Rebel With a Cause: Rick Ross on NXIVM, Landmark & The Law

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

[00:00:04] or mental health advice.

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[00:00:13] individual, anyone, or anything.

[00:00:24] I'm Sarah Edmondson.

[00:00:26] And I'm Anthony, air quotes Nippy Ames.

[00:00:29] 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 directly

[00:00:40] by the people who live through them.

[00:00:43] Because we want you to learn a few things we've had to learn the hard way.

[00:00:46] Like if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something culty?

[00:00:50] You're already prime recruitment material.

[00:00:52] You might even already be in a cult.

[00:00:54] Oops!

[00:00:55] You better keep listening to find out.

[00:00:57] Coming to season six of A Little Bit Culty.

[00:01:17] Hey everyone, welcome back to A Little Bit Culty.

[00:01:19] Today, Sarah, we are diving deep into nexium.

[00:01:23] Heard of that one?

[00:01:24] Mark and all the culty stuff we've ever wanted to discuss with Rick Ross.

[00:01:29] The rapper?

[00:01:30] No, Sarah.

[00:01:31] A different Rick Ross?

[00:01:32] There's a different Rick Ross.

[00:01:33] There's two Rick Rosses?

[00:01:34] Yeah.

[00:01:35] That's confusing.

[00:01:36] This Rick has spent over four decades in the cult recovery and anti-cult trenches,

[00:01:42] spearheading the Cult Education Institute and its database at culteducation.com.

[00:01:47] It's also a courtroom powerhouse with a track record of expert witness appearances

[00:01:51] in numerous U.S. federal court cases, including nexium.

[00:01:55] Rick has personally aided thousands of families grappling with cult entanglements and is the

[00:02:00] author of the book, Cults Inside Out, How People Get In and Can Get Out.

[00:02:04] We want to talk with him about the parallels between organizations like landmark and nexium,

[00:02:09] plus new and emerging culty threats on his radar.

[00:02:12] So many questions.

[00:02:13] Let's get this started, shall we?

[00:02:14] Here's our chat with Rick Allen Ross.

[00:02:16] A rebel with a cause.

[00:02:21] Welcome, Rick Ross to ALBC.

[00:02:33] Hey, thank you for inviting me to join you.

[00:02:37] This has been a, like we say this a lot in the podcast, a long time coming, but this

[00:02:41] in terms of everything coming full circle, the most long time coming since in 2005

[00:02:47] when we joined nexium, you were on our radar as the enemy.

[00:02:52] You know, I blip on a number of radar screens for a number of cults and nexium certainly was

[00:02:58] one that really targeted me for many years.

[00:03:01] It was a very long process.

[00:03:04] Keith Rhaenari sued me for 14 years.

[00:03:07] This lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.

[00:03:10] He hired private investigators to have me under surveillance.

[00:03:14] They literally bought my garbage and watched me when I lived in Jersey city.

[00:03:21] And they tried to set me up in a phony intervention with basically someone posing as a mother

[00:03:29] who was actually working for this private investigator, Yavala Viva at inter4, who's

[00:03:35] being paid by nexium.

[00:03:37] And they wanted me to do an intervention on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.

[00:03:42] I said that I would not do any work without having someone meaning family, friends with

[00:03:51] the person that I'm working with at all times.

[00:03:54] They pulled the plug.

[00:03:55] My attorneys think I might not have ever gotten back from that cruise.

[00:04:00] That sounds very plausible.

[00:04:01] Nothing surprises me now.

[00:04:02] Nothing surprises me now.

[00:04:04] I wish I could go back in time and listen and listen and know that you weren't the

[00:04:10] bad guy, but they were the bad guy.

[00:04:12] But alas, took us 12 years or so.

[00:04:15] But for our audience who doesn't know your work in this space and there's so much out

[00:04:21] there, you've done a million interviews, can you briefly share how you got involved

[00:04:25] in the cult space and what brought you to this point?

[00:04:28] In 1982, I was working for my cousin in the wrecking yard business, salvaging cars,

[00:04:35] crushing them for metal, and rebuilding some.

[00:04:38] I had one grandparent, my grandmother who lived in a Jewish nursing home in Phoenix,

[00:04:44] Arizona.

[00:04:45] I went to visit her and she was very upset.

[00:04:48] I found out that she had been confronted by a woman who had gotten a job at the nursing

[00:04:55] home as a nurse's aide.

[00:04:57] She actually was part of a religious group that wanted to target Jewish elderly people

[00:05:03] at the nursing home.

[00:05:05] And they invited or asked their members of this religious group to seek to get jobs on

[00:05:11] the professional staff with the idea that they would infiltrate the nursing home and

[00:05:17] target the elderly.

[00:05:18] Honestly, I was pissed off.

[00:05:20] I was very angry.

[00:05:22] I couldn't believe that anybody could do this.

[00:05:26] I had no problem with them preaching what they believed, but not in a covert way

[00:05:32] in which they did it without being invited.

[00:05:35] And subsequently, I worked with the director of the nursing home and before I knew it,

[00:05:40] I was an anti-cult activist, a community organizer.

[00:05:43] I started because of my grandmother who was 82 at the time.

[00:05:49] And subsequently, I was appointed to many different committees and so on.

[00:05:53] And that led to working at a social service agency and educational bureau.

[00:05:58] And I started doing interventions.

[00:06:01] I didn't know it was called deprogramming, but that's what it was.

[00:06:05] And gradually, I came to understand that there were other people doing this.

[00:06:09] I started attending conferences nationally and met other people doing this type of work.

[00:06:16] And that segway to doing interventions all over the U.S.

[00:06:21] and then internationally and so on and so on.

[00:06:24] So it all started because of my grandmother and because I was very pissed off

[00:06:30] that people targeted her, went into the nursing home uninvited with a covert agenda.

[00:06:37] So all experts have a slightly different point of view on the definition of cult.

[00:06:42] How would you define it?

[00:06:44] I would go with the seminal work of Robert J. Lifton.

[00:06:48] He wrote a paper called Cult Formation and I think that paper in the 80s

[00:06:53] identified what I call in my book, The Nucleus, for a definition of a destructive cult,

[00:06:59] which has three core characteristics.

[00:07:02] One, an absolute totalitarian leader who is the defining element in driving force of the group,

[00:07:08] who becomes an object of worship.

[00:07:11] Second, a process of coercive persuasion

[00:07:15] in which the leader gains undue influence over his or her followers

[00:07:22] using identifiable techniques of thought reform.

[00:07:25] And then three, if it's a destructive cult, we look to see what harm is being done.

[00:07:32] And that varies by degree from group to group.

[00:07:34] So there could be a group that just is after your money

[00:07:37] or it could be much worse than that, sexual, physical abuse, criminal activities.

[00:07:43] So those are the three core characteristics.

[00:07:47] The all-powerful leader, evidence of thought reform, coercive persuasion being used

[00:07:53] to gain undue influence and then exploiting the members through that undue influence,

[00:07:59] doing harm to them.

[00:08:00] So with all that said, when did Nexium come up on your radar?

[00:08:04] God, Nexium came up what? 2001, 2002.

[00:08:09] The parents of Michael Sutton contacted me

[00:08:12] and they were very worried about Michael and their other children that were involved in Nexium.

[00:08:18] And I ended up doing three interventions.

[00:08:22] The first in an effort to get Michael out,

[00:08:26] in which Nancy Salisman was chattering in his ear on a cell phone

[00:08:30] that we couldn't get him to just relinquish.

[00:08:34] We asked him, would you just cool it with the cell phone

[00:08:37] and just let us talk without the interference from the group?

[00:08:41] But Nancy Salisman was forever chattering in his ear as his coach.

[00:08:46] I was in his first training.

[00:08:48] Wow.

[00:08:48] I was peripheral to all of this.

[00:08:50] For our audience, Michael Sutton, he was part of the Jewish community in New Jersey.

[00:08:56] And I think as I understand it, you can correct me here,

[00:09:00] but what I was getting on my end, so it's interesting to compare notes with you,

[00:09:04] is that Michael was having some reservations about the pressure he was getting from,

[00:09:08] I believe, some people in his community

[00:09:11] and Nancy was in essence saying, we're freeing you from that

[00:09:14] so there's this kind of push and pull going on.

[00:09:17] And I got along great with Michael.

[00:09:19] Michael's a great guy and super generous person,

[00:09:22] but that was the gist and that was the narrative that was going on peripherally

[00:09:26] because it was always private and behind closed doors and as I saw it.

[00:09:29] Nipi, look, this is how Keith Reney operated

[00:09:33] and Nancy Salisman who is no angel

[00:09:36] and in my book, Something of a Sociopath, it seems to me.

[00:09:41] But at any rate, Michael, like everybody, had weaknesses,

[00:09:47] vulnerabilities, personal pain.

[00:09:49] Absolutely.

[00:09:50] And Keith Reney was an idiot when it came to many things,

[00:09:54] but he was a savant when it came to exploiting individual vulnerabilities,

[00:10:00] which he would learn about through the EMS,

[00:10:03] you know, the exploration of meaning exercises,

[00:10:05] which is basically a ripoff from Scientology auditing.

[00:10:10] So anyway, Michael had a child that was from a relationship

[00:10:18] with a woman who was not Jewish.

[00:10:20] He came from an Orthodox Jewish background,

[00:10:24] a very strict community of people that were Sephardic Jews.

[00:10:29] And I think Keith Reney exploited that.

[00:10:32] He exploited the fact that the family did not accept his daughter

[00:10:37] and the pain that he was suffering over that.

[00:10:40] Michael is just a wonderful person.

[00:10:43] And his family really, their great family,

[00:10:46] the parents have both passed away.

[00:10:48] They were sued along with me 14 years

[00:10:53] and each one of them died before the lawsuit was dismissed

[00:10:57] and before Keith Reney was arrested.

[00:11:00] And I just want to say that Morris and Rochelle Sutton

[00:11:04] were wonderful people.

[00:11:06] And they were the first people, I think,

[00:11:09] to truly and completely identify

[00:11:12] that this was a destructive cult

[00:11:15] and that something terrible was going on.

[00:11:17] Because when they first came to me,

[00:11:19] I didn't know anything about Nexium.

[00:11:22] It was an unknown to me.

[00:11:23] But I immediately recognized

[00:11:25] that it was a large group awareness training

[00:11:28] kind of seminar selling company.

[00:11:30] And I didn't quite realize it was a cult

[00:11:33] until Michael started talking about Vanguard Week

[00:11:37] and Keith Reney having this special title of Vanguard

[00:11:42] and Nancy Salisman being a prefect and all of that.

[00:11:46] But the intervention with Michael failed.

[00:11:49] The intervention with his sisters were both successful

[00:11:54] and his brother-in-law also left the group.

[00:11:57] Who I knew as well, yeah.

[00:11:58] Yeah, Aaron, Owen, Steph, and Ian.

[00:12:01] Yeah, all of those people.

[00:12:03] And it was so sad.

[00:12:06] We were able to get most of them out,

[00:12:09] but Michael stayed in.

[00:12:10] And I really liked Michael a lot.

[00:12:13] And he was very close to his father.

[00:12:16] I remember that they bought, I think, matching Porsches.

[00:12:21] And they were just really a close knit tight family.

[00:12:27] And Michael's brother, Jeffrey, was very close to him.

[00:12:30] He was never involved in Nexham.

[00:12:33] So I became involved in 2001, 2002 because of Michael Sutton.

[00:12:39] Now interestingly, the doctor's reports

[00:12:42] that became so high profile through Keith Reney suing

[00:12:48] and basically harassing people,

[00:12:50] he sued the doctors as well.

[00:12:52] That all came about because Nancy Salisman said to Michael,

[00:12:58] you need to have more data.

[00:13:00] You need to have more research.

[00:13:02] This isn't the only expert that you should listen to.

[00:13:05] What other experts could you listen to?

[00:13:08] And so I gave Michael a list of experts,

[00:13:11] including a forensic psychiatrist, John Hochman at UCLA,

[00:13:16] a clinical psychologist, Paul Martin,

[00:13:19] who ran a cult rehabilitation retreat

[00:13:22] called Wellspring Retreat.

[00:13:24] And then when he refused to talk to them

[00:13:27] or meet with them, the family asked me to invite them

[00:13:32] to write critical analyses of the training.

[00:13:37] And Stephanie Frank, Michael's sister,

[00:13:39] gave me the actual workbook with the modules

[00:13:43] and all of the notes.

[00:13:44] I remember.

[00:13:45] And then I gave it to the doctors

[00:13:47] and the doctors went about reading it and analyzing it.

[00:13:51] And they came up with three reports.

[00:13:54] One by John Hochman, two by Paul Martin,

[00:13:57] probably the best of the three was Paul Martin's

[00:14:00] in-depth dive into the correlations between thought reform

[00:14:05] and the modules of nexium.

[00:14:07] And he was very thorough.

[00:14:08] So those three reports were supposed to be read by Michael.

[00:14:12] I remember going to meet with Michael with Jeffrey,

[00:14:16] we asked him, would you please read this?

[00:14:19] Because he had previously said that he would.

[00:14:22] But then again, Nancy Salisman and all the coaching

[00:14:26] and the carrying on, he did not read the reports.

[00:14:30] So I then published them on culteducation.com.

[00:14:34] And one was then a teeny section on nexium.

[00:14:38] And subsequent to that, as Forbes magazine

[00:14:42] did a profile of Keith Raminari,

[00:14:44] he made the cover, not a very good article for him.

[00:14:48] And those reports were cited, I was quoted.

[00:14:51] And then the lawsuit came

[00:14:53] after threats of litigation, then came the lawsuit.

[00:14:56] And the lawsuit bizarrely, this so bizarre

[00:15:00] is that Keith Raminari was at his core a plagiarist.

[00:15:05] He didn't have original ideas.

[00:15:07] He ripped them off.

[00:15:08] He ripped off Ayn Rand, objectivism.

[00:15:11] He ripped off Scientology, suppressive persons.

[00:15:15] The EMs were a ripoff of Scientology's auditing process.

[00:15:19] He ripped off landmark education

[00:15:22] for the structure of his retreats and so on.

[00:15:25] And of course, a lot of neuro-linguistic programming in LP

[00:15:30] and then added that dash of AMWI, multi-level marketing.

[00:15:35] Just a splash.

[00:15:36] Yeah, just a splash, just a tiddle

[00:15:39] like a martini with a little olive juice.

[00:15:42] So anyway, it was dirty.

[00:15:44] So anyway, the end result is this Mishmash composite

[00:15:49] that he calls nexium or his philosophy rational inquiry.

[00:15:53] And the guy has, excuse me for a little Yiddish,

[00:15:57] the chutzpah to sue me for intellectual property infringement,

[00:16:04] trade secret violation.

[00:16:06] What a pair this guy had.

[00:16:09] He had copied it from everybody else

[00:16:11] and now he's suing me for copyright infringement.

[00:16:15] So, Anner Loewenstein Sandler, the huge law firm in New Jersey,

[00:16:20] Peter Skolnick, Michael Norwick, Tom Dolan,

[00:16:24] Thomas O'Brien, a lawyer in Albany.

[00:16:27] Let me not forget Douglas Brooks

[00:16:29] who had originally sued Keith Rinnary

[00:16:32] over his previously failed multi-level marketing scheme

[00:16:36] consumer byline and all these lawyers,

[00:16:39] the cavalry coming over the hill saying,

[00:16:42] Rick, hey, we will help you pro bono.

[00:16:45] We won't even charge you for stamps.

[00:16:47] So I was then very fortunate to have this cadre

[00:16:52] of pro bono lawyers and Keith Rinnary would go through,

[00:16:56] I think seven law firms in 14 years suing me.

[00:17:00] And we estimate he spent $5 million suing me.

[00:17:04] And if I had not had pro bono legal help,

[00:17:07] it would have cost me $2 million to defend myself.

[00:17:12] So I went through this long involved thing.

[00:17:14] And of course why I call Keith Rinnary an idiot

[00:17:17] is because he was so stupid, don't sue a cult expert

[00:17:22] and he didn't know when to fold.

[00:17:25] I've been sued five times by different cults

[00:17:28] and most of them with the exclusion of two

[00:17:32] that I can think of, they knew when to fold

[00:17:35] and Keith Rinnary was incapable of folding.

[00:17:39] I have a theory on that.

[00:17:40] He's stubborn.

[00:17:41] I have a theory on that, Rick.

[00:17:42] I would call him a fool because when you sue somebody

[00:17:47] that's a cult expert, it's like mud wrestling with a pig.

[00:17:50] You get dirty and the pig has fun.

[00:17:54] Do you know that he used to say that?

[00:17:55] He did.

[00:17:56] He was wrong about it if he said I'm a pig,

[00:18:00] I would go along with him but because it was my area

[00:18:04] of work was basically providing me a platform,

[00:18:08] encouraging the media to call me

[00:18:11] because he is in this very high profile lawsuit.

[00:18:15] So the rest is history.

[00:18:16] It just kept going on and on

[00:18:18] and he harassed me and harassed me

[00:18:21] and at the end he was arrested

[00:18:23] and of course he's now in prison

[00:18:26] and probably will be there until his death.

[00:18:29] So that's pretty much my story about Keith Rinnary.

[00:18:32] Other than I would get these calls all the time

[00:18:36] from different people that would leave Nexium

[00:18:39] over the years and they would call me up

[00:18:42] and they would say things like,

[00:18:43] hey, I had heard how bad you were

[00:18:46] and now I realize he's bad, Keith Rinnary and Nancy.

[00:18:51] So maybe you're not that bad.

[00:18:53] So I'm gonna talk to you

[00:18:55] and of course Mark Vicente when he called me

[00:18:57] that was what he said.

[00:18:59] I think I said something similar.

[00:19:01] To your point about Keith,

[00:19:02] I think one of the reasons he did it

[00:19:04] is he had to maintain optics to the people that were loyal.

[00:19:07] So folding to you,

[00:19:09] I think would mean dissension amongst the ranks a little bit

[00:19:11] particularly with the Bronfmans

[00:19:14] because if he would cede to you

[00:19:17] then it might inspire them to

[00:19:19] and listen to their father more.

[00:19:20] That's my guess on it.

[00:19:21] So I think he was willing to take the L with you

[00:19:25] or in terms of the loss.

[00:19:27] L is a loss for those who don't know.

[00:19:29] In order to keep the people that were loyal

[00:19:31] look, we're doing the noble fight, Rick Ross.

[00:19:33] When you're trying to do good in the world

[00:19:35] you attract these kinds of people

[00:19:36] that are trying to take you down

[00:19:37] and he could really pump that narrative up

[00:19:39] to the people that were loyal.

[00:19:40] That's my guess.

[00:19:41] You know Nippy, where it got really crazy

[00:19:44] was court ordered mediation

[00:19:46] in which I had to meet with him and Nancy

[00:19:48] and also his deposition

[00:19:50] which I sat through and would encourage anyone

[00:19:53] who's interested in Keith Rinnary and Nexium

[00:19:56] to go to culteducation.com

[00:19:58] and go to the Nexium section.

[00:20:00] And at the very top you'll see the depositions

[00:20:03] of Keith Rinnary and Nancy Salisman

[00:20:05] and why they make interesting reading

[00:20:08] is when you're finished reading

[00:20:09] in particular Keith Rinnary's deposition

[00:20:13] you realize the guy was a pathological liar.

[00:20:16] That he lied about everything

[00:20:18] he exaggerated everything.

[00:20:21] He basically never had a real job

[00:20:23] and he wasn't a very good student

[00:20:26] but he had Rensselaer Polytechnic

[00:20:28] according to his records.

[00:20:30] 2.3 grade point average.

[00:20:32] Yeah the guy was a loser in many ways.

[00:20:36] I mean he-

[00:20:36] In a lot of ways.

[00:20:37] Yeah.

[00:20:38] And in the deposition it all comes out.

[00:20:41] I'll never forget when just before that deposition

[00:20:45] I had to meet with him in court ordered mediation

[00:20:48] and I'm sitting directly across from him

[00:20:50] all the lawyers are assembled

[00:20:52] there must have been at least eight in the room

[00:20:54] and Nancy Salisman was sitting next to him

[00:20:57] and she looked like a pouty duty of ventriloquist puppet.

[00:21:01] I mean just sitting there next to him

[00:21:03] if he cleared his throat

[00:21:05] she would stop in mid syllable

[00:21:07] to allow him the great one to speak.

[00:21:10] I don't think she was a victim

[00:21:12] but at the same time I think that he was clearly

[00:21:15] the dominant leader.

[00:21:16] And so we're sitting there

[00:21:18] and I'm trying to get the guy to say

[00:21:21] how do we settle this?

[00:21:22] Because I had the doctors as co-defendants

[00:21:25] the Sutton's as co-defendants

[00:21:28] and I wanted to help them.

[00:21:30] I wanted to end the lawsuit

[00:21:32] if there was any way that we could work something out

[00:21:35] and he would just keep saying

[00:21:37] you don't understand, you don't understand

[00:21:40] and then he would start going into his rational

[00:21:43] inquiry word salad babble.

[00:21:46] And I would say look Keith

[00:21:49] I am not interested in what you believe.

[00:21:53] I am not interested in your philosophy.

[00:21:55] I am here to settle a lawsuit

[00:21:57] and all the lawyers would nod their heads

[00:22:01] and then he would go into it again.

[00:22:03] And finally after the third time I said look Keith

[00:22:07] let's just be honest here.

[00:22:09] This is what I think.

[00:22:10] I think you're a cult leader.

[00:22:12] I think you hurt people.

[00:22:14] I think you're a grifter, a con man

[00:22:17] and I am not interested in your rational inquiry junk

[00:22:22] and he got red faced and was very upset at that point

[00:22:27] and then it ended and he went into the deposition.

[00:22:30] I remember Peter Skolnick coming up to me

[00:22:33] and saying the court ordered mediation

[00:22:35] wasn't really worth anything other than

[00:22:37] it shook him up just before the deposition thank you.

[00:22:41] And then Peter in deposition eviscerated him.

[00:22:48] I'll never forget one time I realized that the admissions

[00:22:52] that Peter had gotten from him very quietly,

[00:22:55] very subtly because Peter is an incredibly brilliant attorney.

[00:23:00] It was unbelievable.

[00:23:02] It was like a surgeon slipping the scalpel

[00:23:05] into the interior of somebody's body

[00:23:08] without them even feeling it.

[00:23:10] And at one break I said to Peter

[00:23:13] doesn't he realize that you just completely destroyed

[00:23:17] his ability to win this lawsuit?

[00:23:20] And Peter said, I don't know but yeah we did that.

[00:23:24] I said amazing.

[00:23:25] Where can we see those?

[00:23:26] Yeah where can we see those depositions?

[00:23:28] I would say I think the videos have not been released.

[00:23:32] I think they could be.

[00:23:34] The transcript of the depositions is online as I said

[00:23:39] the videos I'm not sure that's a Peter Skolnick question

[00:23:43] because I think those videos should be made public

[00:23:46] because if you would see Peter questioning Keith Rinaire

[00:23:51] it's like the master and the pupil really at best

[00:23:56] really the recalcer the stooge

[00:23:59] it would be a better way to describe Rinaire

[00:24:02] but Peter just worked him over completely

[00:24:05] and he didn't even know it.

[00:24:07] That's how completely oblivious he was.

[00:24:09] We love Peter.

[00:24:10] Peter was instrumental in writing my final letter to Claire

[00:24:14] as I was leaving where I basically said

[00:24:17] if you'd like to speak with me

[00:24:17] you can do it through my lawyer Peter Skolnick

[00:24:20] I'm sure you're familiar with his work.

[00:24:21] That was great.

[00:24:23] Then she knew that I was not just leaving quietly

[00:24:26] that I was a loud defector

[00:24:27] but up until then I'm sure this story

[00:24:29] I was trying to like leave quietly.

[00:24:31] But anyway.

[00:24:32] Let me tell you a Claire Bronfman story.

[00:24:34] So there was a second court ordered mediation

[00:24:38] and Claire Bronfman shows up

[00:24:41] because she's supposedly a corporate officer

[00:24:44] that's going to make a decisive decision.

[00:24:47] And so we're all sitting there

[00:24:49] and they're all these former federal judges

[00:24:51] in different anti rooms

[00:24:53] and there's negotiating going on

[00:24:55] and all Claire is basically doing is running around

[00:24:58] like a chicken with her head cut off

[00:25:00] because she doesn't know what to do

[00:25:02] unless Keith Rinnary tells her what to do.

[00:25:05] Or at bare minimum Nancy Salisman conveying Keith's directives.

[00:25:11] The judges are looking at Peter and I

[00:25:14] and they're saying, what is going on here?

[00:25:16] This woman doesn't know what to do.

[00:25:19] How can we do mediation like this?

[00:25:21] And finally, I think everybody involved

[00:25:24] came to the conclusion that this is a cult

[00:25:27] because she can't think independently.

[00:25:31] She's a Roomba vacuum cleaner that needs to dock.

[00:25:35] She needs to plug into the collective

[00:25:38] because she cannot make a decision independently.

[00:25:42] So that was my experience with Claire Bronfman

[00:25:45] who I have very little sympathy for.

[00:25:48] The way that she treated her father is brutal.

[00:25:52] For that matter, the way that both Sarah and Claire

[00:25:54] treated their father in my opinion was just abominable.

[00:25:59] It was horrible, especially near the end of his life.

[00:26:03] Putting a camera on his deathbed to me was like,

[00:26:05] ugh, I couldn't believe it when I heard that.

[00:26:07] They broke his heart.

[00:26:09] They really broke his heart.

[00:26:11] And I think they have to live with that

[00:26:14] assuming that they have a conscience.

[00:26:19] This podcast wouldn't happen

[00:26:21] without our amazing supportive generous patrons.

[00:26:24] Are you with us?

[00:26:25] Come find us over on Patreon at patreon.com

[00:26:28] slash a little bit culty for bonus episodes,

[00:26:30] exclusive content and the occasional Zoom

[00:26:33] with our fan favorites from our past episodes.

[00:26:35] It's a lot of fun over there people.

[00:26:42] Now that the novelty of the new year has dwindled down,

[00:26:45] how are your resolutions coming?

[00:26:46] Still going to the gym.

[00:26:47] One of mine was to order less takeout

[00:26:50] and cook at home more.

[00:26:51] I really do want to learn how to cook,

[00:26:52] but I gotta be honest, I haven't been that consistent.

[00:26:55] I don't have the time or patience to meal prep

[00:26:58] and grocery shop.

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[00:29:20] Break times over people.

[00:29:21] Let's get back to this episode of a little bit culty.

[00:29:24] It's a good one.

[00:29:26] I know so much of our story intersects

[00:29:27] in these weird places.

[00:29:28] I used to have to tell you one,

[00:29:30] the flip side to everything you just said went,

[00:29:32] I think it was around the time

[00:29:33] that the Forbes article came out

[00:29:35] and I finally did a little bit of research

[00:29:37] and I found your site and I found those reports

[00:29:40] and I remember going to Nancy and asking about them

[00:29:43] and the defense always was,

[00:29:45] how can somebody write about this curriculum

[00:29:46] if they've never taken it?

[00:29:47] It's experiential.

[00:29:48] So they're blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:29:50] And the part that I really remember

[00:29:52] when I specifically asked what Michael Sutton

[00:29:54] who I actually didn't know,

[00:29:56] I came in after all this was how she framed it was

[00:30:00] because you know how like next year

[00:30:01] I'm talking so much about projection

[00:30:03] and so there the family's projection

[00:30:06] that next year was controlling Michael

[00:30:08] was just indication of how much control

[00:30:10] the family wanted over at Michael.

[00:30:13] So it was just their projection

[00:30:15] how sad as Michael was trying to become autonomous

[00:30:19] from his family's control that they would do this.

[00:30:21] And I fully bought that, I fully bought that.

[00:30:24] Michael was autonomous.

[00:30:26] I remember speaking to the family's financial advisor

[00:30:31] manager and he told me that Michael

[00:30:33] was a very smart businessman.

[00:30:35] Oh yeah, absolutely.

[00:30:36] That he had done very well on his own

[00:30:39] and that he was a wealthy man in his own right

[00:30:43] from his business investments and success.

[00:30:46] So it really, and the family,

[00:30:49] I talk with Morris and Rochelle Sutton often

[00:30:52] and they were very proud of Michael.

[00:30:54] They just loved him so much.

[00:30:56] And I just feel so sad how that all went

[00:31:01] other than to say that it was their perseverance,

[00:31:06] their deep concern about what was happening

[00:31:09] to their family that precipitated Keith Rinaire

[00:31:13] being exposed.

[00:31:14] It was like the ignition spark to a long story.

[00:31:18] And so I appreciate that and Michael Sutton,

[00:31:21] wherever he is, I wish him well

[00:31:24] and he certainly was a gentleman.

[00:31:27] He treated me very kindly.

[00:31:29] He was just a very nice person

[00:31:32] but you know what?

[00:31:33] Bad things happen to good people.

[00:31:36] Bad people exploit nice people like Michael Sutton

[00:31:40] and I think it's just sad how many lives Keith Rinaire

[00:31:46] damaged and he was just a wrecker ball.

[00:31:49] And he really was.

[00:31:51] Yeah, and he just hurts so many people.

[00:31:54] I know that his parents didn't get to see the outcome

[00:31:56] but what was it like for you after being sued

[00:31:58] for so long and being on the other end of his

[00:32:00] meshew gusts, just forget to throw in some Yiddish,

[00:32:03] to see him being convicted for 120 years?

[00:32:05] I mean, sitting in the witness chair at his criminal trial

[00:32:10] and testifying as a fact witness against him

[00:32:13] was interesting because I'd look at him

[00:32:15] and he would not look me in the eye.

[00:32:17] But then the guard from Homeland Security

[00:32:20] who was with me assigned to me would tell me

[00:32:24] that whenever I looked away, he would stare at me.

[00:32:27] So it was just the weirdest thing.

[00:32:29] I feel like Keith Rinaire,

[00:32:32] like so many cult leaders that I've dealt with

[00:32:34] over the years, he was his own undoing.

[00:32:37] No matter how much power he had,

[00:32:40] no matter how many women he had,

[00:32:43] no matter how much sex he had, he wanted more

[00:32:47] until it finally reached critical mass

[00:32:51] and it became a criminal indictment.

[00:32:53] It became that way because he didn't know when to stop.

[00:32:58] And I will tell you this,

[00:32:59] there are some cult leaders that I've dealt with

[00:33:01] over the years that they do know when to stop.

[00:33:04] They can be fairly savvy, they know when to back off,

[00:33:08] they know when to let someone go.

[00:33:11] And Keith Rinaire didn't understand that.

[00:33:13] He didn't understand, for example,

[00:33:16] when to let Tony Natali go and just say goodbye

[00:33:20] and just let her go, his former girlfriend.

[00:33:22] He didn't understand that it would have been

[00:33:24] in his best interest not to continue

[00:33:27] the lawsuit with me past a certain point.

[00:33:30] He also didn't understand when it would be expedient

[00:33:35] to let India-Oxsonberg go and get rid of Catherine-Oxsonberg

[00:33:41] being an activist against him.

[00:33:43] So there were all these people that he underestimated,

[00:33:47] that he miscalculated, the genius that he was,

[00:33:51] I think his IQ was probably more like average.

[00:33:55] But anyway, he just, the hubris, the arrogance,

[00:33:59] the egomania.

[00:34:01] And to some extent, I think that's because cult leaders

[00:34:05] can be consumed in their own bubble.

[00:34:08] That is they're in an echo chamber,

[00:34:10] they're constantly hearing how great they are.

[00:34:12] Everybody's saying, oh, you're so wonderful, Vanguard.

[00:34:14] Oh, I'm gonna, I'm for clemt.

[00:34:17] I just can't, I can't say enough good about you.

[00:34:20] You're so wonderful.

[00:34:22] And they begin to believe their own height.

[00:34:25] And I think that's what happened to Keith Rinaire.

[00:34:28] He got drunk intoxicated on the adulation.

[00:34:32] Also, like many cult leaders, his behavior escalated.

[00:34:36] When I first dealt with him,

[00:34:38] if I were gonna rate him a one to 10, 10 being Jim Jones,

[00:34:43] I would give him a four in 2001 and 2002.

[00:34:47] Was he destructive?

[00:34:48] Yeah, but was he a 10?

[00:34:51] No way.

[00:34:52] It was like a four.

[00:34:53] Then he was a five.

[00:34:54] Then he was a six.

[00:34:56] And I remember Jim Adato of the Albany Times Union

[00:35:00] interviewing me for their Secrets of Nexium series.

[00:35:04] And Jim said to me, what do you think about this?

[00:35:07] How do you think it's all gonna end?

[00:35:09] And I said, Jim is not gonna end well.

[00:35:12] This is gonna be a very sad ending to this group.

[00:35:18] And I just hope that he doesn't take anybody with him

[00:35:22] in the sense of some kind of mass suicide or violence.

[00:35:26] Because at the end, instead of telling the women in Mexico,

[00:35:32] hey, shoot the federales.

[00:35:35] Let's have a duel to the death.

[00:35:38] He just, as I understand it, hid in a closet.

[00:35:41] Basically a whimpering, pathetic weakling in a sense.

[00:35:47] Anything but the vanguard that he projected.

[00:35:49] So it ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

[00:35:52] But he did go from a four to a 10 in theory in your mind.

[00:35:56] In my mind, he went from a four over the years

[00:36:01] to probably I'm gonna give him an eight, maybe an 8.5.

[00:36:07] When you are torturing women,

[00:36:10] when you are doing the horrible things that he did,

[00:36:13] certainly you are coming up on being a 10.

[00:36:16] And I think if he had not been stopped,

[00:36:19] he would have ended up being a 10.

[00:36:21] I agree.

[00:36:22] Okay. I agree.

[00:36:22] It's actually a point, I said in my TED Talks

[00:36:25] that cult experts have said

[00:36:27] that he's one of the most dangerous cult leaders

[00:36:29] of all time on par with Jim Jones.

[00:36:32] It was more of, I guess, that potential.

[00:36:34] But would you agree with that statement?

[00:36:35] I would say that he was,

[00:36:37] Jim Jones was within his grasp.

[00:36:40] He was getting very close to that.

[00:36:43] What I was worried about was him weaponizing the women

[00:36:47] that were in his inner circle.

[00:36:49] For example, I'm thinking of Kristen Keith

[00:36:53] because Kristen Keith was the woman

[00:36:55] that I was supposed to deprogram.

[00:36:58] She was going to pretend to be the woman

[00:37:01] to be deprogrammed with the make-believe mother

[00:37:05] set up by Inner Four.

[00:37:07] And I wonder what he was thinking.

[00:37:09] Kristen would later say,

[00:37:12] oh, we were gonna try to convert him.

[00:37:14] Really?

[00:37:15] I don't think that was what they were thinking.

[00:37:18] And I don't know that she actually knew

[00:37:20] what he wanted to get out of all of that.

[00:37:23] I remember seeing Kristen Keith at a deposition,

[00:37:27] my deposition, because she was the legal liaison

[00:37:32] for Keith Rinnari.

[00:37:34] She would help run the lawsuits that he had.

[00:37:37] And she was like ghoulish.

[00:37:40] She just looked so detached from reality.

[00:37:43] I would look at her.

[00:37:45] She just looked very drawn, very fatigued.

[00:37:48] And she had this dead look in her eyes,

[00:37:51] those shark eyes that you see

[00:37:54] in the most intensely indoctrinated cult members.

[00:37:57] And there would be times in my deposition

[00:37:59] that I would talk directly to her

[00:38:02] trying to get something through to her.

[00:38:04] And I guess she was uncomfortable with that

[00:38:07] because she eventually left.

[00:38:08] But it was that inner circle of women

[00:38:12] that he seemed to control so totally

[00:38:16] that I wondered would they ever say no to him

[00:38:19] and would he weaponize them to do things

[00:38:23] such as retaliate against his perceived enemies

[00:38:27] with violence in a kind of manson-esque murder mayhem way?

[00:38:34] Because, as I said to Jim Adotto,

[00:38:36] these people were so tightly wound around him.

[00:38:40] And some of them had been with him

[00:38:41] going all the way back to consumer byline.

[00:38:44] So it was just a really scary thing.

[00:38:47] And Sarah, I think you're right.

[00:38:49] He was close enough to Jim Jones

[00:38:53] to just, it was frightening how close he was getting.

[00:38:57] How do you escalate that?

[00:38:58] You play the algorithm out of branding

[00:39:00] with people with your initials.

[00:39:01] What's next?

[00:39:02] How do you turn that volume up

[00:39:04] and what does that look like?

[00:39:05] And I think you're right.

[00:39:06] I think it's physical violence in some capacity.

[00:39:08] And the irony was how misogynistic he really was,

[00:39:12] how disrespectful to women he really was.

[00:39:16] And to me, the sex, it wasn't about sex.

[00:39:21] It was about power and control.

[00:39:23] And he had in my opinion, the mind of a rapist

[00:39:27] that also you can say it's not about the act of sex.

[00:39:32] It's about power and control.

[00:39:34] And he wanted to subject women

[00:39:37] to the most horrible treatment

[00:39:39] in order to control them to the extreme.

[00:39:42] Just a very sick individual.

[00:39:45] And when you look at his childhood

[00:39:47] because he lied so much about everything.

[00:39:50] And one of the things I think he lied about

[00:39:52] was that his mother was not a very good mother

[00:39:55] and that he came from a troubled family.

[00:39:58] I think in fact, he was just,

[00:40:02] you could call him like a bad seed

[00:40:04] because even at the age of 10,

[00:40:07] he was terrorizing little girls and controlling people.

[00:40:10] And so that's what his classmates said about him

[00:40:14] in one article when they were interviewed.

[00:40:16] So you could argue, and this is where it gets really weird,

[00:40:21] that psychopaths may be born not raised

[00:40:25] and that Keith Rennery was, in my book, bad to the bone.

[00:40:30] I agree.

[00:40:31] We agree.

[00:40:32] Started out that way,

[00:40:33] unlike some leaders who maybe start with good intentions

[00:40:35] and it goes to their head.

[00:40:37] I don't know if this is right.

[00:40:38] Maybe I think when I saw Tony Natali at the trial,

[00:40:41] she said that she had spoken to my mom

[00:40:44] and maybe you had spoken to my mom.

[00:40:45] Is that accurate about helping me out or via you?

[00:40:49] It may have happened.

[00:40:50] I mean, there are,

[00:40:52] I received so many phone calls from so many people

[00:40:55] over those years and parents would call me.

[00:40:58] And a lot of times what I would say to them, Nippy,

[00:41:01] is look, be very careful

[00:41:03] because you could be labeled a suppressive person.

[00:41:06] You could lose communication.

[00:41:09] It's really important that you not criticize nexium,

[00:41:13] that you just try to keep things as positive as possible

[00:41:17] because if you are going to do an intervention,

[00:41:21] you need access and communication

[00:41:23] to stage such a thing.

[00:41:24] And second, if you're not,

[00:41:26] what you really wanna do

[00:41:28] is make your family member feel loved unconditionally

[00:41:32] so that if they do have doubts

[00:41:35] and they do decide to take a break,

[00:41:37] that they know that they can come home,

[00:41:39] that they can hang out with you and it's okay.

[00:41:41] Then you definitely didn't talk to my mom

[00:41:43] because my mom was like, are you going up to that cult?

[00:41:46] She teased me about it.

[00:41:47] And I was like, yeah, mom, I'm going up to the cult.

[00:41:49] Like it was tongue in cheek.

[00:41:50] So it definitely, my mom.

[00:41:52] There were so many I can remember

[00:41:55] speaking to partners of members of nexium,

[00:42:00] parents, siblings.

[00:42:02] One of the things that I remember vividly

[00:42:06] is there was a woman from Mexico

[00:42:09] who went to a nexium intensive, I believe in Albany

[00:42:14] and she had a psychotic break.

[00:42:16] That's what I was gonna ask you about.

[00:42:17] I was there for that.

[00:42:18] Yeah, she ran naked through the street at night

[00:42:21] and they got her,

[00:42:22] they took her to a hospital in the area

[00:42:25] and psychiatrist Carlos Ruida provided treatment for

[00:42:29] as he did other participants of nexium

[00:42:32] that had psychological problems

[00:42:35] as a result of the stress of the training.

[00:42:38] And this woman called me up and she told me,

[00:42:40] she said, I'm just so grateful to the doctors

[00:42:44] for writing those papers

[00:42:46] because until I read them, I thought it was my problem.

[00:42:50] I thought I was just screwed up.

[00:42:53] I was a mess and I blame myself

[00:42:56] and I thought maybe I'll be crazy for the rest of my life

[00:42:59] because I'm just crazy

[00:43:01] and maybe I'm a paranoid schizophrenic,

[00:43:03] maybe I'm bipolar.

[00:43:05] And so she then arrived at the conclusion

[00:43:08] is no, they drove me crazy.

[00:43:11] The intensive put so much pressure on me

[00:43:13] and I can see it from what the doctors wrote

[00:43:16] and now I feel okay, I feel better,

[00:43:20] I understand what happened

[00:43:22] and that's key to recovery

[00:43:24] is unpacking your experience,

[00:43:27] understanding what happened to you,

[00:43:29] how your power was taken from you,

[00:43:32] what were the techniques used

[00:43:34] and then just rewind it, understand it,

[00:43:38] play it out, freeze frame it at different points

[00:43:42] and that is the beginning of recovery.

[00:43:44] And for her reading those papers was pivotal

[00:43:48] and that's why a chimp, Neri wanted them taken down.

[00:43:52] That's why he sued me for 14 years

[00:43:54] because he didn't want anyone

[00:43:56] to understand what he was really doing.

[00:43:59] And now a brief message

[00:44:00] from our a little bit culty sponsors.

[00:44:06] Sarah, can you please get off your phone?

[00:44:08] We have children to raise here.

[00:44:09] I'm just getting some work done.

[00:44:11] That's not work.

[00:44:12] It would sort of work for the podcast.

[00:44:15] It's June's journey, maybe.

[00:44:17] Who's June?

[00:44:18] What's your journey?

[00:44:19] Okay, look, it's like this ultimate

[00:44:21] hidden object mystery game that's kind of had me.

[00:44:24] Like picture this, you're transported back

[00:44:25] to the glamorous 1920s where you will join June Parker

[00:44:29] on her quest to uncover hidden clues,

[00:44:31] solve puzzles and unravel a gripping storyline

[00:44:34] filled with twists and turns at every corner.

[00:44:36] Every corner?

[00:44:37] Yes, every corner, Nip.

[00:44:38] That's what I love the most about June's journey.

[00:44:40] It's like the attention to detail.

[00:44:41] I'm telling you, you would love it.

[00:44:43] From the stunning visuals to the intricate storyline,

[00:44:45] it's like stepping into a vintage detective novel

[00:44:47] brought to life.

[00:44:49] Interest you?

[00:44:50] I'm on the edge of my seat.

[00:44:51] Right now, the story has taken me

[00:44:53] to a Paris hotel balcony.

[00:44:54] Oulala.

[00:44:56] Would you like a croissant?

[00:44:57] Wee-wee.

[00:44:58] And the best part, you could play anytime, anywhere,

[00:45:00] whether you're on the train to work

[00:45:01] or lounging at home or whatever you're doing

[00:45:04] in the bathroom.

[00:45:05] It's the perfect way to unwind

[00:45:06] and then indulge your inner sleuth.

[00:45:09] Whatever I'm doing in the bathroom.

[00:45:11] So if you're ready

[00:45:12] to put your sleuthing skills to the test,

[00:45:14] Nipi, are you ready?

[00:45:15] Fine, I'm in.

[00:45:15] Join me and the millions of others

[00:45:17] players and Nipi around the world

[00:45:19] in this thrilling journey

[00:45:21] and discover your inner detective

[00:45:22] when you download June's Journey for Free Today

[00:45:25] on iOS and Android.

[00:45:27] Are you downloading it?

[00:45:29] Leave me alone.

[00:45:29] I'm on my phone, doing work.

[00:45:32] This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

[00:45:34] Question, how is your social battery right now?

[00:45:37] Is it A, drained?

[00:45:39] B, fully charged?

[00:45:41] C, totally unpredictable?

[00:45:43] Or D, a little bit of all of the above

[00:45:45] depending on the day.

[00:45:46] I feel you.

[00:45:47] I'm probably in all of the above person.

[00:45:49] Figuring out the right amount of socializing

[00:45:51] versus alone time isn't easy.

[00:45:53] It's easy to overdo it in either direction.

[00:45:56] For example, I definitely overdid it

[00:45:58] on socializing last month

[00:45:59] and I'm feeling a little bit

[00:46:00] of grouchy hermit right now.

[00:46:02] It's not good.

[00:46:03] For me, therapy has been key

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[00:46:06] and helping me enjoy a social life

[00:46:08] that doesn't drain my battery.

[00:46:10] Things like learning,

[00:46:11] it's okay to not say yes to every invitation

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[00:46:16] that no is a complete sentence.

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[00:46:52] Now let's get back to a little bit culti, shall we?

[00:46:55] I was shocked in your book

[00:46:56] to hear that multiple women,

[00:46:59] I had heard about that incident

[00:47:00] as the one psychotic break

[00:47:02] but that many women had three at least

[00:47:05] that we know of had been seen

[00:47:06] in the Department of Psychiatry.

[00:47:08] Is this the incident by the way

[00:47:09] where a woman had Valium put in her eggs?

[00:47:11] I think that Lauren talked about it at the trial.

[00:47:13] Is it the same?

[00:47:14] So as I understand it,

[00:47:16] it was the daughter of a relatively prominent family.

[00:47:18] I think she was interviewed

[00:47:19] so I think this is out there.

[00:47:20] I remember being in a training

[00:47:22] and just so you know,

[00:47:23] I left for about two years after the Forbes article

[00:47:26] just because it felt off and I didn't need it

[00:47:30] but I think this happened before

[00:47:32] and I happened to be there

[00:47:33] and Nancy asked if I could take the parents

[00:47:36] to the airport,

[00:47:37] which is about a five minute drive from the center

[00:47:39] and I come back and I'm hearing rumblings

[00:47:41] of what going on.

[00:47:42] Apparently this person had met Keith

[00:47:45] and couldn't handle his energy.

[00:47:47] Come to find out after the trial

[00:47:50] that Keith made a pass at her

[00:47:52] and she was freaking out

[00:47:53] and he told Lauren and Nancy

[00:47:56] to put Valium in her eggs

[00:47:57] and they thought to chill her out

[00:47:59] and all that stuff

[00:48:00] and that may have,

[00:48:01] it probably is the catalyst for her break.

[00:48:05] Meanwhile there's a training going on

[00:48:06] and people are told like,

[00:48:07] oh, there was this incident

[00:48:09] and we were always lied to about

[00:48:11] what was actually happening.

[00:48:12] Any sort of failure in the curriculum.

[00:48:15] Keith was never about taking responsibility for anything.

[00:48:20] It was always somebody else did something wrong,

[00:48:23] I'm never wrong

[00:48:25] and that's when you know you're dealing with a narcissist

[00:48:28] when someone is incapable of admitting

[00:48:31] they make mistakes,

[00:48:32] we all make mistakes

[00:48:34] and we learn from mistakes.

[00:48:36] Sometimes we learn more from mistakes

[00:48:39] than we do from just having an easy ride

[00:48:41] and so Keith and Neri could never learn

[00:48:44] from any mistake he made

[00:48:45] and he made many

[00:48:46] because he could never deal with that.

[00:48:49] He could never say I'm wrong

[00:48:51] or I'm sorry

[00:48:53] or anything like that.

[00:48:54] He was just,

[00:48:56] all I can say is I've met his ilk over and over again

[00:49:00] in the form of many other cult leaders

[00:49:03] and they all have the same personality.

[00:49:06] I think that's true

[00:49:07] and it's also shocking

[00:49:08] that nobody was able to see that he was doing that.

[00:49:11] Meanwhile, the main tenant of Nexium

[00:49:13] was personal responsibility.

[00:49:14] If anything happened in your life,

[00:49:16] you were to seek,

[00:49:17] how did you create it?

[00:49:18] How did you cause it?

[00:49:19] How'd you author it?

[00:49:20] What was your role in it?

[00:49:21] There's no victims except for Keith.

[00:49:23] Nobody was able to go-

[00:49:24] He became the ultimate victim.

[00:49:26] That was an inconsistency

[00:49:27] that I did not see for many years

[00:49:29] and I'm like,

[00:49:30] how did I miss that?

[00:49:30] That was so obvious.

[00:49:32] Well, I'll never forget

[00:49:33] when I first looked at the modules

[00:49:35] and I went,

[00:49:36] holy cow,

[00:49:38] this is Scientology.

[00:49:40] This guy ripped off Scientology.

[00:49:43] And I thought,

[00:49:45] what kind of integrity is that?

[00:49:47] What kind of honesty is that

[00:49:49] to basically plagiarize the work of L. Ron Hubbard

[00:49:53] who was no great shakes in my book

[00:49:56] as Scientology is a pretty bad group.

[00:49:58] And by the way,

[00:49:59] they were,

[00:50:01] they chased after me for years

[00:50:04] and have harassed me as well.

[00:50:05] But he just had no integrity.

[00:50:08] He had no integrity at all

[00:50:10] on so many levels.

[00:50:12] And I think what happened in the group,

[00:50:15] the reason why people could not see it

[00:50:17] was because they were

[00:50:20] within this subculture of nexium

[00:50:22] in which everyone is reinforcing

[00:50:25] what Nancy and Keith say

[00:50:28] and what they teach

[00:50:29] and no one is actually thinking critically

[00:50:32] on an independent basis.

[00:50:34] So there's all this peer pressure,

[00:50:36] this what I would call false social proof

[00:50:40] where you read the book

[00:50:41] influenced by Robert Cialdini

[00:50:43] and we all depend on feedback

[00:50:46] from people around us

[00:50:47] to get a sense of what is reality

[00:50:50] and what is good and what is bad

[00:50:52] and what we should do.

[00:50:53] And when you're in a subculture bubble

[00:50:56] like nexium, you're not getting accurate feedback.

[00:50:59] Constantly getting the reinforcement of the leader.

[00:51:03] The leader is right.

[00:51:04] The leader is always right.

[00:51:05] And so you look around and say,

[00:51:07] I think this is crazy.

[00:51:09] How about you?

[00:51:09] Anybody else thinks this is crazy?

[00:51:12] And everyone's going, no,

[00:51:13] but I think you have no integrity.

[00:51:15] I think you're not being authentic.

[00:51:17] I think you need to do some EMs right now.

[00:51:21] And so you're not really getting any,

[00:51:23] you're not in an environment

[00:51:25] conducive to critical thinking.

[00:51:27] Absolutely.

[00:51:28] While believing you are the paradigm of critical thinking.

[00:51:31] That is the irony.

[00:51:32] So we've just finished talking about nexium.

[00:51:35] Thank you for your stories and your insight.

[00:51:37] It's always fun to see what was happening

[00:51:39] on the other side of reality

[00:51:40] or actually in reality during our time in nexium.

[00:51:44] We were the other side of reality.

[00:51:45] Yeah, we were not in reality.

[00:51:46] We were bizarro.

[00:51:47] Yep. Meanwhile, you're out there fighting this fight

[00:51:50] and proving that nexium's a cult

[00:51:52] but it's also in this category of cults called an ELGAT,

[00:51:55] large group awareness training.

[00:51:57] Can you explain to our audience

[00:51:58] why ELGATs are problematic?

[00:52:00] Like why they're dangerous as the foray into the forum?

[00:52:03] I would say that a large group awareness training

[00:52:06] could be benign,

[00:52:08] but when it gets dangerous is when you have people boxed in

[00:52:13] for a pretty extended period of time,

[00:52:15] very stressful, high pressure tactics

[00:52:19] to force them to change a controlled environment

[00:52:24] and not having the kind of professional monitoring

[00:52:28] that should be there to know

[00:52:30] if people are starting to unravel,

[00:52:32] they're starting to fall apart,

[00:52:34] they might have a psychotic break, et cetera.

[00:52:37] And what happens to varying degrees in different ELGATs

[00:52:42] is there is this phenomenal pressure.

[00:52:44] The worst case scenario would be James Arthur Ray

[00:52:48] who was this ELGAT guru

[00:52:51] who did a self-styled sweat lodge

[00:52:54] and he pushed people to stay when they should have left

[00:52:58] because they were in distress physically.

[00:53:01] Ultimately, people were hospitalized, three people died

[00:53:04] and I was on the prosecution's team

[00:53:07] in the prosecution of James Arthur Ray.

[00:53:10] He eventually would go to jail for a period of time

[00:53:13] for negligent homicide.

[00:53:14] So here's the thing, what is an ELGAT really?

[00:53:17] What an ELGAT really is, there's a leader, a founder,

[00:53:21] they come up with some philosophy

[00:53:24] that they say is a panacea cure all for everything.

[00:53:28] And then they use this structure

[00:53:30] of this intensive prolonged period of time

[00:53:34] in which you control people's environment

[00:53:36] and you control everything that's going on

[00:53:39] to download that philosophy into their head

[00:53:43] to become the foundation for their new way of thinking

[00:53:47] and perception of the world.

[00:53:49] The problem with ELGATs is they have no,

[00:53:52] as far as I know, I have not found one

[00:53:55] that has objectively scientifically measurable results.

[00:54:00] That is take a group of people

[00:54:03] that have graduated from the ELGAT

[00:54:04] taken one year out, two year out, five years out,

[00:54:07] do they make more money?

[00:54:09] Do they have a lower divorce rate?

[00:54:11] Are they less likely to need medication for anxiety

[00:54:15] or depression?

[00:54:17] Do they make higher grades in school?

[00:54:19] That could be an objective way of determining

[00:54:22] if an ELGAT actually does improve people's lives

[00:54:26] because that's what they're selling.

[00:54:28] Whether it's Tony Robbins, Keith Rinnary

[00:54:31] or Werner Erhardt, the founder of Landmark Education,

[00:54:35] what they're selling is human potential,

[00:54:38] a self-improvement.

[00:54:40] That's their pitch.

[00:54:42] And the question is, do they really accomplish anything?

[00:54:46] And I would question their results

[00:54:49] and also the method, the methodology

[00:54:52] to reach that point, this is the issue with them.

[00:54:56] It's so intense, it's so stressful

[00:54:59] and it's so intensely cathartic

[00:55:02] that it can really cause people problems.

[00:55:05] What are some of the parallels

[00:55:06] that you initially saw between Est, Landmark,

[00:55:10] the Forum and Nexium?

[00:55:11] Just the whole structure.

[00:55:12] The idea that you're going off for a weekend,

[00:55:15] that you're with other people,

[00:55:17] that all of your time is being scheduled,

[00:55:20] that there is this cathartic confession process

[00:55:24] that's going on one way or the other

[00:55:26] in which you are saying, this is who I am,

[00:55:29] this is my pain, these are my issues.

[00:55:32] And you're opening up to people

[00:55:34] and also that there are people around you

[00:55:38] who are more experienced in the LGAT than you are.

[00:55:42] They may not see themselves as shills,

[00:55:44] but they're there and they're encouraging you

[00:55:47] and they're basically helping the facilitator

[00:55:52] to break people down, to move them and so on.

[00:55:55] Why do you think that Werner or Est or the Forum

[00:55:58] hasn't been held accountable

[00:56:00] in the same way that Nexium has?

[00:56:02] Let me just say that at one point,

[00:56:04] Werner Erhard supposedly sold

[00:56:07] Erhard Seminars Training,

[00:56:09] which then became Landmark Education,

[00:56:12] which offers the Forum.

[00:56:14] But in fact, his sister and his brother

[00:56:18] and his former attorney ran the company.

[00:56:22] And that was because Werner Erhard

[00:56:24] was feeling a lot of heat from the IRS

[00:56:28] and through exposés regarding his personal life

[00:56:31] and there were allegations

[00:56:33] that Erhard Seminars Training was destructive.

[00:56:36] In fact, you can find abstracts and studies

[00:56:39] about psychotic breaks in the Forum

[00:56:42] at culteducation.com as well.

[00:56:45] And at one point, Werner Erhard by the way

[00:56:48] was suing me at the same time

[00:56:50] that Keith Rinnary was suing me.

[00:56:52] In fact, there was one point I was being sued

[00:56:55] by three different organizations simultaneously.

[00:56:59] But Werner Erhard, unlike Keith Rinnary,

[00:57:02] he knows how to play it.

[00:57:03] He is much more intelligent than Keith Rinnary,

[00:57:07] which isn't saying a lot

[00:57:08] because I think Keith is an idiot.

[00:57:11] But Werner Erhard is not an idiot.

[00:57:13] And so he would settle with people

[00:57:17] that had personal injury claims

[00:57:19] in answer to your question.

[00:57:20] They would sue or they would threaten to sue

[00:57:23] and he would pay them off.

[00:57:25] He would cut large checks.

[00:57:27] I was involved in one case in Texas called the Neff case,

[00:57:32] NEFF, and that case was settled.

[00:57:34] And there were others that were settled.

[00:57:36] And in my particular litigation with Erhard,

[00:57:40] he was suing me for defamation

[00:57:43] and product disparagement much like Keith Rinnary.

[00:57:47] But when it got to a point

[00:57:49] where he realized that the aggressive discovery

[00:57:55] that was being launched by Peter Skolnick, by the way,

[00:57:59] who also was my pro bono lawyer and Lowenstein Sandler

[00:58:03] in the, and Michael Norwick in the landmark lawsuit

[00:58:08] against me, when he realized

[00:58:10] that he couldn't break me through legal fees

[00:58:13] that he wasn't going to get his way that way,

[00:58:16] now he was going to have to become more transparent.

[00:58:20] He was gonna have to provide information

[00:58:23] and the judge said it would not be sealed

[00:58:25] and it would be publicly visible.

[00:58:28] So then he moved to settle the lawsuit

[00:58:31] and eventually because I would not settle

[00:58:34] and Peter would not settle

[00:58:36] because we had no reason to settle

[00:58:38] being that I could actually get a check from landmark

[00:58:42] to walk away with a non-disclosure agreement

[00:58:46] and then it would appear

[00:58:48] that they got something out of the litigation

[00:58:50] when they didn't.

[00:58:51] So what ended up happening is they dismissed their own lawsuit

[00:58:55] which was humiliating for landmark and for Earhart

[00:58:59] but they did it.

[00:59:00] And unlike Keith Rinnari, landmark realized

[00:59:03] I'm in a losing situation

[00:59:05] and I'm just gonna fold and move on

[00:59:08] and that's what happened.

[00:59:09] It seems like there's definitely a litigious action

[00:59:13] parallel between the two organizations

[00:59:16] and yet landmarks seem to proliferate

[00:59:20] at a much higher rate.

[00:59:22] How do you think that relates to their litigious strategy?

[00:59:24] Like how have they been able to grow so much

[00:59:27] compared to next year numbers wise?

[00:59:29] Well, I mean Werner Earhart whose given name

[00:59:32] is Jack Rosenberg.

[00:59:34] He changed his name to Werner Earhart

[00:59:37] and landmarks philosophy is also a dash

[00:59:41] of a good deal of Scientology

[00:59:43] and it's also a German philosopher

[00:59:47] by the name of Heidegger

[00:59:48] and then there's a certain amount of what Earhart picked up

[00:59:52] from a rather benign seminar training called

[00:59:56] Esalen in Northern California.

[00:59:59] So Earhart's philosophy is a mishmash, a composite

[01:00:03] just like many other people in the Elgat business

[01:00:07] and I think what he learned from Scientology

[01:00:10] besides what he incorporated into his training

[01:00:13] is that suing people as a way to silence critics

[01:00:17] and Scientology is perhaps the ultimate litigate

[01:00:22] in regards to silencing critics through litigation

[01:00:25] and Earhart saw that as an effective way of doing it

[01:00:29] and just so that your listeners understand

[01:00:32] if you've got somebody with deep pockets suing you

[01:00:35] and you don't have pro bono legal help, you can go broke

[01:00:39] and I speak from experience.

[01:00:41] I went bankrupt over a Scientology lawyer

[01:00:44] harassing me for years

[01:00:46] who's now their lead counsel Kendrick Mokson.

[01:00:49] So you can go under financially as a result of being sued

[01:00:55] unless you're fortunate enough to have somebody

[01:00:58] like Peter Skolnick who will step up and say,

[01:01:00] hey, I think you deserve to have free speech rights

[01:01:05] and I'm gonna help you.

[01:01:06] So that's what landmark did.

[01:01:08] They would silence critics through litigation.

[01:01:10] They would pay people off in settlements

[01:01:13] that had personal injuries

[01:01:15] and Earhart was very clever.

[01:01:17] He's almost 90 and he's still working.

[01:01:21] For those that don't know,

[01:01:23] I think Werner Earhart still pulls the strings

[01:01:28] at landmark education

[01:01:30] and nobody really knows the details of the sale

[01:01:34] because it's a privately held company.

[01:01:36] So Earhart per my understanding

[01:01:39] is still very much the leading light of landmark education.

[01:01:44] Depending on how things go,

[01:01:46] when I call Peter Skolnick to ask for his help

[01:01:48] regarding doing this episode even in itself

[01:01:52] when we even mentioned landmark and passing

[01:01:55] and we didn't even do an expose

[01:01:57] just somebody who was sharing

[01:01:59] some little bit culty things that happened in her journey

[01:02:02] and we got our first cease and desist from landmark.

[01:02:05] And it's just shocking that we've done over 150 episodes

[01:02:09] and this is the first group that's come after us

[01:02:12] and we spoke, you and I spoke Rick

[01:02:14] and I shared this with you

[01:02:16] and I was a bit shocked to see

[01:02:17] it was really like a press kit

[01:02:19] of all the reasons why they aren't a cult.

[01:02:23] I'm thinking the Lady Doth protest too much

[01:02:25] and I'm wondering specifically the part where they say

[01:02:29] that Margaret Singer even says that it's not a cult

[01:02:32] and it's in your book

[01:02:33] but can you share with our listeners

[01:02:35] how landmark manipulated Margaret

[01:02:38] to say that it's not a cult?

[01:02:40] Look, Margaret did not think landmark.

[01:02:43] I knew Margaret quite well and we talked about this.

[01:02:46] Margaret Singer, a clinical psychologist, eminent cult expert

[01:02:52] probably the cult expert of the 20th century.

[01:02:55] She wrote about landmark in a book

[01:02:59] that she wrote with Yanya Lallich called Crazy Therapies.

[01:03:03] And in that book they talked about landmark

[01:03:06] but they did not explicitly state that it was a cult.

[01:03:10] And I do not consider landmark education to be a cult.

[01:03:15] I would consider it a little bit culty

[01:03:19] and I would say this,

[01:03:20] that when Werner Erhard was really present

[01:03:26] and he was running things

[01:03:28] and he was the charismatic leader

[01:03:30] that they called the source

[01:03:33] at that juncture in its early days.

[01:03:36] In my opinion, landmark was in fact a cult

[01:03:41] but as Erhard stepped back

[01:03:43] and became this kind of shadowy figure

[01:03:46] that people knew about but didn't really deal with

[01:03:50] landmarks ceased to be a personality driven cult

[01:03:54] that had a leader that they worship

[01:03:57] as they once did Werner Erhard.

[01:03:59] Now having said that

[01:04:01] I have more than reason to believe

[01:04:04] that there remains an inner circle of staffers

[01:04:08] that are practically like slave labor

[01:04:12] that continue to serve Werner Erhard to this day.

[01:04:17] And I would say that it may be

[01:04:20] in that group could be seen as a personality driven cult

[01:04:27] because Erhard is ever present.

[01:04:29] Erhard is pulling their strings.

[01:04:32] Erhard is dealing with them on a day to day basis

[01:04:36] and that would be the inner circle

[01:04:38] of what is landmark education today?

[01:04:43] Yeah, landmark Margaret Singer settled with them

[01:04:46] for the same reason that John Hawkman

[01:04:50] settled with Keith Renehring

[01:04:52] because when will it end?

[01:04:54] When will the litigation end?

[01:04:56] And I can't afford to keep shelling out money

[01:05:00] for lawyers to defend me

[01:05:02] because this group or individual

[01:05:05] will keep suing me and appealing

[01:05:08] all the way to the Supreme Court

[01:05:10] because they have deep pockets and I don't

[01:05:13] and so I'm gonna settle.

[01:05:14] So that's what Margaret did.

[01:05:16] It kind of leads me to, and I'll say it

[01:05:18] if for any landmark lawyers who happen to be listening

[01:05:21] or Erhard lawyers that I don't even have

[01:05:23] to call it a cult or not a cult.

[01:05:26] There's some unhealthy toxic practices that I see

[01:05:28] in this organization that I think

[01:05:30] can be very problematic for people

[01:05:32] and people need to know what they are.

[01:05:34] When they take a cheap weekend

[01:05:36] that helps you have some transformation

[01:05:37] and self-awareness which can be

[01:05:39] at the onset very healthy and helpful

[01:05:42] if it just ends there.

[01:05:43] But when, you know, commit to the longterm path

[01:05:46] for us it was the straight path for landmarks

[01:05:48] the teaching and the assisting

[01:05:49] and the essentially slave labor

[01:05:51] where it gets problematic.

[01:05:52] Well, and also when someone asks you

[01:05:55] to sign away some of your civil rights

[01:05:58] before you can participate in a weekend intensive

[01:06:02] that should be a huge red flag.

[01:06:06] Why do you want me to surrender my rights?

[01:06:08] If I went to a marriage and family retreat

[01:06:11] they wouldn't do that.

[01:06:13] If I went to on a church event

[01:06:16] like a Chriseo in the Catholic Church

[01:06:20] they wouldn't ask me to do that.

[01:06:22] Why are you?

[01:06:23] If I went to see a therapist

[01:06:25] they would not ask me to waive my right

[01:06:27] to sue them for personal injury

[01:06:30] and that I would be obliged obligated

[01:06:33] to binding arbitration

[01:06:36] as opposed to just suing them for personal injury.

[01:06:39] So that is what landmark does routinely

[01:06:43] when people come to take their weekend retreat

[01:06:46] they ask them to sign certain waivers

[01:06:48] certain understandings.

[01:06:50] That is just a huge warning flag.

[01:06:53] And let me say that for years

[01:06:55] people would say to me,

[01:06:56] Rick you haven't done landmark

[01:06:58] you don't know what landmark is really

[01:07:00] you have to do it, Rick

[01:07:01] you have to do it and then you could be a critic

[01:07:04] and I said I don't smoke cigarettes

[01:07:06] but I know it's not good for me

[01:07:07] do I have to smoke them for 10 years

[01:07:10] before I can be able to say that they cause cancer?

[01:07:14] Great metaphor.

[01:07:15] Finally landmark said

[01:07:17] people from landmark said to me

[01:07:19] we will pay for you to do the forum

[01:07:22] and I finally said, okay fine

[01:07:25] I'll do the forum

[01:07:26] and I was gonna do the forum in New York

[01:07:28] and then the next thing I know they said

[01:07:30] no I get a call from one of their lawyers

[01:07:33] and he says no, no, no

[01:07:35] you're not gonna do the forum

[01:07:36] but here's what we're gonna do

[01:07:37] we'll give you a tour of the forum

[01:07:39] you can drop in the different things

[01:07:42] going on in the forum

[01:07:44] with me at your side to be your guide

[01:07:46] and I said no I'm not gonna do that

[01:07:49] I wanna just do it

[01:07:50] and the same enthusiast

[01:07:52] who were trying to pay my way through the forum

[01:07:55] kept calling me and saying are you gonna do it?

[01:07:58] When are you gonna do it?

[01:08:00] When is it gonna happen?

[01:08:01] I said no they won't let me do it

[01:08:03] and they want me to do the tour

[01:08:05] and so the next thing I knew

[01:08:07] there was more pressure

[01:08:09] I guess from these supporters of landmark

[01:08:12] to landmark administration

[01:08:14] and they came back and they said

[01:08:16] okay you can do the forum

[01:08:18] you can do it as a participant

[01:08:20] and I said okay I will do it

[01:08:23] but I will not sign any waiver

[01:08:26] I will sign no paperwork at all

[01:08:28] and that was the end of it

[01:08:30] they would not allow me to do it

[01:08:32] and so it's interesting people say

[01:08:34] well you can't criticize the forum

[01:08:36] because you haven't done it

[01:08:37] well they won't let me do it

[01:08:38] unless I sign my rights award

[01:08:40] which I refuse to do

[01:08:42] Right

[01:08:43] And that's a great piece of advice for listeners

[01:08:45] Kinda answers our final question

[01:08:47] How do people protect themselves

[01:08:49] from these kinds of groups?

[01:08:50] I mean when somebody comes to you

[01:08:52] and they tell you about some weekend

[01:08:55] intensive or retreat

[01:08:58] and they're not really giving you much

[01:09:00] in the way of details

[01:09:01] because they say well you just have to experience it

[01:09:04] I can't tell you

[01:09:05] I don't wanna spoil it for you

[01:09:07] that kind of lack of transparency

[01:09:09] is a red warning flag

[01:09:11] and then the next one is when they start

[01:09:14] putting paperwork in front of you

[01:09:16] and saying hey sign this, sign that

[01:09:18] so that you can do this

[01:09:20] because if you don't sign this paperwork

[01:09:22] we can't let you do our training

[01:09:25] That is a huge warning flag

[01:09:28] that something is really wrong

[01:09:30] And of course go online

[01:09:32] because contrary to what Landmark wanted

[01:09:35] or what Nexium wanted

[01:09:37] and so many other groups

[01:09:38] I have all that information

[01:09:40] the Cult Education Institute

[01:09:42] has all that information online

[01:09:45] that Landmark wanted taken down

[01:09:47] and by the way the other thing they wanted

[01:09:50] was they wanted to find out

[01:09:52] who these anonymous people were

[01:09:54] that were ex-staffers or participants

[01:09:57] that were posting on the Cult Education Message Board

[01:10:01] and a federal judge said sorry

[01:10:03] you're never gonna find out

[01:10:05] we're not going to compel

[01:10:07] Mr. Ross to reveal

[01:10:09] who is posting on the Message Board

[01:10:12] and so they realized they couldn't get that out of me

[01:10:15] When you have a group that has that kind of litigiousness

[01:10:19] and you find all this negative historical information

[01:10:23] about them online

[01:10:24] it's just screaming to you

[01:10:27] wait a minute

[01:10:28] think about it

[01:10:29] don't do it

[01:10:30] don't jump into that

[01:10:31] Well it's interesting because Landmark does have so many participants

[01:10:34] who didn't go all the way in

[01:10:35] and just use the tools

[01:10:36] and does do seem to have happier lives

[01:10:39] if they just stay on their peripheral

[01:10:41] but as you know it was one of our listeners

[01:10:43] who loves our podcast

[01:10:44] but also loves Landmark

[01:10:45] who tattletailed on us

[01:10:47] and said that we're saying negative things

[01:10:49] what would you say to participants of Landmark

[01:10:52] at the forum or asked from the 70s

[01:10:54] or anything like that

[01:10:55] if they're having a good time

[01:10:57] and they're defensive about their experience

[01:11:00] what would you want them to know

[01:11:01] and specifically what's destructive

[01:11:03] what's bad about a group like Landmark

[01:11:05] that if you're not experiencing it

[01:11:07] you should know is happening

[01:11:08] even if it's not happening to you

[01:11:10] I've done interventions to get people out of Landmark

[01:11:13] and in fact one of those interventions is in my book

[01:11:17] and it was with a man who was a medical doctor

[01:11:21] who became involved with Landmark

[01:11:23] because his son wanted him to do Landmark with him

[01:11:27] and as a favor to his son

[01:11:29] and because he loved his son

[01:11:31] he did Landmark

[01:11:32] and then he got consumed by it

[01:11:34] that's the key

[01:11:35] I also have a friend who did Landmark

[01:11:38] just did the forum

[01:11:39] and he never did anything else

[01:11:42] and like you said

[01:11:43] he got some good things out of it

[01:11:45] which he used in his life

[01:11:46] and he moved on

[01:11:47] Landmark is not all bad

[01:11:50] no cult is all bad

[01:11:52] there has to be something good

[01:11:55] in order to interest people

[01:11:57] and in order to sustain some level of interest or commitment

[01:12:01] if a group did nothing except be bad

[01:12:04] be punitive, be negative

[01:12:06] nobody would stay and nobody would go

[01:12:09] so you have to have something

[01:12:11] some bright shiny thing

[01:12:13] as a lure to get people in

[01:12:15] having said that

[01:12:16] when you get involved

[01:12:18] if you become what I would call

[01:12:20] a Landmark junkie

[01:12:22] that is a problem

[01:12:23] so you're doing repeats of courses

[01:12:26] you're going for higher and higher levels of the curriculum

[01:12:30] you're involved in Landmark dating

[01:12:32] you're involved in a kind of subculture

[01:12:35] to the exclusion of old friends and family

[01:12:38] you're becoming socially isolated

[01:12:40] that is when it becomes problematic

[01:12:43] when you can't stop talking Landmark ease

[01:12:47] when you're using all that loaded language

[01:12:50] and those thought terminating cliches

[01:12:53] and they're the beginning and the end of

[01:12:54] pretty much every analysis

[01:12:56] that's when you've lost it

[01:12:58] that's when you're lost in the morass of Landmark

[01:13:02] and you've become a junkie

[01:13:04] you're dependent on Landmark

[01:13:06] to basically make value judgments for you

[01:13:10] to think for you

[01:13:11] and that's when it becomes debilitating

[01:13:14] that's when it becomes really negative

[01:13:16] it is possible Sarah just like you said

[01:13:18] to do an initial forum

[01:13:21] get some good things and move on

[01:13:23] but keep in mind that Landmark doesn't want you to do

[01:13:27] they want you to become a Landmark junkie

[01:13:30] because they make more money

[01:13:32] yeah they're either getting you to work for free

[01:13:35] or for very little which improves their bottom line

[01:13:38] or they're just getting you to keep selling out money

[01:13:41] and that's what makes Landmark rich

[01:13:44] that was definitely the first parallel

[01:13:45] I felt for myself as an ex-Nexian member

[01:13:48] talking to ex-Landmark is

[01:13:50] amidst all the good stuff

[01:13:51] is also this feeling of oh shit

[01:13:53] there's something broken in me

[01:13:54] and this is the path to fix it

[01:13:56] so I better stick around

[01:13:57] and that's the part that's not true

[01:13:59] and I would say that you also feel in Landmark

[01:14:02] that you can never be good enough

[01:14:04] that you can never really be fixed

[01:14:07] and I think that's an inherent facet of Landmark

[01:14:12] and other L-gets that want you to feel a need

[01:14:15] to keep coming back to continue the process

[01:14:19] of fixing yourself which is never ending

[01:14:22] because if it ended and they said hey

[01:14:26] you're okay or you're basically in good shape

[01:14:29] and you can get on with your life

[01:14:31] they're out of luck as far as getting you to pay

[01:14:34] for more courses and more training

[01:14:37] so the inherent nature of the beast is

[01:14:41] you're never really fixed

[01:14:43] you're never really good enough

[01:14:45] and there's always something wrong with you

[01:14:47] that needs more tinkering, more fixing

[01:14:51] if you have a therapist that you can never leave

[01:14:56] find another therapist because

[01:14:58] You joined something you can't graduate from

[01:15:01] even higher learning you're going to college

[01:15:04] and they won't let you graduate

[01:15:05] and they won't send you on your way

[01:15:08] they won't give you a diploma

[01:15:09] they say just one more course

[01:15:11] one more semester and it just never ends

[01:15:15] and so that kind of engender dependency

[01:15:18] on the organization to be an answer

[01:15:21] or a cure-all is really something to be aware of

[01:15:25] and something to watch for as a warning sign

[01:15:28] So helpful

[01:15:30] and we hope that the landmark lawyers

[01:15:32] who will undoubtedly listen to this

[01:15:34] will take some pause as people who seek out

[01:15:37] personal responsibility and transformation

[01:15:39] to think maybe we could make things better

[01:15:41] and that's a challenge to you landmark

[01:15:43] I'm talking to lawyers, sir

[01:15:45] I'm talking to lawyers

[01:15:46] okay

[01:15:47] anything we miss that you feel is important to share

[01:15:50] about landmark or nexium

[01:15:51] I know you've got lots to talk about in the cult space

[01:15:53] but with this very specific niche episode

[01:15:56] anything to say to wrap up

[01:15:57] I would say that Werner Erhard is a poster boy

[01:16:03] for why you should not do landmark education

[01:16:07] in my opinion

[01:16:08] and I would say that here's a guy

[01:16:10] who went through some pretty bad divorces

[01:16:13] and he was supposedly a changed guy

[01:16:16] he went through this epiphany

[01:16:19] he had transformation

[01:16:21] but what happened?

[01:16:23] He ended up continuing to make the same mistakes

[01:16:26] another marriage ended in divorce

[01:16:29] his wife alleged that he abused her

[01:16:31] one of his daughters alleged abuse

[01:16:34] a son supposedly was abused

[01:16:38] staff members said that he was very harsh

[01:16:41] and domineering and hurtful

[01:16:44] so what does that mean?

[01:16:46] if landmark education truly is transformational

[01:16:50] why is it that the creator

[01:16:52] the person who should be the icon of that transformation

[01:16:57] the epitome of it

[01:16:59] he was not really transform

[01:17:01] and I have had feedback to this day

[01:17:04] of Werner Erhard being hardly

[01:17:07] the figure of transformation

[01:17:10] but rather still a very harsh authoritarian person

[01:17:15] who abuses and exploits people

[01:17:17] is that evidence that landmark works?

[01:17:21] if it didn't work for Werner Erhard

[01:17:23] what does that mean?

[01:17:25] very good question

[01:17:26] thank you Rick and I apologize for

[01:17:28] thinking you were a bad person for so many years

[01:17:31] I hope that this interview will alleviate

[01:17:33] any bad blood between us

[01:17:35] yeah well listen

[01:17:37] I've had so many people think that I was satan incarnate

[01:17:41] or that all I did every day was wake up

[01:17:44] and focus on the group that they were in

[01:17:46] when in reality

[01:17:48] there are so many groups

[01:17:49] and so many leaders

[01:17:51] and I don't focus just on one

[01:17:54] and I fully get that people

[01:17:57] in a group under undue influence

[01:17:59] will have all kinds of ideas

[01:18:01] that are not theirs

[01:18:02] and one of them might be that I'm just a pig

[01:18:08] you planted some healthy doubts

[01:18:09] and a lot of people and myself included

[01:18:11] so

[01:18:12] exactly and I think it's also important to say that

[01:18:15] you were part of the initial

[01:18:17] exposing and it took a long time

[01:18:19] and while we and the team of Whistleblowers

[01:18:22] get credit for the ultimate downfall

[01:18:24] that was after many many years

[01:18:26] a lot of people

[01:18:27] and I don't think that's said publicly enough

[01:18:29] and I just want to point that out

[01:18:30] that that happened

[01:18:31] and you planted those seeds for us to

[01:18:34] the breadcrumbs to follow to eventually

[01:18:36] find our way out of

[01:18:37] a very dark place

[01:18:38] so thank you for that

[01:18:39] well thank you for pointing that out

[01:18:42] and I'm glad that I could be helpful

[01:18:44] you definitely were

[01:18:45] thank you

[01:18:46] Rick Allen Ross for your time

[01:18:47] and hope to keep chatting as

[01:18:50] as we discover more culty things out there in the world

[01:18:52] thank you Rick

[01:18:53] thank you

[01:18:55] like what you hear do you

[01:18:56] give us a rating review

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[01:19:09] thanks for listening to a little bit culty

[01:19:11] we hope you enjoyed our deep dive

[01:19:12] with the one and only

[01:19:13] Rick Allen Ross

[01:19:15] so wild that he's been on my personal radar

[01:19:17] since 2005 or six

[01:19:19] yeah and actually was one of the

[01:19:21] original reasons I left next to him

[01:19:24] because he participated in the article

[01:19:26] which made me go

[01:19:28] maybe this isn't right

[01:19:29] and then

[01:19:29] they sucked me back in Sarah

[01:19:32] it's so wild how our stories have

[01:19:34] overlapped with his for so long

[01:19:36] and what

[01:19:37] how fun to finally have him on the podcast

[01:19:39] well he was working for us the entire time

[01:19:41] he really was

[01:19:41] right so that's one way to look at it

[01:19:43] so remember to check out his work at the

[01:19:44] cult education institute

[01:19:46] grab a copy of his book

[01:19:47] cults inside out how people get in and

[01:19:49] can get out for some essential insights

[01:19:52] stay vigilant stay informed

[01:19:54] and join us next time

[01:19:55] until then

[01:19:56] stay safe and stay curious

[01:19:58] and maybe don't attend any Elgats

[01:20:00] catch you on the next episode

[01:20:02] bye for now

[01:20:03] bye bye

[01:20:13] if I let go of it all I could leave

[01:20:17] but I know I won't

[01:20:22] thanks for listening everyone

[01:20:23] we're heading over to patreon.com

[01:20:25] slash a little bit culting now

[01:20:27] to discuss this episode

[01:20:29] in the meantime dear listener

[01:20:30] please remember

[01:20:31] this podcast is solely

[01:20:33] for general informational

[01:20:34] educational and entertainment purposes

[01:20:36] it's not intended as a substitute

[01:20:38] for real medical legal or therapeutic advice

[01:20:41] for cult recovery resources

[01:20:43] and to learn more about seeking safely

[01:20:45] in this culty world

[01:20:46] check out a little bit culty

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[01:20:54] A Little Bit Culty is a Trace 120 production

[01:20:56] executive produced by Sarah Edmondson

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