A Landmark Sampler: Anne Peterson, Rick Ross, and Rob Copeland

[00:00:00] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical

[00:00:04] or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official

[00:00:08] policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion, group,

[00:00:12] club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything.

[00:00:25] I'm Sarah Edmondson. And I'm Anthony, air quotes Nippy, Ames. And this is A Little Bit Culty.

[00:00:32] A podcast about what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad.

[00:00:36] Every week we chat with survivors, experts, and whistleblowers for real cult stories told

[00:00:40] directly by the people who lived through them. Because we want you to learn a few things

[00:00:44] we've had to learn the hard way. Like if you think you're too

[00:00:48] smart to get sucked into something culty, you're already prime recruitment material.

[00:00:52] You might even already be in a cult. Oops. You better keep listening to find out.

[00:00:57] Welcome to Season 6 of A Little Bit Culty.

[00:01:02] Hey everybody. We hope you're having an amazing summer. We are recording this special summer

[00:01:21] remix from Wave Productions in Vancouver, where I happen to have also recorded Yanya

[00:01:27] Lalich's book, Take Back Your Life and also recorded many ad spots over my illustrious

[00:01:33] career as a voiceover actor back in the day before I joined a cult and during the time I was in a

[00:01:38] cult. So it's all full circle here at Wave Productions. And to keep your culty content

[00:01:42] coming while we're on a bit of a hiatus, we've whipped up this summer platter of snippets from

[00:01:47] some of ALBC's episodes on the burning topic of Shmandmark, aka Landmark Worldwide. Keep

[00:01:53] listening for insights into Landmark and its founder Werner Erhardt.

[00:01:57] Also known as Jean-Paul Jack Rosenberg.

[00:02:01] And the controversies surrounding the organization's alleged practices. We've got cult expert Rick Ross,

[00:02:07] former members like Anne Peterson and investigative journalist Rob Copeland

[00:02:11] sharing their takes on Landmark. And listen, Landmark, we're not saying you're a cult. We

[00:02:15] would never. We would never. But from what we hear, you sure do like some cult-like inner circle

[00:02:20] coercive persuasion tactics and waging legal battles against any critics. So just saying.

[00:02:26] More questions than answers there. First up, we've got Anne Peterson who detailed her experience

[00:02:30] rising through the ranks of Landmark and the disillusionment that followed. And the motivation

[00:02:35] to pen her memoir covering the 15 plus year experience in the organization. In our first

[00:02:40] of two conversations with Anne, we talked through her earliest experiences at Landmark,

[00:02:44] her breakthroughs and how some of these personal development tools actually work.

[00:02:47] We loved this conversation. Here's some of our favorite parts.

[00:03:02] So deeply embedded in the Landmark, certainly the Landmark version of the human potential

[00:03:07] movement, which I say Landmark are the big kids on the block. They claim to have over three and

[00:03:12] a half million participants having gone through their programs. For those of us that were part

[00:03:16] of it, actually, I actually found that always a little bit sad because it seemed to me like it

[00:03:20] should be millions more. Because when you're in, not only is that your job, but that's your job

[00:03:26] because that's your belief. So I was deeply a part of Landmark. And then when I left Landmark,

[00:03:31] I had the opportunity, I was invited to host a program for Werner Erhardt, who is known as the

[00:03:37] source of Landmark. That's how he's often referred to inside of the community. It is his ideas and

[00:03:43] his work that all of their programs are based on. They are the only organization, I believe,

[00:03:49] that is still licensed, if you will, to develop human potential, personal growth and development.

[00:03:55] That's what they call it. They want personal and professional growth and development programs,

[00:03:59] but it's all in the human potential realm. So they are the lineage. They are his lineage.

[00:04:04] You've been in since 1995 to 2012. So you're the reason we're able to do this podcast because

[00:04:09] everyone else we found till now were too peripheral to really pack the punch that we needed to...

[00:04:16] We have the Nancy Salzman of...

[00:04:17] I wouldn't say you're the Nancy Salzman because I don't think you're quite a perpetrator.

[00:04:21] But in terms of access, yeah.

[00:04:24] Listen, watching The Vow, trust me, I spent a lot of time on my couch going,

[00:04:29] oh shit, am I Nancy Salzman?

[00:04:31] You're definitely not. You weren't perpetrating, yeah.

[00:04:34] No, but I was unseeing. Now we don't know how unseeing she really was, but

[00:04:40] I didn't know what I was looking at, particularly once I started working,

[00:04:44] when I started hosting the program for Warner and then working alongside,

[00:04:48] directly with him and alongside his immediate intimate circle and apparatus.

[00:04:53] And we want to hear all about that. Let's go back to the beginning and set the stage.

[00:04:57] What was going on in your life? Who was Anne? What was the version of Anne that

[00:05:01] walked into the first landmark event? Tell us about her and what drew you to it.

[00:05:05] Who invited you?

[00:05:07] Yeah, I was 23 or something, 25, no, 25, but I had been living on my own since I was 16.

[00:05:14] I had my son when I was 15 and then had to move out. Literally,

[00:05:18] I used to have this dramatic story about I moved out on my 16th birthday because

[00:05:22] my mom told me you have to be out by October 1st and my birthday happens to be October 2nd.

[00:05:27] So I moved out. Me and my son literally got a job at McDonald's, still to this day,

[00:05:32] one of my favorite jobs, by the way, shout out to McDonald's. It was a great place to work.

[00:05:36] It was really fun. It became like my high school, pseudo high school college atmosphere.

[00:05:41] I got in with a gang of friends. They love my son. And then fast forward at 20, I marry, I meet,

[00:05:47] I got a man who became my first husband. As that relationship going on, I have my daughter.

[00:05:52] He announces to me one day, I'm going to leave you. My daughter's two years old.

[00:05:57] And I really thought when I met him, like I had defied all the prediction of that teen mom.

[00:06:03] I wasn't on welfare anymore. I didn't have five more children. I wasn't in a,

[00:06:08] I didn't think I was in an abusive relationship, but that's a whole other

[00:06:12] it turns out that relationship does become somewhat abusive. But he announces he's going

[00:06:17] to leave me and I'm freaking out because my, I made it story is going to get torn apart.

[00:06:24] So I call my very best friend in the whole world who had been nagging me to do this

[00:06:28] program, landmark forum for months forever. And I, she'd even dragged me to an event where they

[00:06:34] quote unquote pressured me. I don't know if they really pressured me or not, but that's what it

[00:06:38] felt like. And I remember telling her I'm not ever going to do this program. Cause I don't want to

[00:06:42] know what I don't know. I don't know what I didn't want to know was that I was in a semi-abusive

[00:06:48] relationship with the wrong guy. Right? So fast forward, he's going to leave me. I think she's

[00:06:53] going to fly, get on an airplane and come out and help me sort all this out. But instead she

[00:06:58] literally screams at me on the phone, not until you do the landmark forum, because when you do

[00:07:03] the landmark forum, even if you and Darren break up, it'll be a choice, not a decision. And I'm

[00:07:09] sobbing and okay, I'll do anything. And she calls, she puts me on a three-way call. We call

[00:07:16] the landmark center, funny footnote. We have no way of proving this, but it's very likely that the

[00:07:20] person who answered the phone and registered me in the forum is my current husband number two,

[00:07:25] because he happened to be the manager. He was the registration manager and it was a Monday.

[00:07:30] So the chances of it being somebody else that answered the phone when my girlfriend calls and

[00:07:35] says, I got my phone, my friend on the phone, we're going to register her in the forum.

[00:07:38] Hilarious.

[00:07:38] It was probably him.

[00:07:39] Wow.

[00:07:40] Isn't that great?

[00:07:40] Yeah.

[00:07:41] But yeah, so it was really that I was a survivor and my life was falling apart and my best friend

[00:07:47] in the world said, you have to do the landmark forum. So me and my husband did it together

[00:07:51] actually. My first husband.

[00:07:53] What was it like? What did it look like? What was your first impressions? Tell me everything.

[00:07:57] It was kind of scary. It was scary mostly because I think I knew that was going to be some line

[00:08:03] in the sand that was going to cause a major change in my life. And that did end up being true.

[00:08:07] Where I lived in Seattle, the programs were done at the Seattle Landmark Center. So we had an office.

[00:08:12] I think it's one of the very few that's still there. It's my understanding they've mostly

[00:08:17] shut down and gone online, but there's still a few offices that we have a Seattle center one

[00:08:21] is still there. So you go down to the center and you walk into this, which is plain office building

[00:08:27] was nice. It was comfortable, simple, a few pictures on the wall. You go through these

[00:08:31] big double doors into this big room. It's like a giant, like a ballroom, but more of an office

[00:08:37] style look than the ballroom you would see in a hotel stage up front, all windows, but on the

[00:08:42] windows, all the blinds are closed. They don't want you being distracted. You get there too.

[00:08:47] And everybody's so happy to see you and they're congratulating you. I remember that was so wild.

[00:08:52] They don't even know me. What do you mean? They're congratulating me. I did register both myself

[00:08:57] and my then husband about to become ex-husband, but we think we're going in to fix our marriage.

[00:09:05] And we're there together and he's being super weird. He ended up having probably what today

[00:09:11] with the knowledge I have today, probably some kind of a break, like a bit of a psychological

[00:09:15] break during the forum. But we had been instructed even though we were doing it together to not

[00:09:20] really be together because we wanted, the instruction was that we should each have our own

[00:09:24] landmark forum and then we could come together and work on our stuff.

[00:09:27] Funny, we used to do that in NXIVM too. You always got separated as soon as you entered the doors.

[00:09:32] Which I think might be a smart thing to do.

[00:09:34] Smart. So you have this intention. What were you confronted with? Like what were some of the like

[00:09:39] initial ahas that you had about yourself? Interestingly, I mean, it's not that I don't

[00:09:45] remember my forum, but most of the first, I've done the landmark forum twice. And the first time

[00:09:50] I did it, which was that initial occasion, the whole thing occurs like this, almost like white

[00:09:56] noise. Like when I look back at it and I do remember somebody getting up and sharing about

[00:10:02] having been raped or it was this really dramatic thing and she has this big breakthrough.

[00:10:07] I was sitting there trying to not pay attention to my ex-husband who'd be in a weirdo in the corner.

[00:10:13] And for me, a lot of it occurred like, okay, that makes sense. Okay. That makes sense. I'm pretty

[00:10:21] skeptical. I'm pretty standoffish. Honestly, I was the kind of person then who never,

[00:10:26] ever spoke in public. I shouldn't look people in the eye when I talked to them.

[00:10:30] And I was also, but I was also very smart and I knew it. And I was the kind that kind of sat

[00:10:34] in the middle and went, yeah, I know that. I've heard that before. Yeah, that's right.

[00:10:39] I could agree with that. So that was how my forum went. And then my ex-husband has a whole freak out.

[00:10:45] My best friend flies out from Kansas city to be there for my Sunday night, which is where the

[00:10:51] graduates that invite you can come and be. She takes me to the table and she said, I know I

[00:10:56] said the landmark forum was what it was about. And you need that. You have to do the, in landmark,

[00:11:01] you have to do the forum to do anything else. It's the main program. But my best friend walks

[00:11:06] me to the table and she says, but it's really the advanced course. The advanced course is like

[00:11:11] the thing. And she had been volunteering a lot, was very invested in advanced course.

[00:11:17] It was the advanced course, honestly, that I had the biggest breakthrough. It was the advanced

[00:11:22] course that I really saw. They have this process where you like write the story of your life.

[00:11:28] And then you sit there with another person and you tell it to them over and over and over and over.

[00:11:32] And at some point they start playing like the farmer in the Dell. I don't know if they still

[00:11:36] do this, but this is back in 1996. And you start hearing this nursery rhyme music and literally

[00:11:43] what happened for me, and I now understand the design of it and what happens for most people

[00:11:47] in that moment. You all of a sudden realize you're not that story, that you are not that story.

[00:11:52] You have a story, those things maybe happened to you, but you're not that story.

[00:11:55] That was the most pivotal moment for me in my initial, like that from there on, I was like,

[00:12:01] I liked the forum. It was great. My brother-in-law was going to do the next one. I went and volunteered.

[00:12:07] That was a weird experience. But that advanced course, which I did two months after the forum,

[00:12:12] that was the first place where I would say changed my life because I just got,

[00:12:16] I wasn't locked into that story. We had a similar deciphering delusion.

[00:12:21] Is that where the term is just your story? Because I know there's a lot of

[00:12:25] landmark vernacular, story, racket. Tell us about some of those terms that you learn.

[00:12:32] The story thing comes from a distinction they call the vicious circle. It's actually their

[00:12:36] plain Jane languaging of it's on their website, on their syllabus, but basically the vicious circle.

[00:12:41] And I've now listened to a little bit culty enough to hear that there's versions of this

[00:12:45] in lots of different groups, but there's what's happening and there's what you're making it mean,

[00:12:48] and they get collapsed. And then you're interacting from what you made it mean,

[00:12:52] not from what actually happened. So then what happens once you get that concept,

[00:12:57] you discover it for yourself. That's a big Warner term experience. You don't just know

[00:13:02] it like an epistemological knowing that you actually experience it. Then everybody,

[00:13:07] then you'll hear regularly like, oh, Sarah, that's just your story. That's just the,

[00:13:11] so that becomes the shorthand. This podcast certainly would not be happening without our

[00:13:18] amazing, supportive, generous patrons. Are you with us? Come find us over on Patreon at

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[00:13:34] goodies. It's fun over there, people. The Frankies were a picture perfect

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[00:13:48] I just had a 12 year old boy show up here asking for help. He's emaciated. He's got tape around

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[00:14:46] You've heard from our sponsors. Now let's get back to a little bit culty, shall we?

[00:14:50] Wow. Taking us back to those heady days of personal development seminars.

[00:14:54] Yeah, a lot of time in the penthouse.

[00:14:56] So many similarities. It boggles my mind. It's sort of wild that we can have such

[00:15:01] similar experiences in completely seemingly different organizations.

[00:15:04] The process is the same.

[00:15:06] Yep. If you want to learn more about Anne's experience in Landmark, check out her memoir,

[00:15:10] Is This a Cult? Confronting the Line Between Transformation and Exploitation.

[00:15:14] You can purchase it on Amazon and hopefully one day on Audible.

[00:15:18] You can also find her work on Illuminate.life, a learning hub and marketplace dedicated to the

[00:15:23] safe and ethical practice of providing personal development.

[00:15:26] Next up, we've got Rick Ross, the OG anti-cult crusader and expert in all things Elgatz.

[00:15:32] Rick is the founder and executive director of the Cult Education Institute.

[00:15:36] He's known internationally as an expert in cults and controversial movements.

[00:15:40] He's even testified in the US federal court as an expert witness on cults.

[00:15:44] He testified in the NXIVM trial, if you remember.

[00:15:47] Rick joined us to talk about the parallels between organizations NXIVM and Landmark

[00:15:51] and why when it comes to being culty, it might be more about the messenger than the message.

[00:15:55] Let's see what Rick had to say.

[00:16:09] Just the whole structure. The idea that you're going off for a weekend,

[00:16:13] that you're with other people, that all of your time is being scheduled,

[00:16:18] that there is this cathartic confession process that's going on one way or the other in which

[00:16:25] you are saying, this is who I am. This is my pain. These are my issues. And you're opening

[00:16:31] up to people and also that there are people around you who are more experienced in the

[00:16:38] Elgatz than you are. They may not see themselves as shills, but they're there and they're encouraging

[00:16:45] you and they're basically helping the facilitator to break people down, to move them, and so on.

[00:16:54] Why do you think that Werner or AST or the Forum hasn't been held accountable in the same way

[00:16:59] that NXIVM has?

[00:17:00] Let me just say that at one point, Werner Erhard supposedly sold Erhard Seminars Training,

[00:17:07] which then became Landmark Education, which offers the Forum. But in fact, his sister and

[00:17:15] his brother and his former attorney ran the company. And that was because Werner Erhard

[00:17:22] was feeling a lot of heat from the IRS and through exposés regarding his personal life.

[00:17:29] And there were allegations that Erhard Seminars Training was destructive. In fact, you can find

[00:17:35] abstracts and studies about psychotic breaks in the Forum at culteducation.com as well.

[00:17:43] And at one point, Werner Erhard, by the way, was suing me at the same time that Keith Renneri

[00:17:49] was suing me. In fact, there was one point I was being sued by three different organizations

[00:17:55] simultaneously. But Werner Erhard, unlike Keith Renneri, he knows how to play it. He is much

[00:18:02] more intelligent than Keith Renneri, which isn't saying a lot because I think Keith is an idiot.

[00:18:09] But Werner Erhard is not an idiot. And so he would settle with people that had personal injury

[00:18:16] claims in answer to your question. They would sue or they would threaten to sue,

[00:18:21] and he would pay them off. He would cut large checks. I was involved in one case in Texas

[00:18:28] called the Neff case, N-E-F-F, and that case was settled. And there were others that were settled.

[00:18:34] And in my particular litigation with Erhard, he was suing me for defamation and product

[00:18:42] disparagement, much like Keith Renneri. But when it got to a point where he realized that

[00:18:50] the aggressive discovery that was being launched by Peter Skolnick, by the way, who also was my

[00:18:58] pro bono lawyer and Loewenstein Sandler and Michael Norwick in the landmark lawsuit against me,

[00:19:07] when he realized that he couldn't break me through legal fees, that he wasn't going to get

[00:19:13] his way that way, now he was going to have to become more transparent. He was going to have

[00:19:19] to provide information. And the judge said it would not be sealed and it would be publicly visible.

[00:19:26] So then he moved to settle the lawsuit. And eventually, because I would not settle,

[00:19:32] and Peter would not settle because we had no reason to settle, being that I could actually

[00:19:38] get a check from Landmark to walk away with a nondisclosure agreement. And then it would appear

[00:19:46] that they got something out of the litigation when they did. So what ended up happening is

[00:19:51] they dismissed their own lawsuit, which was humiliating for Landmark and for Erhard,

[00:19:57] but they did it. And unlike Keith Ranieri, Landmark realized I'm in a losing situation and

[00:20:03] I'm just going to fold and move on. And that's what happened.

[00:20:07] It seems like there's definitely a litigious action parallel between the two organizations.

[00:20:14] And yet Landmark seemed to proliferate at a much higher rate. How do you think that relates

[00:20:21] to their litigious strategy? Like how have they been able to grow so much

[00:20:25] compared to Nexium numbers wise?

[00:20:27] I mean, Werner Erhard, whose given name is Jack Rosenberg, he changed his name to Werner Erhard.

[00:20:35] And Landmark's philosophy is also a dash of a good deal of Scientology. And it's also

[00:20:43] a German philosopher by the name of Heidegger. And then there's a certain amount of what Erhard

[00:20:49] picked up from a rather benign seminar training called Esalen in Northern California. So Erhard's

[00:20:58] philosophy is a mishmash, a composite, just like many other people in the Elgat business.

[00:21:05] And I think what he learned from Scientology besides what he incorporated into his training

[00:21:12] is that suing people is a way to silence critics. And Scientology is perhaps the ultimate litigant

[00:21:20] in regards to silencing critics through litigation. And Erhard saw that as an effective

[00:21:26] way of doing it. And just so that your listeners understand, if you've got somebody with deep

[00:21:32] pockets suing you and you don't have pro bono legal help, you can go broke. And I speak from

[00:21:38] experience. I went bankrupt over a Scientology lawyer harassing me for years, who's now their

[00:21:45] lead counsel, Kendrick Moxon. So you can go under financially as a result of being sued,

[00:21:53] unless you're fortunate enough to have somebody like Peter Skolnick, who will step up and say,

[00:21:58] hey, I think you deserve to have free speech rights, and I'm going to help you.

[00:22:04] So that's what Landmark did. They would silence critics through litigation.

[00:22:08] They would pay people off in settlements that had personal injuries. And Erhard was very clever.

[00:22:15] He's almost 90, and he's still working. For those that don't know, I think Werner Erhard

[00:22:23] still pulls the strings at Landmark Education. And nobody really knows the details of the sale,

[00:22:32] because it's a privately held company. So Erhard, per my understanding, is still very much

[00:22:40] the leading light of Landmark Education. Depending on how things go. And I call Peter

[00:22:45] Skolnick to ask for his help regarding doing this episode, even out of itself,

[00:22:50] when we even mentioned Landmark in passing. We didn't even do an expose, just somebody who was

[00:22:56] sharing some little bit culty things that happened in her journey. And we got our first cease and

[00:23:01] desist from Landmark. Their merit badge. It's just shocking that we've done over 150 episodes,

[00:23:08] and this is the first group that's come after us. And we spoke, you and I spoke, Rick,

[00:23:12] and I shared this with you. And I was a bit shocked to see it was really like a press kit

[00:23:17] of all the reasons why they aren't a cult. I'm thinking the lady doth protest too much.

[00:23:23] And I'm wondering specifically the part where they say that Margaret Singer even says that it's not

[00:23:29] a cult. And it's in your book, but can you share with our listeners how Landmark manipulated

[00:23:35] Margaret to say that it's not a cult? Look, Margaret did not think Landmark. I knew

[00:23:41] Margaret quite well, and we talked about this. Margaret Singer, a clinical psychologist,

[00:23:48] eminent cult expert, probably the cult expert of the 20th century. She wrote about Landmark in a

[00:23:56] book that she wrote with Janja Lalic called Crazy Therapies. And in that book, they talked about

[00:24:03] Landmark, but they did not explicitly state that it was a cult. And I do not consider Landmark

[00:24:11] education to be a cult. I would consider it a little bit culty. And I would say this, that when

[00:24:20] Werner Erhard was really present, and he was running things, and he was the charismatic leader

[00:24:29] that they called the source, at that juncture, in its early days, in my opinion, Landmark was

[00:24:37] in fact a cult. But as Erhard stepped back and became this kind of shadowy figure that people

[00:24:45] knew about but didn't really deal with, Landmark ceased to be a personality-driven cult that had

[00:24:53] a leader that they worshipped as they once did Werner Erhard. Now having said that, I have more

[00:25:00] than reason to believe that there remains an inner circle of staffers that are practically like slave

[00:25:10] labor that continue to serve Werner Erhard to this day. And I would say that it may be,

[00:25:18] and that group could be seen as a personality-driven cult, because Erhard is ever-present.

[00:25:27] Erhard is pulling their strings. Erhard is dealing with them on a day-to-day basis. And that would be

[00:25:35] the inner circle of what is Landmark education today. Yeah, Landmark, Margaret Singer settled with

[00:25:44] them for the same reason that John Hockman settled with Keith Rennering, because when will it end?

[00:25:52] When will the litigation end? And I can't afford to keep shelling out money for lawyers to defend me,

[00:26:00] because this group or individual will keep suing me and appealing all the way to the Supreme Court,

[00:26:08] because they have deep pockets and I don't, and so I'm going to settle. So that's what Margaret did.

[00:26:14] It kind of leads me to, and I'll say it for any Landmark lawyers who happen to be listening or

[00:26:19] Erhard lawyers, that I don't even have to call it a cult or not a cult. There's some unhealthy,

[00:26:25] toxic practices that I see in this organization that I think can be very problematic for people,

[00:26:30] and people need to know what they are. When they take a cheap weekend that helps you have some

[00:26:35] transformation and self-awareness, which can be at the onset very healthy and helpful if it just ends

[00:26:41] there. But when, you know, commit to the long-term path, for us it was the straight path for Landmark,

[00:26:46] it's the teaching and the assisting and essentially slave labor where it gets problematic.

[00:26:50] Well, and also when someone asks you to sign away some of your civil rights before you can

[00:26:57] participate in a weekend intensive, that should be a huge red flag. Why do you want me to surrender my

[00:27:06] rights? If I went to a marriage and family retreat, they wouldn't do that. If I went to on a church

[00:27:14] event like a Christio in the Catholic Church, they wouldn't ask me to do that. Why are you?

[00:27:21] If I went to see a therapist, they would not ask me to waive my right to sue them for personal

[00:27:27] injury and that I would be obliged, obligated to binding arbitration as opposed to just suing them

[00:27:36] for personal injury. So that is what Landmark does routinely when people come to take their

[00:27:43] weekend retreat, they ask them to sign certain waivers, certain understandings. That is just a

[00:27:49] huge warning flag. And let me say that for years, people would say to me, Rick, you haven't done

[00:27:55] Landmark. You don't know what Landmark is really. You have to do it, Rick. You have to do it and

[00:28:00] then you can be a critic. And I said, I don't smoke cigarettes, but I know it's not good for me.

[00:28:05] Do I have to smoke them for 10 years before I can be able to say that they cause cancer?

[00:28:12] Great metaphor.

[00:28:13] Finally, Landmark said, people from Landmark said to me, we will pay for you to do the form. And

[00:28:21] I finally said, okay, fine, I'll do the form. And I was going to do the forum in New York.

[00:28:26] And then the next thing I know, they said, no, I get a call from one of their lawyers. He says,

[00:28:32] no, no, no, you're not going to do the forum. But here's what we're going to do. We'll give you a

[00:28:36] tour of the forum. You can drop in the different things going on in the forum with me at your side

[00:28:43] to be your guy. And I said, no, I'm not going to do that. I want to just do it. And these same

[00:28:49] enthusiasts who were trying to pave my way through the forum kept calling me and saying,

[00:28:55] are you going to do it? When are you going to do it? When is it going to happen? I said, no,

[00:28:59] they won't let me do it. They want me to do the tour. And so the next thing I knew,

[00:29:05] there was more pressure, I guess, from these supporters of Landmark to Landmark administration.

[00:29:12] And they came back and they said, okay, you can do the forum. You can do it as a participant.

[00:29:18] And I said, okay, I will do it, but I will not sign any waiver. I will sign no paperwork at all.

[00:29:27] And that was the end of it. They would not allow me to do it. And so it's interesting. People say,

[00:29:32] well, you can't criticize the forum because you haven't done it. Well, they won't let me do it

[00:29:37] unless I sign my rights award, which I refuse to do. For more background on what brought us here,

[00:29:45] check out Sarah's page turning memoir. It's called Scarred, the true story of how I escaped NXIVM,

[00:29:50] the cult that bound my life. It's available on Amazon, Audible, and at most bookstores.

[00:29:54] If you want to see that story in streaming form, watch both seasons of The Vow on HBO.

[00:30:03] This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables?

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[00:31:55] communities at Macy's. You've heard from our sponsors. Now let's get back to a little bit

[00:32:01] culti, shall we? I like Rick. He's very pragmatic. I love Rick invoking the name of our podcast in

[00:32:09] there. There is just such a thing as being a little bit culti. Rick is a wealth of knowledge

[00:32:13] on the subject of cults. If you want to dive more into his work, check out his book, Cults Inside

[00:32:18] Out, How People Get In and Can Get Out. Okay. So we've heard a lot about Landmark,

[00:32:22] which doesn't seem to be nailing it when it comes to not, you know, ending up being nightmarish.

[00:32:27] For the dessert course of this little Landmark spread, we'll round this out with one of my

[00:32:30] favorite episodes with finance reporter Rob Copeland, who joined us for a deep dive into

[00:32:35] Wall Street's seedy underbelly and how its leadership can feel just a little bit culti

[00:32:40] at times. Rob's work explores hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and its famed cult-like leader,

[00:32:45] Ray Dalio. Here's that chat with Rob. And for the full episode, just take a look at our show

[00:32:50] notes or scroll down on our feed. We just did two episodes on Landmark. I do have verified

[00:33:07] proof from ex-Landmark grads because people have been coming to us and they've been saying,

[00:33:11] did you know that Ray Dalio did Landmark through Vantos, which is like the VIP section?

[00:33:17] I did not know that. Yes. That's what I wanted to tell you something new about Ray Dalio. So yeah.

[00:33:22] A little bit of a sleuth over here. I'm a sleuth. Yeah.

[00:33:25] So the things that were similar, just so you know, were specifically the public. I've got some notes

[00:33:31] here from my spy, drilling people in meetings, the radical transparency, the principles,

[00:33:37] going back in the past to find the source of the error. That's all classic Landmark, which I knew

[00:33:44] already before reading your book because we just prepped for Landmark, which by the way, Landmark,

[00:33:49] Scientology, NXIVM, it's all like, it's hard to know now what came first, but it's all overlaps

[00:33:55] of the same principles and actual principles, not like Ray Dalio's principles. That's wild. I would

[00:34:00] love to learn more about that offline. Yes. You were so great about that too.

[00:34:04] Part two. Exactly. Part two.

[00:34:06] And you guys got a second season. I just get a paperback.

[00:34:10] What I love about too is that because Ray always loves to claim that he came up with it all,

[00:34:14] that this came from out of his study of history and that he started to come up with these rules.

[00:34:19] He would hate to credit that he took other classes or that.

[00:34:22] Well, that's why I was so curious is that because like Vantos apparently is like the private,

[00:34:28] there's so many different things in what we call now the wacky world of Werner Erhardt. There's

[00:34:33] Werner, there's Landmark, there's the forum. Now I know about Vantos, which basically was the group

[00:34:38] where it was for private premium corporate clients. So Bridgewater was a client of Vantos,

[00:34:43] apparently according to my Landmark insider. That's fantastic. And you're absolutely right.

[00:34:48] One of his favorite things is root cause, is finding the root cause of something.

[00:34:52] And it always winds up being something. Same.

[00:34:53] There you go. I mean, it's always something about you.

[00:34:56] Right. Well, that's the gaslighting. The inherent thing in all of these people,

[00:35:00] whether it's Ray, Landmark, Scientology, the gaslighting is built into the structure of

[00:35:05] trying to figure out what caused this in the best way possible for the growth of everybody.

[00:35:08] Sounds really positive. It's not. It is not. Because it also deflects responsibility from the

[00:35:14] leader, which is the thing that I thought was so crazy about your book is that all these things

[00:35:19] that happen, none of it's his fault. Can never be his fault.

[00:35:23] Never. Not once.

[00:35:24] He takes credit too.

[00:35:25] No.

[00:35:26] It's his fault for hiring you. It's one of the great flips ever. If he was like,

[00:35:31] this is my fault. I gave you too much responsibility.

[00:35:35] Sidebar, just to relate it for our audience. I don't know if you're following the Dan

[00:35:39] Schneider case with the Nickelodeon in Hollywood.

[00:35:43] Yeah. Oh gosh.

[00:35:43] Expose. So he did a public apology. I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone. That was a different

[00:35:49] era. I would never do that now. But I was super, super apologetic. And at the end, somebody asked,

[00:35:53] what would you do differently? He said, well, I'd have a therapist on set. I said, great.

[00:35:56] That would have been amazing to have somebody for the kids to talk to. No, no. The therapist

[00:36:00] would have been there to ask the kids when they signed up, do they really want to do this? Do

[00:36:04] they understand how hard it's going to be? And I was like, you can go fuck yourself. You were

[00:36:09] disgusting.

[00:36:09] Do you understand that you're going to be molested? Is that what the therapist was supposed to say?

[00:36:13] Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You may or may not be. Do you understand that this may be part of the

[00:36:17] job? Fuck off. Sorry. I get a little riled up.

[00:36:21] It's unchecked power too.

[00:36:22] Yeah. But the thing with Landmark brought up this ongoing conversation we've been having. When is

[00:36:29] leadership good? When is it bad? And when do these methods become exploitative? And when does it go

[00:36:36] from growth to coercion? It's like the ongoing debate in this particular arena. So I just loved

[00:36:44] your book. I did read it or I listened to it on Audible at two times the speed for efficiency.

[00:36:50] So for me, it read like a thriller. It's like, and then he did this, and then he did that. And

[00:36:55] my heart is racing the whole time because of the speed.

[00:36:58] What I actually love about the book is I left out a lot of stuff about the book because I'm

[00:37:01] trying to make it a thriller. I'm trying to make it like this dark thing where it's surprising and

[00:37:08] you think you know where it's going to go. And you think that someone's going to be a hero. Maybe

[00:37:12] they try or maybe they don't try. It's stranger than fiction for me. And it's not easy. It's a

[00:37:18] book that takes place over 50 years. And remember, these are real people. They're all real people to

[00:37:23] try to get that past the lawyers. And what's remarkable is I love the book as crazy as wild

[00:37:29] after the book came out just a few months ago, not a single complaint,

[00:37:33] not a single lawyer letter, no lawsuit. It's like, oh, I could have gone even harder.

[00:37:39] Well, the truth too. This is the radical transparency that the book is bringing

[00:37:44] forward and they don't like it. So it makes sense that they don't do that. Also,

[00:37:48] it draws attention to your book. They don't want to give you your...

[00:37:51] That's fair. That's true. But it did well. And my favorite feedback that I get from

[00:37:58] people occasionally is they'll be like, I didn't really learn anything about finance.

[00:38:02] And I'm like, oh no, yeah, this isn't supposed to be in the

[00:38:05] how-to section. Maybe how to escape from a personality-based organization.

[00:38:11] Yeah. I learned about finance. Oh good.

[00:38:12] I felt like I... Because I've never understood hedge funds or that world at all. So I feel like

[00:38:17] I have a better understanding and I will not go there. I did learn about that. It just fortified

[00:38:21] a lot of my beliefs around these types of personalities. Is there anything we didn't

[00:38:26] ask you that you feel like is important or that you want our listeners to know or

[00:38:29] that we didn't cover? No, this was honestly wonderful. I

[00:38:33] feel like we got a good taste of everything. I would correct you on one thing I think you

[00:38:37] said early on, which is something like no one gets physically hurt or something.

[00:38:41] There is some physical coercion. Oh yeah. Okay. Tell me.

[00:38:44] And it is gender-based. There's one character in particular who she's very low ranking and

[00:38:50] she becomes involved with the CEO. And I won't spoil what happens, but to me, there are a lot

[00:38:56] of examples of this at Bridgewater, but I chose just to have one because I wanted to show the

[00:39:01] reader what happens when sort of a younger woman gets involved and tries to speak the truth about

[00:39:06] what is happening between her and the CEO. And remember, they have different baseball

[00:39:10] cards. So she's much less credible. So this is how when you apply sort of like vanilla

[00:39:17] sexual misconduct and you try to put it inside this radical transparency, what happens?

[00:39:22] To me, I found that very disturbing just as I was writing it because it was like,

[00:39:26] there's so many moments there where you say, just go to the police or just tell your spouse

[00:39:32] or tell someone outside of Bridgewater. But when you're in an organization that forces

[00:39:37] you to adjudicate these disputes inside based on their quote unquote system, imagine what happens.

[00:39:47] Like what you hear, do you? Give us a rating, a review and subscribe on iTunes. Every little

[00:39:52] bit helps us get this cult awareness content out there. Smash that subscribe button. You know you

[00:39:57] want to. That was Rob Copeland. And if you want to learn more about the cults of Wall Street,

[00:40:05] check out his New York Times bestseller, The Fund, a fascinating read. I read it on Audible,

[00:40:10] perhaps a little bit too fast, made me a little bit anxious, but it was fascinating.

[00:40:15] Well, people bow down and adore people with a lot of money.

[00:40:17] That's true.

[00:40:18] Yeah, that's why those people get away with it.

[00:40:20] Okay, people, you've been listening to our greatest hits from Landmark Worldwide Conversations.

[00:40:23] We'd love to know what you think. And Landmark, really just take a hard look at yourself,

[00:40:28] if you will. Remember personal responsibility is one of the tenets. Why don't you apply it

[00:40:32] to yourselves? Okay, that's it for now, everyone. We'll be back with all new episodes soon.

[00:40:37] And we have amazing stuff coming up, including brand new guests never before heard from

[00:40:42] ever in the course of this podcast here in Vancouver.

[00:40:46] Who is it, Sarah?

[00:40:47] Who's it going to be? You gotta join Patreon to find out. It's gonna be lit. Have a great summer.

[00:41:11] Thanks for listening, everyone. We're heading over to patreon.com

[00:41:15] a littlebitculti now to discuss this episode. In the meantime, dear listener, please remember,

[00:41:20] this podcast is solely for general informational, educational and entertainment purposes.

[00:41:25] It's not intended as a substitute for real medical, legal or therapeutic advice.

[00:41:30] For cult recovery resources and to learn more about seeking safely in this culty world,

[00:41:35] check out a littlebitculti.com culty resources and don't miss Sarah's TED Talk called

[00:41:40] How Cult Literate Are You? Great stuff.

[00:41:43] A Little Bit Culty is a Trace 120 production, executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and

[00:41:47] Anthony Nippy Ames in collaboration with producer Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound and our co

[00:41:52] creator and show chaplain slash bodyguard Jess Temple-Tardy. And our theme song,

[00:41:56] Cultivated, is by John Bryant.