M M M. Hey, I'm de Alipa and I'm thrilled to welcome you to the second season of my podcast. Do Elipa at your service. I'm so happy to be back. Season one was such a labor of love. It was incredible for me to speak to some of my favorite people and biggest inspirations, and so planning this season has been a lot of fun. To anyone who also tuned in for our summer series, thank you so much. It was a bit of an experiment, so it's been great to see such positive feedback. If you want more of these kind of episodes, and please let me know the contact email addresses in the show notes, I'm really, really curious to know what you think. As everyone who's been following our service et five journey knows, I love lists and I love sharing recommendations, so I'll be doing a bit more of that this season. Get in touch and let me know what lists you want from me. My notes APP is full of them. The first episode of Season Two was a really special conversation for me. I'm just going to get right to it by introducing you to this week's guest, the activist and producer Monica Lewinsky will be with you after this. I'm so excited to introduce you to my first guest for season two, a woman whose strength, dignity and resilience I've long admired. For most of you, Monica Lewinsky will need no introduction, but for the few of you who are unfamiliar with her story, here are the facts. You're looking at a woman who was poly silent for a decade. Obviously that's changed. Today Monica is respected for a work as a campaigner and a producer, but her affair with President Bill Clinton, while she was a young twenty something intern in the White House, almost derailed her life. At the time of the affair, she confided in her colleague Linda trip, sharing intimate details, which trip began secretly recording and later handed over to the FBI. We didn't have SELINDA. What do you call it? We pulled the round. I don't know. I think if you get to orgasm, that's having sex. No, it's not, it is, it's not. What followed can only be described as a scandal of epic proportions for the President and a living nightmare for Monica. A confusing day here at the White House as President Clinton and his AIDS have sought to satisfy a stunned public, and Mr Clinton is totally innocent of these dangerous charges. President Clinton was nearly impeached for lying after famously saying this. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, and she became patient zero, the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet. Everyone piled on. Monica's face was on the cover of every newspaper and she became the butt of every late night television joke. Her mother feared that she would literally be humiliated to death. After the initial fallout, Monica retreated from public life for a decade, eventually breaking her silence into with a Ted talk that the New York Times sided as one of the best most courageous Ted talks ever. Today she writes a Vanity Fair focusing on issues related to public shaming, cyber bullying and the me too movement. She's a powerful advocate for numerous anti bullying organizations and she's quickly amassing credits as a Hollywood producer, most notably for fifteen minutes of shame, a documentary which looks at public shaming in a modern day context, an American crime story, Impeachment Ryan Murphy's fictionalized account of the Lewinsky Scandal. There is so much I wanted to unpack Monica, including her own reprocessing of investigation, her relationship with feminism, her observations of the Johnny Depp versus amber, her trial and what her life looks like since she publicly reclaimed her own story on the Ted Stage seven years ago, a period which, she says, has been nothing short of a fucking miracle. We could have talked all day and nearly did. I hope you enjoyed this week's very special at your service guest, Monica Lewinsky. Hi, hi, Monica. How are you doing? Good? I hope you can't see that I need to get my hair colored. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm delighted. I'm so flattered. No, I mean I I really I can't tell you how delighted I am to have you on this podcast. I mean, I feel like, sorry, what we're gonna say? No, no, it's it just was funny because I was with my best friend from college up in Santa Barbara visiting her daughter, who's in school there, when I got the email about this and we were both squealing in the car and then had to put levitating on and, you know, in front of her, you know, college age daughter, so anti Monica. Like you know, it was really had so many levels and I texted her this morning. She's in Europe, and I was like, guess what I'm doing today. Oh, that makes me really, really, really happy. Um, I really had such a delight and I wanted to have you on this podcast. Um, you know, your story is is one that I think a lot of people think that they know, but I guess the reality is that there's so much more to the events that took place more than twenty years ago, and I just have to say that, personally, I'm I'm just so inspired about how you've taken control of your own story in recent years, and it's a story that that was co opted by, you know, so many for their own personal and political gain. And not only that, but I love the way that you're using your platform to advocate for those who have been bullied or humiliated online. And, you know, I love how you'r how you go about trying to encourage people being more compassionate or having a more compassionate approach to social media. And as a woman in my twenties who has a little bit of insight in the highs and lows of public life. So much of this really resonates with me and so I'm really hoping that during our chat that you might be able to share some tips on how to survive the madness Um. You know, it's interesting because I think that I so much of the work that I've done personally in healing has been around compassion, compassion for myself, you know, trying to find compassion for others, which can be really difficult given certain circumstances, but it's just it. There really is a magic to it. There's a magic to shifting. I think it can shift so many situations and it's something we need more of in our world today. So I try to bring that online. I don't always succeed, I don't know. I tweeted something the other week. It was political, and a whole bunch of people are like, so much for your anti pullingcompassion campaign, and I'm like, okay, I get to, you know, I get to I get to be human, human and you're allowed to have an opinion. Yes, and you know I joke a lot about like well, people haven't seen my drafts folder of the tweets I want to send that I don't, but I you know, I think that's part of it right, which is like being mindful with your click and almost like a a I know this sounds sort of silly, but almost like a bank account. You know that it's like what kind of good are you putting in? How much good are you you putting in? Are you saying positive things or trying to find a way to say something with nuance and context, or amplifying other voices, and that that all sort of puts you in the green. And then every once in a while you can, you know, you're allowed to just dip into that jar. So it's a really it's a really good way of looking at it and I guess I feel like now what you just said is is something that we can we can touch back on on a question that I have a little bit further down the line, but I really just wanted to start with you know, when, you know, the news of your affair with Bill Clinton broke, I don't think there was a single person on the planet who didn't know your name. So many of the most like intimate details of your personal life really played out on TV and on newspapers for months and for the first time it was on this new thing which is called the Internet, and you basically became stuck in people's minds forever as this twenty two year old White House intern called Monica Lewinsky who almost brought down the president of the United States and, I think the most people a beret, not to and and and for a lot of people they think that your life story kind of just ends there. And I want to ask basically, what's it like to have your life defined by one relationship that you had in your early twenties? Um It was. It's been a challenge uman the last several years since it started to evolve and mold and change, but prior to that it was Um. I think I came into a different difficult period after, you know, sort of once everything subsided and this sort of shock of trauma that lasted for a year, I then found myself in this new landscape and trying to understand how did I move forward, how did I try to get back on a developmental path as a young woman? And it was really through that next decade, after so many different attempts, and then, you know, going to graduate school and being able to find a job after that. I that I really started to realize the damage that had been done in a whole different way than what I had experienced in and that was sort of one of the again, another really dark period in my life. You know, I've been living back in L A now for a little bit and I guess it was last year at some point I ended up driving down a portion of a highway that I hadn't been on for a really long time and I remembered that it was like I used to drive that to Pasadena sometimes to like purchase something at target and then drive home and the next day drive there and return it, all because it took up time during the day. I had no purpose and it was just a very, very dark time, and quiet dark in a different way. Where was, you know, like chaos and a shambolic more ask of you know, blaring headlines and jokes and others, other things. This this was a quiet despair. So yeah, I just, you know, it's it's so surreal even hearing you talk about this, because it's such a it's such a crazy way to think about being defined by something in your twenties. If we were defined by the early relationships at a point where we're still, like, not even fully formed. We're discovering ourselves and figuring out who we are, we're trying to understand even relationships at the most basic point, and to have that kind of really take over your life is is really it's been, Um, I don't know, a lot to just kind of take in. So I can only imagine what that must have been like for you. And you know, a few years after all of this happened, you took a step back from the public eye for a decade and you took time to earn a master's degree in social psychology, among other things, and then you chose to take to the Public Forum again and you published this really powerful essay on shame and survival and vanity fair and becoming a champion for victims on Internet shaming, and you followed that with a really incredible Ted talk as well, which has now been watched by millions of people. was there a pivotal moment that really encouraged you to step back into the fray? I think it was. Um You know how change usually comes from a number of moments that sort of start forming and eventually come together and collide, and I think that for me, as I talked a bit about in the Ted Talk. There there was a moment when Tyler Clementi, who was an eighteen year old freshman at Rutgers University and he had been videotaped, secretly, videotaped, being intimate with another man by his roommate and it was, you know, threatened to be exposed online and shame and humiliation he felt from that led him, days later to take his own life and it became a national news story and my mom and I were discussing it. I was on a drive home, you know, experiencing her or watching her process what had happened to tyler and the pain and anguish of his family. That really put my mom back in and I sort of saw through her lens Um in a different way, just that the fear and panic, you know, that she had had, and my dad as well, that they had had about me, that that worry of me taking my own life being, you know, publicly humiliated to death. So Um I think that it was at that point that I started to realize too, that that with the advent of the Internet and now social media had, you know, had been born, that that there were these opportunities that public shaming was now going to be something that more and more people would start to experience. It wasn't just for people who made mistakes, you know, or public people, that that we were starting to feast on Private People's moments that, you know, could bring shame and humiliation, and I think that at that point I thought, okay, there might be a place, you know, as a poster child for having survived public humiliation. There might be there might be a place for my voice, and I think that happened alongside a lot of deep healing work that I had started to do that allowed me to be in a place where I could do that, where I could take the risks of kind of, quote unquote, coming back out. I mean it's really, really inspiring to be able to take, you know, your pain and what you went through to help benefit others, especially in this age of social media just becoming bigger and bigger and people also seeing other people's misfortunes or things that they went through as a form of currency to be able to talk about, you know, build their own social persona, really make themselves soon stronger at the hands of other people. And I think one thing that's really fascinating to me is how, over time, we deconstruct and reconstruct events that happened to us in the past and before the whole me too movement. You know, you said, sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I'll always remain firm on this point, that it was a consensual relationship and any abuse that came was in the aftermath, when you were made as a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position. And something that really struck me was how feminists agonized over you, whether you were using your own agency or where you were a victim or you know, and and I really wonder how this has evolved and how this experience has defined, like your own relationship with the feminist movement, because for me, it completely blew me away that, you know, feminism then isn't really as how we know it now, that maybe abuse of power wasn't at the top of their list. And and yeah, you know, it's interesting because, Um, what happened with my relationship with feminism in a way was reflective of so many different streams in my life, and one of which was healing work I did in sort of stepping back out, really recognizing that there were grudges I was going to have to let go of and, while that doesn't mean I don't, you know, still wish with all my might that there had been some support. That would have changed my experience as I got older and I started to understand the duality of situations and the difficulty sometimes. There were things I started to understand too, that I started to see as I was older. By no means excusing what the movement had done at the time and the silence or the contributing even I think that was really one of the worst. I mean to sort of it was the yeah, I was knowing that really struck me was the contribution from, you know, women who were, you know, like Cathy Rogers, who was the National Organization of women, and Eleanor smil from you to President of Feminist Majority Foundation, like I was. I think while I was reading and understanding and also learning more about your story, it was something that really kind of struck me that you really had no support at that time when, you know, girls really need other women to help them out, especially when they're going through such a such a difficult time. Absolutely I think that, Um, I certainly came to understand and experience that you know, women aren't immune to misogyny and, Um, you know, as intersectionality, you know, has become more of a focus in feminism too, that we also start to see the ways women behave towards other women that really support the Patriarchy too. That helped keep that in place. So there's an irony there of fighting to try to change something while at the same time reinforcing the Atitution, and that's not you know, that's not to say all feminists or or even all the time, but I think that that we can all become prey to those, those sorts of things. You know, for me, if you are a somewhat liberal woman today, it's impossible to not find yourself in some tributary of feminism because of what's at least in my country, what's happening over here, Um, and I think in terms of how are how our rights to make decisions about our own body and our lives, I mean has just been decimated and it's incredible in the worst definition of the word. Um, yeah, sort of. It's it's it's interesting. You know, I am I think I got a little lost in a way in answering all of that, because my mind hitched to the quote that you were talking about from the essay and think it's really you know, looking at feminism and how things have changed in just even a short period. I think, like around the me too movement and everything, that even that idea of abusive power, as you were saying, is something that we weren't we weren't focused on when I wrote that essay in that was not something that we that was top of mind when we looked at those things, and within a few years that became something that forced so many of us um two. I don't know, because you're young, so I don't know if you're you yourself had those experiences to where you were re contextualizing, reevaluating, you know, re examining what some of your experiences had been, because the definitions were shifting. We were understanding complexities and nuanced to things that that we hadn't before. We'll be right back with Monica Lewinsky. All to this short break. Just recently, you know, we have the case with Johnny Depp and Erhart, you know, the trial, for example, and it seems like they're still a really special like vitriol for women in certain scenarios, and you've written really powerfully about this case specifically and also, more generally, about how social media encourages our worst instincts. Then I was just wondering, like how do you think that we can break the cycle of behavior that in just two decades has become so, so, so embedded in our society? Yeah, Um, I think what becomes challenging is we see a lot of this behavior at the intersection of, you know, sort of the human condition and what's happening in our world socially, and also the commodification of a lot of these things, that it's like we are set up in some ways too. I guess maybe there's a way to say it differently than that, which is sort of this that it's kind of the intersection between the human condition and the online disinhibition effect, which, you know, talks about how, because we're online, we're not face to face with people, were not reading social cues, we're able to dehumanize people more, and so I think that, you know, we've seen that throughout our sort of social media or online history. Like you think about second life, you know that was sort of really the precursor to the metaverse in a way. But this idea of you know, people going online and creating entire new personas and living a life out. I mean, there were people who got divorced in real life because of what was happening in second life, and so I think we start to see the ways that, Um, you know, certainly on social media, how we're curating who we are, how we want to be seen. You know, I think about Instagram, you know, and you just you start to feel inferior to write, like everybody else is having more fun, they're more in love, they're eating better food. Um, that's always the best bits. It's always the best bits when they're having a ship day or when something's not going right or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it's so true. Yeah, so, Um. But I think too, I think, going back to what you're saying with the trial, I think it really also reflects something that I experience too, which is still a place in feminism that I think there's work to be done, which is around the imperfect victim, which is around sort of how do we what happens when someone doesn't take every box of what makes something be an easy decision and to know how to to know what the right course of action is there. Does that make sense at all? And it completely makes sense. It's just what I what I think is interesting is that, no matter what, somehow we managed to always pointing fingers at the women, whether you know there was a miss take that happen there or not. Right you know, we're we're always found with the woman kind of picking up the pieces in whatever way. You know, this year we finally saw the first conviction in the Jeffrey Epstein case, you know, when Calain Maxwell was sentenced to twenty years in prison for child sex trafficking offenses, which is obviously a very welcome first step in seeking justice for Epstein and Maxwell's victims. And at the time of Maxwell's sentencing, you tweeted a really like short and simple message, which is now do the men, and I think that kind of that really resonates to everything that's happening. It's you know, you're saying so much in such a short message and I want to know, really, where do you think this could go next? You know, I think we're um we're living in an interesting moment of change and it's so hard to remember. I mean, maybe it's always happening, so maybe these are just the big changes of my lifetime, you know, or our lifetime, and so that's what we're seeing. So it feels it has a certain weight to it, but I think that there's you know, there are others who talk about it this way too, but if you think about change happening like a pendulum, you know that if the pendulum still there has to be this force that gives an initial movement out of inertia and that pendulum is gonna swing too far one way and too far another way. And I think that's how change happens, that we sort of we go a distance. We now have that movement, we have the change and the shift in something. You know, it's like that sort of two steps forward, one step back thing which happens and change right, and I think that's where we are and it's incredibly frustrating. Right. It's very challenging because this isn't this isn't just one thing which becomes defined by a law that then goes into effect and now change has solidified and happened. These are decisions being made in society, their nuances, there's power, there's money. You know this idea. Of course Gillane should have some punishment for having put these young women in these positions and also having, you know, allegedly abused some of them as well sexually. But I think this idea that the men who physically and sexually harmed them, that that hasn't happened yet and that it seems unclear. It doesn't seem as if there are these other trials now lined up and we'll have to see, you know, we're kind of going to see is it justice or or power which wins out here, you know, how that will justice be meeted out as a justice or power? Seems to be the overarching question, I think, for a lot of things going on. You know, even how you said, with the proversus weighed and everything that's happening with women's reproductive rights, and it's just I feel like we're taking more than, you know, two steps forward and one step back. We're taking ten steps backwards and we're holding on for dear life hoping that's something that is going to happen and change is actually going to come. But it's definitely a really scary time, um, but it is, and it's I think, too for, you know, for so many people, and we see this not only with, as you're saying, reproductive rights, but also sort of trans rights and the LGBT Q I community and you know, racial issues that there's if you're someone who falls on a you know, just even slightly to the left of a liberal or progressive, you know, anywhere in that spectrum which we normally call a Democrat right, like anybody who's a Democrat is sort of assumed to be to the left of the midpoint. I think what becomes challenging is that there's so many people who are so up in arms around judging others and sort of wanting to regulate someone else's life in a way that doesn't impact them at all, and that I just find shocking. That's sort of just a place where I don't know. I don't know anymore how we bridge that divide. You know, if I think my rights trump your rights and that my vision of the world, which would dictate how you live your life, is right, and you know it just it doesn't. I don't know. I don't know how we move forward. I don't know Howard and I pressed a depressed, compressed char I know. I mean the world, the world makes makes us, makes us feel depressed, and and the thing that I was going to say earlier, which I couldn't even remember, is is the way that people just try and amplify their own public persona at the hands of other people's misfortune. But you know, in recent years you seem to have become, you know, much more intentional and direct about how you use your public profile and you're an ambassador for several anti bullying organizations and last year you were the executive producer of fifteen minutes of shame, which is a documentary that's a plea for mercy for those who have been subjected to online humiliation, and it seems to me that you are exactly where you should be. Um. In fact, you said recently that the past seven years have been a fucking miracle, and I just want to know what what changed to make that possible? Um, I think it was a reflection of the kind of involution, the deeper work that I had to do that married with the times changing. When I wrote the Vanity Fair Essay, it was your generation that insisted on reevaluating my story. So I think that there were probably a lot of the older generations. Um, I won't blame everything on the boomers, but but almost maybe. You know, like next genet, we used Um. So, but uh, you know, it really wasn't. It was fascinated because I think that these younger generations were, you know, coming to this story maybe having heard, you know, bits and bobs of, you know, the headlines Right knew, if they knew me outside of rap songs, you know, then it was like, you know, just the headlines and and and really, you know, as we kind of say in my family, it's like I hadn't lived through the brainwashing, because that's really what happened, you know, through political forces and the media and how that unfurled. So it was the younger generations that kind of said, who WOA, Whoa, wait a minute, what happened here? You know, you know. So just looking at the facts, really insisted on on a reevaluation and I'll be, you know, forever grateful for that. It was, I think, one of the things too, you know, and just you you were saying about two about my public platform and those things and being intentional. I do a lot of deep consciousness work, like with its like scientific consciousness work. I don't know how to really explain it, but I've been doing it for like mindfulness, or I mean there's of course there's an aspect of mindfulness. There's an aspect of loving kindness and compassion. But it's really been around. You know, I don't know how woo Woo we want to get here. I mean, not that it's not what it's science base, but I mean it. It's just been very much about healing energy fields and and trying to reorganize energy patterns in my life. And one of the intentions there, you know, that I think I went into was in stepping back out to be seen as my true self. and Um, it's weird, Um, you know, sometimes emotion sneaks up on you in a Um, strange way. So I think that that was Um, one of the things that it was so lost from the period before was there were certainly the lies, there were the cherry picked facts. So they were all the awful things that I had done or humiliating things, you know, ways that I embarrassed myself, but there was the totality of me as a person, you know, the multidimensionality of me, seeing me in context, was just missing, and so I think that's been one of the most rewarding things for me. You know, Um, just in terms of of having a public voice and and also now my brother, my younger brother, had to admit that I was funny so most, so much of my life. He was like want to you're just you're not as funny as you think you are. And he's really funny. He's like the funny. You know, he's I have a very funny family actually, Um, very funny. That was definitely something that that took me advice. Brought your sense of humor as well, even even in the way that you write, was Um, is really brilliant. Thank you. Yeah, it's really I actually I have a pretty body sense of humor as well, but I kind of I tend to keep that just more among friends, like my private instagram. You know, it's a little I can imagine. That's really fun. Yeah, so well, and I think isn't that, in a way, what we all want, right, is we all sort of want to be seen and accepted for our true selves. Well, I'm really happy that you've, you know, I had the opportunity to be able to to feel that, to feel your authentic self and and to really step into your light and also share that with other people, because I think people will really appreciate you know, your your experience and how you're how you're giving back and helping others. And you know, last year, just as you know you're really reclaiming your narrative, you accepted the producer role on ack and crime story, impeachment. It's a fictionalized account of the impeachment investigation and Beenie Feldstein plays you and Sarah Paulson is Linda trip and you know you had no editorial control and no veto and I was wondering, you know, what persuaded you to participate in a project that put your story back in someone else's hands, and what was that experience like for you? You know, the decision was not easy for me, Um, but I also think that when you've gone through the kinds of things I've gone through, you come to recognize that any input in something around your narrative is better than nothing, you know, and to be able to work with an extraordinary group of producers and writers and actors and in that way was an appealing opportunity in that sense. And you know, for me, I've sort of people who know me you're like, Oh God, here she goes again saying the same thing. But like I'm really like, I really feel about that. With everything the projects, I'm really pouring my soul into. I want them to be about moving a conversation forward, like that's really what it's about for me. And in being a producer on impeachment, what it meant for me was, you know, the angle in that they wanted to take with this story. Was Looking at this from the women's perspecutive. Yeah, I had participated also in a documentary for the twentieth anniversary that was being done. That was directed by Blair Foster, and she had made this amazing comment to me that in their research, all of the books about this time had been written by men. So to be a part of something like that and really, I think you know my personal goal with impeachment. I mean of course I had, like you know, some selfish ones, but I think my bigger goal was really to shift a collective consciousness in a way that this couldn't happen to an other young person again. You know, I don't know that it's going to go from, you know, white to black in terms of a young person not being shamed ever again, like, but I think, yeah, exactly, and I think, you know, make people aware of that in that way. And it was, you know, it was a really challenging process. It was ungrateful to have been involved and it's led to me doing more producing. But I think every time that I step back into, you know, doing something around this time in my life, there's a price to pay. But I also feel so much of the work that I had to do I had realized kind of you know, I was talking about like the dark period in after, you know, the sort of legal things were done, was that I had to integrate what happened to me. You know, when I moved to London for Graduate School, I naively thought, Oh, I'm going to go be, you know, Montica Lewinsky, the Social Site Graduate Student at LC and you know, Montica Lewinski the intern. She's gone, and of course that was like a very um rude awakening that I really was adding an identity and that became a big part of the work I've had to do and you know, I still sort of my back goes up a little when, you know, I still get shipped on twitter sometimes and people are like, yeah, she's extending her fifteen minutes of fame and Oh, she just you know this, and why isn't she shut up about her past and if she wants to move on, you know, whatever all the things are warriors, Theodora. Yeah, you know, for me moving forward and evolving is more about, you know, what are the ways that this folds into my life organically, because it did happen to me. I mean sometimes it's still surreal Um, but also it really is about integrating, not running away from or or becoming someone different. Like I haven't reinvented myself, I've evolved and there's a big difference to me with that. And you know, you said earlier that there was like a period in your life where you know, you basically couldn't get a job and you're just driving to the shops and back just for something to do, and I'm sure you're not doing that now. So what's what's your day look like, you know, both professionally and in terms of self care? I'm really interested in this deep consciousness thing, but maybe we have a chat another time, because I I believe in all the you know, the energy shifting and how you can really work through certain things in order to find your true selves. I find that really inspiring. But I guess, just on a daily basis, what does that what does that look like for you? I can't say that there's sort of a regular structure, but the majority of my time right now I have a first look deal at twenty television. So I'm developing scripted drama, you know, which is just me being I'm I'm so grateful for the opportunity and I'm learning so much. I'm very lucky to have a patient executive who answers my stupid questions like so, how long does this take? But uh, you know, it's been exciting. I'm I'm, you know, working with a number of different extraordinary producers on various projects that all you know that I feel are that next step for me. You know that are taking the things that are unique about my lens that's been shaped by my experiences to imprint that into different other people's stories, like it just doesn't you know that it's Um, it's not to say I'm not going to do things with my own story ever again, because I will. It's my story, it's part of me, but I'm very interested to tell other kinds of stories and other people's stories, and so I feel really hopeful. Um. So I do a lot of that. I you know I do. We've talked so much or, you know, dipped into the healing work I'm very lucky because I'm in a position, you know, I'm supporting myself enough now where I can afford to give myself the kinds of healing things that I need, but in order to show up in a public way, you know, it's like I have a a normal therapist who's a trauma psychiatrist. I have my my energy guy, I have a, you know, a therapist who's like also sort of a friend but kind of on call for emergencies when it's not and I started during the pandemic. I started doing somatic therapy. So there's that and then, you know there'll be other people who kind of come in and out, but I mean that's like, that is a lot of fucking work and it's expensive, you know, so that that takes time. You know, it's one of the things that I really hope. You know, I think we're very much moving towards really big public conversations around modern trauma. You know, I think trauma is the next mindfulness, you know, in that way, and I have to do a lot to show up, you know, and my crystals and my candles and my you know, so it's uh, you know, I have a crystal little thing hypockets. Yeah, so it's, you know, it's one of those things that I do hope that is we kind of move into these discussions, you know, more publicly, that it allows people to, Um, feel less shame around getting help, you know, and exploring all different kinds of ways that might be available to them, because I think, Um, so much of us have been denied our recognition of trauma, you know, in certain circumstances. Monica, learning just about your journey, you know, over the years and over the past couple of weeks, since I found out that that you accepted to do this podcast with me, has been really, really inspired ing, and I'm so happy that you have had the opportunity to really take the narrative into your into your own hands, and for having this conversation with me. I think a lot of people are going to find this really interesting and the way that you've chosen to be of service to other people as well as really just it's really inspiring and I really love to end my podcasts at the end with some lists, some recommendations from you, and I have two and one is, Um, I'd love to know the five best books on how the mind works. So I'd say number one is the untethered soul by Michael Singer. Two and three are both by Michael Pollen, how to change your mind, and this is your mind on plants, for would be the feeling good handbook by Dr David Burns. And the fifth is one that I am planning on reading soon, which is emotional inheritance. A therapist, her patients and the legacy of trauma by Dr Galite Atlas. That's amazing. I really wanted to get your recommendations, so I'm looking forward to getting into that. Yeah, go with the untethered soul first. I mean it was sort of just the the one nugget from it that stuck with me the most was this idea that we have an inner roommate. You know, what we think of as our mind is not really our mind and we really are a consciousness, and that would just like blew my mind. I was like, Oh wow. So, I mean, I I now. It was funny because I had one of those experiences. I don't know if you've had this before. Um of I couldn't get into reading the book and I had two different friends say, Oh, you know, I listened to the book, so I, you know, bought the audio version and I've now listened to it like ten times and every time I listen I'm I'm, you know, gaining something new. And then also, I'd love to know, you know, five things that you can do if you witness Cyberbillyon Um, in terms of five things, you know, I kind of shifted a little and sort of say that the things to do when you witness cyber bulling can be, if you feel safe, to step in to interrupt the bulling cycle. But people don't always feel safe. So I think that's a you know, for me, this is my opinion. It's really important to me that people not always think the first and only thing to do is to step in, because that's not safe for everybody. But what you can do is you can always reach out to the target, whether that's publicly privately, if it's a friend, those kinds of things really they make such an extraordinary difference of when someone's a target and they're feeling so alone. There's that, there's helping people, there's reporting what you're seeing. So we think that those are things that people can do and also really even beyond that, which is kind of a bigger thing. And, as you mentioned, fifteen minutes of shame. The documentary kind of touches on this, which is how do we contribute to this culture of humiliation in the algorithm so that actually has an impact, like by being mindful of what you click on and what you're contributing to. Society. Sort of goes where the money is in that way. So if we're not giving more money by clicks, we're helping to change that. So I think there are those things and just you know too, is that if you're the target, the most important thing is to not suffer in silence. There is no shame in having been a target of cyber bulling or online humiliation or harassment, any of those things. Um, I mean, I know people experience a shame, but I mean there's there's no shame in telling someone what happened and also trying to hold onto that idea that you're more than the other words that people say about you. So thank you so much. I want to good thank you for your time, thank you for being so generous with your words and for, you know, going back on your story as well, which I know probably isn't very easy every time you have to revisit it. So I really appreciate yeah, everything you're doing as well. I really wanted to thank you for having me on and tell you that I think that you're a really extraordinary young woman and I love your music and, as I was saying before, you know, my my best friend from college and I were squealing car and I got to do this. So I just thank you for doing a podcast like this, and so that's my fan girling now. Thank you so much. It really like I said, I feel very lucky to have had the chance to talk to you, so this is really special for me. Yeah, thank you so much to do it. Bye. Thank you again to Monica Lewinsky, whose bravery and Canada has stuck with me ever since our recording and whose second list of books to expand the mind you can find in this week's issue of service, available to current and new subscribers who sign up at service DOT COM. If you're in the United States, Hbo Max is making Monica's documentary fifteen minutes of shame available for free through October, which is billion prevention month. If you go to Hbo Max from the beginning of October, you can watch this important film. We'll be back next week with another episode of at Your Service. As I said at the beginning of the episode, I want to ask you, are amazing listeners, for a favor. How can I be of service to you? What lists do you want from me? Do you want travel, restaurants, movies, TV shows, albums, books? I've been filling up my notes APP all some along with new lists. So please write into podcast at service dot com with what you'd like to hear from me. Until then, see you next week. FE

M M M. Hey, I'm de Alipa and I'm thrilled to welcome you to the second season of my podcast. Do Elipa at your service. I'm so happy to be back. Season one was such a labor of love. It was incredible for me to speak to some of my favorite people and biggest inspirations, and so planning this season has been a lot of fun. To anyone who also tuned in for our summer series, thank you so much. It was a bit of an experiment, so it's been great to see such positive feedback. If you want more of these kind of episodes, and please let me know the contact email addresses in the show notes, I'm really, really curious to know what you think. As everyone who's been following our service et five journey knows, I love lists and I love sharing recommendations, so I'll be doing a bit more of that this season. Get in touch and let me know what lists you want from me. My notes APP is full of them. The first episode of Season Two was a really special conversation for me. I'm just going to get right to it by introducing you to this week's guest, the activist and producer Monica Lewinsky will be with you after this. I'm so excited to introduce you to my first guest for season two, a woman whose strength, dignity and resilience I've long admired. For most of you, Monica Lewinsky will need no introduction, but for the few of you who are unfamiliar with her story, here are the facts. You're looking at a woman who was poly silent for a decade. Obviously that's changed. Today Monica is respected for a work as a campaigner and a producer, but her affair with President Bill Clinton, while she was a young twenty something intern in the White House, almost derailed her life. At the time of the affair, she confided in her colleague Linda trip, sharing intimate details, which trip began secretly recording and later handed over to the FBI. We didn't have SELINDA. What do you call it? We pulled the round. I don't know. I think if you get to orgasm, that's having sex. No, it's not, it is, it's not. What followed can only be described as a scandal of epic proportions for the President and a living nightmare for Monica. A confusing day here at the White House as President Clinton and his AIDS have sought to satisfy a stunned public, and Mr Clinton is totally innocent of these dangerous charges. President Clinton was nearly impeached for lying after famously saying this. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, and she became patient zero, the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet. Everyone piled on. Monica's face was on the cover of every newspaper and she became the butt of every late night television joke. Her mother feared that she would literally be humiliated to death. After the initial fallout, Monica retreated from public life for a decade, eventually breaking her silence into with a Ted talk that the New York Times sided as one of the best most courageous Ted talks ever. Today she writes a Vanity Fair focusing on issues related to public shaming, cyber bullying and the me too movement. She's a powerful advocate for numerous anti bullying organizations and she's quickly amassing credits as a Hollywood producer, most notably for fifteen minutes of shame, a documentary which looks at public shaming in a modern day context, an American crime story, Impeachment Ryan Murphy's fictionalized account of the Lewinsky Scandal. There is so much I wanted to unpack Monica, including her own reprocessing of investigation, her relationship with feminism, her observations of the Johnny Depp versus amber, her trial and what her life looks like since she publicly reclaimed her own story on the Ted Stage seven years ago, a period which, she says, has been nothing short of a fucking miracle. We could have talked all day and nearly did. I hope you enjoyed this week's very special at your service guest, Monica Lewinsky. Hi, hi, Monica. How are you doing? Good? I hope you can't see that I need to get my hair colored. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm delighted. I'm so flattered. No, I mean I I really I can't tell you how delighted I am to have you on this podcast. I mean, I feel like, sorry, what we're gonna say? No, no, it's it just was funny because I was with my best friend from college up in Santa Barbara visiting her daughter, who's in school there, when I got the email about this and we were both squealing in the car and then had to put levitating on and, you know, in front of her, you know, college age daughter, so anti Monica. Like you know, it was really had so many levels and I texted her this morning. She's in Europe, and I was like, guess what I'm doing today. Oh, that makes me really, really, really happy. Um, I really had such a delight and I wanted to have you on this podcast. Um, you know, your story is is one that I think a lot of people think that they know, but I guess the reality is that there's so much more to the events that took place more than twenty years ago, and I just have to say that, personally, I'm I'm just so inspired about how you've taken control of your own story in recent years, and it's a story that that was co opted by, you know, so many for their own personal and political gain. And not only that, but I love the way that you're using your platform to advocate for those who have been bullied or humiliated online. And, you know, I love how you'r how you go about trying to encourage people being more compassionate or having a more compassionate approach to social media. And as a woman in my twenties who has a little bit of insight in the highs and lows of public life. So much of this really resonates with me and so I'm really hoping that during our chat that you might be able to share some tips on how to survive the madness Um. You know, it's interesting because I think that I so much of the work that I've done personally in healing has been around compassion, compassion for myself, you know, trying to find compassion for others, which can be really difficult given certain circumstances, but it's just it. There really is a magic to it. There's a magic to shifting. I think it can shift so many situations and it's something we need more of in our world today. So I try to bring that online. I don't always succeed, I don't know. I tweeted something the other week. It was political, and a whole bunch of people are like, so much for your anti pullingcompassion campaign, and I'm like, okay, I get to, you know, I get to I get to be human, human and you're allowed to have an opinion. Yes, and you know I joke a lot about like well, people haven't seen my drafts folder of the tweets I want to send that I don't, but I you know, I think that's part of it right, which is like being mindful with your click and almost like a a I know this sounds sort of silly, but almost like a bank account. You know that it's like what kind of good are you putting in? How much good are you you putting in? Are you saying positive things or trying to find a way to say something with nuance and context, or amplifying other voices, and that that all sort of puts you in the green. And then every once in a while you can, you know, you're allowed to just dip into that jar. So it's a really it's a really good way of looking at it and I guess I feel like now what you just said is is something that we can we can touch back on on a question that I have a little bit further down the line, but I really just wanted to start with you know, when, you know, the news of your affair with Bill Clinton broke, I don't think there was a single person on the planet who didn't know your name. So many of the most like intimate details of your personal life really played out on TV and on newspapers for months and for the first time it was on this new thing which is called the Internet, and you basically became stuck in people's minds forever as this twenty two year old White House intern called Monica Lewinsky who almost brought down the president of the United States and, I think the most people a beret, not to and and and for a lot of people they think that your life story kind of just ends there. And I want to ask basically, what's it like to have your life defined by one relationship that you had in your early twenties? Um It was. It's been a challenge uman the last several years since it started to evolve and mold and change, but prior to that it was Um. I think I came into a different difficult period after, you know, sort of once everything subsided and this sort of shock of trauma that lasted for a year, I then found myself in this new landscape and trying to understand how did I move forward, how did I try to get back on a developmental path as a young woman? And it was really through that next decade, after so many different attempts, and then, you know, going to graduate school and being able to find a job after that. I that I really started to realize the damage that had been done in a whole different way than what I had experienced in and that was sort of one of the again, another really dark period in my life. You know, I've been living back in L A now for a little bit and I guess it was last year at some point I ended up driving down a portion of a highway that I hadn't been on for a really long time and I remembered that it was like I used to drive that to Pasadena sometimes to like purchase something at target and then drive home and the next day drive there and return it, all because it took up time during the day. I had no purpose and it was just a very, very dark time, and quiet dark in a different way. Where was, you know, like chaos and a shambolic more ask of you know, blaring headlines and jokes and others, other things. This this was a quiet despair. So yeah, I just, you know, it's it's so surreal even hearing you talk about this, because it's such a it's such a crazy way to think about being defined by something in your twenties. If we were defined by the early relationships at a point where we're still, like, not even fully formed. We're discovering ourselves and figuring out who we are, we're trying to understand even relationships at the most basic point, and to have that kind of really take over your life is is really it's been, Um, I don't know, a lot to just kind of take in. So I can only imagine what that must have been like for you. And you know, a few years after all of this happened, you took a step back from the public eye for a decade and you took time to earn a master's degree in social psychology, among other things, and then you chose to take to the Public Forum again and you published this really powerful essay on shame and survival and vanity fair and becoming a champion for victims on Internet shaming, and you followed that with a really incredible Ted talk as well, which has now been watched by millions of people. was there a pivotal moment that really encouraged you to step back into the fray? I think it was. Um You know how change usually comes from a number of moments that sort of start forming and eventually come together and collide, and I think that for me, as I talked a bit about in the Ted Talk. There there was a moment when Tyler Clementi, who was an eighteen year old freshman at Rutgers University and he had been videotaped, secretly, videotaped, being intimate with another man by his roommate and it was, you know, threatened to be exposed online and shame and humiliation he felt from that led him, days later to take his own life and it became a national news story and my mom and I were discussing it. I was on a drive home, you know, experiencing her or watching her process what had happened to tyler and the pain and anguish of his family. That really put my mom back in and I sort of saw through her lens Um in a different way, just that the fear and panic, you know, that she had had, and my dad as well, that they had had about me, that that worry of me taking my own life being, you know, publicly humiliated to death. So Um I think that it was at that point that I started to realize too, that that with the advent of the Internet and now social media had, you know, had been born, that that there were these opportunities that public shaming was now going to be something that more and more people would start to experience. It wasn't just for people who made mistakes, you know, or public people, that that we were starting to feast on Private People's moments that, you know, could bring shame and humiliation, and I think that at that point I thought, okay, there might be a place, you know, as a poster child for having survived public humiliation. There might be there might be a place for my voice, and I think that happened alongside a lot of deep healing work that I had started to do that allowed me to be in a place where I could do that, where I could take the risks of kind of, quote unquote, coming back out. I mean it's really, really inspiring to be able to take, you know, your pain and what you went through to help benefit others, especially in this age of social media just becoming bigger and bigger and people also seeing other people's misfortunes or things that they went through as a form of currency to be able to talk about, you know, build their own social persona, really make themselves soon stronger at the hands of other people. And I think one thing that's really fascinating to me is how, over time, we deconstruct and reconstruct events that happened to us in the past and before the whole me too movement. You know, you said, sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I'll always remain firm on this point, that it was a consensual relationship and any abuse that came was in the aftermath, when you were made as a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position. And something that really struck me was how feminists agonized over you, whether you were using your own agency or where you were a victim or you know, and and I really wonder how this has evolved and how this experience has defined, like your own relationship with the feminist movement, because for me, it completely blew me away that, you know, feminism then isn't really as how we know it now, that maybe abuse of power wasn't at the top of their list. And and yeah, you know, it's interesting because, Um, what happened with my relationship with feminism in a way was reflective of so many different streams in my life, and one of which was healing work I did in sort of stepping back out, really recognizing that there were grudges I was going to have to let go of and, while that doesn't mean I don't, you know, still wish with all my might that there had been some support. That would have changed my experience as I got older and I started to understand the duality of situations and the difficulty sometimes. There were things I started to understand too, that I started to see as I was older. By no means excusing what the movement had done at the time and the silence or the contributing even I think that was really one of the worst. I mean to sort of it was the yeah, I was knowing that really struck me was the contribution from, you know, women who were, you know, like Cathy Rogers, who was the National Organization of women, and Eleanor smil from you to President of Feminist Majority Foundation, like I was. I think while I was reading and understanding and also learning more about your story, it was something that really kind of struck me that you really had no support at that time when, you know, girls really need other women to help them out, especially when they're going through such a such a difficult time. Absolutely I think that, Um, I certainly came to understand and experience that you know, women aren't immune to misogyny and, Um, you know, as intersectionality, you know, has become more of a focus in feminism too, that we also start to see the ways women behave towards other women that really support the Patriarchy too. That helped keep that in place. So there's an irony there of fighting to try to change something while at the same time reinforcing the Atitution, and that's not you know, that's not to say all feminists or or even all the time, but I think that that we can all become prey to those, those sorts of things. You know, for me, if you are a somewhat liberal woman today, it's impossible to not find yourself in some tributary of feminism because of what's at least in my country, what's happening over here, Um, and I think in terms of how are how our rights to make decisions about our own body and our lives, I mean has just been decimated and it's incredible in the worst definition of the word. Um, yeah, sort of. It's it's it's interesting. You know, I am I think I got a little lost in a way in answering all of that, because my mind hitched to the quote that you were talking about from the essay and think it's really you know, looking at feminism and how things have changed in just even a short period. I think, like around the me too movement and everything, that even that idea of abusive power, as you were saying, is something that we weren't we weren't focused on when I wrote that essay in that was not something that we that was top of mind when we looked at those things, and within a few years that became something that forced so many of us um two. I don't know, because you're young, so I don't know if you're you yourself had those experiences to where you were re contextualizing, reevaluating, you know, re examining what some of your experiences had been, because the definitions were shifting. We were understanding complexities and nuanced to things that that we hadn't before. We'll be right back with Monica Lewinsky. All to this short break. Just recently, you know, we have the case with Johnny Depp and Erhart, you know, the trial, for example, and it seems like they're still a really special like vitriol for women in certain scenarios, and you've written really powerfully about this case specifically and also, more generally, about how social media encourages our worst instincts. Then I was just wondering, like how do you think that we can break the cycle of behavior that in just two decades has become so, so, so embedded in our society? Yeah, Um, I think what becomes challenging is we see a lot of this behavior at the intersection of, you know, sort of the human condition and what's happening in our world socially, and also the commodification of a lot of these things, that it's like we are set up in some ways too. I guess maybe there's a way to say it differently than that, which is sort of this that it's kind of the intersection between the human condition and the online disinhibition effect, which, you know, talks about how, because we're online, we're not face to face with people, were not reading social cues, we're able to dehumanize people more, and so I think that, you know, we've seen that throughout our sort of social media or online history. Like you think about second life, you know that was sort of really the precursor to the metaverse in a way. But this idea of you know, people going online and creating entire new personas and living a life out. I mean, there were people who got divorced in real life because of what was happening in second life, and so I think we start to see the ways that, Um, you know, certainly on social media, how we're curating who we are, how we want to be seen. You know, I think about Instagram, you know, and you just you start to feel inferior to write, like everybody else is having more fun, they're more in love, they're eating better food. Um, that's always the best bits. It's always the best bits when they're having a ship day or when something's not going right or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it's so true. Yeah, so, Um. But I think too, I think, going back to what you're saying with the trial, I think it really also reflects something that I experience too, which is still a place in feminism that I think there's work to be done, which is around the imperfect victim, which is around sort of how do we what happens when someone doesn't take every box of what makes something be an easy decision and to know how to to know what the right course of action is there. Does that make sense at all? And it completely makes sense. It's just what I what I think is interesting is that, no matter what, somehow we managed to always pointing fingers at the women, whether you know there was a miss take that happen there or not. Right you know, we're we're always found with the woman kind of picking up the pieces in whatever way. You know, this year we finally saw the first conviction in the Jeffrey Epstein case, you know, when Calain Maxwell was sentenced to twenty years in prison for child sex trafficking offenses, which is obviously a very welcome first step in seeking justice for Epstein and Maxwell's victims. And at the time of Maxwell's sentencing, you tweeted a really like short and simple message, which is now do the men, and I think that kind of that really resonates to everything that's happening. It's you know, you're saying so much in such a short message and I want to know, really, where do you think this could go next? You know, I think we're um we're living in an interesting moment of change and it's so hard to remember. I mean, maybe it's always happening, so maybe these are just the big changes of my lifetime, you know, or our lifetime, and so that's what we're seeing. So it feels it has a certain weight to it, but I think that there's you know, there are others who talk about it this way too, but if you think about change happening like a pendulum, you know that if the pendulum still there has to be this force that gives an initial movement out of inertia and that pendulum is gonna swing too far one way and too far another way. And I think that's how change happens, that we sort of we go a distance. We now have that movement, we have the change and the shift in something. You know, it's like that sort of two steps forward, one step back thing which happens and change right, and I think that's where we are and it's incredibly frustrating. Right. It's very challenging because this isn't this isn't just one thing which becomes defined by a law that then goes into effect and now change has solidified and happened. These are decisions being made in society, their nuances, there's power, there's money. You know this idea. Of course Gillane should have some punishment for having put these young women in these positions and also having, you know, allegedly abused some of them as well sexually. But I think this idea that the men who physically and sexually harmed them, that that hasn't happened yet and that it seems unclear. It doesn't seem as if there are these other trials now lined up and we'll have to see, you know, we're kind of going to see is it justice or or power which wins out here, you know, how that will justice be meeted out as a justice or power? Seems to be the overarching question, I think, for a lot of things going on. You know, even how you said, with the proversus weighed and everything that's happening with women's reproductive rights, and it's just I feel like we're taking more than, you know, two steps forward and one step back. We're taking ten steps backwards and we're holding on for dear life hoping that's something that is going to happen and change is actually going to come. But it's definitely a really scary time, um, but it is, and it's I think, too for, you know, for so many people, and we see this not only with, as you're saying, reproductive rights, but also sort of trans rights and the LGBT Q I community and you know, racial issues that there's if you're someone who falls on a you know, just even slightly to the left of a liberal or progressive, you know, anywhere in that spectrum which we normally call a Democrat right, like anybody who's a Democrat is sort of assumed to be to the left of the midpoint. I think what becomes challenging is that there's so many people who are so up in arms around judging others and sort of wanting to regulate someone else's life in a way that doesn't impact them at all, and that I just find shocking. That's sort of just a place where I don't know. I don't know anymore how we bridge that divide. You know, if I think my rights trump your rights and that my vision of the world, which would dictate how you live your life, is right, and you know it just it doesn't. I don't know. I don't know how we move forward. I don't know Howard and I pressed a depressed, compressed char I know. I mean the world, the world makes makes us, makes us feel depressed, and and the thing that I was going to say earlier, which I couldn't even remember, is is the way that people just try and amplify their own public persona at the hands of other people's misfortune. But you know, in recent years you seem to have become, you know, much more intentional and direct about how you use your public profile and you're an ambassador for several anti bullying organizations and last year you were the executive producer of fifteen minutes of shame, which is a documentary that's a plea for mercy for those who have been subjected to online humiliation, and it seems to me that you are exactly where you should be. Um. In fact, you said recently that the past seven years have been a fucking miracle, and I just want to know what what changed to make that possible? Um, I think it was a reflection of the kind of involution, the deeper work that I had to do that married with the times changing. When I wrote the Vanity Fair Essay, it was your generation that insisted on reevaluating my story. So I think that there were probably a lot of the older generations. Um, I won't blame everything on the boomers, but but almost maybe. You know, like next genet, we used Um. So, but uh, you know, it really wasn't. It was fascinated because I think that these younger generations were, you know, coming to this story maybe having heard, you know, bits and bobs of, you know, the headlines Right knew, if they knew me outside of rap songs, you know, then it was like, you know, just the headlines and and and really, you know, as we kind of say in my family, it's like I hadn't lived through the brainwashing, because that's really what happened, you know, through political forces and the media and how that unfurled. So it was the younger generations that kind of said, who WOA, Whoa, wait a minute, what happened here? You know, you know. So just looking at the facts, really insisted on on a reevaluation and I'll be, you know, forever grateful for that. It was, I think, one of the things too, you know, and just you you were saying about two about my public platform and those things and being intentional. I do a lot of deep consciousness work, like with its like scientific consciousness work. I don't know how to really explain it, but I've been doing it for like mindfulness, or I mean there's of course there's an aspect of mindfulness. There's an aspect of loving kindness and compassion. But it's really been around. You know, I don't know how woo Woo we want to get here. I mean, not that it's not what it's science base, but I mean it. It's just been very much about healing energy fields and and trying to reorganize energy patterns in my life. And one of the intentions there, you know, that I think I went into was in stepping back out to be seen as my true self. and Um, it's weird, Um, you know, sometimes emotion sneaks up on you in a Um, strange way. So I think that that was Um, one of the things that it was so lost from the period before was there were certainly the lies, there were the cherry picked facts. So they were all the awful things that I had done or humiliating things, you know, ways that I embarrassed myself, but there was the totality of me as a person, you know, the multidimensionality of me, seeing me in context, was just missing, and so I think that's been one of the most rewarding things for me. You know, Um, just in terms of of having a public voice and and also now my brother, my younger brother, had to admit that I was funny so most, so much of my life. He was like want to you're just you're not as funny as you think you are. And he's really funny. He's like the funny. You know, he's I have a very funny family actually, Um, very funny. That was definitely something that that took me advice. Brought your sense of humor as well, even even in the way that you write, was Um, is really brilliant. Thank you. Yeah, it's really I actually I have a pretty body sense of humor as well, but I kind of I tend to keep that just more among friends, like my private instagram. You know, it's a little I can imagine. That's really fun. Yeah, so well, and I think isn't that, in a way, what we all want, right, is we all sort of want to be seen and accepted for our true selves. Well, I'm really happy that you've, you know, I had the opportunity to be able to to feel that, to feel your authentic self and and to really step into your light and also share that with other people, because I think people will really appreciate you know, your your experience and how you're how you're giving back and helping others. And you know, last year, just as you know you're really reclaiming your narrative, you accepted the producer role on ack and crime story, impeachment. It's a fictionalized account of the impeachment investigation and Beenie Feldstein plays you and Sarah Paulson is Linda trip and you know you had no editorial control and no veto and I was wondering, you know, what persuaded you to participate in a project that put your story back in someone else's hands, and what was that experience like for you? You know, the decision was not easy for me, Um, but I also think that when you've gone through the kinds of things I've gone through, you come to recognize that any input in something around your narrative is better than nothing, you know, and to be able to work with an extraordinary group of producers and writers and actors and in that way was an appealing opportunity in that sense. And you know, for me, I've sort of people who know me you're like, Oh God, here she goes again saying the same thing. But like I'm really like, I really feel about that. With everything the projects, I'm really pouring my soul into. I want them to be about moving a conversation forward, like that's really what it's about for me. And in being a producer on impeachment, what it meant for me was, you know, the angle in that they wanted to take with this story. Was Looking at this from the women's perspecutive. Yeah, I had participated also in a documentary for the twentieth anniversary that was being done. That was directed by Blair Foster, and she had made this amazing comment to me that in their research, all of the books about this time had been written by men. So to be a part of something like that and really, I think you know my personal goal with impeachment. I mean of course I had, like you know, some selfish ones, but I think my bigger goal was really to shift a collective consciousness in a way that this couldn't happen to an other young person again. You know, I don't know that it's going to go from, you know, white to black in terms of a young person not being shamed ever again, like, but I think, yeah, exactly, and I think, you know, make people aware of that in that way. And it was, you know, it was a really challenging process. It was ungrateful to have been involved and it's led to me doing more producing. But I think every time that I step back into, you know, doing something around this time in my life, there's a price to pay. But I also feel so much of the work that I had to do I had realized kind of you know, I was talking about like the dark period in after, you know, the sort of legal things were done, was that I had to integrate what happened to me. You know, when I moved to London for Graduate School, I naively thought, Oh, I'm going to go be, you know, Montica Lewinsky, the Social Site Graduate Student at LC and you know, Montica Lewinski the intern. She's gone, and of course that was like a very um rude awakening that I really was adding an identity and that became a big part of the work I've had to do and you know, I still sort of my back goes up a little when, you know, I still get shipped on twitter sometimes and people are like, yeah, she's extending her fifteen minutes of fame and Oh, she just you know this, and why isn't she shut up about her past and if she wants to move on, you know, whatever all the things are warriors, Theodora. Yeah, you know, for me moving forward and evolving is more about, you know, what are the ways that this folds into my life organically, because it did happen to me. I mean sometimes it's still surreal Um, but also it really is about integrating, not running away from or or becoming someone different. Like I haven't reinvented myself, I've evolved and there's a big difference to me with that. And you know, you said earlier that there was like a period in your life where you know, you basically couldn't get a job and you're just driving to the shops and back just for something to do, and I'm sure you're not doing that now. So what's what's your day look like, you know, both professionally and in terms of self care? I'm really interested in this deep consciousness thing, but maybe we have a chat another time, because I I believe in all the you know, the energy shifting and how you can really work through certain things in order to find your true selves. I find that really inspiring. But I guess, just on a daily basis, what does that what does that look like for you? I can't say that there's sort of a regular structure, but the majority of my time right now I have a first look deal at twenty television. So I'm developing scripted drama, you know, which is just me being I'm I'm so grateful for the opportunity and I'm learning so much. I'm very lucky to have a patient executive who answers my stupid questions like so, how long does this take? But uh, you know, it's been exciting. I'm I'm, you know, working with a number of different extraordinary producers on various projects that all you know that I feel are that next step for me. You know that are taking the things that are unique about my lens that's been shaped by my experiences to imprint that into different other people's stories, like it just doesn't you know that it's Um, it's not to say I'm not going to do things with my own story ever again, because I will. It's my story, it's part of me, but I'm very interested to tell other kinds of stories and other people's stories, and so I feel really hopeful. Um. So I do a lot of that. I you know I do. We've talked so much or, you know, dipped into the healing work I'm very lucky because I'm in a position, you know, I'm supporting myself enough now where I can afford to give myself the kinds of healing things that I need, but in order to show up in a public way, you know, it's like I have a a normal therapist who's a trauma psychiatrist. I have my my energy guy, I have a, you know, a therapist who's like also sort of a friend but kind of on call for emergencies when it's not and I started during the pandemic. I started doing somatic therapy. So there's that and then, you know there'll be other people who kind of come in and out, but I mean that's like, that is a lot of fucking work and it's expensive, you know, so that that takes time. You know, it's one of the things that I really hope. You know, I think we're very much moving towards really big public conversations around modern trauma. You know, I think trauma is the next mindfulness, you know, in that way, and I have to do a lot to show up, you know, and my crystals and my candles and my you know, so it's uh, you know, I have a crystal little thing hypockets. Yeah, so it's, you know, it's one of those things that I do hope that is we kind of move into these discussions, you know, more publicly, that it allows people to, Um, feel less shame around getting help, you know, and exploring all different kinds of ways that might be available to them, because I think, Um, so much of us have been denied our recognition of trauma, you know, in certain circumstances. Monica, learning just about your journey, you know, over the years and over the past couple of weeks, since I found out that that you accepted to do this podcast with me, has been really, really inspired ing, and I'm so happy that you have had the opportunity to really take the narrative into your into your own hands, and for having this conversation with me. I think a lot of people are going to find this really interesting and the way that you've chosen to be of service to other people as well as really just it's really inspiring and I really love to end my podcasts at the end with some lists, some recommendations from you, and I have two and one is, Um, I'd love to know the five best books on how the mind works. So I'd say number one is the untethered soul by Michael Singer. Two and three are both by Michael Pollen, how to change your mind, and this is your mind on plants, for would be the feeling good handbook by Dr David Burns. And the fifth is one that I am planning on reading soon, which is emotional inheritance. A therapist, her patients and the legacy of trauma by Dr Galite Atlas. That's amazing. I really wanted to get your recommendations, so I'm looking forward to getting into that. Yeah, go with the untethered soul first. I mean it was sort of just the the one nugget from it that stuck with me the most was this idea that we have an inner roommate. You know, what we think of as our mind is not really our mind and we really are a consciousness, and that would just like blew my mind. I was like, Oh wow. So, I mean, I I now. It was funny because I had one of those experiences. I don't know if you've had this before. Um of I couldn't get into reading the book and I had two different friends say, Oh, you know, I listened to the book, so I, you know, bought the audio version and I've now listened to it like ten times and every time I listen I'm I'm, you know, gaining something new. And then also, I'd love to know, you know, five things that you can do if you witness Cyberbillyon Um, in terms of five things, you know, I kind of shifted a little and sort of say that the things to do when you witness cyber bulling can be, if you feel safe, to step in to interrupt the bulling cycle. But people don't always feel safe. So I think that's a you know, for me, this is my opinion. It's really important to me that people not always think the first and only thing to do is to step in, because that's not safe for everybody. But what you can do is you can always reach out to the target, whether that's publicly privately, if it's a friend, those kinds of things really they make such an extraordinary difference of when someone's a target and they're feeling so alone. There's that, there's helping people, there's reporting what you're seeing. So we think that those are things that people can do and also really even beyond that, which is kind of a bigger thing. And, as you mentioned, fifteen minutes of shame. The documentary kind of touches on this, which is how do we contribute to this culture of humiliation in the algorithm so that actually has an impact, like by being mindful of what you click on and what you're contributing to. Society. Sort of goes where the money is in that way. So if we're not giving more money by clicks, we're helping to change that. So I think there are those things and just you know too, is that if you're the target, the most important thing is to not suffer in silence. There is no shame in having been a target of cyber bulling or online humiliation or harassment, any of those things. Um, I mean, I know people experience a shame, but I mean there's there's no shame in telling someone what happened and also trying to hold onto that idea that you're more than the other words that people say about you. So thank you so much. I want to good thank you for your time, thank you for being so generous with your words and for, you know, going back on your story as well, which I know probably isn't very easy every time you have to revisit it. So I really appreciate yeah, everything you're doing as well. I really wanted to thank you for having me on and tell you that I think that you're a really extraordinary young woman and I love your music and, as I was saying before, you know, my my best friend from college and I were squealing car and I got to do this. So I just thank you for doing a podcast like this, and so that's my fan girling now. Thank you so much. It really like I said, I feel very lucky to have had the chance to talk to you, so this is really special for me. Yeah, thank you so much to do it. Bye. Thank you again to Monica Lewinsky, whose bravery and Canada has stuck with me ever since our recording and whose second list of books to expand the mind you can find in this week's issue of service, available to current and new subscribers who sign up at service DOT COM. If you're in the United States, Hbo Max is making Monica's documentary fifteen minutes of shame available for free through October, which is billion prevention month. If you go to Hbo Max from the beginning of October, you can watch this important film. We'll be back next week with another episode of at Your Service. As I said at the beginning of the episode, I want to ask you, are amazing listeners, for a favor. How can I be of service to you? What lists do you want from me? Do you want travel, restaurants, movies, TV shows, albums, books? I've been filling up my notes APP all some along with new lists. So please write into podcast at service dot com with what you'd like to hear from me. Until then, see you next week. FE