The Beige Room Mini-Series From The 11th - Review and Discussion
Is the beige room nowhere, or everywhere?
Last October 11th, I happened to be driving somewhere across town caught in traffic, when I heard the hot-off-the-press episode from the 11th, that monthly unicorn, a narrative podcast series, from Pineapple Street Studios.
The title caught me off guard: Before We Go. Go where? I wondered optimistically. Maybe they were heading off for an ambitious investigative series somewhere far away…
As I inched through traffic, stopping to pick up food for a fundraising dinner I was volunteering with that evening, I actually gasped when I realized that the producers had meant by “Go.” They meant gone, as in, no more. Caput.
Before We Go was the story of the show being cancelled (although no actual reasons were given). It was left to the audience to infer their own meaning.
Learning that the 11th was cancelled, by listening to an episode through my car speaker in traffic, felt like finding out that someone you know had suddenly died, by voicemail.
It was the second podcast funeral I had listened to in recent months. The last Reply All episode got me too (sure, I saw this ending coming, but I enjoyed this poetic lament from Emmanuel Dzotsi as he chased one of his running shadows in Prospect Park to ask his awkward question).
What stuck with me about that episode was the out-loud musing of where all these producers were going to go and work next. It was sort of a cut between an employee recruiting promo reel, and a wake, at the same time.
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What is happening to this industry?
I started to wonder…is this the recession talking, an industry awakening, an industry reckoning? Or worse, is it proof that audiences are more drawn to all the latest celeb pods, and not to quality, in-depth and engaging audio storytelling? Or is it more like further proof that advertising dollars for these sorts of stories were drying up, and moving on?
The disappearance of the 11th reminded me of a stand-out series that I had listened to months before. The Beige Room was originally published in November of 2021, by collaborators Kelly Loundenberg and Samantha Culp. Going back to listen to it again was a bruise on my elbow, about the amount of space that is now lost to narrative podcasts, now that the 11th shut their doors.
The Beige Room follows the life and controversy of Werner Erhard, and his program Landmark, formerly EST
Erhard is what some call a dangerous conman, others call a guru, and then scores of other people, including some Hollywood glitterati from the 1980s, called “a very important friend,” once responsible for helping them change their lives in deep and profound ways…so much so that they thanked him from the stage of the Golden Globes.
I was drawn to this podcast perhaps because it falls into a now well-worn sub-genre of podcasts that I call Cult-Or-Not? This sub-genre goes alongside true crime, girlfriends, debunking science, new history reveals, who’s-your-daddy, and many other emergent sub-genres.
To prove the point that I’ve been drawn to cult-or-not podcasts over the years, I drew a line through some of the other cult-or-not series that I’ve listened to over the years:
Dear Franklin Jones (which is on my playlist of foundational narrative podcasts)
The #MeToo story about Bikram on 30 for 30 (truly loved this show and it kind of rocked my yoga-loving world as I planted my garden back in 2018)
Guru: The Dark Side of Englightening (A Wondery series, which is code for heavy-handed narration I don’t love)
Escaping XXIVM (woosh, that all hit a bit close to home and feels like it could have happened to about 10 people I’ve known in the past).
The fact that I can actually recall this many of them, while my brain nags away at least two others that I’m forgetting the name of, makes my point. They are a sub-thing inside the thing of narrative podcasts. And, apparently, I like to listen to them.
From the world of documentary
In the first episode, host Kelly Loundenberg reconnects with an old boyfriend who had participated in Landmark when they were in their 20s living in New York. Kelly then speaks about how she’s been making films about, as she calls them, “the grey areas of human nature,” like different subcultures, issues of injustice, and different forms of psychological coercion.
This detail, that Kelly came from the documentary film world, made sense to me. I recognize this space from my decade of work in that arena and could hear some of the trademark signs of a documentary filmmaker in her voice. She’s cooly detached from the subject, but still factual. Her approach to the story is curious, not whimsical.
The reporting is done with meticulous details and multiple voices to report on the different angles and facts of the story. It’s flawless. But her narration lacks a bit of a spark, or perhaps a connection, with the audience.
I see how this happens…a documentary producer is supposed to be a bit aloof and disconnected from the subject matter. It’s a documentary training to be separate, or at least keep some distance, between the film and its subjects, whether it’s a personal connection, or not.
But I would argue that podcasting has successfully blurred that line. The subject and the material seem to be allowed to exist a bit closer together. And in that way, or perhaps because of it, the podcast narrator is able to connect on a more intimate level with their audience. Some of this has to do with the fact that podcasts are generally listened to with earphones, during quiet moments in the listener’s life.
In that way, I feel that The Beige Room is a good study of what these two cultures do, and how they can work together…but also what they have to teach each other.
The iron-tight journalism of this series sets a good height on the bar for the level of journalism that should be in a podcast, especially when there are (these) many layers of legal involved.
But herald this, documentarians
Those of ya’ll who have an interest in telling your story inside a narrative podcasting format…what I want to say to you is this: Find a way to connect with your audience at that personal level.
Picture them huffing for air at the end of a sprint while you’re running with them…picture the frustration on his face as he folds and matches yet another pile of mismatched socks. These are the moments you’re joining in. They are up close and intimate. That’s the level to speak to your audience if you want to reach into their ears and grab their brains.
I was curious about this connection to the documentary world, and so I posed these questions to Kelly Loundenberg and her collaborator, Samantha Culp, in an email interview.
Samantha Hodder: The Beige Room opens on a very personal note…you connecting with your old boyfriend from back in the day, because he had a connection to Landmark. And then the series turns very journalistic, as you dive into Werner Erhard and his history. Did you consciously change gears, or was that a natural progression?
Kelly Loundenberg: My relationship with my ex-boyfriend Peter was what inspired me to look into the Landmark Forum. It had been nagging at me over the years when I told my collaborator Samantha that I was curious to read more about it. Then it sort of took off from there.
Samantha Culp: I had always been curious about this cultural phenomenon that many people I knew also had experienced, or friends of theirs had, but I didn’t know any the historical background until we started this research. In some ways, the structure of the narrative of the show runs parallel to that - how many people have heard of this type of group or process but don’t know the broader context, so it’s designed to open up from the personal to a much wider historical and cultural tableau.
Samantha Hodder: Could this have been a documentary film, as an alternative presentation format? Why or why not?
Kelly: I originally considered this as a documentary, but with sensitivity around certain interviews, we decided this was better as a podcast. Plus, we had amazing audiotapes and not as much visual archival available to us.
Samantha Culp: We also felt that audio as a medium can be so intimate, and could help make the psychological and philosophical themes more immediate for the listener.
Samantha Hodder: You’ve worked and published in many aspects of the documentary world (film, tv, Netflix, and now podcast). How does the podcast industry compare to the others…in terms of work culture, independence of thought, ability to get stuff done, and the speed of the path to publishing?
K&S: We found this medium to be incredibly open to new ideas and critical histories that mainstream documentary and TV typically don't allow for anymore. It let us explore themes and concepts fully and also flesh them out in a way that didn’t dumb them down. While reporting and research still takes just as long, certain stages of the project are able to move much faster,
Personal Jesus?
Maybe I keep listening to the podcast Cult-Or-Not? series to try and get a handle on where the limit really does exist with self-improvement. It’s part of the human condition to want to improve yourself, to want to do better, overcome difficult events, and move past trauma.
Lots of people turn to religion to expedite those teachings, or to feel supported while they go through that tricky process of unravelling and rebuilding. I’m not a religious person, so maybe like other people, I’m curious about what other paths there are to redemption and relief from suffering.
Kelly voices a similar thought in the series:
Growing up, I constantly saw family members who were having trouble in their life: Financial, emotional, medical…get seduced by the shiny snake oil of a self-help book, supplements, audio tape set, or MLM network. They’d latch on to it, like a life raft. But instead of helping them, they just sank further into chaos.
This instilled a bit of suspicion in me, about all kinds of One Size Fits All groups, and businesses, I kept think about Erhard’s philosophy, about accepting your own circumstances…taking responsibility…
But then I started to think about the flip side of it.
It feels like a slippery slope. It’s only a short walk from: It’s your responsibility, to, It’s your fault.
And then, that deadends into: Don’t even bother changing the system. Work on yourself.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought that I was seeing that philosophy everywhere around me.
We live in the Internet age where self-help and self-improvement are so pervasive around us that it’s hard not to feel blurry about where the line is between self-help and cult groups. All that Bro Marketing, various people, ahem Influencers, selling you their version of themselves, has created massive silos that foster various Cults of Personality online. This has led to some dark and challenging cultural events over these last few pandemic-struck years.
The question that lingers around the series, that keeps popping up like a Whack-a-Mole after you think you’ve figured out the answer, is this:
Is Landmark a cult….and ergo, is Werner Erhard the cult leader?
In the series, Kelly states her opinion: No, despite it all, despite her feeling like Landmark crosses the line in many ways, on balance, she actually doesn’t think that Landmark is a cult.
Does she still think that? And what about the future of Landmark, now that Erhard is 87-years-old? But there’s no answer to these questions.
This brought me back to my documentary days, and the challenge of getting through the legal department when anything controversial needs to be discussed, let alone answered. The legal tentacles of wealthy and connected groups, like Landmark, make it very difficult for any journalist or documentarian to poke around too far down these rabbit holes.
But if you listen closely to the credits at the end of each of the three episodes, you’ll hear more than one legal department mentioned. Like in so many documentary film projects, the lawyers play the role of the chorus.
The 1980s saw Werner Erhard grow in both fame and finance
And then, everything changed after 60 Minutes aired a portrait of Erhard, which included damning testimony from one of his daughters. In 1991, Erhard sold his company to several employees, who promptly changed its name to Landmark, and then he decamped to Russia.
Larry King, the exuberant TV personality who hosted a live show on CNN for almost three decades, either knowingly or unknowingly, resuscitated Erhard’s career when he appeared on his show on December 8, 1993. Erhard appeared via satellite from Moscow where he had been in self-exile for two years.
By this point, it was either convenient or obvious to pin his downfall on Scientology. According to Erhard, his whole demise was master-minded by Scientology, whom he presumed felt threatened because he was edging in on their potential congregation. Scientology even brandished him as a “Suppressive Person.”
Had Erhard borrowed too heavily from Scientology? They call it “Going Clear;” Erhard promises in his seminars, a radical personal transformation.
Some say that what takes years of therapy, this program can do in a weekend.
It’s hard to draw straight lines anywhere in this domain, but nothing here shies away from promising the moon.
It’s all everywhere, all the time
This idea of recognizing your own limitations, and that you can change your own life is another version of the American Dream, where anyone can be anything. It’s an elusive trap that many people fall into because…why not? It’s often better than our current realities.
It’s another chapter in the fantastical notion that Corporate America pretends everyone is equal. If you just work hard enough, you can achieve anything. It’s a nice idea…but it smacks of privilege.
In our globalized, Internet-connected capitalist world, there are tons of examples given to us every day of what success and happiness look like. Resisting that has become a cult of its own.
Now that Erhard is just three years away from his 90th year, it’s an interesting time to look back on his life and career. For a man who has shared a stage with the Dalai Lama, Buckminster Fuller, lectured at multiple Ivy League institutions and been published in an academic tome alongside Martin Heidigger, maybe his place in history is (actually) rather solid.
It does seem a bit odd, and a bit out-sized, for a man like him to have to resort to sicking legal attack dogs on small production companies, or hiring a journalist to write a fake story about him…but maybe I’m naive to the travails of people of his cultural standing.
When Erhard returned from Russia, he turned his attention to where the real power was being brokered in America—the boardroom. Corporations like Reebok, Microsoft, NASA and Lululemon all embraced Landmark programs. Lululemon literally stitched those types of self-actualization messages into the seams of their clothing.
Lululemon also offers a Landmark session to their employees in this way: Take a weekend Landmark seminar, for free, including travel and accommodation, and no time off. All you had to do was get through the weekend in one piece.
I’m with Kelly on this one, in her conclusion, that “the beige room is everywhere,” so we can stop looking for it. Embracing that concept helps me to understand why the personal growth movement has been so fervently, and effectively, embraced by Corporate America.
It’s just such a good way to turn a profit because the well never runs dry.
Some notes about how I reference podcasts…All of the hyperlinks in this artilce point to Apple Podcasts.
But since Spotify has that handy playlist feature, I decided to pull together my references together here 👇👇