Speaker 1: What do you do when life doesn't go according to
Speaker 1: plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one,
Speaker 1: or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
Speaker 1: is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told
Speaker 1: by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down
Speaker 1: with a guest to talk about the times they were
Speaker 1: knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Speaker 1: Some stories are funny, others are cutwrenching, but all are
Speaker 1: unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every
Speaker 1: setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers
Speaker 1: one question, Now, what what did that? Strong? Wells, I'm
Speaker 1: not getting off the swing, little girl dream for herself.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, let's see. Well when I I mean, it's
Speaker 1: given my history, it is pretty funny that for a
Speaker 1: little while, when I was very young, I had decided
Speaker 1: that I wanted to grow up and be president. So well,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, oh you know they got into the
Speaker 1: Oval office. Yeah. I always say that, wrong way, wrong track.
Speaker 1: My guest today doesn't need an introduction, but rather a reintroduction,
Speaker 1: one that I feel is long overdue. Monica Lewinsky is
Speaker 1: a producer, an activist, a public speaker and a contributing
Speaker 1: editor to Vanity Fair. In the twenty five years since
Speaker 1: her relationship with former President Bill Clinton made her both
Speaker 1: a household name and patient zero for online harassment, she's
Speaker 1: become an expert on the effects of cyberbullying, earning a
Speaker 1: master's degree in social psychology from the London School of
Speaker 1: Economics and Political Science. Her now viral ted talk on
Speaker 1: the matter has racked up more than twenty one million views.
Speaker 1: And that was just the beginning Monica's now what moment.
Speaker 1: It's clear, but her resilience, her drive, and her refusal
Speaker 1: to let the world make her bitter, that story has
Speaker 1: yet to be told. I so admire her. She's one
Speaker 1: of the bravest people I know, and I am honored
Speaker 1: that she made a point to join me. So here
Speaker 1: is Monica Lewinsky. First of all, Monica Lewinsky, I just
Speaker 1: want to say hi, friend, and thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me Brook,
Speaker 1: it's so sweet, And congratulations on the documentary. Thank you. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that you are going to really appreciate it
Speaker 1: and identify with it in lots of different little ways.
Speaker 1: But just to kind of you jump in a little
Speaker 1: what are you working on right now? So for the
Speaker 1: last several years I have been focusing on and trying
Speaker 1: to build a career in producing god producing television. I
Speaker 1: saw the documentary fifteen Minutes of Shame. I thought it
Speaker 1: was beautifully done. Oh thank you. Yeah. Max Joseph who
Speaker 1: was the director, did a really fantastic job and the
Speaker 1: whole team. We did it during the pandemic, which in
Speaker 1: a way was a blessing to have work. You know,
Speaker 1: it's something to focus on, but was certainly challenging to
Speaker 1: film a documentary. Well yeah, to have access to the
Speaker 1: to what you need to put in the documentary, right.
Speaker 1: But you know what I thought was what really stuck
Speaker 1: out for me is, you know, people think that your
Speaker 1: experiences were just so one of a kind and sort
Speaker 1: of isolated, and what you've done with a documentary is
Speaker 1: really bring to light the power of public shame and
Speaker 1: the vitriol and how it happens all the time, cyberbullying,
Speaker 1: the press, all of the time, all around us. In
Speaker 1: the incidences were for these different people in your story
Speaker 1: included are so varied, and that's something that I guess
Speaker 1: I never really thought about it that way. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that it's you know, I mean I've seen certainly
Speaker 1: in the last twenty five years. I can't believe it's
Speaker 1: been that long, but in the twenty five years, since
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, I have seen this sort of online
Speaker 1: world virgin in myriad ways. Right, So there was we
Speaker 1: started to have different kinds of aol chat and then
Speaker 1: my Space and blogging, and eventually, you know, we got
Speaker 1: to this sort of explosion of social media. And I
Speaker 1: think that with social media so many people having voices
Speaker 1: really changed our cultural landscape that way. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not the only person who's seen this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think many people have commented that we've just started
Speaker 1: to see this kind of behavior that used to only
Speaker 1: be lobbed at at public figures now start to be
Speaker 1: lobbed at private people as well. And with fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: of shame, I think what we really wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's only ninety minutes. So it really was
Speaker 1: kind of this introductory examination of asking these questions of
Speaker 1: like how did we you know, how did we get
Speaker 1: to where we are today with public shaming and where
Speaker 1: the fuck are we going? I mean, and you talk
Speaker 1: about it public shaming has been part of the world
Speaker 1: and an existence at the beginning of humanity, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And I you know, something that we discovered while we
Speaker 1: were working on the film that was really fascinating to
Speaker 1: me was kind of this turning point that happened around
Speaker 1: from public shaming having been kind of a social tool
Speaker 1: in communities, and then when the printing press came along,
Speaker 1: it now all of a sudden went out of the
Speaker 1: public square sort of person to person or gossip, and
Speaker 1: it's now on the printed page, and it now started
Speaker 1: to become a commodity. You know. Throw Rupert Murdoch in there,
Speaker 1: and the tabloid culture, and you really start to see
Speaker 1: the roots of how we got to where we are
Speaker 1: today and how indelible it is and how forever it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is, And I think, you know, it's like, um,
Speaker 1: I sometimes use this analogy that I think about, you know,
Speaker 1: we all we all rubber neck when we see a
Speaker 1: car accident on the freeway, you know, but how many
Speaker 1: of us? Certainly not me? But you know, does anybody
Speaker 1: ever five minutes or five hours or five days think, oh,
Speaker 1: I wonder how that person is? We don't you know?
Speaker 1: It sort of comes in. We were we're going to
Speaker 1: see blood, you know, yeah, exactly. Well, it really resonated
Speaker 1: with me because when I was a kid, I was
Speaker 1: tabloid fodder, I mean all the time, and it was
Speaker 1: about my sexuality, and it was about and I was
Speaker 1: portrayed a certain way, and everybody had an opinion. It
Speaker 1: wasn't on social media. I don't. I don't think I
Speaker 1: would have survived if the social media had existed. My
Speaker 1: mother kept it all from me, and I didn't read
Speaker 1: all of it until much much later, because I just
Speaker 1: found all the boxes. And I do identify with you
Speaker 1: in that way. And you hit on the idea. In
Speaker 1: your documentary fifteen Minutes of Shame. You open with this line.
Speaker 1: Imagine waking up one morning with the whole world suddenly
Speaker 1: knowing your name and talking about you. Not because you
Speaker 1: cured a disease or saved your neighbor's house from burning down.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows who you are, because your secret, your mistake
Speaker 1: has now been made public. That is so vulnerable and honest,
Speaker 1: and I just have such empty for you, and I'm
Speaker 1: just so sorry that it that it had to happen
Speaker 1: that way for you. Well, I mean, you were just
Speaker 1: talking about your experiences, and you were even younger, much
Speaker 1: younger than I was. I mean, it was that the
Speaker 1: technology was different in the world. And it also I'm
Speaker 1: sure a lot of the attention you were getting was positive.
Speaker 1: I know there might have you were mentioning some of
Speaker 1: the negative. So there was that difference. I don't think
Speaker 1: I had a positive No one liked me. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you admitted you made a mistake or you said you
Speaker 1: did right, but then the level of abuse that was
Speaker 1: thrown at you, it's unfathomable. It wasn't I think too,
Speaker 1: what you know. One aspect that became very interesting to me,
Speaker 1: and I think we tried to thread into the doc
Speaker 1: in the personal stories, was that these kinds of incidents
Speaker 1: aren't just what happens in the moment. The trauma and
Speaker 1: the shame lives with you for such a long time,
Speaker 1: and in my instance, and actually in sort of all
Speaker 1: of these the public shamings that happen online, no matter
Speaker 1: the degree it impacts your life, you know, And I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually see the full effect until probably two thousand,
Speaker 1: let's see two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: when I had gone to graduate school. I tried to,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of build this new scaffolding of who
Speaker 1: I was as a person coming into adulthood. And I
Speaker 1: couldn't get a job. And that was when I realized like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is still here, and this is has imprinted on
Speaker 1: my life in a way. And that's actually when I
Speaker 1: came into some anger. It took me that long to
Speaker 1: come into any anger too. I mean I think that
Speaker 1: there's it's like dealing with death or you know, the
Speaker 1: five stages of grief. And but you talk so eloquently
Speaker 1: about shame and shame coming off in layers. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that to me, tell me
Speaker 1: how you do it? Yes. Let me credit my therapist,
Speaker 1: who's a trauma psychiatrist. So, I mean, she's really really
Speaker 1: helped me to see in different times of times that
Speaker 1: I've come into sessions and gone, well, I think I'm
Speaker 1: depressed again, you know, And when we unpack that and
Speaker 1: really examine it, it's usually grief, and that grief is
Speaker 1: usually connected to some part of a loss for me
Speaker 1: that usually tacks back to ninety eight in some way,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I think that there, I think
Speaker 1: what happens is is it's this like it's this this
Speaker 1: is like such a bad metaphor, but it's sort of
Speaker 1: like peeling an onion, except if you imagine that in
Speaker 1: between the layers that you're peeling, you're healing and your chaining.
Speaker 1: So it's with more awareness, you know, it's with growth
Speaker 1: and more awareness that I think you kind of come
Speaker 1: to that next stage almost like in a video game.
Speaker 1: You know, you've like passed that layer and now, oh,
Speaker 1: here's this other grief or shame aspect that you're looking at.
Speaker 1: Do you find forgiveness for yourself in doing that? I
Speaker 1: try really hard. I need a lot of reminders for that,
Speaker 1: I think, like I try to work on it from
Speaker 1: many different angles, you know. So one thing I started
Speaker 1: doing a couple of years ago is here I can
Speaker 1: show you what. I have photos of me as a
Speaker 1: kid all over my health, like different photos, and I've
Speaker 1: sort of put them there to remind myself to like
Speaker 1: send love to that in her child, that little girl,
Speaker 1: remind her she's safe today. So that's one way I
Speaker 1: do it. Another is, you know, a mantra my therapist
Speaker 1: gave me of like, rather than beat myself up trying
Speaker 1: to just like yeah, that's what I do sometimes when
Speaker 1: I get anxious. Sometimes when I'm scared, I blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, whatever the thing is that I don't
Speaker 1: want to be doing. We're talking about the concept of shame,
Speaker 1: and one thing that really strikes me about our conversation,
Speaker 1: which I've also heard you speak about before, is that,
Speaker 1: for you, and for many young women, myself being one
Speaker 1: of them, your sense of shaming yourself started at a
Speaker 1: really young age. Oh yeah, a thousand percent. I mean
Speaker 1: I think that it was you know, I think that
Speaker 1: there there aspects like another I'm just trying to think
Speaker 1: of how to phrase this because it sort of mirrors
Speaker 1: what we were just talking about with the layers of
Speaker 1: shame in a way, is that there's also layers of
Speaker 1: awareness that comes. So for me, it wasn't until my
Speaker 1: life started changing in twenty fourteen and people started to
Speaker 1: see me for more of my true self. I was
Speaker 1: able to earn an income and support myself in my forties.
Speaker 1: As that started to happen, I was able to kind
Speaker 1: of say certain other issues that had always been lurking of,
Speaker 1: you know, trauma, different traumas from before ninety eight, you know,
Speaker 1: from my younger years in high school. I also was
Speaker 1: raised in La so being a little chubby Jewish girl
Speaker 1: was like, I mean, not the Jewish part, but the
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the didn't fit in here, you know. So,
Speaker 1: I mean I remember I went on my first diet,
Speaker 1: I think when I was maybe eleven, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: and I just you know, and now now I think
Speaker 1: it's I'm sure you've experienced it too, because you also,
Speaker 1: you know, you've always been looked at for your beauty
Speaker 1: and which you have both inside and out. Anybody who
Speaker 1: spends five minutes with you knows that, ah, we're in
Speaker 1: the club, we'll get jackets. So but so now you're
Speaker 1: eleven years old, do you do that? Do you do this?
Speaker 1: Self imposed? Again? What were you like as a little girl, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: that was it was self imposed. But I think it's
Speaker 1: probably what I absorbed, um from the culture, what I
Speaker 1: absorbed from school, I you know, but as a kid,
Speaker 1: I mean, like my mom always says that she just
Speaker 1: I was very strong willed and that I knew like,
Speaker 1: I mean, both of my parents sort of still tease
Speaker 1: me that, you know. One of the first sentences I
Speaker 1: ever said before I was two was like, hands on
Speaker 1: my hips, you are not the boss of me, you know,
Speaker 1: so um, and I think that's that's that's still with me.
Speaker 1: But um my, you know, my mom will joke and say,
Speaker 1: I think she feels like she was just never strong
Speaker 1: enough to be the parent to discipline me or to
Speaker 1: you know, to shape the kind of strong, strong willed
Speaker 1: kid that I was. What did that that strong willed
Speaker 1: I'm not getting off the swing, little girl um dream
Speaker 1: for herself. Oh gosh, um let's see. Well when I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's given my history. It is pretty
Speaker 1: funny that for a little while when I was very young,
Speaker 1: I m had decided that I wanted to grow up
Speaker 1: and be president. So that's you know, okay, well you
Speaker 1: got there. You know, you can always say that it's
Speaker 1: like wrong way, wrong track, Uh, definitely not the right way.
Speaker 1: And I went through different um stages of I think
Speaker 1: it was always caring about people. My dad is a
Speaker 1: doctor and my mom was a social worker for a while,
Speaker 1: and so I sort of grew up in this helping environment. Um.
Speaker 1: That was just kind of an undercurrent in my family
Speaker 1: of like, you help people. Um, And so I think
Speaker 1: that there that that was always interesting to me and
Speaker 1: so it wasn't it wasn't really a surprise when ultimately
Speaker 1: I was interested in psychology also because I was fucked
Speaker 1: up so well you talked about I mean trauma. My god,
Speaker 1: you definitely went through a drauma. So did you did
Speaker 1: you think you wanted to be a therapist or initially
Speaker 1: actually so from high school. I did a lot of
Speaker 1: costume design in high school, and so I actually was
Speaker 1: looking into that as a career. But I think my
Speaker 1: parents sort of, you know, like many parents wanted, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: choose choose a major. That's sort of something where you
Speaker 1: could go get a job tomorrow if you had to.
Speaker 1: But with psychology, I didn't feel I'd be able to
Speaker 1: learn the skills to leave work at home, and so
Speaker 1: I wasn't interested in becoming a therapist. I was very
Speaker 1: interested in forensic psychology. So I was fascinated by that
Speaker 1: intersection of law and psychology in everything from jury selection
Speaker 1: to you know, the mind of a criminal. Like my
Speaker 1: dream job was sort of working at the FBI. So
Speaker 1: again and again, my alliance, like the Monica the story,
Speaker 1: you know, one bad path after the other, one crooked path,
Speaker 1: you know, or but what do you think you were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out about yourself in that those twenties,
Speaker 1: you know, looking for I think that professionally I was.
Speaker 1: I was really interested and I've always been interested in
Speaker 1: kind of solving puzzles and problems. You know, understanding the
Speaker 1: cause of something is really interesting to me. And the
Speaker 1: idea that when you unlock that key and understand something,
Speaker 1: you can change behavior individually collectively. Personally, I think I
Speaker 1: was I was looking for validation. I think I felt
Speaker 1: like I was this very kind of split person, you know,
Speaker 1: one who was young and naive and who was looking
Speaker 1: for adoration and validation that I was lovable. And I
Speaker 1: think then there was this other part of me that was,
Speaker 1: you know, exploring who who Who was I? And that
Speaker 1: was a lot of when I moved to Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: of like you try on different identities. You know, nowadays
Speaker 1: people kids do that as a teenager on social media,
Speaker 1: but for me that happened, you know, in my late
Speaker 1: teens in early twenties. Well, and then you get validation
Speaker 1: from the most important person in the world practically, and
Speaker 1: that's can I say, I don't know if I'm going
Speaker 1: to get in trouble for this, but I get it.
Speaker 1: I get that. I mean, in reading the Andrew Morton
Speaker 1: book that you did collaborate with, I was struck by
Speaker 1: sort of the empathy and the understanding sexuality. Wise, there's
Speaker 1: a quote and you say, I don't see sexuality as
Speaker 1: being something to hide away in the dark or be
Speaker 1: ashamed of. I think our sexuality is something to be honored,
Speaker 1: cherished and valued. That is such a fascinating piece of you.
Speaker 1: How do you think those two things happened in your psyche?
Speaker 1: Was it? Do you think a reaction to the shame
Speaker 1: that you had about your weight and the struggle was
Speaker 1: a defiance Those two things coexisting really is fascinating to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean it's interesting to me too. Where it
Speaker 1: also takes on a whole other layer, is I um,
Speaker 1: I had had an experience when I was fourteen that
Speaker 1: I didn't even recognize as being an unwanted sexual experience
Speaker 1: until I was in my forties. So I look back
Speaker 1: on a lot of my behavior and it's here. There
Speaker 1: are probably other things that happened when I was even
Speaker 1: younger than that that someone led to that situation, and
Speaker 1: so I think that there was a lot of dissociation
Speaker 1: for me you know a lot, and I know there
Speaker 1: are a lot of young women who go through and
Speaker 1: men who go through that too, and so it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's not that I feel differently than that quote now,
Speaker 1: but I think I was twenty five years old, I
Speaker 1: had I had been trying to that part of me
Speaker 1: that was trying to figure out who was I. An
Speaker 1: aspect of my social identity to myself was I'm comfortable
Speaker 1: with my sexuality and it's a good thing, and this
Speaker 1: is what young women should do. And the truth is
Speaker 1: is like underneath all of that, because I see it
Speaker 1: now and also impacted by what happened in ninety eight,
Speaker 1: it's like the intimacy issues, you know, the real sort
Speaker 1: of the very bearing of your soul and and being
Speaker 1: physically and sexually intimate with someone and emotionally intimate, you know,
Speaker 1: the difficulties that can happen there, and well, unavailable people
Speaker 1: in some aspects too. There's something in that and it's
Speaker 1: not and I'm sure you know it's not just a
Speaker 1: wedding ring that makes someone unavailable. I mean there's the
Speaker 1: you know, we could probably have a whole museum exhibit
Speaker 1: of different kinds of unavailability and you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll be I'm forty nine, I'll be turning fifty in July.
Speaker 1: And this last year has been so much about acceptance
Speaker 1: for me, of just sort of recognizing, okay, where am
Speaker 1: I and and accepting that. And I you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that looks at some of
Speaker 1: my relationship history and it has just gotten to a
Speaker 1: point where I'm like, I don't, I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I can't do that. Maybe I have this really
Speaker 1: deep I mean, I'm so lucky I have. I have
Speaker 1: incredible friends. I have really deep emotional intimacy with these people.
Speaker 1: There's there's not a barrier there, and yet I think,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I seem to don't cry, lift off,
Speaker 1: don't don't don't say it's not but also great. But
Speaker 1: it's just I think that there's also it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I can't have connection, it doesn't mean I won't evolve,
Speaker 1: it's you know, where things may not shift. You know
Speaker 1: that I'm hearing a lot of people who are trying
Speaker 1: MDMA therapy and having a lot of success, and especially
Speaker 1: with PTSD, so you know, who knows. But I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to It's not like a Saba or you know,
Speaker 1: violin playing moment of like, oh I I've you know,
Speaker 1: retired from romance or anything. I think it's just about
Speaker 1: coming into your own being okay with with where things are.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you become complacent, but you just you're okay.
Speaker 1: You didn't just become okay. You know, I want to
Speaker 1: I want to really applaud you for all of the
Speaker 1: work and the time and the willingness to confront and talk.
Speaker 1: And you know you didn't just push things up, shove
Speaker 1: stuff under the carpet. And you know you've you've had
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of abusiveness towards you and towards
Speaker 1: that little girl, and well, I talk a lot about
Speaker 1: this about a reclaiming of yourself and I didn't start
Speaker 1: that until my fifties. And I'm happy for you for
Speaker 1: this next phase because I think it's a blooming. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a different type of a blossoming. But you've
Speaker 1: done the hard work to get there. I have I'm
Speaker 1: going to I will accept that. So thank you. It
Speaker 1: is it's I was actually just saying yesterday to someone
Speaker 1: who has for positive reasons but kind of come into
Speaker 1: a lot of attention in a fast way, somewhat unexpectedly,
Speaker 1: and I was saying, how in order to do in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, when Impeachment was coming out and a
Speaker 1: month later fifteen Minutes of Shame was launching, and I
Speaker 1: was needing to do a lot of things that are
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable for me. The amount of support that I
Speaker 1: had to build for myself is crazy, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean it's the regular therapist, the somatic therapist, the energy work,
Speaker 1: the friend of his, this other energy work, the crystals,
Speaker 1: the the you know, the person I work with practice
Speaker 1: seeing and hearing questions that could upset me so that
Speaker 1: I'm able to show up because it's really scary for
Speaker 1: me to show up publicly that way. What's interesting is
Speaker 1: you did so many interviews, yeah, back in the day,
Speaker 1: and you were so open and so I'm so curious
Speaker 1: too in looking back at them. What do you think
Speaker 1: about them? What is your opinion of the Barbara Walters interview?
Speaker 1: Because I have an opinion about my Barbara Walters interview. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um. You know. I Barbara and I had a
Speaker 1: friendship that you know, went on until she passed recently.
Speaker 1: Although I think like a number of people. I heard
Speaker 1: from her less and less the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: but from that whole period. I mean, those those kinds
Speaker 1: of interviews are complicated to look at now because where
Speaker 1: they're fascinating when you're not the person who's the subject,
Speaker 1: is to see, oh, this is a reflection of where
Speaker 1: we were in the culture. It was okay to say this,
Speaker 1: It was okay to ask that of a young person,
Speaker 1: and I for me and maybe this is you know,
Speaker 1: not that there's a right answer, but that whole period
Speaker 1: of I just look back on it, and what feels
Speaker 1: sad to me was I had this very naive view
Speaker 1: at the time that if people just got to know me,
Speaker 1: they would go, oh, oh okay, you're not all these
Speaker 1: awful things that we thought. And I truly thought that
Speaker 1: after I sat down and did this, you know, big
Speaker 1: interview with Barbara and had had participated in the book
Speaker 1: with Andrew. I mean that was more also to help
Speaker 1: pay legal fees and things that I thought, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: then people will they'll get it, they'll understand, people will
Speaker 1: like me. And I was so wrong. I was so wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, it took over fifteen years for people to
Speaker 1: be in a place the world to be in a place,
Speaker 1: new generations, for people to be willing to sort of
Speaker 1: ratch the surface of my true self. But you're you're
Speaker 1: preyed upon, and you're I mean, the betrayal is what
Speaker 1: I'm I mean from Linda Trip's betrayal, the non admission
Speaker 1: of relationship, with Bill's betrayal, the people who knew me,
Speaker 1: you know, they were a handful of people who who
Speaker 1: who knew me, who were in that who still made
Speaker 1: the choices they made. You know, um, and that it
Speaker 1: didn't jade you and harden your heart is a fucking marriage.
Speaker 1: I agree. I'm really it's you know, I've had some
Speaker 1: incredibly unlucky things happened to me, but I'm a really
Speaker 1: lucky person because you're so right. I could have ended
Speaker 1: up just bitter. I could have ended up bitter, not
Speaker 1: ever trusting anybody, never opening my heart again to someone.
Speaker 1: And that hasn't happened, and it has come from hard work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, why do you think you
Speaker 1: didn't become bitter? You know, I went through phases where
Speaker 1: I was, but I think that I started, you know,
Speaker 1: I started doing I see it's energy work or consciousness
Speaker 1: work in part because even though I've done it for
Speaker 1: over fifteen years, I still don't know how to really
Speaker 1: talk about it in the right way. But it's really
Speaker 1: been this energy, consciousness, spiritual work that heals and evolved
Speaker 1: my soul right, And so I think that because of that,
Speaker 1: and because of my friends and my family, I was
Speaker 1: able to hold on to that core self, and that
Speaker 1: core self was eventually felt safe enough to sort of
Speaker 1: start to blossom again. Do you think that you've grieved
Speaker 1: sufficiently the loss of privacy? No? No, I I you've
Speaker 1: gotten some of your privacy back. Yeah, I have. I
Speaker 1: have where it's definitely and it's also shifted, you know.
Speaker 1: So I mean I say it jokingly, but there's truth
Speaker 1: to it that. It's like people don't say to me,
Speaker 1: no offense, do you know who you look like? Anymore?
Speaker 1: Like they'll say, oh, your Ted talk helped me, or
Speaker 1: you know, your anti bullying campaign on this help my kids.
Speaker 1: They start with no offense. Yeah, oh for years, like
Speaker 1: no offense, but do you know who you look like?
Speaker 1: And it's like, yes, yes I do. I've gotten you know,
Speaker 1: I thought you were really gonna suck, but you're You're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're good. When they've seen me on stage and it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: thank you for setting the bar solo exactly easily, you know,
Speaker 1: jump over bred um. Yeah. So this show is called
Speaker 1: now What. And aside from the most infamous now what
Speaker 1: year are two or fifteen? What in your life? Can
Speaker 1: you sort of pinpoint as another powerful now what moment
Speaker 1: in your life? I think there were two that were
Speaker 1: very close together for me, and one was my Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair essay being published in twenty fourteen and sort of
Speaker 1: having this opportunity of writing a first person essay instead
Speaker 1: of being interviewed that coming out, having the conversations that
Speaker 1: were happening between the generations, and it was really this
Speaker 1: younger generation that kind of forced me to re evaluate,
Speaker 1: or not forced me, but I think forced others to reevaluate,
Speaker 1: to reevaluate the situation. That was sort of a jumping
Speaker 1: in having no idea where I was going to land moment.
Speaker 1: And then second close to that, I think was the
Speaker 1: moment at the end of my TED talk when people
Speaker 1: responded positively to the talk. When I was in the room,
Speaker 1: people were shaking their heads, they were agreeing with you,
Speaker 1: They gave you a standing ovation. It was it was hard.
Speaker 1: Chris Anderson sort of sweetly kind of made me take
Speaker 1: the moment, in which I very much appreciate now, because
Speaker 1: I just kind of wanted to run off stage, and
Speaker 1: you know, three quarters of the way through, in my head,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, this is so boring.
Speaker 1: Everybody's bored. I better hurry up and finish, and oh god.
Speaker 1: So but I think from there that those were and
Speaker 1: those only came because I took risks. I think public opinion,
Speaker 1: you know, really sort of shifted and people are looking
Speaker 1: back at ninety eight with a very different lens, and
Speaker 1: so much of our history really does shape us. But
Speaker 1: I really firmly believe that we are also more than
Speaker 1: what we've been through. So who is Monica Lewinsky in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three very grateful? I'm just grateful person. I
Speaker 1: love to laugh. I love making other people laugh. I
Speaker 1: don't you know. I'm my happiest when I'm kind of
Speaker 1: with the people that really get me, that I love.
Speaker 1: And you know, I have a handful of friends that
Speaker 1: the marker for me is usually around like can I
Speaker 1: spend an entire day with you and not get annoyed?
Speaker 1: You know, And so like the ones that I do like,
Speaker 1: those are my people. I'm happier in a one on
Speaker 1: one or a small dinner party than a big, you know,
Speaker 1: a big thing. So I don't know, that's not I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know how to say who I am now,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm silly. That was the incredible Monica Lewinsky. Monica,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, thank you so much for sharing your story.
Speaker 1: The world needs to hear it from you, and I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful for your time. If you have time, go
Speaker 1: watch Monica's documentary Fifteen Minutes of Shame. It's streaming now
Speaker 1: on HBO Max. And if you have extra time, head
Speaker 1: on over to Apple Podcasts and please give now What
Speaker 1: with Brookshields a rating and a review. These things really
Speaker 1: help listeners discover us. Now What with Brookshields is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is
Speaker 1: Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and
Speaker 1: abou Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show
Speaker 1: is mixed by Bahed Fraser.