Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.In Monica Lewinsky’s new podcast Reclaiming, guests reflect on traumatic moments in their lives and how they got through them. Her first interviewee? That would be Monica Lewinsky.Almost any other podcast host making themselves the subject of their opening episode would seem outrageously self-absorbed — more so when it lasts 75 minutes. But this is Lewinsky, a victim of mass shaming and misogyny who, after a long period away from the limelight, has recast herself as an anti-bullying advocate. If anyone knows about coming back from the brink, it’s her.For this episode only, she is in conversation with producer Elna Baker, who is too young to remember the scandal that erupted in 1998 when an affair between Lewinsky, then a 24-year-old White House intern, and US president Bill Clinton was exposed in an FBI sting operation. The affair nearly derailed the presidency but, at the time, little thought was given to the impact on this young woman who was vilified by the press, betrayed by her friends and threatened by the FBI with a 27-year jail sentence if she refused to co-operate with prosecutors.Lewinsky doesn’t dwell on the affair itself, instead focusing on the aftermath. And there are some arresting details, such as that if a restaurant offered her free dessert, they had probably called the paparazzi. “There is no road map, no field guide to surviving a scandal,” she says. Not only did her notoriety make romantic relationships difficult, it also meant that, despite her qualifications (she has a masters degree in social psychology), no one would give her a job. The only future she could see “was continuing to wear this hair shirt of shame”.It took Lewinsky more than a decade to decide she would have to rewrite the narrative foisted upon her, embrace what she has learnt and turn it into her professional raison d’être. In 2015 came her viral TED talk about being a casualty of public shaming, followed in 2018 by a self-authored Vanity Fair article and, later, producing credits on the documentary series 15 Minutes of Shame and Ryan Murphy’s Impeachment.While there is a fair amount of therapy-speak here, Lewinsky talks perceptively and courageously about all she has endured, only once breaking down in tears. The overwhelming impression is of a woman who paid a terrible price for a youthful mistake but who has emerged, remarkably, without bitterness and with a determination not to be weighed down by other people’s opinions.For the remainder of the series, Lewinsky is in the host’s chair letting her guests do most of the talking — some famous, some not. In the latest episode she interviews Scottish actor Alan Cumming who talks bluntly and movingly about the physical abuse he experienced as a child by his father, and his long road to acceptance.wondery.com
