How to reclaim your narrative (w/ Monica Lewinsky)

Chris Duffy (0:03)

This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today's episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the 2026 Ted Conference in Vancouver, Canada. And today's guest is Monica Lewinsky. Monica is someone who other people have tons of instant preconceived ideas and opinions about. She has been the butt of jokes and song lyrics and tabloid news stories for years because of a sexual encounter she had when she was 22 years old with then president Bill Clinton that became highly public. But I was really interested in talking to Monica because in recent years, she has been hosting a podcast called Reclaiming. It's a show where Monica and her guests talk very openly and candidly about the ways that they have been perceived and how they are trying to rewrite their own narratives, and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. The show is an invitation to listeners to, and I'm quoting here, find their own connection to the stories of how we get back what was once lost or taken from us.

Now, Monica's story is obviously an extreme case. It was incredibly public and dramatic. Very few people are going to experience having their most embarrassing mistakes from their 20s broadcast on the nightly news every single night for months. However, I think that all of us these days have to navigate a gap between our private personal selves and the version of us that we put out into the world publicly, whether that's on social media or on a broader screen.

Everyone is at some point going to have to figure out how to handle an embarrassment, a mistake, a humiliation. All of us are going to have times where we have to decide whether we judge or shame or exclude someone else, or whether we offer them some grace, a possibility at redemption and reconciliation.

And I think there's an incredible amount that all of us can learn from Monica's reflections on her experience, about reclaiming your narrative, about power dynamics, about mistakes, about bullying and cruelty, and about empathy and redemption. So to get us started, here's a clip from Monica's 2015 Ted Talk, which was called The Price of Shame.

Monica Lewinsky (2:04)

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

This rush to judgment enabled by technology led to mobs of virtual stone throwers. Granted, it was before social media, but people could still comment online, email stories, and of course, email cruel jokes. News sources plastered photos of me all over to sell newspapers, banner ads online, and to keep people tuned to the TV.

Do you recall a particular image of me, say, wearing a beret?

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

Chris Duffy (4:11)

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

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

Monica Lewinsky (4:37)

Yes, Chris. Hi, everybody.

Chris Duffy (4:41)

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

Monica Lewinsky (4:53)

I love it.

Chris Duffy (4:57)

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

Monica Lewinsky (5:03)

Gosh, I think that I would probably say who I am today versus who I am in Wikipedia.

Chris Duffy (5:11)

Right?

Monica Lewinsky (5:12)

But I think, today, I feel especially, I think there are probably some women who are in their 50s or older in the audience, and I feel like I have found so much of myself in my 50s, and that I just keep getting more and more comfortable with who I am. And in answering who I am, I don't actually know how to answer that. I feel like that's sort of one of those questions that people who know you well can answer with adjectives, and I like to think of myself as someone who's thoughtful, fucked up, works on herself, you know.