradual and nuanced than that?
Claire Hoffman 00:20:26 Yeah, I think it is gradual, but thank you for asking that question because this is like my favorite thing actually. You know, if there were fame studies, that’s what I would get like my PhD in, because I find this whole question of people who are treated as gods on earth as just endlessly fascinating. And for Amy, I start to see evidence of it in the early 1920s, before she builds her temple while she’s still on the road.
Claire Hoffman 00:20:58 But she’s getting a lot of attention for being a faith healer. and she travels around the country and she starts to attract just wild crowds, huge crowds. You know, people come from surrounding states and they, you know, wheel their children and their sick relatives. I mean, there’s a point in the book where people are like passing bodies through windows of a building to try and get their loved ones to Amy to touch. Right. She’s sort of treated as this like portal to, you know, another realm almost. And during that time, you know, I mean, it’s incredible pressure. She’s she’s working like 12 hours on the stage doing these healings. She kind of is dragged away at the end of the night, like covered in sweat and dirt. And I noticed, I mean, she wrote quite a few memoirs, as was her way. no personal letters, just lots of memoirs. She starts to write about herself in the third person in this kind of disassociated way. Right. And I found that really interesting, like where she starts to have trouble seeing herself as an individual looking out in the world and is just seen as this kind of she uses the royal we sometimes, but like how she’s seen by others, starts to confuse how she sees, if that makes sense.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:23 And you mentioned that you think that religion was a path for her, and not that she didn’t believe in what she did, but but that it was a way of, of sort of putting herself out there. Were there things in her make up, her personality that you’ve seen in common with other people who are famous as far as something that she needs from others?
Claire Hoffman 00:22:48 Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, you know, I mean, certainly she was an incredible talent. So there’s that like really, you know, completely unique, totally mesmerizing. Right? Like, she had an ability to capture attention. She was a showstopper. You know, she would get up on a stage, she’d stand in front of her tent, and people just stopped and were mesmerized. And, you know, I mean, you think about Justin Bieber playing his music on the street in Canada. They were actually from almost the same exact place, which is just a fun fact. Or, you know, Amy Winehouse as a young woman going into record and that voice just kind of stopping everything, right? Like these.
Claire Hoffman 00:23:31 There is fundamentally a talent, and I think there’s also part of that talent is the experience that you get in the room. These are people who have the ability to transport you. They have the ability to stop your mind, stop your thoughts and just capture your attention, so to speak, and everything that means, right? That’s why they call them spellbinding. Mesmerizing, showstopping, right. Like these these qualities where they just capture you, so to speak, in terms of, you know, what she got from it. I think, you know, she had a real desire for an audience. She had an insatiable desire to be loved. The back half of the book kind of explores that dark side. You know, where the negative view that the world started to have of her kind of destroyed her in some ways, because she was so attached to public perception of her.
Eric Zimmer 00:24:54 As I’m thinking through this and talking about it, it’s thinking about the role of religion or spirituality. And in its practice, it’s often intended, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, to make you seem less special in a way.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:12 right? It connects you to everybody else, and it ideally would reduce your ego, and it would help you see your place in the greater scheme of everything. Right? And so to me, it’s almost the opposite effect of that. But she is an example of where that certainly didn’t counterbalance the desire for fame. And we can certainly look at plenty of other spiritual communities where the leaders are clearly egomaniacs to some degree, and where whatever the religion or the teaching is, isn’t actually working on them in that way.
Claire Hoffman 00:25:47 Yeah, it’s an interesting question, because if you read about and I’ve included some of those in the book, her actual religious experiences, you know, I mean, she’s laid out on the ground, as you say, she’s slain is the term that they use, right? Like, she’s just laid out, laying in the dust, surrounded by others, weeping and crying. And it is that. Yeah. Like what you’re talking about that kind of religious experience of like, I’m nothing and this is everything, right? So that does seem to be an element in her own religious experience, especially early on.
Claire Hoffman 00:26:23 But at the same time, absolutely. She saw herself as divinely chosen. She saw herself as a selected vessel for God to bring the gospel. And so there is a sense of specialness. I mean, she said time and again, I want the largest microphone possible, and I want love, like I want to be in love. That’s what she wanted. So. Yeah. Do with that what you will.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:49 I’m going to take famous slightly different direction here because I want to get to what potentially is so corroding about it. One of the things I often wonder is, as we have all become internet personalities to some degree or other, right? Nearly everyone is on social media and is wanting to get more attention, more attention. Is there a connection to that and fame? Is fame corroding because of the way it causes you to seek out certain adulation? Or is it when you actually get it? Is when it becomes pernicious? Or probably both?
Claire Hoffman 00:27:32 In my experience reporting this book and reporting on famous people, what I have seen is a certain loss of self and even, you know, reporting on the Transcendental Meditation movement and our guru in reporting that book.
Claire Hoffman 00:27:51 You know, I’d always thought like, oh, he took advantage of us, right? Like he was constantly raising money. He had these crazy schemes like, you know, we were victimized by him. But in reading, you know, private papers and private recollections of him. I also kind of saw him as victimized, like. By our expectations of who he was supposed to be. And that really shifted things for me and definitely made me think about celebrities. You know, where they end up sort of caged by the audience. And I see that in Amy, and I worry about that for my 14 year old when she posts stories on Instagram, you know, of HoCo. like, I think there is this thing where you stop having the experience for the experience, you stop being yourself for yourself, and you start performing, and the performance takes over everything and the audience’s expectation of you. So whether you’re a guru and your audience expects you to be enlightened. Whether you’re a evangelist who people think is a living saint on earth, you know, whether you’re a 14 year old girl who’s supposed to just look hot all the time.
Claire Hoffman 00:29:18 You know what I mean? Like, I think I see the through line as, like, losing touch with your individual experience and having to just be projecting out and experience all the time.
Eric Zimmer 00:29:30 Yeah, there’s a term and maybe you’ve heard it. I don’t really even know where it comes from, but it’s called audience capture. And the idea is that someone starts out doing something and they get an audience that could be a huge audience. It could be a relatively small audience. And as you said, that audience starts to have some degree of expectation. And that person then finds themselves in that role, often not even quite aware of it, but oftentimes very aware of it, where they are living into the persona that they created. And as you said, they are not then. Being authentic to who they are and authentic to the ways in which they might change or develop different interests or be more complex than the simplistic facing story.
Claire Hoffman 00:30:22 Yeah. I mean, if I fast forward to the end of the book, at the end of Amy’s life, I see so many parallels with Amy Winehouse, with Prince, with Michael Jackson.
Claire Hoffman 00:30:35 I mean, particularly Michael Jackson, where, you know, he was living in sort of exile for reasons good and bad. And, you know, I was struggling with addiction and had a dream of coming back and being a star and having it feel the old way. Right. So in in the summer before Michael Jackson died, you know, he talked all the time about his comeback, right? He was getting ready for his comeback tour, and Amy had almost the exact same thing she was. She had been in conservatorship for years. Every aspect of her life controlled by her accountant. You know, she had a nurse who was living with her full time. And I’m guessing she was on quite a bit of medication. She was estranged from her family. And, you know, in the spring before she died, she got herself out of conservatorship, put her son in charge, filed papers to start. You know what would have been the first religious television? Making her the first televangelist. And she was getting ready for her tour to come back.
Claire Hoffman 00:31:46 You know, and there was so much energy and excitement and stress around that. And that’s really where I sort of saw these, like, modern day celebrities that I’ve encountered towards the end of their last chapter where they. They’re kind of trapped in a two dimensional place where they’re not who they were before, but they want to go back. And I think time is a bitch. I don’t know if you can say that on this podcast, but.
Eric Zimmer 00:32:14 You can absolutely say that.
Claire Hoffman 00:32:16 I could, I could say even more. But I think, you know, time is an aspect in all of this, right? Like we’re talking about ego. We’re talking about experience. We’re talking about, you know, the expectations of others. But time is a big piece of this, right? And in terms of change and transformation. And so I think, yeah, like these people get stuck in an idea of how they think things are supposed to be, but for a million reasons, they aren’t that way.
Claire Hoffman 00:32:44 And it becomes unbearable.
Eric Zimmer 00:32:46 Just to give people a little context on Michael Jackson, you wrote his obituary for rolling Stone.
Claire Hoffman 00:32:52 I did, yeah, I spent the summer that he passed away covering every aspect of his death and Rolling Stone’s big look back at what happened and investigating his death and the circumstances. So it really that surprised me when doing this book of like, oh my gosh, like this. You know, woman living in 1940s Los Angeles had such a similar story, you know, even down to the kind of the language of like, oh, I’m going to get ready for my comeback. And, you know, a love of downers.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:23 Obviously, things for her start to go wrong after the disappearance, right? She disappears, comes back, says she was kidnapped and then is largely not believed by an awful lot of people, including Los Angeles law enforcement, who consider putting her on trial. Talk a little bit about what this suddenly not being revered as universally starts to do to her.
Claire Hoffman 00:33:49 It drives her crazy, you know, and I think she had spent a decade up until this point, being a person who translated the world and the unseen and the unknown to other people.
Claire Hoffman 00:34:08 That was part of her gifts, you know, was like giving prophecies, articulating the divine, I would say. And so I think she had a real strength and palette as a storyteller. She came back to Los Angeles and, you know, told pretty much the same story over and over of, of her kidnapping. You know, it’s like a movie, like it’s a crazy story. And, you know, she escapes by sawing off the ropes on her wrists on a serrated maple syrup can and running through the desert through, you know, incredible heat and also darkness and rattlesnakes and, you know, I mean, it’s like she’s a she’s the star of a movie. And people just Immediately had an issue with it, and they could never find any evidence of the place where she said she was kept or the kidnappers. Yeah, it seemed like that doubt in her just just drove her crazy. Like, she she dug in her heels and she began to see the world in darker terms. Right.
Claire Hoffman 00:35:15 Her ministry up until that point had been very warm, very accepting, very heaven oriented, I would say. You know, there was not a lot of devil in Amy McPherson’s preaching. She was really about all the kind of beautiful, transformative, almost kind of feminine love aspects of Christianity and being born again. And yeah, after that, her sermons got like very dark. And, you know, she would have, you know, the devil depicted on her stage chasing her. And she called out, you know, the Catholics of the world for prosecuting her. And it really changed. My theory is that this had to do with her mother.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:00 Okay. Before we go down that you said when immediately people started to doubt her. There was very good reasons to doubt her, right? I mean, based on the evidence that was coming in, it sure seemed like she had made this story up. Now, she might have painted it as people were out to get her, and there probably were people who wanted to see her not succeed.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:22 Right. You talk about how the LA underworld did not want her to do well. There were other preachers who did not want her to do well. There were forces aligned against her, but she wasn’t blackballed for no reason.
Claire Hoffman 00:36:36 Yeah, I mean, it’s sort of why I love this story. You know, when I first started looking into her, I assumed that she was falsely accused. You know, I like any good kind of 90s feminist. I assumed that she had.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:50 Been believe the woman.
Claire Hoffman 00:36:52 Yeah, I believe the woman. I always believe the woman. Yeah. And when I, you know, started going into the court transcripts and all the newspaper archives, it was like, oh, like the evidence is really building up. But she also was right that there were people out to get her, and there were people trying to, you know, take her down and use this opportunity to destroy her. I just love that, you know, where it’s like she was a liar and she was right.
Claire Hoffman 00:37:20 You know, she and all of it’s a little bit of a world of her own making, which I think is just so incredible. You know, I mean, it was just like the biggest scandal. And, you know, all this drama ensued. And, you know, she was screaming from the rooftops. You know, and on the radio every night about being persecuted. And she was right. And they were also right. You know.
Eric Zimmer 00:37:44 Yeah. In the midst of all that, there’s a really maybe it means a lot. Maybe it means nothing. You can let me know what you think. But there’s a point where someone is talking about identifying her in another city and saying, like, I saw her in this other city so she couldn’t have been kidnapped. All that. And how did you know it was her? Oh, it was because of her fat ankles. Based on the way you tell it, it’s almost as if she stops caring about being accused of lying of everything else, and is obsessed with the fact that someone thinks she has fat ankles.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:21 I was just struck by how we all can be that level of insecurity or vanity. It’s striking.
Claire Hoffman 00:38:29 Yeah, I mean, this is how I see her. Kind of like playing on different levels. You know what I mean? Like, she’s telling the story over and over, and I truly believe she began to believe it. Like, I think at some point, probably pretty early on, she did a version of it in her head and she lived it. And that was her story. You know, the angles is just hilarious. And this, you know, it’s a through line. It happens throughout that summer and fall. It happens in the courtrooms. You know, they ask her to show her ankles. You know, I mean, it’s it’s unreal. People are looking at their own ankles. It is, to me, kind of a perfect snapshot of the kind of ways that women were being judged and looked at and taken apart, and she was totally a part of that. So she resented it and was like, it’s unfair.
Claire Hoffman 00:39:19 But she was also like, wait, my ankles are actually not that bad. You know, I mean, it’s mind fuckery at its best in my mind.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:28 So, yeah. One of the things that’s also wonderful about this book is that it features Los Angeles in the late 19 tens 1920s as a fascinating place, which it obviously is. A lot of books that I love have come out of there, like the noir tradition of crime writing comes out of there like LA was like this amazing place and also a really dark underside to it. And so you’re seeing the underworld and you’re seeing how connected the gangs are in politics and how roped in the newspapers are. And it’s just a really great portrait of a particular time.
Claire Hoffman 00:40:27 I think that if you were going to make a the one you feed video game, you would make it in 1920s Los Angeles because they called it sunshine and Shadows. I mean, that is the definition of noir is a dream that is broken, right? I love those books. I love that time.
Claire Hoffman 00:40:47 There’s so much that comes out of it in terms of film and art and religion. It’s so fascinating. And I think it is this time where people came to Los Angeles, as they do now, to start over and to transform and to leave the past behind and become a new person. And whether that means economically or spiritually or cosmetically. You know, I mean, it’s the classic story. And she was completely part of that, and her followers were totally part of that. But there’s also a predatory aspect of that. First of all, you know, people act out, you know, they act out their addictions, they act out their dark side. And there’s also a lot of people who take advantage of, you know, these people who are trying to transform, you know, or inside their dream.
Eric Zimmer 00:41:44 You mentioned a moment ago. I don’t know what you say. It all came down to her mom. Was that what you said?
Claire Hoffman 00:41:50 Well, I think everything does.
Eric Zimmer 00:41:52 Doesn’t it? Always.
Eric Zimmer 00:41:53 Yeah. no. Mom ism. Mother’s out there. Joke. What do you mean?
Claire Hoffman 00:42:00 I think her mother saw her as prophesied from the day she was born. You know, that’s part of her story. And it was part of her success as her mother. She was an only child. And her mother, you know, took her when she was a baby to the Salvation Army and said, like, this child is chosen by God. And that was just part of her legacy. It’s how she opens, like all of her biographies, basically is this pivotal moment. And the book is reported, it’s journalistic. It’s it’s based on factual accounts. But if you’re asking me like what I think walking away from it. I think that she was a normal 36 year old woman at the height of her fame, who was interested in her former employee and decided that running away with him seemed like a great idea at the time and maybe immediately regretted it. Maybe they got in that house after like five days and she’s like, yeah, I’m good or whatever.
Claire Hoffman 00:43:02 Or she missed the fame and she missed the audience and she missed her world. She missed her family. And and she came back. And I think her commitment to telling that story, where she was kidnapped and victimized, where she hadn’t been a sinner, so to speak, was about her mother and this idea that her mother held of her as being this pure being.
Eric Zimmer 00:43:26 I didn’t research as fully as you. I’m not sure I would arrive at the same conclusion, only in that I think there are a lot of factors that go into her being in a cage, right? Let’s just say that before she disappears. She’s in a cage. Like she can do certain things and certain things. Only now she’s able to do all kinds of things that other women at the time aren’t able to do. But she’s still kind of by painting herself, whether it was because of what her mother put into her head. As a as you said, a saint, not a sinner, gave her no room to move when, as you said, she sort of fell in love with someone outside of marriage and didn’t know what to do about it.
Eric Zimmer 00:44:08 Okay, with all of that? You spent a lot of time in her world. You jokingly emailed me that you told me in 2021, you thought you were almost done with the book, and then you email me in 2025. So you were with her for a long time. Did writing about her change anything in you?
Claire Hoffman 00:44:27 I would say, you know, in researching the end of Amy’s life and kind of where her legacy ended up, I feel like grace is a really important concept. And as I said, you know, I didn’t grow up Christian like that’s not an idea that I grew up with, I would say, or have an attachment to. And who knows if I’m even thinking about it. Right. But I really kind of loved this idea and wished for more of it for her. To me, Grace is like this beautiful notion of forgiveness and acceptance of our humanity. And I think it’s it’s missing in that way that a lot of religions and, you know, society kind of divides us, right? Like this divided self.
Claire Hoffman 00:45:11 And I feel like grace is, you know, just this beautiful concept and Christianity of like, love and acceptance and embrace of the lightness and the darkness. And I’ve tried to give that to myself, you know, because I think that when we see the world that way as so divided or we see ourselves that way. Like this is good behavior. This is bad behavior. It perverts, you know, for want of a better word or deforms. You know, I think that it starts to cage us in a sense. And I see, I mean, again, as somebody who did not grow up Christian, who is not Christian, I find that notion of love and acceptance that is at the core of Christianity so beautiful and that that love and forgiveness and that grace can kind of release us is just beautiful. I think it’s really beautiful. You know, I mean, part of writing about a, I mean, as a sort of quasi Hindu married to a Jewish person, like Christianity is like not part of my life, so to speak.
Claire Hoffman 00:46:22 But so I feel like I can kind of admire it from the sidelines. I would also say like, I mean, I am a person who lives in the world and reads the newspaper every day. You know, I mean, Trump’s pastor is a Pentecostal preacher and is working in the white House every day. And there’s a part of me that I think it’s important to look at what the predominant narratives are. You know, there’s a majority of Americans identify as Christian. And I think it’s really important to understand that faith and to think about these ideas and in a way that is empathetic. I would say.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:04 Yeah, I love the idea of extending grace to other people. I think it’s a beautiful idea. And I also find it hard to extend grace to people who are not doing the same thing at all. I’m not naming anybody here. I’m just saying in general, it gets hard to extend grace. I think it’s why when a spiritual leader falls, they fall so hard is because they’ve often really like.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:30 They’ve done part of the painting of themselves as this way. But I do agree. I mean, I’m obviously somebody as a recovering heroin addict. Right. Like I’m glad there was grace in the world for me, right? I mean, I was not a good person at one time or. Let me say that differently. I did a lot of things that were that were not good, that were bad, and that were harmful. And so I’m glad that parts of the world extended grace to me, and that I was able to extend it to myself. And because I do believe in second chances, and I do believe that people make mistakes, and we shouldn’t let a single mistake or a couple mistakes that people make be the entirety of their story.
Claire Hoffman 00:48:13 Yeah. I wish that the conversation in Christianity in America was more about these ideas, and I think there are ways that Christianity has been so fundamental in the world of recovery. You know, I mean, I have a friend who is a recovering alcoholic who went and did rehab in the basement of Amy’s church like three years ago.
Claire Hoffman 00:48:36 And I mean, he grew up in that tradition. So it was a world that he connected to and made sense to him. You know, he sees her church as fundamental to saving his life and saving his family. I feel like Grace is so beautiful. I mean, I say this as a person who got kicked out of high school for fighting, like, I’m not like that. Like I’m not that nice. Yeah, but maybe that’s why I like, sort of romanticize it. Like I love revenge. I love revenge just the best. You know? I’m hateful. You know, when you think about forgiveness for when we do bad things, there is like, that kind of soft wash feeling of, like, letting go, you know, and moving on. Yeah. And, you know, I think that’s beautiful. As a non-Christian, it’s something that I’ve taken away and I’ve thought a lot about in terms of Amy’s story, because I don’t think she was extended a lot of grace.
Eric Zimmer 00:49:35 Yeah, well, that is a great place for us to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation, because I would be deeply remiss in my duties to my friend Chris, if I did not talk about you and your limo ride with David Lynch because he’s a huge David Lynch fan, I would be letting him down as a friend. I’m not going to do that. So you and I and the post-show conversation are going to talk about David Lynch, Transcendental Meditation, your experience with him. Maybe we get to Eckhart Tolle, I don’t know. But listeners, if you’d like access to this, what’s going to be mesmerizing? Post-show conversation, special episodes I create just for you, and most importantly, to support us because we can use your help. Go to one you feed join. Claire, thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to have you back on. And in another decade when you have another book. No, I’m teasing you and me. I probably will not be doing this in a decade.
Eric Zimmer 00:50:33 And you’ll write another one in less than ten years, I’m sure.
Claire Hoffman 00:50:36 I hope so. I will be back, and I hope it won’t be so long.
Eric Zimmer 00:50:40 That was not a very graceful way to end the interview, now, was it?
Claire Hoffman 00:50:44 I deserve it. You’re speaking right to my soul there.
Eric Zimmer 00:50:48 Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity. But we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.
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