Confronting The Line

Cara spent more than 30 hours in mediation with leaders of the International School of Temple Arts, trying to help the neo-tantra organization face the harm survivors had reported. The result was a joint statement, and then, she says, the organization cut her group off and kept using that statement as proof it had changed. CONTENT WARNING : This episode contains open discussion of sexual assault a...

A popular self-help model says integrity is keeping your word, and has nothing to do with being a good person. In this short preview, Chris Shelton explains what that means when the model ends up in the hands of people who intend harm: it isn’t a corruption of the tool, it’s the same tool. And it’s how people stay for years in environments that hurt them, believing they’re surrounded by good peopl...

Michael Jensen’s 2009 paper, “Integrity: Without It Nothing Works,” claims that integrity creates “workability,” and workability creates performance. In this short preview, Chris Shelton asks Anne Peterson to prove it. She tries with two examples, a bicycle that won’t work and a stool missing a leg, and Chris answers with one question: what is a human being designed to do? This is a preview of Par...

A popular self-help definition of integrity says it's simply keeping your word, with nothing to do with good versus bad. So Chris Shelton asked the follow-up: by that definition, can a serial killer be a person of integrity? After nearly 30 years teaching this model, Anne Peterson had to answer yes. This is Part 1 of a series where Anne and Chris take apart core ideas taught across Landmark Wo...

Susan Pease Banitt has spent nearly fifty years as a trauma therapist, including decades working with survivors of mind control and trafficking. In this conversation, she turns that clinical eye on the self-help world: where it helps, where it crosses the line, and how to tell the difference. Susan is a licensed clinical social worker trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy in the Harvard teaching...

This episode is a sample from Beyond the Line, the companion space to Confronting the Line. Over the next few months, Beyond the Line is running a series on the clichés that show up all over self-help and personal development: phrases many of us heard so often we stopped asking what they meant. We're looking at where they came from, when they can be useful, and when they cause harm. We're...

AUDIO FIXED - PART 2 OF 2: In Part 1, Garry Norman was told to erase what he filmed. In Part 2, he and Anne Peterson ask how a culture teaches good people to look away. CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses psychological and verbal abuse in a workplace and coaching setting, including how a "training exercise" involving simulated strangulation is understood through the lens of domestic...

CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses psychological and verbal abuse in a workplace and coaching setting, including a training exercise involving simulated strangulation, and references to historical assault allegations. If this is difficult territory for you, please take care as you listen, with support, in pieces, or another time. In the US, RAINN offers confidential support at rainn.org or 1-...

For seventeen years, Jen Coken was a Landmark seminar leader, coaching people thirty hours a week for free, leading sessions with a 103-degree fever, and calling it integrity. It took her more than a decade after leaving Landmark Worldwide (formerly Landmark Education) to say the word out loud, on this episode with Anne Peterson, for the first time in public: cult. CONTENT WARNING: This episode in...

For thirty years, Vera Sheranova has stood inside the rooms where "transformation" gets sold. First as a language teacher, then as the person doing live, unrehearsed simultaneous interpretation of a high-stakes leadership course into Russian, with no script and no warning of what the instructors would say next, and for years, as the romantic and business partner of the man running it. Ve...

A cult researcher spent 11 years inside a Buddhist community, rising to her teacher's inner circle, before a spiritual crisis broke it open. CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains open discussion of spiritual abuse, coercive control and psychological manipulation within a high-control spiritual community. If you are a survivor of spiritual or religious abuse, please take care of yourself as yo...

Anne Peterson and Chris Shelton — author of What Now: A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult — are teaming up for a 21-week workshop designed for anyone who has ever found themselves in a group, relationship, or environment that left them confused, smaller, or asking what just happened to me? We know how to lock our doors. We were taught to park under the lights and have our keys ready. But nobody...

She thought she had left. She had walked away from the church, built a career, created a new life. Then a panic attack in a Costco in the early days of the pandemic stopped her cold — and told her the truth. She had left the building. But the building had never left her. Susan Stirling is the author of Velcro Kisses: Prophecy, Trauma Bonds, and Reclaiming the Narrative. Her memoir traces a journey...

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains open discussion of psychological harm, coercive control, and alleged physical abuse in an employment context. If you are a survivor of a high-control group or workplace abuse, please read on carefully and take care of yourself as you listen. That might mean listening with someone you trust, taking breaks when you need to, or choosing to read these notes first...

Children of the Forum is a special series on Confronting the Line, hosted by Lindsey Hartzel, exploring the lasting impact of Large Group Awareness Trainings on young people and those shaped by high-control environments before they had the language to name what was happening to them. This is episode three — and the series continues for as long as there are stories worth telling. Ann Betz came to e...

Cara Cordone thought she'd found her people. Then she tried to fix what was broken — and discovered the damage was by design. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Anne sits down with Cara Cordone — coach, advocate, and host of Fool's Gold: Discernment in the Age of Grift — to trace how a search for healing and connection led Cara deep inside ISTA (the International School of Temple Art...

What happens when the very tools meant to help us grow are turned against us? In this episode, host Anne sits down with Kellie Rhea — an Australian entrepreneur, former animal behaviorist, and horsemanship expert — who spent nearly two decades inside a personal development organization that slowly crossed the line from helpful to harmful. Kellie's story is remarkable: a self-made woman who bui...

If you've ever thought "I would never fall for that" — this conversation is for you. Anne sits down with author and researcher Jon Caven-Atack ( If Scientology Ruled the World , Opening Our Minds ) for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about how smart, well-meaning people end up in high-control groups — and why believing you're immune is actually your biggest vulnerability. Jon...

Brandon began Landmark programs at just 13 years old and quickly became a success story within the organization. But the deeper he went, the more he began to see things that didn’t line up with the promises of personal and global transformation. And when he started asking questions and raising concerns, Brandon says the response wasn’t reflection or change - it was gaslighting. He was told the pro...

What Makes Coaching Truly Safe — and When It Crosses the Line Not all coaching is created equal — and knowing the difference could protect you from real harm. In this episode, Anne sits down with Ann Betz, CPCC, PCC, MNTC — neuroscience researcher, master coach trainer, and co-founder of BEabove Leadership — to pull back the curtain on the world of personal coaching. They explore where coaching ge...

In this episode of Confronting the Line , Anne Peterson and Dr. Ed Gurowitz examine how prestige, proximity, and institutional affiliation can shield harmful behavior. Using the case of Jeffrey Epstein as a reference point, this conversation explores how charismatic figures embed themselves within elite networks, borrow credibility through association, and leverage social proof to build trust. Thi...

As part of Confronting the Line’s ongoing examination of how high-control personal development spaces impact real lives, this special series turns our focus to those who entered Landmark and similar LGAT environments as children—before they were old enough to consent, question, or fully understand the systems shaping them. In this episode, Marlo shares what it was like growing up with a single mot...

What happens when transformational programs reach people before they’re old enough to consent ? In this episode Anne formally introduces Lindsey Hartzel , who will be hosting a special series examining the impact of LGATs on children and teens. Lindsey shares her own story of growing up inside Landmark Worldwide , and why she believes early exposure to adult-oriented transformational spaces deserv...

What happens after someone speaks out—and an institution responds? In this follow-up episode of Confronting the Line, we examine how organizations act when concerns are raised without acknowledging harm. After Ben Eisenberg shared his experience of growing up inside Landmark Worldwide, Landmark’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Harry Rosenberg, responded directly. Shortly afterward, the organiz...

In this episode of Confronting the Line, Anne Peterson is joined by her friend and colleague Chris Shelton—former Scientologist and long-time advocate for people recovering from high-control groups. Together, they unpack a recent online incident involving a Landmark supporter posting what appeared to be insider gossip, disinformation, and misinformation in response to Anne’s work and public commen...