How to reclaim your narrative (w/ Monica Lewinsky)

Monica Lewinsky is an anti-bullying activist and host of Reclaiming with Monica, a podcast that shines her guests’ unguarded conversations about how they make sense of the world. In this episode filmed in front of a live audience at TED 2026, Chris interviews Monica on how she finds healing throughout the years. They discuss the role of public shaming in an online world, the differences between cancel culture and accountability culture, and how to have more empathy after surviving trauma. Featured guest Follow Monica Lewinsky on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/monica_lewinsky/ and X https://x.com/MonicaLewinskySubscribe to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@ReclaimingMonicaLewinsky?app=desktop&ra=m&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAcGRvZgJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA85MzY2MTk3NDMzOTI0NTkAAaccCY7xb_wBYgowwo86ADt5kQsZH_JqI32lJv7GDhV1I1bDVJwnPhKUXR0bxg_aem_DhZZ8efAWjssngsYrYvzhw, TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@reclaimingwithmonica, and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reclaimingwithmonica Connect with the team Follow Chris on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en and at chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/Buy Chris’ book, Humor Me https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcL Watch How to Be a Better Human videos on YouTube at TEDPods https://www.youtube.com/@TEDPodsFollow TED on X https://x.com/TEDTalks, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ted, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TED, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences/, and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoksVote for our show in the Signal Awards for Best Advice & How To https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/advice-how-to podcast! For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6 https://bit.ly/BHSurvey6 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  makes the show. Thanks for listening and thanks for taking a few seconds to do the listener survey. Now, onto the episode.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today's episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the 2026 TED Conference in Vancouver, Canada. And today's guest is Monica Lewinsky. Monica is someone who other people have tons of instant, preconceived ideas and opinions about. She has been the butt of jokes and song lyrics and tabloid news stories for years because of a sexual encounter she had when she was 22 years old with then-President Bill Clinton that became highly public. But I was really interested in talking to Monica because in recent years, she has been hosting a podcast called Reclaiming. It's a show where Monica and her guests talk very openly and candidly about the ways that they have been perceived and how they are trying to rewrite their

• 1:39Speaker 00

  own narratives, and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. The show is an invitation to listeners to, and I'm quoting here, "find their own connection to the stories of how we get back what was once lost or taken from us." Now Monica's story is obviously an extreme case. It was incredibly public and dramatic. Very few people are going to experience having their most embarrassing mistakes from their 20s broadcast on the nightly news every single night for months. However, I think that all of us these days have to navigate a gap between our private, personal selves and the version of us that we put out into the world publicly, whether that's on social media or on a broader screen. Everyone is at some point going to have to figure out how to handle an embarrassment, a mistake, a humiliation.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  All of us are going to have times where we have to decide whether we judge or shame or exclude someone else, or whether we offer them some grace, a possibility at redemption and reconciliation. And I think there's an incredible amount that all of us can learn from Monica's reflections on her experience about reclaiming your narrative, about power dynamics, about mistakes, about bullying and cruelty, and about empathy and redemption. So to get us started, here is a clip from Monica's 2015 TED Talk, which was called "The Price of Shame."

• 2:56Speaker 01

  When this story broke in January 1998, it broke online. It was the first time the traditional news was usurped by the internet for a major news story, a clique that reverberated around the world. What that meant for me personally was that overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one worldwide. I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  This rush to judgment enabled by technology led to mobs of virtual stone throwers. Granted, it was before social media, but people could still comment online, email stories, and of course, email cruel jokes. News sources plastered photos of me all over to sell newspapers, banner ads online, and to keep people tuned to the TV. Do you recall a particular image of me, say, wearing a beret? Now, I admit I made mistakes, especially wearing that beret.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  But the attention and judgment that I received, not the story, but that I personally received, was unprecedented. I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and of course, that woman. I was seen by many, but actually known by few. And I get it. It was easy to forget that that woman was dimensional, had a soul, and was once unbroken.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  We are going to be back with this special live conversation with Monica Lewinsky in just a moment.

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• 6:39Speaker 00

  And we are back. This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience in Vancouver, Canada, at TED 2026. Monica, I'm so excited to get to talk to you.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yes, Chris. Hi, everybody.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  So the first question that I have for you is, we were talking with the, one of the producers of this show, and she told someone who was 18 that we're doing this episode, and they said, "Who is Monica Lewinsky?"

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Ah, I love it.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  And I actually thought that might be an interesting way to start, which is, how do you answer that question? Who is Monica Lewinsky?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Gosh, I think that I would probably say who I am today versus who I am in Wikipedia, right? But I think today, I feel especially, I think there are probably some women who are in their 50s or older in the audience, and I feel like I have found so much of myself in my 50s, and that I just keep getting more and more comfortable with who I am. And in answering who I am, I don't actually know how to answer that. I feel like that's sort of one of those questions that people who know you well can answer with adjectives.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  And I like to think of myself as someone who's thoughtful, fucked up, works on herself, you know?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  It also feels to me like so much of the project of your podcast, Reclaiming, is about this idea of who am I versus who do other people think I am? And the same for other people as well, right? Everyone who you interview has some version of that story. You have one of the most dramatic ones.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. The idea for Reclaiming as a podcast, I had initially been thinking about it as a topic for a book, and had been keeping notes on my phone. And I, I eventually got to a point where I realized it was far more interesting to have the conversation around reclaiming with other people than it was to just talk about myself. Everybody has reclaiming moments. I think we tend to think of them as these top-line notes, like you would look at me and go, Monica's reclaimed her narrative. But I have also reclaimed so many different things, and in small moments.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Just this morning, I had a somatic therapy session over Zoom, and it was taking the time to sort of acknowledge with the therapist I work with.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Oh, this is a really important thing for me that I am saying, I see this change that can be made, that I want to be making. And there's a part of me that's not ready. And I'm going to be okay with that. It sounds so tiny. It sounds like such a small thing, but for someone who's always felt like she was running out of time because I lost so much time. It is, it's a really big thing.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  I have a lot of questions that are around this same idea, right? Because I think that isn't actually a small thing. It's a really big thing, right? How do you reclaim the idea? How do you have small moments or big moments that are yours and not what someone else is telling you your story should be? How can a regular person who's maybe going through this on a less dramatic scale? How can they take some lessons about what we can do to have ourselves be the ones defining who we are rather than letting other people define us?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I mean, I think of myself as a regular person.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Sure. But I just mean like impressive and.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, but I still think of myself as a regular person. And I think that in many ways, the process of reclaiming who you are, whether you've gone through something on a big global stage, or you have lost your job, or maybe lost part of your identity in getting divorced, or some aspect of yourself, there's so many different ways. I think that it begins in a strange way with an act that's kind of like putting on a seatbelt when you get in the car. Because I think for me, when I was going through such a difficult time in 98 and the

• 10:56Speaker 01

  decade after, my friends and my family reflecting back to me, kind of who my true self was, allowed me to have an anchor. So if I had been somebody who had never invested in those relationships, I wouldn't have had that. And I think for me, that that aspect started there. And that's kind of goes hand in hand with what I was saying about going into my 50s of recognizing, everybody moves through a healing process differently. And that healing is never linear. It's always sort of like a spiral shape. And so you will think you've mastered something when you're, when you're kind of cresting

• 11:39Speaker 01

  the top, and then you realize, oh, you'll think, fuck, I like here again. But you're actually not here again. You went down in order to go up. And that's been a really important, hard thing for me to accept because I want it to be linear.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Something that I heard you say that struck me was that healing this is not like healing a cut.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Can you talk about what you mean by that?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  I think it's exactly, you know, that we have a timeline for a cut. We know, you know, that in the first few days, this is what will happen. If you, if you put this ointment on, if you put this Band-Aid on, if you take care of your wound in this certain way, that you will then end up with either completely healed skin or a scar, right? But, but that's the process. And I think that emotional trauma is, is so different because we, I think particularly for the times that we're living in, I, my hope for the younger generations is that we're already having so many more conversations about trauma in ways that we didn't when

• 12:48Speaker 01

  I was a kid, or we didn't when I was in my twenties. I think it'll hopefully be different for kids because they will be being raised with an awareness of trauma. So healing emotional trauma is, again, not linear. And it's different for everybody. And I think that's what's so hard is that especially when we're suffering, or we're watching someone we love suffer, all we want to do is like, just tell me the three things to do and I will do them. But those three things may not be what works for you in part, I think because we all store trauma differently, right?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  So you and I can go through the same traumatic experience, but that very same experience is actually completely different inside our nervous system. And so that's where you are having to have grace with yourself, which is so hard.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Something I wonder about when I think about you and your story is, why are you here on a public stage? Like, if it was me, I can imagine that there would be a real desire to like, change my name and go and live in another country. So why are you here? Why are you still Monica Lewinsky? Why are you not like a British farmer named Monique Lewiston?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. Monique Lewinsky. So I think that there, there are different stages to that for me. In 99, after the impeachment was wrapping up, the idea that I could ever go, change my name legally was really not going to happen. There was no way that that could have gone through a court system without some journalists finding out. So then that wouldn't work. And I think that also as I, as I started to try to figure out, and with my family, try to figure out how to begin to move forward, I also realized I didn't want to change my

• 14:50Speaker 01

  name because in part, no one ever asked Bill Clinton, you know, have, did you think about changing your name? Now, there's a little ridiculousness because obviously he was the president, everybody knows who he is. But you understand that that's often the question the woman gets asked. So I think that from there, I did want to retreat into a private life. And that was a large part of why I went to graduate school in 2005 in London. And when I came out of graduate school, the whole hope and the plan was to get a job and try to become as normal as I could be. My best friend from college, who's still one of my best friends, is always teasing me.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  She's like, it was never going to be normal for you, Monica. I'm just not normal. So, and a lot of the healing work that I had to do was the acceptance and the integration of the idea that I wasn't going to get to leave 1998 Monica Lewinsky in the dust. She was going to have to integrate and be part of who I am today, who I am moving forward. And ultimately, in terms of, of re-entering the public arena, I had tried everything else. I had gone on 50 job interviews and nobody would hire me. And I tried starting a business, but I'm lever rising and I could see both sides to every decision.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  And so that does not bode very well for having a business on your own. And the only opportunities, the only doors that kept opening to me were around public spaces, being in public spaces, being a public person. And ultimately in 2014, after kind of this, what I call my dark decade, I had done enough healing and was also at the same time at the end of my rope of like, I don't know what else to do. I'm also now like early 40s and I can't support myself financially. So I was very lucky to come from an upper middle class family, but I didn't come from

• 16:59Speaker 01

  the kind of family where there were resources to just support me financially for the rest of my life. So when I wrote a first person essay in Vanity Fair in 2014, which was sort of my first public words in, in a decade, it was an experiment. You know, it was jumping in with no fucking idea where I was going to land.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  There are so many amazing episodes of reclaiming, but the very first episode is you talking about your own story. And I really, I'm not just saying this because you're here. I think it is like one of the most incredible hours of audio that I've ever heard and I think everyone should listen to it. And a big part of that is, you know, you talking about having to face like, well, who am I going to be? Who can I be? What paths are open to me? And the, something I hadn't known about your story is that by all rights and means, you should have had your legal fees paid for. But there was kind of a vindictive way in which your legal fees were not paid. So you were truly like deeply in debt to legal fees and you had to figure out ways to move forward and you had your family support.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  But when people weren't going to hire you, this wasn't like, I can just do anything. Like you had to figure out how to move forward.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Right. And just, just as backstory for, for anyone here who might not know, in the States, from the Independent Counsel Act, they had had a stipulation in there that if you were investigated by an independent counsel and you were not indicted, you were allowed to apply to have your legal fees reimbursed. So both Reagan and then President, first President Bush, who was Vice President at the time, both had their legal fees reimbursed from Iran-Contra. And Bill Clinton had a very small amount that they approved. Vernon Jordan had a very small amount of legal fees that they approved. And I was denied completely.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  And somebody just said to me about two days ago, they were saying, well, you know, if Michael Flint got his, his legal fees reimbursed, you should be able to get yours. I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. It seems to me like when, in that episode where you're talking about all this, you say that the hardest part for you actually was not in the middle of 98. It was after, when the storm had kind of died down. And you were there and it felt like, what is left? What's left for me to move forward into? So how did you get past that part? How did you survive what you call the dark decade?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  I think that it was a number of different things. My therapist will often say, you know, sometimes the.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  The difficulties I might have in letting go of a situation or a hope or wish or dream is a reflection of an old coping mechanism that saved my life before, that I just didn't give up. And part of that just not giving up included dissociation, included not delusion in a DSM delusion kind of way, but a delusion of, well, I'm just going to focus on the hope. I'm just going to try to find the hope. And that helped in some ways. I think another pillar was my mom is very Pollyanna-ish and it was so annoying. You know, just in 98, I know, in 98, and she would say, well, you'll see,

• 20:29Speaker 01

  you'll be able to go outside again. You'll see, you'll be able to go out without a hat again. You'll be able to. And I was like, you don't know what you're talking about. And but looking back, I think that somebody being this kind of beacon and shining light of hope was also something I could anchor on. But then there's the more practical. And I had, at the time, I had stopped doing more traditional therapy. And I started to work with someone who now people understand it a bit more when I say it's resonance and vibrational work. So he uses sound to heal your field, your energetic field. So that

• 21:10Speaker 01

  work was very, very deep for me. And I still do that work to today. So I think in a year or two, it'll be 20 years that I've been working with this person and saved and changed my life. But I also, from there, brought in so many different healing modalities of EFT, also known as tapping, I think trying anything, anything that somebody said, oh, I did this. And I was like, I'll try it. But it was, I think, really, the work I did with Ken was probably the most pivotal because it was for my soul. And I think what it did was it helped me find my light again.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  We're going to take a quick break and then we will be right back.

• 22:10Speaker 00

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• 25:18Speaker 00

  And we are back.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Something that is also really clear in talking to you, even just in the short time that we've been talking right now, is you have a great sense of humor.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  You're definitely able to laugh about things. I think, I think people are probably surprised by that about you.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Gallows humor has always been something in my family. And I'm culturally Jewish. And I think that's also the gallows humor there comes there. But I came to understand over time that it's interesting laughter and gratitude shift your frequency and your vibration faster than anything else. And so I love to laugh. And, and I, I think that it's also disarmed people in many ways. And I think that when, when we all laugh, it's a collective, when we all laugh together at the same thing, it's a collective experience. And in part, you know, since we're sitting here at TED, 11 years ago, when I stood on

• 26:18Speaker 01

  the red circle, it was really important to me that when I had this instinct of this funny thing that had happened to me about being hit on by.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Wait, can you share? Because I truly think that's one of the best jokes that's ever been told at TED.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  It's a real story. So it's not even, it's not even like a joke.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  So it's a younger man is.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. So you're all here, Randall Lane, who gave the talk last night on Billionaires. So he created Forbes 30 Under 30 Conference. And he had asked me to come speak. And it was very first public speaking I did. And so everybody in the audience was 30 and under, or under 30. And this 27 year old guy hit on me that evening after my talk. And it was amazing because his pickup line was, I can make you feel 22 again. And, and I, you know, he was cute. So maybe I thought about it for a second. But, you know, maturity

• 27:21Speaker 01

  prevailed. And I was telling a friend of mine this story on the phone that night. And I was like, you're not going to believe what happened to me. And I said, I was like, I'm probably the only person over 40 who doesn't want to be 22 again. And so when I thought about putting that in the talk, I was actually, you know, if anybody else here has given a talk, you have 8 million people look at it to get thoughts from people. And there were some people who were very smart women who were like, I don't think you should do this. It's sexualizing you. And you're trying to move away from that. And I felt so deep in my bones because of how humor had helped me survive up until that point. And, and

• 28:03Speaker 01

  my family. I mean, in the period between the FBI sting, where I learned about this investigation and the investigation becoming public, I could leave the house. But, you know, I now had this experience where I'd been apprehended by the FBI. And I now knew I was up Schitt's Creek and they had threatened my mother and all this stuff. And so anytime I left the house, like, I'd go over to the lamp and I'd say, I'm just going out to the drugstore, you know, or my mom would jokingly go, Ken Starr is very attractive. And so we would just, it's because there's an absurdity. And I think when, you know, we've all heard

• 28:45Speaker 01

  people say you can laugh or cry. And I prefer to laugh. Laugh till I cry even.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Oh, that's the best. Yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  For me, one of the things that I think is really powerful about humor and laughter, too, is that it can help you see a situation from multiple perspectives. That all of them can be true in the same moment, right?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  I bring that up because I think that one of, in addition to just the really powerful work that you've done and the eloquent way that you speak about it, I think one of the things that is really resonant with people is looking at what you went through and the situation and how it is seen in a really different light. That that same situation is now seen in much more nuanced way.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  By me as well. You know, I think that my beliefs and understanding of what happened to me and what I chose and engaged in and all those things, that I think that that's shifted too. And it's such an important part of healing of the kind of the elasticity that we're talking about, that, you know, you move forward and you move back. It's, there is context changes. You might learn something, you know, it may not, for everybody, it may not be, oh, there's a huge cultural movement of Me Too 2.0. Although many, I think many women did go through that, and men. I think not only men who have been victimized themselves, but I think also sadly, the

• 30:16Speaker 01

  men who were least likely to have actually done something wrong with women were the ones wondering, did I do something wrong? It's been an interesting process for me and I, I think that's part of the idea of healing and trauma being living things that are a part of us in a way.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  So, one of the things that I actually don't have a, haven't fully figured this out, but maybe you can have some thoughts on this and we can figure it out somewhat together, is how shame is involved here. Because obviously, there was a lot of shaming, there's a lot of public shame, and you've talked about how that was really powerful and negative piece of this that you had to overcome. But the part that I haven't quite figured out is, it now feels like we live in a time, politically, where people are shameless, who should feel shame. And what role should shame play? Where is it positive and where is it negative? Or is it always negative? Because that's the part that I haven't figured out.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Well, I think that both Roxane Gay and Kara Swisher talk about the difference between cancel culture and accountability culture. And I think that's an incredibly important distinction, that there are behaviors that people engage in for which they need to be held accountable. And then there are the behaviors that are too reflexive, too reactive. I don't know if anyone else ever has this experience, but sometimes I'll be at a dinner party and I hear myself spout off on something that I only read the headline. I don't know what I'm talking about. I didn't read the article, but I think I have an opinion.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  And I think a large portion of what can happen sometimes in cancel culture is, we will all hear a little something and we go, yeah, that sounds like a bandwagon I would get on, and we get on the bandwagon, not really even realizing the impact of what we're doing. So, I think you're right. I think we're living in times where shamelessness is more rampant than it had been in the past. And I also wonder sometimes, I've been thinking about this, if we need to have, it's like we need to maybe have some more words, some more names for things, like we need to kind of dissect shame and give it different names.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Because we are talking about something that from the old, old, old days, pre-printing press, was a way of keeping social norms for people. And it still does that a little, but we've also come to learn so many different things and so I wonder about that.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  It makes total sense. And you know, I think so much of the destructive power of shame is this like piling on and this creation of a version of someone that is a monster. For me, Elise, you really answered my question in drawing that line between like accountability and shaming and cancel, in the sense of what cancel culture means in that sense.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:18Speaker 03

  Because I'm sometimes skeptical of like, sometimes people use cancel culture to say like, I don't think I should be allowed to be critiqued for saying something that's offensive. You know, they sometimes use that as a scapegoat when it's not actually.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  And I think so much, and so much of what we've been talking about this week or hearing this week around engaging in dialogue, we don't have enough places and avenues in our current culture to do that. And I wonder if we did, if critique might be easier. I think sometimes maybe people get defensive because they're narcissistic assholes and sometimes people get defensive because they're actually terrified of what could this mean? And I can't let this in at all and must defend it because, you know, the drop from here to being canceled is enormous. And the consequences can be grave, even for some people.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  And just to, you know, add on to that is, I think sometimes we are much more harsh in our critique of the person who is the most easily available to us. The person who's the closest, rather than the person who is the most accountable, the person who's the most powerful and responsible, right? Like, it's easier to attack the person who's listening to us than the person who's ignoring us while they go about their evil deeds.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Right. Inequality keeps coming up, but it feels like the inequality in responsibility.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. For people who are young and they're just figuring out their lives, right? You've talked about how a lot of what was a challenge for you post everything that happened, post the scandal, was getting back onto like a normal developmental track. That was something that you and your therapist worked a lot on. In some ways, I think nowadays, like every young person has to figure out like, what is my private narrative of myself versus this public narrative that is written online? So what advice would you give to a young person who's trying to figure out like, what is my internal story of who I am versus what my peers and the world says about me?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question. I think that with young people today, who have all grown up with social media, they've tried different, you know, we all, as we grow up, we all try on different identities, right? So many people can go, oh, I had a punk rock phase. I did not have a punk rock phase, but, you know, I definitely had other phases. And we're trying on these different identities and in trying to figure out who we are, what feels right and what do we push back against. And I think that it is probably, trying to figure out who you are is hard.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  I think that there are things I can speak to if somebody feels their narrative has run away from them.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Well, I'd be curious to hear that, yeah. And I'm curious also what helped you to figure out, like, who is Monica Lewinsky now?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Well, I think a lot of who I am today is who I always was. And so, and that was a big part for me in the, a lot of the healing work that I did and in, intentions is such a loaded word now, but in my hopes and dreams and intentions in stepping back out in 2014, was around this idea of being seen for my true self, because this caricature of me had been drawn. Some from things that were completely made up and some, you know, things that I had done that were fucked up and bad and, you know, or mistakes I made or stupid things I'd said or done. So, like around when you've lost your narrative or that has happened, I think sometimes people

• 37:02Speaker 01

  use the word reinvention a lot, and I have a really hard time with that word. Because I think reinvention implies that what was there before needed to change. And really, there's a space between someone, what's wrong with someone and what needs to change and maturing and evolving and healing. You know, so, once again, I didn't really answer your question.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  No, you did. It's actually, one thing it's making me think of is like, the idea that you are opposed to reinvention because it's, you don't want to deny the person who you were before. Just for myself, I, I'll share just a small thing, not a dramatic one, but I didn't go to my high school reunion. And the reason I didn't go is because I don't really like the version of myself who I was in high school.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  So like for me, I just don't feel like, I feel like I was really like insecure and not sure of myself. And so like, I feel like I was not my best self in the sense that I wasn't like, I didn't have a core, you know? I was just kind of like, is this going to make these people like me and will that make people like me?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Oh my god, I can relate.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  And so I didn't want to go back. But part of that is being like...

• 38:15Speaker 03

  That Chris isn't who this Chris is. And you're actually making me think of like, well, maybe have a little more empathy for that Chris, like you are still the same person. Because in some ways, I would like to imagine that I'm not that person anymore.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  That's interesting.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Even though I'm asking you for approval in front of an audience, so you know. How different, how far have things changed? You're just not the quarterback. That's the only difference.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I wasn't the prom queen. So, but I think that there's like, and that kind of goes to the heart of all of what we're talking about, which in a way is that is the grace for yourself, the empathy for yourself, the recognizing who you were, how has, how did that contribute to who you are to today? Most of us, if you're one of those people who notices at a party that there's someone standing on their own, if you've been that person, which I've been, you are going to notice and try to bring someone into your circle to have the conversation because you've experienced that. And there probably are ways that you show up more empathetic in the world because of what that high school experience was.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  But that integration, I mean, that's kind of what I was talking about of having to integrate, you know, 1998 beret wearing Monica Lewinsky and who I wanted, who I had become, who I wanted to become, who I hoped I had become. That's the grace for yourself. That's the self forgiveness.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  The one thing I think you do gain when you go through something terrible is like a fellowship with other people who have been through something terrible like that, too. You can understand what they're going through in a way that other people can't. And some of that is like, you know, you talk about gallows humor, right? Like if an ER nurse makes a joke to another ER nurse, it's funny. And if I go into an ER and make that same joke to the ER nurse, she goes like, you have no idea what you're talking about. You don't have the shared context. So it feels like some of what we've talked about and some of what, you know, you've done in your work is to take that fellowship with other people who have had their narrative taken away from them, who have been publicly shamed and to try and at least make them

• 40:25Speaker 03

  understand that you see them and that there is a, there is a path forward.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Yes. And I think a lot of the work that I do, just even in a small, narrow way, I executive produced a show called The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox that's on Hulu right now that came out last fall. And it's a scripted series on Amanda's experience. She's also an EP on the show. And I brought the show to 20th Television and put the project together because I had, I understood what it meant to be misunderstood on a global stage as a young woman. And I understood what it meant to have that long tail follow you and how people will tell you to just move on. And yet they don't actually allow you to have a narrative that is any different from

• 41:14Speaker 01

  what had happened from, from the narrative they're telling you to move on from. And it was very important to both Amanda and myself and Hulu was wonderful about this was showing the aftermath. So the story, in telling her story, it could have very easily ended when she gets out of prison, yay. But she comes home and what it means to find yourself in a totally new normal and how does that impact your family and what happens in those quiet moments. It's important for us to all understand, but then it's important because this will likely happen to someone else.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  And every time someone moves through it, it gets easier and it's a little better for the next person. And we get a little farther in helping people understand those things. So there, there is, I think, that sense of fellowship. But, but I also want to say too, when you haven't had the experience of everything falling apart and you get through it and then you actually do look back later and you, and you go, oh, thank God, that thing that I thought was the worst thing in the world that I didn't want to get out of bed for happened. And when you have enough of those experiences, it also allows you to be more resilient when it happens again. And you don't maybe fall as far down. You get up faster.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  You, you maybe don't catastrophize as much. And so that's, that's what's hard about it too, because we shouldn't have to go through so much and you don't want to gloss over what is, is difficult. And at the same time, so often in life, when those horrible things happen, I don't want to say the silver lining, but something goes away for something better to come in.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Have you been able to get to a place or do you feel like that? Like, you wouldn't, like you wouldn't take away all the trauma?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I would 100% take away all the trauma.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  I was like, that's, I'm surprised.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  100%. People are like, would you change it now that you can help people? No, no, no, would you change? I'm like, yes, yes, I would. So I, my life looks nothing like, you know, the life that I had dreamed for myself. And I feel very privileged to be in a place where I can help other, like ease other people's suffering, but it has come at a cost. You know, it's come at a cost for me. And yeah, but I have had, I've had the experience of now a number of times, something that I had kind of put all my, I put all my eggs in the basket. I put all my hope behind this idea.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  I worked so hard for something and it, it didn't happen and it fell apart. And that ended up being a moment where I now go, thank God that happened. Thank God. And so it's meant the more times that I've then found myself, because unfortunately it was not just one experience, it's happened numerous times. The last time it happened, I didn't get that, that upset. I was like, all right, I'm going to just plow forward because I know that this will have happened for a reason.

• 44:31Speaker 00

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• 47:28Speaker 03

  One thing that I personally appreciate a lot, and I imagine that people listening and people in the room also can really appreciate is to hear you talk about something like a dark decade. And then to know that there is another side to that. I feel like when I have been in really dark periods in my own life, it's hard to imagine that like you can be in a dark place and then there can be something else. And so especially when it's like, I think it's easier to imagine if you're like, "I had a rough day. Well, maybe tomorrow will be better." But then to think like, "You had a decade that was really, really bad." And your life is not like that anymore. I think that's actually a really important message for people, that it can last for a long time and it still isn't forever.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and things can get better. And you can still have to deal with the difficulty that you had back then. Like, it doesn't always, it doesn't always just poof, erase. Even when you're in a better place. And that's sort of, again, that dance with trauma is the ability to know. And that's the kind of the core of resilience, right? Is sort of bouncing back faster and easier every time. Because that's what life is made of. That's this, sorry to get woo-woo, that's this dimension, you know? So that's what we came here for.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  How do you think about forgiveness and what forgiveness means?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  I do subscribe to the belief that, one, forgiving someone does not excuse their behavior. And I think that is such, that was a really important thing for me to learn and understand. And the other is that forgiveness helps you more than it does the other person. It's always better when the forgiveness comes because somebody has made amends. Someone has taken responsibility for how they've harmed someone else. But that doesn't always happen.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Do you feel like anyone has made amends to you? Like personally, privately?

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Nobody who was a key player in 1998. I think personally, I have had many experiences where people, whether it's in a private moment or even on social media, people will say, you know, "I laughed at all those jokes and I'm really sorry." And I have this own little cuckoo thing for myself where it's like, anytime somebody says something positive to me, which I would consider that positive, it erases two negative things from the past. So I take those moments in, you know?

• 50:09Speaker 03

  You talked about this in your talk and you talked about it in the podcast. But the idea, right, like that when all this happened, that you were 22. You had graduated from college months before.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Months before. I mean, like, this was, you know, my first job out of college.

• 50:26Speaker 03

  I've noticed even in our conversation and in your public interviews, you're very conscientious to not say, like, you always say, "I did some, like, I made mistakes." But I would say, "This is so not your mistakes to make, right?" Like, a 22-year-old, like, this is a system that was deployed against you.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  What's always felt really important to me and something that I interrogated personally so much in the Me Too era is there is a difference between women who have had experiences where they have been forced into some sort of sexual relationship with their boss. And they did not want to be there at all. And every moment of it was excruciating trauma. And that was not this. There are many questions about the power differentials. We didn't, you know, abuse of power was something we only really ever talked about and thought about with Nixon in that kind of a Watergate scenario. It was an extreme gross abuse of power.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  I wrote a piece on the survivors, the Epstein survivors, in part because I had been abhorred by a conversation I had in London where someone was saying, "Oh, this woman who, who had been around at the time said that those girls were happy to be there. They were getting handbags, you know, and it's like, what are you, you know, like, this is grooming." And so it makes you think about, okay, well, where is the line in what we see and the line in what we experience ourselves? You know, you begin to interrogate that. But I think what is, what I cannot deny is I knew that he was married. So there are also plenty of people who cross those lines all the time.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Many people in here probably have. I'm sure everybody in here knows somebody, whether it's you or someone else who's had an affair. It is very, very, very common. The person who is married is the one who's more responsible. But there is always the possibility that those behaviors that you've engaged in hurt other people who didn't make, who didn't make a choice. And I engaged in that. So that's where I feel it's important. It's interesting because that's evolved for me too in a big way of, as I, you know, matured and gotten older

• 52:57Speaker 01

  and I'm now this age where it's like, I think I could no sooner have a relationship with a 24-year-old than, you know, than I could a 94-year-old. So again, part of the abuse of power came even when the investigation was, became public. Because of how I was thrown under the bus, because of how I was lied about, how I was talked about. I think because there had been this servicing narrative that was out there about me, that I felt this deep need in a protective way for myself and in a way to hold on to what, what had actually transpired

• 53:40Speaker 01

  was also a declaring of my agency too. So it's, you know, it's complicated.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  After you had gone through everything, you went and got a master's in social psychology. And I'm really curious about that choice because it seems like you were learning about social psychology in the classroom, but no one knew more about social psychology than you in your life. And so I'd love to hear just like what resonated with the academic research and also what struck you as like, "These people do not, these theories do not get what I have been through."

• 54:22Speaker 01

  So I think there were definitely moments. My advisor, Dr. Jovtchelevich, she tells a funny story of how we studied. I went to school, graduate school in London. No fucking idea that there's a difference between American and European social psychology, FYI. So we were learning about this thing called social representations. And she tells it much better and she has a Brazilian accent. But she, that I like walked into her office and I was like, "I'm a social representation." Like, you know, so it is a very weird thing to kind of, to see yourself in that way. In categories of things that you're learning that are different.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Or I had an experience in, there's a class where you learn all the research modalities. Basically, they were like, "Well, you have to use reputable sources like the New York Times." And I'm like, "The New York Times gets it wrong a lot," you know? And so that was an interesting perspective for me. But one of the hardest aspects for me, and I, I think with the public shaming that I went through, and this is probably true of most public shamings, is that there's often some sort of like tiny kernel. It may not be truth, but it's what you fear is a truth about you.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  And to have that amplified by other people is incredibly painful. There is still a version of me that is hearing all the negative things that were said about me publicly. And the fear of that, it's lessened the more I've done. And that doesn't happen so much anymore. And it's so much why I have so much compassion for young people. And this happens to people of all ages online now, but especially young people who are growing up online. When I was a kid, the worst thing that would happen is like, everybody in the school knew something.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Or as an adult now, if one of us spills a glass of wine at a dinner, you're embarrassed, there's a perimeter around how many people saw this embarrassing thing. But when it's online, there is no way to draw a border. And I think that becomes a very complicated psychological experience because you literally feel like everyone is laughing at you. And I think that was some of what made the day the Starr Report was put online come out. So like, that exposure, that global exposure.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  But I think, you know, we've seen this with a lot of people now who have survived public shaming. And the important part is that, as awful as it is, it doesn't have to be the end of your life, you know?

• 57:26Speaker 03

  I was very moved in hearing you talk on your podcast about how one of the most powerful parts for you of the TED Talk coming out and your Vanity Fair article coming out was how people would say to your family, really positive things about you. How much your work mattered to them and how that was such a profound shift for you in the private versus the public.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Right. And I think sort of going back to something I was saying too about the Amanda Knox show and her family is there's collateral damage whenever these public shamings happen. And when they happen on smaller, more private levels, they, they can have collateral damage too, but it's just not quite as big. But, you know, I have a younger brother who was a sophomore in college when this happened. And he had to graduate college and move into the world. He chose to keep our last name. And, you know, he'd done nothing wrong. And yet, he had to bear the brunt of what it meant for our family last name to become synonymous with a sexual act for a long time. So I think that there is that

• 58:34Speaker 01

  balance now that is, I feel it's like a triple dose of pride when my dad, he's retired now. So he has this breakfast group on the weekend and someone in the breakfast group listened to the podcast and loved the, you know, that there is that, I can feel the pride on them. And I can feel how without us talking about it, it's a healing moment. And I'm so grateful because I have a niece and nephew who are eight and 10. And pretty soon, there's going to have to be a conversation around like, Auntie Monica is a public person. And what

• 59:15Speaker 01

  does that mean? And I'm so grateful that there are these other things to point to than just the worst thing that could have happened, you know? So, very grateful.

• 59:29Speaker 00

  We can't end on a better note than that.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  Thank you so much, Monica Lewinsky.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you for being here. And I also, I just want to say, if there's anybody in the room here today who had been in the room 11 years ago, when I gave my talk, I found myself feeling emotional as we round out here in Vancouver. Just so much gratitude for the people who were in the room that day who made it possible for me to actually get up onto the red circle because, boy, did I want to run away. And just helped change my life. And so I'm just, so just thank you.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Thanks, Chris.

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  This was an honor. What an honor.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to everyone who made this episode possible. Thanks to all the onsite staff at the Vancouver Convention Center who made the live recording run so smoothly. Thank you to today's guest, Monica Lewinsky. You can listen to Reclaiming wherever you find podcasts. I really recommend you check out the show, especially that very first episode and all of the more recent episodes. They are really, really special. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me on my website, chrisduffycomedy.com, including information about my live show dates and also my book, Humor Me, about how to laugh more every day. This episode of How to Be a Better Human was packaged delicately and then carried across the Canadian border just for you. On the TED side, our show is made by Daniella Bellereso, Banban

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey Lott, Tansika Sunmanivong, and Tony Leighton, Joseph DeBryan. Ryan Lash put together this video and Mateus Salas checked our facts. On the PRX side, our show is brought to you by Morgan Flannery, Nora Gill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks to you for listening. Please send this episode to someone who you think would like it, someone who you'd like to talk about it with. We will be back next week with even more episodes of How to Be a Better Human. Thanks again for listening and take care.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. What if the most overlooked space in your home could become the most considered? Their Vail Smart Toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional, it's a philosophy that design changes everything. The Kohler Vail Smart Toilet is sleek with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness that

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  exceed expectations. It's all about elevating those ordinary daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high-performance function. That's a long time to get it right, and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out more at kohler.com.

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  Power at work isn't just about a title. It's about knowing when to tap into the power you already have, from wherever you sit in the organization, and step into your swagger. So how do you actually do that? I'm Anne Mora, CEO and leadership coach. My co-host, Frances Frye, a Harvard Business School professor, and I are speaking with experts on our podcast Fixable in a special series on unlocking your power at work. Hear from voices like journalist Kara Swisher and Haley Sacks, also known as Mrs. Dow Jones. Get honest advice for a more successful career on Fixable, wherever you get your podcasts.