At the height of his cultural dominance, market analysts estimated that one in every twenty American homes featured the work of a single artist: glowing stone cottages, babbling brooks and nostalgic main streets at twilight. But the man who painted those scenes of peace lived a life in violent opposition to them, involving an FBI investigation, franchisee lawsuits, chaotic public behavior and a death by accidental overdose. This episode examines the mechanics of the Thomas Kinkade empire and the psychological duality behind it.

We begin with a childhood of severe poverty in California, shivering in a dark house with the utilities shut off, and trace his path through UC Berkeley, a best-selling sketching handbook, background art for Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice, and the formula of empty cottages, Christian symbols and hyper-saturated pastels  ...