He was hailed as “The Painter of Light,” a titan of pastoral landscapes which glowed whimsically from the windows of malls and Disney stores across America in the 1990s. But inside Thomas Kinkade, the famed born-again Christian artist behind one of the most commercially successful art entities ever created, lurked a darkness even he couldn’t cover with layers of shining lacquer. His tragic story of worker exploitation, belligerent self-destruction, and nostalgia gone awry was carefully hidden behind a wall of corporate money for decades but emerged from the shadows after Kinkade’s sudden and unexpected death back in 2012. It’s a piece of forgotten American art history so bent Teams Edward and Kimberly had to drop their monthly storytelling competition and join forces to share it with y'all correctly. If you’ve ever felt disillusioned with The American Dream, skeptical about so-called “Christian artists,” or creeped out by those relentlessly-cheery Christmas villages glowing in Hallmark stores every winter, hit play and listen as the veneer dissolves into truth far stranger than fiction. Featuring original music by Sergio Gonzalez Pagan. Support the show