Evolution from EST to The Forum

In Part 1 of this conversation, former Landmark Forum staffer Anne Peterson returns to update us about life post-Is This a Cult? book launch. She takes us back inside the transformational training machine built on Werner Erhard’s EST curriculum, and how something sold as breakthrough personal growth slowly revealed classic high‑control dynamics. Going from enthusiastic participant to full‑time staff, Anne breaks down the structure of Landmark forums, leadership programs, and “enrollment” culture, and what it actually felt like to live inside a world of long days, unpaid labor framed as service, and constant pressure to bring in new people.

She also unpacks the language games, thought‑stopping clichés, and emotional high/low cycles that made it so hard to question Landmark Education or Erhard’s legacy, and shares how she eventually stepped away, began naming her experience as loaded with undue influence, and started rebuilding a life, career, and sense of self outside the Landmark universe.

Be sure to pick up Anne’s memoir, Is This a Cult?, follow her on Facebook or Instagram, and follow iLumn8.Life on Facebook and Instagram.

Trigger warning: This episode contains frank discussion of parental and physical abuse and trauma.

Also…let it be known that:

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

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