Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today is February
2nd, 2026. And if you've been keeping your ear
to the ground, or I guess your earbuds in...
you probably know that we just passed a pretty
significant anniversary in the audio world. That's
right. It has been exactly one year since Monica
Lewinsky launched her podcast, Reclaiming with
Monica Lewinsky, back in February of 2025. And
it really feels like that podcast was the final
piece of a puzzle. A puzzle that's been, what,
almost 30 years in the making? At least, for
the longest time, Monica Lewinsky wasn't a person's
name. It was a punchline. It was. It was cultural
shorthand for scandal, for a certain kind of
joke on late night TV. But if you look at where
she is now today, it's a completely different
reality. She's a producer, an activist, a media
creator with, you know, real institutional backing.
It's a full 180. She's no longer a historical
footnote that you read about in a chapter on
the Clinton presidency. She's a current active
media figure with genuine clout. She is. But
the thing with these redemption arcs, the danger
is that we tend to fast forward through the really
messy parts. You know, we see the before, which
was the scandal, and we see the after, which
is today. And we kind of just skip over the decades
of pure survival in between. Exactly. And that
is our mission for this deep dive. We are not
here to just rehash the 1998 scandal for the
gossip of it all. We've got a massive stack of
source material here. We really do. We have biographical
records, actual legal filings from the Starr
investigation, which are just fascinating to
read. Unbelievable. We have details on her so
-called wilderness years in London, which people
rarely talk about. And we've mapped out the very
strategic roadmap of her public reemergence.
We really want to study the mechanics of survival.
How does a person reclaim their own narrative
after the entire globe has decided on one for
you? A single story that defines you. And beyond
that, how has our own collective definition of
things like scandal and victimhood shifted? I
mean, the lens we'd use in the late 90s versus
the one we use now in the post hashtag Me Too
era, they're just worlds apart. It's a study
of her, but it's also a study of us, how we shame
people, how that's evolved. It's fascinating.
So let's rewind the tape. Way, way back. Because
before the blue dress, before the beret, before
the Oval Office, she was just a person. Who was
Monica Lewinsky before the world decided who
she was? Well, if we look at the biographical
data, the first thing that just jumps out at
you is the environment. She was born in San Francisco
in 1973. But she is a creature of affluent Los
Angeles. Is that what we're talking about? We're
talking Brentwood, Beverly Hills. This is high
society, top tier L .A. life. OK, so wealthy,
probably very connected. And I imagine maybe
a bit sheltered from the real world. Very much
so. Her father, Bernard Lewinsky, was a prominent
oncologist. His backstory is actually quite intense.
He was the son of German Jewish refugees who
escaped the Nazis. Wow. Yeah, they fled to El
Salvador first and then eventually made it to
the U .S. So there is this, you know, this thread
of deep survival and resilience in her DNA generations
back. That's a heavy legacy to carry. And her
mother, what was her story? Her mother was Marcy
Lewis. And she was an author. Now, this is one
of those details from the source material that
feels almost too written to be true. I think
I know what you're talking about. Her mother
wrote a book called The Private Lives of the
Three Tenors. Wait, like the opera singers? Pavarotti
and company? The very same. And it was described
explicitly in reviews as... a gossip biography
it was meant to be sensational that is i mean
you cannot make this up it's undeniably ironic
her mother literally made a living writing gossipy
books about famous powerful men and then her
daughter becomes the subject of the biggest gossip
story of the century involving the most powerful
man in the world it's unbelievable it definitely
adds a really complex layer to that whole family
dynamic it really does but On paper, Monica's
path was the classic L .A. trajectory for someone
from that background. She went to the John Thomas
Dye School, which is a very exclusive prep school,
then Beverly Hills High, and she graduated from
another private school, Bel Air Prep, in 1991.
So a very polished, privileged education. Absolutely.
But beneath that shiny surface, there was a lot
of turbulence. Her parents divorced in 1988.
And by all accounts, it was a really messy, contentious,
drawn out split that was very hard on the children.
Right. So you have this young woman. product
of a broken home, even if it's a wealthy one,
growing up in a culture that is just completely
obsessed with image and celebrity. Precisely.
And in our research stack, there's a specific
relationship that happens before she ever sets
foot in D .C. that I think is the real key. It's
the Rosetta Stone to understanding what happens
later. You're talking about the Andy Blyler affair.
I'm so glad you pulled that out because it is
so often glossed over or just mentioned as a
footnote. But it's critical. This started back
in 1992. Monica is attending Santa Monica College,
and she's also working in the drama department
at her old high school, Beverly Hills High. And
she enters into a five -year relationship with
Andy Blyler. But let's be very clear about who
he was. Right. For context, Blyler was not a
classmate. He wasn't a peer. He was her former
high school drama instructor, who's married,
and he was significantly older than she was.
Okay, let's just pause on this for a second.
We have an older man, an authority figure, a
teacher engaging in a multi -year relationship
with a former student who is just barely out
of her teens. Yes. In 2026, we look at that and
the alarm bells are just deafening. We have a
vocabulary for that now. We call that grooming
or at the very least a severe, unethical, abusive
power dynamics. Precisely. But in the early 90s,
the lens was very, very different. To Monica,
this was a secret romance. And it lasted for
five years, even overlapping with her eventual
move to Washington. But the reason this is so
significant for our deep dive isn't just the
psychological setup, is it? It's what happens
later. It's the betrayal. It's the ultimate betrayal.
Because when the Clinton scandal breaks years
later, Andy Blyler doesn't just, you know, quietly
disappear and hope no one finds out about his
own affair. He does the complete opposite. The
complete opposite. He goes to the press. And
more importantly, he goes directly to Kenneth
Starr, the independent counsel investigating
the president. And what did he do? He didn't
just talk, right? No, he turned over physical
items, souvenirs, photographs, personal letters,
documents that Monica had sent him over the five
years of their relationship. He handed over her
private intimate correspondence to be used as
evidence against her. That is just brutal. I
mean, think about that. The first major authority
figure, romantic partner in her life. ends up
selling her out, handing over evidence to help
destroy her. It establishes this horrifying pattern.
What pattern is that? That trust, for her, is
something that gets weaponized against her. That
her intimacy will be used as a public weapon.
It's a recurring theme, absolutely. The private
becomes public ammunition. But okay, let's get
her to D .C. She eventually transfers from Santa
Monica to Lewis and Clark College in Portland,
Oregon. She graduates with a psychology degree
in 1995 and pretty quickly lands a major internship.
And not just any internship. This wasn't fetching
coffee for some backbencher congressman. She
gets into the White House, the West Wing, and
the office of the chief of staff, Leon Panetta.
Which is the absolute nerve center of any administration.
And she got the position, our sources say, through
a family connection, which again speaks to that
affluent, well -connected background we talked
about. But she must have been good at the job.
Oh, she clearly was capable because by December
of 1995, just a few months in, she moves from
being an unpaid summer intern to a full -time
paid position in the Office of Legislative Affairs.
And she's still only 22. She's inside the machine.
And this, of course, brings us to the event.
horizon, the scandal. But I want to be really
specific here because the popular memory is just
this blurry montage of headlines and jokes. What
does the actual record the testimony say about
the timeline of the affair itself? It's surprisingly
contained. According to the grand jury testimony
from both of them, there were nine specific sexual
encounters. Only nine. That's it. I feel like
the cultural memory, the narrative that was built,
assumes it was this daily, ongoing thing that
lasted for years. No. It was nine specific encounters
between November of 1995 and March of 1997. And
the nature of these encounters is legally critical
to everything that follows. Right. The testimony
stated they involved oral sex and other physical
acts, but, and this is the legal firewall that
was built, they did not include sexual intercourse.
Which to a normal person just sounds like a distinction
without a difference. I mean, sex is sex. But
in the very specific high stakes legal world
that Clinton was operating in, that distinction
was the entire bowl game. It was the entire foundation
of his defense. It was everything. But before
we even get to the legal parsing of words, we
have to look at the immediate workplace fallout.
By April of 1996, Monica is transferred out of
the White House. Why? What was the official reason?
The official reason, according to her superiors,
was that she was spending too much time around
the president. Which is the most polite, bureaucratic,
HR -speak way of saying, we see what's happening
here and we need to separate them immediately.
Exactly. They see it as a potential problem.
So they exile her to the Pentagon. Exile is the
right word. It is. She becomes an assistant to
Kenneth Bacon, who was the chief Pentagon spokesman
at the time. And for Monica, based on her own
accounts, this was a devastation. She viewed
it as being cut off from the man she thought
she loved. She was isolated. And in that professional
and emotional isolation, she found a friend.
Or so she thought. Linda Tripp. Linda Tripp,
a career civil servant, much older, who presented
herself as a sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry
on. And in September of 1997. Lewinsky starts
confiding in her. She's got to tell someone,
right? She's carrying the biggest secret in the
world. She needs an outlet. She's overwhelmed.
And this is where the betrayal that we saw with
Andy Blyler repeats itself, but on just a nuclear
scale. Because Tripp isn't just listening sympathetically.
She's not just being a friend. She's producing.
She's operating. She starts, without Monica's
knowledge or consent, secretly recording their
phone calls. Hours and hours of them. She's taking
detailed notes. And who is she feeding this information
to? She's reporting the contents of these conversations
to a woman named Lucianne Goldberg, a literary
agent with deep ties to Clinton's political enemies.
So we need to be clear. This was not just office
gossip. This was a political intelligence gathering
operation from the very beginning. And the advice
that Tripp gave Monica. Yeah. Looking back on
it, it's just chilling. It's so calculated. She
specifically advised Lewinsky to keep all the
gifts the president had given her. Don't throw
them out. Right. And then famously, she told
her not to dry clean the blue gap dress that
had been stained with semen during one of their
encounters in the Oval Office. It's pure manipulation.
Keep the evidence, dear. You might need it one
day. It's so sinister. It was a trap, a very
carefully laid trap. And that trap was finally
sprung by a completely separate legal case that
on the surface had nothing to do with Monica
Lewinsky. The Paula Jones sexual harassment suit.
Exactly. We have to connect these dots. Because
it's easy to get lost in the legal weeds here.
Paula Jones was suing President Clinton for an
incident of alleged sexual harassment that happened
years before he was president, back when he was
governor of Arkansas. So what on earth does that
have to do with a White House intern? It's a
phase in a lawsuit where both sides get to gather
evidence. Jones's lawyers were trying to establish
a pattern of behavior. They wanted to prove to
a jury that Clinton had a habit of sexual misconduct
with employees or subordinate women. So they
were looking for other women. They cast a very
wide net, asking for testimony from anyone who
might have had a sexual relationship with him.
And through the D .C. rumor mill, Lewinsky's
name came up. And when she's approached, initially,
Monica tries to protect him. She does. In January
of 1998, she signs a sworn affidavit in the Paula
Jones case. And in it, she denies under oath
that she had a sexual relationship with the president.
And that, that is the moment the legal jeopardy
becomes real for her. Because lying in the sworn
affidavit isn't just a lie. It's the crime of
perjury. It's a felony. And at the exact same
time this is happening, Kenneth Starr, the independent
counsel who was appointed to investigate the
Whitewater land deal, something totally unrelated
from years ago, gets wind of the tapes from Linda
Tripp. The secret recording. The secret recordings.
And he immediately goes to the attorney general,
Janet Reno, and gets his investigative mandate
expanded. He essentially says, forget Whitewater
for a second. I am now investigating whether
the president of the United States and his friend
Vernon Jordan encouraged this young woman to
lie under oath. So the investigation shifts from
a decade old complicated real estate deal into
a very current, very explosive investigation
into perjury and obstruction of justice. And
that is what leads us to the semantics. The word
games and probably the most parsed, debated and
ridiculed sentence in modern American history.
I did not have sexual relations with that woman,
Ms. Lewinsky. We really need to unpack the definition
defense because in Clinton's mind and in his
lawyer's minds, this wasn't just a simple lie.
It was a carefully constructed legal argument.
OK, so lay it out for us. How on earth do you
stand in front of the world and argue that what
happened wasn't sexual relations? It relied entirely
on a very specific, very convoluted definition
of sexual relations that had been provided by
the prosecution and agreed to by the judge in
the Paula Jones case. It wasn't the dictionary
definition. It was a very particular legal one.
And what was it? It was complex and multi -part.
But Clinton's lawyers seized on one aspect of
it. They argued that the definition required
the person being accused to be the active participant,
to be the one touching certain body parts of
the other person, for the act to legally count
as sexual relations under that specific paragraph
of text. So wait. His argument was, essentially,
she performed acts on me, I was passive, therefore
I did not technically engage in sexual relations
under this very specific, agreed -upon definition.
That is exactly the argument. It was a hyper
-technical, almost Talmudic reading of a legal
document. He was answering the question according
to a strict legal definition that he believed
he hadn't violated, not according to common sense
or what any normal person would think. That is,
I mean, the audacity of it is kind of breathtaking.
It's the kind of argument that only a lawyer
could come up with and think would actually work.
And it extended to his other denials, too. Remember
the famous line from his grand jury testimony?
It depends on what the meaning of the word How
could anyone forget? It became a punchline for
years. But there was a logic to it in his mind.
He had said to his aides earlier there is not
a sexual relationship. And he argued that was
a truthful statement because the affair had ended
months prior. So in the present tense is, he
was arguing that at that moment there was no
ongoing relationship. It's maddening. It's like
watching someone try to navigate a maze of their
own creation. But while he was playing these
word games, the physical evidence that Linda
Tripp had coaxed Monica into preserving came
back to end the entire debate. The blue dress.
The FBI's crime lab got a sample of Clinton's
blood, they tested the stain on the dress, and
the DNA match was irrefutable. It was a 1 in
7 .87 trillion match. It's about as conclusive
as science gets. It forced a total pivot in the
investigation. And to get Monica's side of the
story without her facing prison, Kenneth Starr
offered her transactional immunity. Can you explain
that term for us? Transactional immunity. What
does that mean in practice? Sure. It's basically
the highest level of protection a witness can
get. It's a legally binding agreement from the
government that they will not prosecute you for
any of the offenses related to the subject you're
testifying about, provided you testify completely
and truthfully. So it protected her from being
charged with perjury for that earlier false affidavit
she signed. Exactly. It was the only way to get
her to talk without her facing serious jail time.
It was her only way out. So she testifies. The
president testifies via closed circuit television
from the White House, but she has to do it in
person in front of the grand jury. The Star Report
comes out full of excruciatingly personal details.
The House impeaches him. The Senate acquits him.
And for Bill Clinton, the crisis eventually ends.
But for Monica Lewinsky, the trial is over and
the real punishment is just beginning. Which
brings us to the immediate aftermath. We're in
1999 now. The legal threat is technically gone,
but she is, and this is without any exaggeration,
the most famous woman in the world and possibly
the most ridiculed and shamed person on the planet.
And she's broke. She has to survive. She has
massive, crippling legal bills from a team of
world -class attorneys. So she decides to do
the only thing she can. tells her own story.
She cooperates with the biographer Andrew Morton,
who famously wrote the Princess Diana book, for
a biography called Monica's Story. And then on
March 3, 1999, she sits for the big interview
with Barbara Walters. I looked up the numbers
on this again because they're just staggering.
That interview on 2020 drew 70 million American
viewers. Let's put that in perspective. That
is more than most Super Bowls. It was a genuine
monocultural event. Practically every household
in America with a television was tuned in to
watch this 25 -year -old woman explain her sex
life to the nation. And the narrative at the
time, the one pushed by the media, was that she
was cashing in. Oh, absolutely. The sources say
she made about $500 ,000 for the book rights
and another million for the international rights
to the Walters interview. So a total of about
$1 .5 million. And the public sentiment was very
much, look at her getting rich off her sin. But
the math on that narrative doesn't really hold
up, does it, when you look at the reality of
her situation? Not at all. It falls apart immediately.
Her legal defense team, people like Plato Kacheris
and Jacob Stein, were among the best and most
expensive in the world. She had round -the -clock
security costs. She had basic living costs. That
$1 .5 million was consumed almost immediately
by debt and expenses. She wasn't buying yachts.
She was literally paying to stay out of prison.
And this financial pressure leads to what our
outline calls the commercial venture era, or
as I like to think of it, the handbag era, because
she couldn't get a normal job, could she? No
one would hire her. What would you put on your
resume? She was completely radioactive to any
mainstream employer. So she tried to lean into
the only asset she had, her fame, her notoriety.
In September of 1999, she launches a company
called The Real Monica Inc. And she literally
starts designing and selling handbags. She did.
And according to the reports from the time, she
took it quite seriously. These were described
as hippie -ish reversible totes. She was personally
flying down to Louisiana to supervise the manufacturing.
She was trying to be a real entrepreneur. And
she had some success, right? I mean, these weren't
just being sold out of the trunk of her car.
No, she got them into high -end boutiques. Henri
Bendel in New York, Fred Seagal in Los Angeles.
She had an online store. She was making a real
go of it. It's almost heartbreaking when you
think about it. It's like she's saying to the
world, if you're going to consume my life as
a product, I might as well sell you a bag to
carry it in. It was a very public attempt at
reclaiming her identity through commerce. But
then came the Jenny Craig disaster in 2000, which
was just a whole new level of public humiliation.
This one really makes me wince every time I read
about it. So Jenny Craig, the weight loss company,
signs her to a $1 million endorsement deal. But
the terms of the contract were just draconian.
What were they? A huge chunk of that million
dollars was contingent on her losing 40 pounds
or more in a specific time frame. The payment
was literally tied to her shrinking her body
for them. We will pay you, but only if you physically
diminish yourself. The subtext is just screaming.
It's not even subtext. A spokesperson for the
company actually went on the record and said
she represents a busy, active woman and she has
had weight issues. That represents a lot of women
in America. They were trying to pivot her political
scandal into a relatable weight loss journey.
But the public, and more importantly, the company's
own people, were not having it. The franchisees
revolted. The people who own the individual Jenny
Craig centers across the country basically said,
absolutely not. We do not want this woman as
the face of our brand. They were terrified it
would alienate their core customer base. So what
happened to the campaign? It was pulled almost
immediately. The commercials barely aired. She
only ever received $300 ,000 of the promised
million dollar contract. So it's just one rejection
after another. She tries entrepreneurship. She
tries endorsements. She even tries to lean into
the absurdity of it all. She has a cameo on Saturday
Night Live. She does in May 1999. She appears
in a couple of sketches basically lampooning
her own situation. She also had a stint as a
TV personality, right? To brief one. She was
a correspondent for a UK channel in a segment
called Monica's Postcards. And then in 2003,
she hosts a reality dating show on Fox called
Mr. Personality. Oh, this one was something else.
The premise was that the male contestants all
wore masks to hide their faces the symbolism
is just too much isn't it a woman who was judged
almost entirely on her looks and her past is
hosting a show where men have to hide their faces
to be judged on their personality and how was
it received it was panned critics absolutely
destroyed it it was seen as the height of trash
television and around the same time in 2004 a
major event happens that seems to be a real turning
point for her bill clinton releases his autobiography
And for her, this was a massive blow, emotionally
and psychologically. It really was. She later
said she felt he desecrated her character all
over again. In the book, he maintained the narrative
that he was passive in the affair, that he tried
to stop it, that she was essentially the aggressor.
He revised history in a way that protected himself
and threw her under the bus one more time. And
what did she realize from that? I think she realized
that as long as she was in the United States,
she would never be her own person. She would
always just be a character in his story, a footnote
in his biography. So she does something incredibly
radical. She just leaves. She disappears. And
this begins what I think is the most fascinating
and critically overlooked chapter of her entire
life. The quiet years. In 2005, she packs her
bags and moves to London. And she doesn't go
there to hide in a flat and lick her wounds.
She applies to the London School of Economics,
the LSE. Which is not exactly a community college.
No. This is one of the most rigorous elite academic
institutions on the entire planet. And she gets
in. I just love this move. It's the ultimate
clapback. The entire world calls you a bimbo
and a ditz for a decade. So you go get a master's
of science in social psychology from the London
School of Economics. She fully immersed herself
in her studies. And if you really want to understand
her mindset at the time, you have to look at
her master's thesis. It is a brilliant and stunning
piece of meta -analysis. What was the title?
The title was In Search of the Impartial Juror,
An Exploration of the Third -Person Effect and
Pre -Trial Publicity. Okay, that's a mouthful.
Let's break that down. The third -person effect.
What does it mean in psychology? The third person
effect is a well -established psychological theory.
It posits that people tend to overestimate the
influence of mass media messages on other people
while simultaneously underestimating the media's
influence on themselves. So it's basically the
idea of I'm a smart, independent thinker and
I'm not brainwashed by the news. But those people
over there, they believe everything they see.
That is it exactly. So she was writing an academic
paper about how the relentless biased media coverage
of her own case made it psychologically impossible
for her to ever get a fair hearing in the court
of public opinion. Everyone thought they knew
the real story because they were immune to media
influence. But in reality, they're all shaped
by it. She was using the tools of high level
academia to perform an autopsy on the mechanism
of her own public trauma. That's incredible.
It's incredibly intellectual and, frankly, incredibly
brave. So she graduates in December 2006. She
has the degree. She has the intelligence. She
comes back to the States. Does the world finally
let her move on and get a normal job? Not a chance.
This begins what she later called her lost decade.
From roughly 2006 to 2014, she tries repeatedly
to get normal jobs, corporate jobs, marketing,
communications, working for nonprofits, jobs
she was perfectly, if not overqualified for with
her new degree. And what would happen? How would
the interviews go? The interviews, by her account,
would go great. They'd be impressed with her,
with her ideas. But then the hiring manager would
have to go talk to the board or the PR department.
And the answer that came back was always the
same. We can't have Monica Lewinsky on the payroll.
Think of the donors. Think of the press clippings.
It's too much baggage. That is a terrifying kind
of purgatory. You've done the work. You've gotten
the education. You've paid your dues ten times
over. But you are permanently branded. You're
untouchable. She was completely stuck. And I
think that decade of stagnation of being told
no over and over again is what finally pushed
her to stop running from her past and instead
turn around and confront it. If the world wouldn't
let her be normal. then she had to become exceptional.
Which leads us directly to 2014, the reemergent.
The comeback. She writes a powerful, long -form
essay for Vanity Fair magazine titled Shame and
Survival. And she uses this one phrase in it
that has always stuck with me. She said, it was
finally time to stick my head above the parapet.
That's a military term, right? Looking over the
wall of a trench, knowing you're completely exposed,
knowing you might get shot at. It's the perfect
metaphor. She knew the risks, but she decided
it was time to take control of the narrative.
narrative. She made a crucial brilliant strategic
pivot. She stopped talking about scandal and
started talking about bullying and harassment.
And she gave herself a new title. She called
herself Patient Zero. Patient zero of losing
your personal reputation on a global scale almost
instantaneously. And she's right. If you think
about it, the Drudge Report broke the story online.
She was arguably the first private citizen to
be globally, publicly shamed and humiliated via
the Internet. There was no playbook for it. No
one had ever experienced that before. And she
connected her own experience to a more recent
tragedy, the suicide of Tyler Clemente. This
was the catalyst for her activism. Tyler Clemente
was a student at Rutgers University who died
by suicide in 2010 after his roommate used webcam
to secretly film him being intimate with another
man and then posted about it online. He was outed
and cyberbullied. And Monica saw a direct line
from her experience to his. She saw the lethal
endpoint of what she had gone through. She realized
that public shaming wasn't just a political game
or a media circus. It had real human and sometimes
fatal consequences. It wasn't about Democrats
and Republicans anymore. It was about survival.
And this reframing culminates in her TED talk
in March 2015. It was called The Price of Shame.
It has been viewed millions and millions of times.
In it, she called for a more compassionate Internet.
She became a strategic advisor for the anti -bullying
organization Bystander Revolution. She transformed
herself from a punchline into a protector. But
then just as she's establishing this new identity,
the culture shifts under her feet again. It's
2017. The Harvey Weinstein story breaks. The
hashtag MeToo movement goes viral. And this was
a really complicated moment for her because for
two decades, Monica had fiercely, fiercely defended
the idea that the affair with Clinton was consensual.
She always insisted on her own agency in the
situation. Her line was always, I made a choice.
It was a mistake, but it was my choice. Right.
She rejected the victim label, but hashtag me
too introduced a whole new public vocabulary
about power dynamics, about consent, about abuses
of authority. And it forced her to look at her
own story through this new lens. It did. In 2018,
she wrote another powerful essay for Vanity Fair.
And in it, she publicly reevaluated her own history.
She looked at the massive power imbalance. He
was the president of the United States, arguably
the most powerful man on Earth. He was 27 years
older than her. He was, for all intents and purposes,
her boss's boss's boss. And she started asking
the question, is true consent even possible in
that kind of power vacuum? And she concluded
that it really wasn't. She wrote, and this is
a direct quote, I'm beginning to entertain the
notion that in such a circumstance, the idea
of consent might well be rendered moot. She called
it a gross abuse of power. She also revealed
she'd been diagnosed with PTSD from the whole
experience, not from the affair itself, but from
a public outing, the investigation, the global
ostracism. Which gave a clinical medical framework
to the suffering she'd endured. And with that
new self -awareness came the setting of hard
boundaries. She started saying no to a world
that had consistently walked all over her. And
the Town & Country incident really highlights
this new strength. Tell us about that. In 2018,
Town & Country magazine invited her to a major
event celebrating philanthropy. She accepted
the invitation. Then a short time later, Bill
Clinton also accepted an invitation to the very
same event. The magazine's response was to call
Monica and rescind her invitation. They uninvited
her. They chose the powerful man over the woman
he had abused his power with. Again, the pattern
repeats. But this time, Monica didn't just go
away quietly. She went on Twitter and she called
them out on it. She exposed the hypocrisy publicly.
And then there was the even more public display
of boundary setting at a conference in Jerusalem
that same year. With the journalist Yanit Levi.
Yanit Levi is a very prominent Israeli journalist.
Before their onstage interview, Lewinsky's team
had made it explicitly clear to the producers
and to Levi. There's one question that is off
limits. Do not ask her if she still expects a
private personal apology from Bill Clinton. That
was the boundary. And Levi asked it anyway. It
was her very first question. Her first question.
And Monica didn't debate her. She didn't get
flustered. She didn't awkwardly laugh it off.
She just calmly and firmly said, I'm so sorry.
I'm not going to be able to do this. And she
stood up, put the microphone down, and walked
off the stage. That is just a master class in
self -respect and reclaiming your power in the
moment. It was the moment that the insecure 22
-year -old girl in the beret finally left the
building for good. She showed the world and probably
herself that access to her, to her story, to
her pain is a privilege, not a right. And from
that point on, we enter the current era, the
era of Monica, the producer. She's no longer
just the subject of the story. She is the creator.
She executive produced a documentary for HBO
Max called 15 Minutes of Shame, which is all
about the culture of public shaming. But the
really big one, the one that brought everything
full circle, was American Crime Story. Impeachment
The Ryan Murphy FX Series She was a full producer
on the show about her own life. She wasn't just
a consultant. She had real input. She was in
the writer's room. She gave notes on the scripts.
She made sure that Linda Tripp wasn't portrayed
as just some cartoon villain, but as a complex,
wounded, and manipulative human being. She ensured
that the terrifying FBI interrogation scene,
where they held her in a hotel room for 12 hours
and threatened her with decades in prison, was
portrayed accurately and with all its horror.
She forced the audience to sit in that room with
her 22 year old self and experience the trauma
and now she has her own production company the
name is just perfect it's called alt ending productions
she is literally writing an alternative ending
to her own story She also signed a first look
deal with 20th Television in 2021. This means
a major studio is paying her to develop new projects.
She has gone from unemployable to a power player
in Hollywood. Which brings us right back to where
we started today. Her podcast, Reclaiming, it's
been out for a year now. She's the one asking
the questions. She's the one guiding the conversation.
She has successfully, against all odds, transitioned
from being the object of the global conversation
to being the subject of it. She is the one holding
the microphone. So as we wrap this deep dive
up, let's go back to that central question we
started with. What does the survival and now
the thriving of Monica Lewinsky teach us? I think
it teaches us that the word scandal is often
just a convenient dismissive cover for a gross
abuse of power. It teaches us that the court
of public opinion is a kangaroo court almost
always. But mostly I think it teaches us about
the sheer stubborn power of human resilience.
She survived what she calls the House of Gaslight.
And here is a thought I want to leave you, the
listener, with. We often hear people say, thank
God social media didn't exist back in 1998. It
would have been so much worse for her. I hear
that all the time. It's the common wisdom. But
I want to challenge that just for a minute. How
so? If Twitter or Instagram or TikTok had existed
in 1998, yes, the harassment and the trolling
would have been louder, more vicious, more direct.
No question. But Monica would have had a handle.
She would have had a platform. She would have
had a voice. You would have been silenced. Exactly.
In 1998, she had to wait for Barbara Walters
to give her permission to speak. She had to wait
16 years for a legacy magazine like Vanity Fair
to give her the space to write her own story.
If social media had existed, she could have posted
a video explaining her side of the story on day
one. She could have fought back in real time.
She could have countered the narrative as it
was being built. Right. The gatekeepers in the
mainstream media controlled her image completely
for more than a decade. Social media, for all
of its undeniable toxicity, it destroys those
gatekeepers. So it's possible, just possible,
that instead of being a pariah for 20 years,
the public might have rallied around her much
sooner. She could have been a hero for speaking
out, not a villain for existing. That is a really
fascinating what if. Would the whole slut versus
predator narrative have survived? If the so -called
slut could tweet back, we'll never know for sure.
But what we do know is that today she has the
mic. And she's clearly not giving it back. A
lesson for us all, I think. Thanks for diving
in with us. We'll see you next time.