We open with Keith Raniere blathering about what ESP can do for you. Imagine someone who has the traits you wish you had for yourself. Well, with Keith’s magic methodology, you could pretty much become the idealized version of whatever you want to be. Cut to intro.
A gentle sounding song– “Safe with Me” by Soap and Skin– plays as we see lots of clips of shiny happy people doing what shiny happy people do. Laughing, clapping, hugging, dancing etc. as the song plays, “No love can be safe with me. No love can be safe with me.” Well, that sounds ominous.
2017
Ex-Nxivm member Mark Vincente is explaining why he put up cameras in his home. He was afraid he would be attacked by the people of ESP. It was never his intent to destroy the organization, he explains. Rather, he saw what was going on and it fucked with his head. “But I never thought it would lead to this,” he says in voice over as we see a courthouse in Brooklyn, New York and headlines on newspapers talking about sex trafficking and so forth. “Why didn’t these women see that he was harming them?” one headline reads. Cult leader Keith Raniere is in court and is asked if he understands the charges against him and he answers that he does.
Sarah Edmonson
We meet ex-Nxivm member Sarah Edmonson who got introduced to Nxivm when she was about 27 or 28. An actress located in Vancouver, Canada, her career wasn’t going how she had hoped it would and she was feeling a bit lost. She had had visions of becoming successful enough to be able to use her celebrity as a platform to have a positive impact on the world in some way. Instead she was living in a basement apartment and doing beer commercials.
Her boyfriend at the time, a filmmaker, had been invited to The Spiritual Cinema Circle Festival. It was for new-agey spiritual type films and one of the judges was Mark Vicente. Mark, as it turns out, directed a film called “What the Bleep Do We Know?!” a movie that is essentially about quantum mysticism. I have never seen it myself so I offer no opinion about it. I just went to the easiest source, Wikipedia, for a general rundown of what it’s about. The film was wildly successful, becoming the top grossing documentary of all time. Sarah had seen it and loved it so she was really excited to find herself seated across from Mark at dinner that first night.
Sarah gushed about his film and coughed a lot (“like a seal” she said in an interview I heard) because she had a bad cold. Oddly, Mark asked her what she had to lose if she no longer had that bad cough? In that moment, Sarah had the insight that she equated illness with comfort from others. Her bad cold was a means to get attention from her boyfriend. She started to experience an ease in symptoms and within 24 hours felt cured of her cold.
She talked with Mark the next day and he told her about Keith Raniere. How he was the smartest man in the world and ran a self-improvement organization called Nxivm. Mark was super casual about the whole thing, but Sarah was intrigued. She felt frustrated with her career and unsure what steps she needed to take to move forward in her life. Maybe this self-improvement program would be worth checking out. Maybe that’s what her next step should be. She wanted to know more about it.
We cut to footage of Mark Vicente talking to a group of people about ESP and how it helped him overcome a great many difficulties. Mark explains Nxivm was the umbrella company of the ESP program. We cut to video footage of Keith Raniere, who gives us the spiel about ESP being a methodology for human growth and reaching your full potential blah blah blah. A woman in a video explains that ESP stands for Executive Success Program—I don’t care.
The 5-day intro to ESP cost thousands of dollars, but Sarah went ahead and made the leap. Well, more like she was given a hard sell, according to Sarah’s book “Scarred.” There had been another person associated with Nxivm, a woman named Suzanne, attending the festival. As soon as she heard Sarah might be interested in checking out the ESP program she began popping up with uncomfortable frequency. She really put the pressure on Sarah and her boyfriend to fill out the application and pay the deposit of 500$ (each) to attend the intensive. They went ahead and signed up.
As soon as Sarah and her boyfriend were back home, they had second thoughts given the price came to 2500$ (Canadian dollars) each. That was even with the “sign up now!” discount Suzanne had given them. Sarah called Nxivm headquarters to see if she could get her 500$ deposit back. She explained she really couldn’t afford it and she should be at home in case her agent called about a job. The person on the phone didn’t miss a beat, you’re 28 years old and you don’t have the money? Did Sarah want to spend the rest of her life broke and waiting by the phone for her agent to call or did she want to be in control of her own destiny?
I think I would have demanded my money back at that point just because I don’t respond well to such hokey attempts at hard sells, but Sarah caved. In her book, she says she realized in hindsight the high pressure sales tactics were really the first red flag about Nxivm.
Sarah expected a Tony Robbins type set up with a large crowd and plenty of enthusiasm, but instead the intensive was held at a run-down Holiday Inn. The leaders of the group played a video where a woman gave a cheesy introduction, “Hello. I’m Nancy Salzman and welcome to your first “origins” class…” Sarah sat silently judging Nancy’s badly tweezed eyebrows and the 80’s vibe of the video thinking, “This is bullshit.” The attendees were told that they should expect to feel uncomfortable at times, because that is where growth happens: outside the comfort zone. That was something Sarah agreed with, but as the daughter of therapists, she had doubts this group had anything to offer she hadn’t heard before.
Everyone had to learn about the rituals of the organization on day one. How to give a proper handshake according to your rank. What the colored scarves mean that everyone wears. How to bow and say thank you to Keith (“Thank you, Vanguard”) and to Nancy (“Thank you, Prefect”) even though neither of them are in the room. We see footage of a group of people huddled together shouting “We are committed to our success!!”
Sarah thought the whole thing was nuts. She called up Mark Vicente to complain. “What the fuck did you get me into?” Mark hadn’t liked all the rituals from day one either, but everything was explained. Symbols of rank—the handshakes, the scarves, the goofy titles for Keith and Nancy— were important, because they represented accomplishment and contribution. By acknowledging these things, it was a way to reinforce that within ourselves. That’s the gist.
Mark assured Sarah if she stuck it out, day three is when the program gets good. Given the money she had already spent, she figured she might as well. And on day three, Sarah had her first “holy shit” experience.
We see video of Nancy explaining what the ESP definition of self-esteem is. It is the ability to see numerous possibilities in any given situation. People suffer from all kinds of self-limiting beliefs and behavior patterns, “disintegrations” as ESP calls them, and that prevents them from reaching their full potential.
Sarah unlocked many self-limiting beliefs on day three. She felt like with the tools this program was teaching it would be possible to basically write her own character and become the kind of person she had always hoped to be.
Let’s get real. Haven’t we all wished for the ability to change things we don’t like about ourselves at some point in our lives? Here’s my list of all the bullshit I think, feel and do that gets in my way. Then you hand me some simple enough process you say can fix that. If a person had some kind of breakthrough that felt profound during the 5-day intro, I can see why they’d be curious enough to continue on with what came next.
In the video Nancy explains once a person gets rid of all their self-limiting beliefs using the ESP methodology, they will become “integrated.” Sarah was hooked.
Mark Vicente
Mark got hooked into the program through Nancy Salzman, too. The success of his documentary “What the Bleep Do We know!?” had opened up a lot of doors for him in Hollywood. He had the cachet to pretty much work with anyone he wanted.
One day he received an email from a woman named Barbra Bouchey. She wanted to speak with him about an organization that was run by a man named Keith Raniere. Mark was curious so he called and spoke to both Barbra and Nancy Salzman. They gave him the basic rundown about their company and asked if they could come to LA and meet with him. Mark agreed and they arrived by private learjet, which impressed him. Their company must be doing pretty well.
The women told Mark they had loved his movie and asked him what his future plans were? Make movies and change the world, he said. Well, their organization could help him do that. They had the resources, the connections and the money. “They had like, billionaires in their group,” Mark tells us. They asked him to come to their headquarters in New York to take the ESP 5-day intro so he could check out what they do. Mark agreed.
Mark describes Nancy as sharp, energetic and warm. Everyone he met was kind and supportive. The vibe was almost idyllic. It made him suspicious. Maybe it’s you and you’re just looking for a problem? Nancy said.
We see some video from the 5-day intro where Nancy explains “Rational Inquiry,” a process for something something created by Keith Raniere. She explains that we all have perceptions that we formed when we were young. Perceptions inform behavior so, as she puts it, “on some levels, six, seven and eight year olds are running the world.”
That just sounds so cheesy. Sarah wasn’t exaggerating when she said the videos have an 80’s vibe. Times ten. Nancy is incredibly off-putting. The way she talks, like she is speaking to a bunch of drooling idiots who eat crayons. The over-emphasizing every other word, and her facial expressions. And yeah, those eyebrows. Have mercy.
Now, if she spoke like she was talking to adults, not toddlers in diapers, and she had said, “on some level, our childhood selves formed perceptions that influence our present day choices” I’d think, well, yeah. I could see how that could create unnecessary problems as an adult. But honestly, I don’t think I would have wanted to continue on. It would be too hard to take seriously.
Mark explains a process called “Exploration of Meaning,” or EM for short. It’s the method Keith designed to rid people of their fears. A big step in becoming the highest version of yourself.
Mark volunteered to do a demo. That is, he did an EM with Nancy in front of the group of other attendees. He told Nancy he had intense anxiety every time he had to go on the LA freeway. From what I have heard, so does every Los Angeleno, but I digress. Nancy explained to him at some point during the EM session he would disconnect from his surroundings. Indeed, that is what happened. Mark seemed to go into a hypnotic state. When he came out of it, he didn’t really remember what had just happened. But sure enough, next time Mark was on the freeway he felt no anxiety at all. It’s gone for good, Nancy tells him when they meet again.
These breakthroughs make you feel high.
Mark was sold on Nxivm, Nancy and ESP. Mark called the breakthroughs “peak experiences” and they made you feel high. Sarah said the same, calling it like a “secret potion of understanding.” Both Sarah and Mark enjoyed not just experiencing breakthroughs themselves, but watching other people have them, too. Sarah describes it as so much faster than therapy. Mark wondered if Keith had discovered some map of understanding where people could finally fully understand themselves in explainable ways. People would no longer be a mystery to themselves.
We see footage of Keith explaining his technology was not grounded in mysticism, but was simply a unique set of tools.
Mark was now very eager to hear about Keith. Nancy told him Keith was in the Book of World Records for the highest IQ in the world. That he spoke five different languages before he could even read. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute when he was sixteen and earned a triple major. He created a new system of math. He became a concert level pianist as a child and a black belt in Judo by the time he was eleven. He changed his own diapers as a baby and read Dostoevsky while was he was potty-training himself as a two year old. He could fly. You know, totally believable stuff that, for whatever reason, did not make Mark skeptical at all. But ultimately, Nancy told him, Keith was a scientist whose science was about helping people. Mark couldn’t wait to meet him.
This is the guy?
Mark was surprised. This is the guy? This is the dude? Keith was short with a bouncy walk and odd. But Mark reasoned you never know where wisdom comes from. They ended up chatting for five hours discussing all sorts of science-y stuff like quantum physics and dark matter. Keith mentioned that he developed a new system of math and other accomplishments, but the way he talked about it all was casual, not boastful.
Keith asked Mark about himself. Mark grew up in apartheid South Africa and witnessed a lot of horrible things. As a result, he felt a strong desire to be a force for good in the world in some way. He got into movie making after seeing “Star Wars” as a kid. Maybe he could use the medium of film to achieve that.
Keith told Mark that what he saw in him was a deep sense of responsibility to humanity. He wonders if the reason why Mark wasn’t “hit[ting] hard” with his work was fear of causing harm.
In the audio we can hear that Mark has begun to cry. Obviously Keith has pushed a button. Like a therapist, in a soft gentle voice, Keith asks, “Why is that emotional for you?” Mark admits he is afraid of causing harm. He judges himself harshly about pain he has caused people in the past. Keith is like, yeah, we all have hurt people at some point. In that soft voice with the casual tone, he assures Mark they can bring about positive changes in the world. I’m a good person, you’re a good person. It’s all good. “At that point he had me,” Mark tells us.
The Stripe Path
The Stripe Path is the ranking system within the company. A white sash represents a new-comer and means “student.” Keith wears a white sash always because he is a “student of life.” Kill me. Each color requires earning a certain number of stripes before advancing to the next color. You do so by getting people to enroll and take courses (spend their money on Nxivm), taking courses yourself (spend your money on Nxivm) and getting rid of your disintegrations (more money, more money, more money for Nxivm.) Some courses cost as much as 20,000$ to enroll. I take it nobody thought to ask Keith if he wanted to help people so much why he didn’t make the courses more affordable?
It’s marketing. That’s why. Plenty of us tend to value things that cost more money. Or at least want to feel like the money we have spent was worth it. Confirmation bias. I watched myself go through this whole thing with a facial cream I bought once that was insanely expensive. At first I thought it was amazing stuff. My skin glows! Eventually I was able to get real with myself. It was too expensive not to. Haha. Luxury skincare is such a racket but it does feel like you’re pampering yourself even when you know better. The price tag is part of that.
Back to the show. Sarah and Mark were all in now. To Sarah the sashes came to mean her own growth and progress as a person. She loved sharing ESP with people. She found it rewarding. Mark felt a deep sense of privilege to be part of a group of people that helped other people.
Bonnie Piesse
Mark met Australian actress and singer Bonnie Piesse through friends. She was a fan of his What the Bleep documentary, he was a fan of the Star Wars movies she had been in and they fell for each other fast. Bonnie was very frustrated in her career at the time as she was having a lot of trouble with her record company. She wanted to give up music and she was dealing with a lot of fear and anxiety. Mark asked her to take the ESP 5-day intensive and then decide if quitting music was the way to go.
In 2010, Bonnie took the intensive. She found the probing questions spot on and helpful. Like Mark and Sarah, she was hooked right away by the EM tech (as they call it). Bonnie wanted to become a coach so she too could share “the tech” with other people. She moved to New York to learn the methodology. New York, I will add, was where Keith lived and where Nxivm headquarters was located. Albany, New York to be specific. She got on the Stripe Path and loved working with other people. She found the vibes really good, especially compared to the music industry.
Curing Tourette’s
Mark Elliot was a young man with a severe case of Tourette’s. We see footage of Mark really struggling with his tics. After working with Keith and Nancy he was cured of the problem. For real. They also helped a young woman named Isabella. The whole process was filmed and a documentary, called “My Tourette’s,” was released in 2018. That was after the fall of the cult, so the doc died on the vine. Nobody was interested in talking up a film involving a cult leader helping people I am assuming, but I admit I wouldn’t mind seeing it because I am curious.
The people of Nxivm really hoped that by curing some people of Tourette’s it would give Keith validity in the scientific community. Footage is shown of Keith humbly explaining curing Tourette’s seems like a miracle, but the tech was just a tool. “When the conventional way doesn’t work maybe the unconventional way of thinking does,” he says. Sarah calls it a heightened version of what they all do in ESP.
Famous people! Kinda.
Some famous people started coming in for intensives because Sarah and Mark reached out to people they knew in the acting community. People like Kristin Kreuk, Grace Park, Nicki Clyne and Allison Mack. Mack was on the TV show Smallville and is, I think, the most famous of the lot that came in. Or maybe Kristin was, but she bailed on the program a couple of years after she joined and no one knows why. She refuses to discuss it beyond a few neutral statements. She must be so fucking relieved she got out before the shit hit the fan. Grace Park got out before the fallout, too. I don’t think she has said anything about it at all. Smart. Sidestep all that controversy. Nicki Clyne is still in and is as brain washed as a Manson chick. Allison Mack is staring down a possible 40 years in the clink and well… that’s all coming up a bit later.
Then there were the Bronfman sisters. The heirs to the multi-billion dollar Seagram’s fortune. They joined in the early 2000’s and basically bankrolled the whole organization. They spent hundreds of millions on Keith. More on that later, too. But Clare Bronfman is still a Keith loyalist and received an 8 year sentence back in October for whatever crime she committed. I can’t recall what it was.
Allison Mack
We see footage of Allison Mack talking to a small group of people and telling them about her life pre-Nxivm. Superficially her life looked perfect, she says, but she was in search of meaning. Like many actors, she gives off that desperate-to-be-liked vibe. I’m not judging. I’m just saying.
It was Sarah who introduced Allison to ESP. She was considered a VIP so there were no cheesy videos in her 5-day intro. Nancy Salzman and her daughter Lauren were there in the flesh to lead the intensive. She was so immediately hooked, she flew to New York to meet Keith the very next day. She was a real get, I would think. Like Scientology, Nxivm understood the power of celebrity.
Expansion
As the years went by, more sub-groups, or companies as Keith liked to call them, sprouted under the Nxivm umbrella. Different things for different people’s needs as Mark explains it. Jness, a woman’s empowerment group. SOP, a men’s empowerment group. Exo/eso, a fitness group and The Source, a group to improve public speaking and performance, lead by Allison Mack. More ESP centers were opened all across America, Mexico and other countries.
For Mark there was a lot going on in the 12 years he was in Nxivm. He and Bonnie decided to get married and Keith wrote their vows. It was all Nxivm people at their wedding except Bonnie’s mom. They were too busy with their various jobs within the company to go on a honeymoon.
We cut to Mark present day who chokes up saying he feels his life with Bonnie was stolen and he wants to get it back. “Bonnie got there first [wanting to leave]. It took me longer,” Mark says. We end the episode hearing a recorded phone call between Mark and Bonnie. That everything was recorded and/or filmed is explained later. But mainly it was because Keith thought every utterance that came out of his mouth should be recorded for posterity. Because Mark talked to Keith a lot, Keith asked him to record their phone calls which became a habit for Mark. Later, he did it for security reasons as he explained at the opening of the episode.
We hear Bonnie tell Mark her gut is talking to her and she thinks there are some things within Nxivm that just aren’t right. Mark sounds like he can’t believe what he is hearing when he replies, “Come on, come on, come on…” “Some things are going to crumble,” Bonnie says. End
Outro music is “Dreaming” by Dustbowl Revival.
Next week: Episode 2 “Viscera” It’s been seven years in Nxivm and Bonnie wants out.
Recapulet 
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