“If you can’t laugh at yourself, you are so fucked”: During a conversation yesterday at The Atlantic Festival with Atlantic staff writer Sophie Gilbert, Monica Lewinsky said this was one of the most important things she’s learned. In 1998, as a 24-year-old White House intern, she was entangled in a sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton and quickly became a subject of international scorn. A few years later, she went to graduate school and tried to live a “normal” life, but eventually came to understand that there was no road back to anonymity. Instead, she began to imagine herself as “a poster child for having survived shame.” Today, Lewinsky is an anti-bullying activist, a TV producer, and the host of the podcast Reclaimed—whose title, for her, holds multiple significant meanings. S

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