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A
Wondery subscribers can listen to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky early and ad free right now. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.
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B
I got a call from a guy saying, hey, you don't know me, but I was Jack Paladino's lawyer. And before he was murdered was the phrasing that was. Was used on the tape of this voicemail, which I hadn't known about at the time. He asked that some of his files be shared with you.
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A
Oh, my gosh.
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B
Congratulations, by the way.
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A
Oh, thank you.
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B
I'm really. I'm like, you're doing great stuff. The interviews are great.
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A
Thank you.
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B
You're getting good things out of people.
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A
What's felt so important to me with the podcast is that people who come and sit in the chair feel really safe, you know, and that. And I think the people who listen to the conversation feel like I value their time.
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B
I appreciate that. You're very caring.
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A
I am. Which helps because I know what it's like. I know what it's like to sit in a chair and to be worried about someone having ill intentions, about someone even not having ill intentions and inadvertently causing trouble, causing pain, all sorts of other things.
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B
And so, oh, most of my life, sitting as an interview subject is in that space of like, you're defending really complicated reporting.
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A
Yeah.
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B
You know, you're defending yourself. There's all kinds of bad faith forces out there set against you@tucker.
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A
UFO people you've like. Right. Catch and Kill was all about your book and then the podcast. Right. And then surveilled and all trailed from your work, from your powerful work that you've done of the kind of consequences of that, of powerful people coming after you. That's how you know. Right. You're really. You're close and you're doing something big and important.
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B
Yeah. I mean, look, you know, I'm not in a coal mine, and there's a lot of journalists who do tough investigative work and get much less attention for it. So I feel grateful. I feel very privileged in the work I do. But I also increasingly have transitioned from not being willing to make myself the story and not being willing to talk about the challenges to feeling that journalists talking about the headwinds is actually an important public service.
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A
That's interesting.
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B
Getting good, quality information to people is one of the most important things that we can do to preserve our basic rights in a democracy.
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A
Well, and in today's world. I mean, I just. I don't know how you feel, but I. I just keep finding myself seeing small things that make me question reality. You know, just like any. And it just begins. And maybe reality is the wrong word, but. But begin to kind of question things. Even something as small as like lab grown diamonds, you know, there's just a whole concept of. Well, it's not a real diamond. Well, it is a real diamond.
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B
I mean, just the way what is reality?
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A
What is real?
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B
Well, and I think. I think the fragmentation of shared reality, you know, in some ways there's modest upsides that people have more access to disparate sources of information. And if they're willing to engage in critical thinking, they can do the research and seek out the data. The data is more available than ever.
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A
Yeah.
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B
The problem is there's also a decline in that culture of critical thinking. And there are vast political forces taking advantage of the fragmentation of reality and the declining trust in reality. And that's where lies and disinformation can flourish and can be exploited to seize power.
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A
Well, and look at. Even on a much simpler. I mean, maybe it's not simpler, but you think about the AI stories that you hear recently. I mean, the first one I heard of was Brad Pitt, but now it's Keanu Reeves and several other actors that people have used AI to impersonate them and going after. I guess they're using social media to find sort of vulnerable people who are fans of their work and scamming them for a lot of money.
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B
People in the administration are getting calls from an AI Fake Marco Rubio right now. That's been a recent story in this genre.
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A
I had a version of that happened. Not AI it was Greta Thunberg. That someone called me and pretended that like Greta Thunberg wanted to talk to me.
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B
And wait, did it work? Did you get on the phone with fake Greta Thunberg?
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A
I got on the phone with fake Greta Thunberg and her father and wow. Supposedly. Which it was totally not. And about halfway through the call, I started to get really suspicious. And so then I just. I was really careful in what I said. And I think it ended up being a prank. Right. But it was. I think it was a radio or a TV show. Radio show that was doing. They had done it to several other.
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B
People like, oh, Monica, we gotta get you better gatekeepers.
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A
Oh, my God.
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B
It's really good that you're sharing this because I think the truth is it doesn't matter how smart you are, how cautious you are. Like, it could happen to any of us.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And we're about to enter into an era where no amount of critical thinking is going to automatically protect you. You really do have to do additional due diligence on everything. Every image, every news story. It's everywhere. And I actually, I had an experience of this recently that really opened my eyes to how pervasive disinformation culture is. There was an alt right influencer, and this is a person who, you know, tweets memes about Jews drinking Christian baby blood and, like, helped to radicalize Kanye into racism, like, into, you know, anti intelligence.
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A
A lovely sounding person.
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B
Well, exactly. But has a real following. And people who, I think, in this climate of not trusting reality and the ground under them, have latched onto and think, well, this is a counterculture person. And maybe what she says is right. And she uploaded this crazy conspiracy theory completely divorced from facts. She actually. She started by getting up and saying, ronan Farrow is the most powerful journalist at the New York Times. I don't even. I don't write for the New York Times.
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A
Right.
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B
I have no connection to the paper. But her premise was basically that I had been photographed with my boyfriend coming out of drinks with Taylor Swift, and that Taylor Swift was friends with Blake Lively, the actress.
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A
Yes.
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B
And that Blake Lively was engaged in this lawsuit with this guy, Justin Baldoni. And then the New York Times, after I had drinks with Taylor Swift, did a story which I had no knowledge of, no contact with, didn't encourage in any way. Obviously, I'm not gonna talk to a competing paper about a story like that. Nothing to do with this story. And her premise was, because of that chain of disparate facts that I had orchestrated with Taylor Swift, the destruction of this guy. I have never done any reporting on this guy. I have nothing to do with this. And for a while, as I was getting essentially doxxed by this woman, she sent out her followers and every possible channel of public communication was, you know, you're just dirt. You're worthless. You destroyed this man. Again, complete fiction. Nothing. Not even adjacent to reality.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And at first I was like, well, this is so far from reality. Why engage with it? And then it really. I realized, no, we are living in a time when people will go out and attack someone and, like, gleefully be like, you know, this influencer is taking you down without even Googling what paper I write for.
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A
Right.
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B
And so I did finally, like, respond to a couple of people. And what was interesting is when I explained, like, hey, this is truly a fiction. Try to do your research in a respectful way of Course, there's a subset of true extremists in any conversation like this where they say, you know, well, I don't care. I don't care about the facts that you're giving me. Like, I am dug in.
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A
Yeah.
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But mostly people were like, oh, geez, I'm sorry. You know, I hadn't bothered to think critically. I didn't bother to do research. But the problem is you now have this decline in what used to be trustworthy news sources.
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A
So I think there is that human element that can happen. And I know you're talking about it in a different way and through the lens of critical thinking, but I think in all of these places where we're trying to find our way back to, you know, find our way back to a place where democracy really existed and we believed in it, or find our way back to a place where people trusted journalists more, or find our way back to a place of decency, I think we can see some of this, you know.
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B
Well, I think these are both really important spokes of coming back from the twin demises we're describing, of the death of truth and the death of kindness and compassion.
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A
I felt like, in your new podcast, not a very good murderer.
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B
Thank you for the audible.
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A
Exactly. But that's exactly what you're doing there, right? Is sort of you're taking us behind the curtain of how you evaluate someone as a, as a potential source. And of course, you do it in the, it's sort of the juiciest, the juiciest of ways of. With these stories, which we're going to dive into that, that later, too, because.
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B
It'S a propulsive listen.
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A
Yeah, it is. It's interesting. But you're. I, I definitely want to dive into your podcast and, and I also want to officially welcome you, Ronan Farrow, to reclaiming.
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B
Oh, yeah. Wow.
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We went on cut.
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B
Any of that that you want?
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A
That is, no, no. It's also interesting. And that's what I, I, that's, that's what I like. I like the conversation and the connection and all those things.
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B
This is why you're, you're good at what you do.
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A
Well, thank you. You know, I was thinking about, and you're sort of talking about the loss of kindness and compassion and reminded me, too, that sometimes I think the work we do in different places in bringing awareness to things makes a difference. And then sometimes you think maybe we haven't come as far in some ways, because it reminded me, especially as I've been talking to you, that we met. I think we Met at the Forbes 30 under 30 conference.
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B
Wow.
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A
And that was my very first public talk. That's right. So. And I was talking. Oh, thanks. I was so nervous.
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B
But I've always felt, I mean, I don't mean this in a patronizing way. Protective of you and like a certain kinship. Because it is a small set of people who understand the unique dynamics of trying to do things of worth and consequence in the world in the shadow of a generationally defining sex scandal.
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A
Yes.
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It's a really particular challenge.
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It is.
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And I think that you have always carried yourself with so much poise and grace through that.
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A
Thank you.
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And that there's a lot of valuable things that we've learned historically about what not to do as a society when we look at how you were treated. And I really, I see you right now, you know, rising above that.
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A
Thank you.
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And so as someone who's had to do my own version of that.
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A
Yeah. You and your mom and your sister.
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Yeah, absolutely. I really have been happy to see you thriving.
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A
Thank you, Ronan. That's really sweet. Really sweet. It was. Yeah. I was thinking, I think that's where we had first connected. But you had already. Right. I mean, and this was something I don't normally kind of start conversations, going into youth and stuff. Stuff. But with you, I wanted to only because I had forgotten. So if I had forgotten this, maybe someone else did that. You, Ronan Farrow, are a super fucking genius.
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B
I did a Doogie Howser went to school young.
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A
I know, but I had forgotten that you went to college at 11.
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B
I went to college at 11.
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A
Yeah.
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B
How are my dysfunctional social skills?
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A
Well, I went to college at 19 and I still have. No, but I mean, do you look back on that just the sort of short of it of going to college at 11, graduating at 16 with a bachelor's in philosophy? Right. I mean, do you look back on that and just think, okay, this is my life. Those were the choices and I needed that to end up here. Or do you wish you had had more of a quote unquote, normal childhood?
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B
I think I have moments of experiencing both. The choices were very self driven. So that informs my present day psychology about it. You know, I didn't have like a helicopter mom. I didn't have someone who was urging me to do that. You know, if you talk to my mom about it, she's like, I don't know, I was along for the ride. I was so driven. I had such a jet engine of ambition in me. And I think I am still parsing why And I imagine it's a confluence of all of these biographical factors. There's a kind of best little gay boy in the world philosophy. You know, people talk about that frame of mind that can sometimes accompany that, that, you know, if you're not gonna be sort of the alpha male in the conventional patriarchal sense, sexuality wise, that you're gonna just succeed so much in other ways. So that's, that's a particular kind of overachievement that you see in the gay community. Then on top of that, there's the whole being in the shadow of celebrity psychology.
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A
And I should say just, I'm sure there's. Everybody knows, but in the event that there's a Martian who just came to Earth who's actually listening to our podcast, that your mom is actress Mia Farrow and your dad is filmmaker Woody Allen and your grandma's actress Maureen o' Sullivan. Jean from Tarzan.
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B
Yeah, so I mean, deep Nepo baby. Yeah, well, all the way back.
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A
No, because you didn't go into, you didn't go into entertainment in that way.
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B
That's a very gener use of that distinction. Thank you. I think that's right. And that actually is relevant to answering the question that I wanted very badly to do things that mattered in the world, and especially earlier in life, cared a lot about having that be taken seriously in its own right. Now I feel like I've matured into caring a little bit less in a way that is quite healthy. I think I was massively animated by those insecurities that I just talked about. And then also sincerely, really infused with intellectual curiosity and, you know, bored with grade school work and reading voraciously. And I had done all of my high school credits by the time I was done with sixth grade. They kept, you know, skipping me grades, skipping me grades. And so I, you know, I went to college young and then I went to Yale Law and I did the Rhodes Scholarship and I got a PhD at Oxford and in political science.
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A
And that's how you know our mutual friend Jemima, right? Yeah, that's right.
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B
Jemima's the best. I really miss Jemima.
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A
I know I miss Jemima.
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B
We gotta go visit Jemima.
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A
100%. Jemima, we're coming for you.
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B
It's time to hang with Jemima. I think that some of that was almost self destructive, that I was so, so relentless all the time. I think, by the way, also growing up in a kind of chaotic childhood.
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A
Right. Cause you had 14 siblings or you're 14.
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I'm one of 14. And that was its own source of chaos. But also there was this really destructive, painful court case around all the allegations that my sister had about Woody Allen and Woody Allen marrying my other sister. Really painful stuff. And I think when you grow up without a kind of solid family background, without, like, firm ground you can stand on and the things that you're supposed to trust most are so precarious. And like, even the most trusted relationships can become, you know, people who are at odds with you and trying to destroy you later. Like, this is the kind of background that then leads you to on some level, like, rush, rush, rush. Because you don't know how long you have and you don't know that you can count on anything.
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A
Oh, that's interesting.
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B
So, I mean, this is my armchair psychologizing later, like, why the hell did I do this?
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A
But what's interesting about what you're saying is. So I chatted with Kara Swisher on the podcast early, and she was talking about, oh, she's amazing.
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B
Yeah, she's fun.
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A
Yeah. She was talking about having lost her dad when she was really young. And that instilled in her that same sort of a mentality, which is really interesting. Like, it's just interesting to see that develop from something so different.
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B
Yeah. I think for me, I had like three or four layers of factors that just led me to really, really over torque in terms of academic achievement. And. And, you know, to your point, going into this question, like, nobody knows it about me now, so sometimes I do look back and I'm like, well, this was very intellectually rich. And, you know, in some ways I had a blast. But also, like, why. Why did I over credential myself so much?
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A
Maybe you're secretly French.
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B
You know, maybe I'm secretly fresh.
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A
I just had read this thing about, I think that it was saying you were five and there were these helicopters outside your house. So was that around?
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B
Yeah, all through, like, that period, roughly, of like, yeah. Five, six, seven.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And then onward through my childhood. Because that case lasted years.
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A
Right.
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B
It was, you know, people now, thankfully, have started to forget, but it was a white hot shit storm. Shit storm, yeah. Where, you know, even my mom, who was wonderful through all of this and really protected us as much as I think a parent could. And so there's a lot of happiness and joy and magic in my childhood too, because of her sheer force of protectiveness. But she moved us from New York to Connecticut. And even there, like, in really rural middle of nowhere, in a farmhouse, in a field, there'd be, you know, the helicopters Overhead and the paparazzi showing up and coming down the driveway. And it was very embattled feeling at times, which is another point of commonality.
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A
Obviously, I was just gonna say, because where it took me when I read that was it took me back to this period where, you know, in 1998, there was the period before I got immunity. I didn't get to leave the house very much, but if I was in the car and there was a helicopter, I would think I had been indicted. And so this was in this time before cell phones. Right. So you couldn't just check your phone. And then that persisted for quite a long time that I would be in the car, and if there started to be a helicopter or two helicopters hovering, I would panic. And now at this point, I had a cell phone, so I could at least call someone, but those sorts of things. And so I just. I felt so much compassion for little Ronan of, like, being that age and having that experience. It just.
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B
Thank you for that. I think that one of the things that's been surprising to me, looking back at all that, is how little compassion it felt like there was, you know, for the kids involved.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Like, mostly my experience of that legacy was people sort of judging me negatively for having this supposedly, you know, wonderfully privileged background. And it certainly was, in some ways, you know, I own the privileged parts of it. But I also grew up in a crucible of, like, literal violent crime and a lot of deaths around me, too. You know, the background was. Yeah. You know, several of my siblings died.
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A
Oh, wow.
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B
It was a challenging childhood in some ways. I lost a lot of people that I loved and dealt with a lot of painful circumstances and how terrifying. Even though that's so public, I found surprisingly infrequently, people had the reaction you just had of, like, wow, that sucks. Like, I really feel for you. And certainly that's also the reaction that I've always had to what you went through. And I also think there was a paucity of that in the national reaction.
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A
Absolutely.
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B
As you were going through it anyway.
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A
Right.
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B
100%. I look back, the film that Randy.
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A
Barbato and Fenty Bailey made, another point of commonality.
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B
Yeah. So Randy and Fenton, they later went on to create RuPaul's Drag Race and have all these other successes. And they actually. They direct a lot of my film projects now. I do documentaries currently for hbo, and we have a couple of films and series coming up.
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A
Oh, great.
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B
Including, by the way, this hasn't been announced, but I'm just gonna say it they directed the television version of Not a Very Good Murderer by the current podcast.
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A
Oh, wow.
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B
Which will also stay tuned later, be on tv. But they're wonderful documentarians. And one of the reasons why I started working with them, which they did a TV documentary version of Catch and Kill, which is also great and worth watching. And that's all credit to them. And the reason I allowed them to use this footage of my interviews to make that documentary and then collaborated with them on it was because I had seen their documentary Monica in Black and White.
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A
Oh, wow. Yeah.
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B
Which I think I'm sure. Yeah, you have mixed feelings, and it's probably complicated to watch, but I look at that, and I do think it's like a rare, ethically, somewhat futuristic document in terms of the compassion that it has for you. Correctly. And up to that point, there was just so little of that. And they really. They capture the culture of cruelty that you had to live through.
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A
Yeah. It's so interesting for me to look back at times, I don't know if you've had this experience. And I was just trying so hard. I was just trying so hard to have people know me, understand me, see me as something different. And. And you just. You look back and you go, it's amazing that these people were able to, you know, bring forth this kind of a story. And yet it was too early. It was just too early.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I don't know if it was sort of an emotional evolution for you, a conscious choice, a subconscious thing that you, you know, you began writing about powerful men doing bad things well, before people were ready to hear that. Right. Cause you were writing about Cosby. Is that right? About Bill Cosby.
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B
On my MSNBC show, I was reporting on things like the Cosby allegations, although I remember also encountering resistance. Like, it just wasn't a topic that was raised. And I remember having Cosby's official biographer on my show and having this big fight with my producers where I was like, well, we gotta raise the allegations. They've been around for years. They've been, like, pretty public already, and people being, like, horrified. And then right after that, they, of course, resurfaced in a very public way.
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A
Right. But I think that. I think sometimes the. I imagine we might see a different reaction today. Maybe not depending on who the person was who would have been exposed. I think you're. You know, you've done this work. A lot of people know your name for a lot of different things, but so many women are grateful to you for your brave reporting and, you know, of bringing into our world. MeToo 2.0, you know, with our mutual friend Tarana Burke having launched MeToo 10 years before.
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B
Well, I think, like, Tarana Burke is a great example of the people who actually built a movement. I've always viewed my job as very separate than that. I feel, you know, honored anytime someone says something like that, that my work mattered to them on that beat. But I did view it as a reporting beat, you know, and I was never involved in any activism around it. I had a narrow job, which is when I was reporting on sex crimes, I was furnishing facts that in some cases, had been suppressed.
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A
Right.
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B
And where clearly, like, even law enforcement processes, if you look at someone like Harvey Weinstein, had been manipulated and facts had been buried. And my hope is that whenever I report on something with those kinds of stakes, you know, that people might go to jail. I am really exercising caution to only put out the facts that are bulletproof. And I think that reporting has held up well by that metric. But it is complicated because, as you point out, it. It did inform an activist movement. And I think, you know, people can debate exactly where that should ultimately fall. The pendulum kind of swings back and forth in terms of the culture of, like, how fastidious we are about, you know, the boundaries between bodies and the way men treat women in the workplace and so forth. Those are all somewhat outside of the scope of the reporting that I did that. The reporting I did was always on cases that weren't edge cases. They were about serious serial violent crime that, honestly, in any culture, would be considered unacceptable at any time. So I'm happy that there was that. Follow on to it. I just also feel quite separate from it.
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A
Mm. I understand that. It's interesting to me that you were, you know, writing about Cosby before this happened, the year before. I think MeToo 2.0, or help just calling it hashtag MeToo. Whatever. We want to say that the year before, you had taken this sort of. To me, it felt emotionally brave because you talk about your personal feelings about having. You wrote an essay, right, about Bill Cosby and Woody Allen and your sister's allegations. And I just. There's a quote from it I wanted to read, if that's okay. Just because it connected for me in a way that might be different, might feel different, I don't know. But it had to do with my own family and my own. It just was really interesting to me, you know, and you touched on this before, too. It just was so moving to me to be in a written public piece and it was. I had worked hard to distance myself from my painfully public family history and wanted my work to stand on its own even now. I hesitated before agreeing to the Hollywood Reporter's invitation to write this piece, knowing it could trigger another round of attacks against my sister, my mother, or me. And I think what I felt in rereading that now, in preparing to talk to you, was not only the. My own fears of what I might have and when you step forward to do something, but also the difficulty of family, you know, that there is collateral damage. And we were sort of touching on that before. And I think, you know, I have a younger brother, and I have parents and step parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and, you know, people who share my last name, people who don't, you know, who. Who have different kinds of experiences in those ways. And that sense of how do you decide when a story is legitimate enough to tell, even if the consequences impact people you love? You know?
- [28:50]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of my experience of that story was actually with me in the recipient role of those decisions that my sister was making. And what you're highlighting is an op ed that I wrote where I was very reluctant, as I say in that quote, to write it because I was already working as a serious journalist, Right. And this was actually. This was not me reporting on these cases. This was me having been invited by the Hollywood Reporter to respond to a scandal that they were dealing with over a cover story that they had published about Woody Allen where they had basically dismissed the allegations against him, which was shitty journalism. You know, any review of the facts makes it very clear that there was a preponderance of evidence over and over again that various processes in the justice system failed around that. But there's a great documentary on HBO about this where a team of investigative reporters looked at it and, you know, for instance, the initial finding by social workers in New York was that my sister was credible. And then the mayor's office intervened and shut that down. It's a whole saga. But my point was that even without getting into the particulars, not asking questions about a very serious and protracted criminal process in a cover story about a public figure is not responsible journalism. And, you know, I'm not a cancel culture guy. I never have been. My argument was not don't do the COVID story on him. My argument wasn't, you know, nobody should work with him. My argument in that piece was we've all got to do good journalism. And if a major part of someone's public life is that they're credibly alleged to have committed serious crimes. And, you know, in this case, there was an adult woman out there who was maintaining her allegation. This is what I mean about somewhat being in receipt of the obligations that this brought. Like, my sister is a woman in her 30s saying, like, yeah, he did this. And, you know, the facts seemed persuasive to me. So when I was asked by that outlet to talk about it, even though it's the last thing I wanted to be associated with, I did feel, as someone who cared about journalism and as someone who cared about my sister, that it was right to say, yeah, the kind of feminist critiques that your coverage has received, there's something to it.
- [31:33]
A
Yeah, I just. I thought it was such a powerful piece. And I always think that the most persuasive ways to get people to either reexamine their own belief system and to then think differently or to potentially adopt new stories is through personal story. And so I think that your having brought that, you know, just really impacted that idea in a way. And what I, you know, and I think you're touching on if you're the recipient or of your sister's story. And I. That. I think I have grappled with that in different ways at different times. You know, the last 10 years have been much more positive for me. But even just that, that initial, you know, writing the piece in Vanity Fair and. And the worry of, oh, if this doesn't go well, it's not just me that gets impacted, you know, it is. It's. It's a bigger picture there.
- [32:30]
B
It speaks well of your ethics, that you're conscientious about that and about the people around you that said, you know, it's your story, and you're right. And I've always felt that about my sister, too. There were times where I was like, why do you have to revive this? Like, this is just the worst shadow to live under for the rest of us. But ultimately, I respect her decision to try to create more accountability for other little girls going forward.
- [32:55]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It was really interesting to me. You've been brave in helping a lot of other people be brave. And I started to think about, if my story had not become public, would I have had the bravery to step forward? Would I have even viewed my story the same way had it not become public? And just was a really interesting. You know, it gave me another layer of compassion and gratitude for the work that you and other journalists who work in this area, like, gratitude for all of you, and also another layer of compassion for the women who step forward, you know, and we continue to see that. I mean, look at Gisele Pellico, right? You know, I mean, like, I mean, your husband, Your husband facilitating your own rape by, I think it was 70 men, 65, something like. I mean, it is.
- [33:58]
B
And I would extend that to sources in general who work with investigative reporters. The way we break through the culture of a lack of accountability for people in power, for our political leaders, is often through people who become whistleblowers. And I work all the time, whether it's on a beat like the one we're talking about, where it's about sex crimes or it's with government, you know, national security oriented whistleblowers that I've worked with. I encounter all of these examples of bravery where it is completely against someone's self interest to come forward, but they do it anyway because it's in the public interest. And very often the most powerful lever I have when I'm trying to persuade someone that they should do something is like, hey, the reason I'm trying to persuade you is not because I need this break. Like, I'm past the point where that's the case for me career wise. It's because I sincerely believe this can help the conversation and it can help other people. And I just hope that culture of understanding that becoming a source for an investigative reporter is a beautiful and brave thing, never dies. Cause we need it more than ever.
- [35:09]
A
Have you ever been a source for someone?
- [35:13]
B
It's a great question because I've had a lot of conversations with reporters over the years, including, like, background conversations. I don't think that I have ever been. And I have. I should give myself credit in some of the cases we're talking about. Agreed to talk when I don't want to. Like this. The subject of the family stuff is the last thing I want to talk about even to this day. I mean, you and I were texting about this. I hate talking about it.
- [35:43]
A
Right. And we don't, you know, I don't want you to feel uncomfortable.
- [35:47]
B
No. But, you know, I know you've been there and I get the utility in it. And I did, for instance, for that investigative documentary that these filmmakers were doing for HBO about my family's case. After discouraging my family from participating, after saying I would never participate, when they really, they came to me and they laid out everything they had and all the police records and the law enforcement sources they'd talked to, I just had to admit, like, this is good, serious work. And as A journalist, I should support it. So I kind of sucked it up in terms of my own personal desire not to. And I went on the record and gave an on camera interview for it.
- [36:26]
A
Yeah.
- [36:27]
B
I have not been a confidential source in like a sprawling print investigative story. And I would like to think that I would, either confidentially or on the record, when push came to shove, if it was the right thing, if I could share something that would help others.
- [36:48]
A
Yeah. Well, it's just, I mean, it becomes for me, looking, looking to, at your, at your work and who you are as a, as a person and through the lens of this elastic way we talk about reclaiming on the show. It just was really interesting to me because you, you're helping so many, usually women, but it's been men too. But reclaim dignity and I think society sort of reclaim justice or faith in these kinds of things.
- [37:17]
B
Well, I think that that's a good point too, the reclaiming aspect of it. Participating in an investigative reporting process and sharing something that maybe is dangerous or against your interests to share, but can help other people also. I can tell you from the experience working with source after source has a really fulfilling dimension. And I have had sources come back to me and say, like, hey, I'm really glad I did this.
- [37:44]
A
Wow. Okay.
- [37:45]
B
Because I think there's. There's a kind of, There's a carrot there. There's a positive incentive of like, they, they can feel unburdened of this information they had that was creating a moral dilemma. And they can feel they did something that they can be proud of and people around them can be proud of. And there is also a, A stick there. There is a negative aspect to the experience of staying quiet when you have information that, you know could help other people.
- [38:16]
A
Yeah.
- [38:16]
B
Making the totally selfish call. Although I encounter people all the time who do. And every case is different. And there are certainly circumstances where it's merited and where I respect the decision, but I think that it is difficult in its own ways.
- [38:29]
A
Yeah.
- [38:30]
B
You know, if you, if you know about corruption or crime and you could create accountability and help other people and you choose not to do that if you are a good person, I think that that is its own unique kind of pain.
- [38:48]
A
Yeah.
- [38:48]
B
And this is why, I mean, across this whole conversation, I have to say I remain optimistic about people.
- [38:56]
A
Me too.
- [38:57]
B
Yeah. Most. I'm happy to hear that from you too. Yeah. I feel like people mostly want to help other people. And there has been a lot written of late about the organized, moneyed political movement to demolish compassion and empathy as a value.
- [39:13]
A
Oh, I missed this.
- [39:15]
B
It is worth reading up on. Yeah, I mean it's obviously become like a central spoke of a mainstream political party now to like relish in cruelty, you know, really kind of market cruelty. And you see even in the religious adjunct to the alt right movement where it's, you know, preachers talking a new thread of like Christianity without compassion.
- [39:44]
A
Right. Without the principles.
- [39:46]
B
And you see it from these two directions of like, well, not just without the principles, which is a different observation, but without viewing kindness as an important value. You see it from that community as a fomenting new sort of strain. And you see it also really loud and clear from Silicon Valley, from these tech bro libertarians and people like Peter Thiel and people like Elon Musk, you know, talking about empathy as a bug, as a flaw in the human species that we all need to resist and that like, you know, these policies that are cruel to people and hurt people might be hard, but we got to suck it up and we got to tolerate the negative feelings. That is I think ultimately in my view, in my experience of working with people in the kinds of circumstances that we've talked about, not a movement that can prevail the movement against empathy. Because I do, I think empathy is a trait that is built in from an evolutionary biology standpoint and we see it in all kinds of species. And I think there are enough people who want to live in an empathetic world and be in receipt of the empathy of others that that is the more powerful and salient trait.
- [41:07]
A
I just wonder sometimes if that it almost that there's a value for people who are pushing the kinds of things like the anti compassion that what is needed are the compassionate people to push against, you know, and so that if they could wave a magic wand and the exact world they wanted appeared tomorrow morning, would they be happy?
- [41:35]
B
Well, I think the reality is that those people have all been beneficiaries of a culture of compassion and of policies that are built around supporting people. You know, you look, I've done a lot of reporting on Elon Musk and Elon Musk and his companies. You look at his like green energy credits that benefited Tesla like this. This is a guy who has benefited from the social welfare state that he now decries. And so I think that the reality is everybody needs the kindness whether they admit it or not. And that makes me skeptical that this big play we're seeing in American politics right now of like, actually cruelty is great and empathy is a bug will ever flourish long Term. You look at human history, and you certainly see large periods of time where more cruelty can predominate.
- [42:36]
A
Okay.
- [42:37]
B
And maybe that will happen for a while, but I just. I think you can't kill the empathy value because people do need it and they rely on it, even opponents of it.
- [42:48]
A
Mm. I hope you're right.
- [42:50]
B
I hope I'm right, too.
- [42:51]
A
You know, I want to talk about your new podcast.
- [42:55]
B
It is a new podcast.
- [42:56]
A
You have a big content deal that. You're right with Audible. Making a lot of content.
- [43:00]
B
Yeah, I do. My TV business is my next few projects are at HBO and my next few podcasts are at Audible. And Not a Very Good Murderer is actually very apt for what we're talking about because it really zeroes in on how people behave when they're faced with these dilemmas we've been talking about in our own lives of do you confront the hard truth or do you run away from it? And you kind of alluded to this earlier, talking about how it can sometimes be the most powerful thing when you confront the difficult thing and step up.
- [43:38]
A
Yeah.
- [43:39]
B
And so it looks at that both in the microcosm of a family and in a political sense.
- [43:44]
A
Right. Yeah. I mean, it was just fascinating, sort of. I don't. I doubt that a journalist would want to hear this, but it had a, like, a little bit of Tiger King quality of it. Okay, so that's an okay thing to say.
- [44:03]
B
No, I completely get it. I mean, both of those are shows that are centered on a, like, mesmerically chaotic woman in Not a Very Good Murderer. It's during a white hot political election season of reporting, and I get a lead about a woman who has accused a candidate of a crime. And I go into this kind of gothic desert community, Paradise Valley, Arizona, which is one of the richest communities in the country. Very American. Yeah.
- [44:41]
A
Okay. I didn't. I didn't, I didn't. It's all gated mansions from the podcast. I didn't know it was one of the richest or wealthiest. I should say so. Okay.
- [44:50]
B
And one of the themes in the show is examining kind of the isolation that comes through wealth and the fear that can come through wealth. And I meet this woman who I'm vetting to see whether she's credible. Cece Doane, who is. And this is where I think the Tiger King comparison comes in. I mean, people can't look away or stop listening.
- [45:14]
A
Right.
- [45:15]
B
And she is her closet full of furs. She's. I mean, how to describe Cece? She's hilarious. She is really Cutting. She is off the wall in terms of her mental health profile. And I find as I'm vetting her, has been investigated by the police for all these alleged wild crimes. I mean, trying to burn down her house and kill one husband with a hitman and kill another husband with Viagra. And so I go down this rabbit hole of investigating these different cold cases and, like, talking to law enforcement officers who worked on them. And meanwhile, I'm also in the rabbit hole of this reporter source relationship, which becomes very volatile. You know, at one point, she threatens to punch me. It's very intense. And I eventually get to know everyone around this woman. And it looks a little bit like, in some dimensions, of the dilemmas it creates for the people around her, the situations we've gone through. Just in that when you have a big epicenter of chaos and destruction like that, she has to decide for herself, and everyone around her has to decide, like, am I blocking this out and running away from it and changing my name and trying to forget, or am I confronting. And you see the way she has dealt with that and the very different ways her children and others around her have dealt with it.
- [46:53]
A
Yeah. Who've been collateral damage to the kind of whirlwind that she is. It was.
- [46:59]
B
Yeah.
- [46:59]
A
I don't know what it. What it was exactly, whether there's something in the sound of her voice or her mannerisms or some of it, but she reminded me of Linda Tripp. I got triggered a lot.
- [47:13]
B
I was fascinating when you said that.
- [47:15]
A
So I just. There. I think it was sort of. Maybe some of it was just the craziness of. Or the. Or the vastness of the story. You know, some of the stories that you just. That. Those are not the kinds of stories that. That I hear from my friends. Right. I mean, you, too, I imagine that you don't have friends sort of saying, I think I'll kill my husband, you know, or, can you help me kill my husband? Can you crush the Viagra and put it in his coffee? Right. So there was just a. Not that. Not that Linda was, you know, ever saying she wanted to kill her ex husband, but I think there were just these moments of outrageousness and outlandishness that were. That I remembered feeling a little bit at the time when it was happening, but definitely when I had to listen to the tapes of these recorded phone calls that she had made of our calls of like. And now through the context of what it actually had meant, what the intentions had been of driving conversations. And then there's, you know, there's a taping that happens, a secret taping of, like, wiring, quote, unquote, with that, with the police, the enforcement that happens between two friends in the podcast. So I was a little triggered that way.
- [48:34]
B
But, yeah, I mean, you went through, in my experience, one of the most painful things a person can go through interpersonally, which is, like, true betrayal and manipulation. And I think cece, if you were to ask her children, for instance, is someone they. They feel is very manipulative and very ready to betray.
- [48:58]
A
Right.
- [48:58]
B
And, you know, I, whenever I'm working on a story, deeply do lean into compassion in the way that I talked about. And I do have genuine fondness for cece. She treats me terribly. I mean, screams at me, just really abusive behavior. And, you know, I understand that being the subject of investigative reporting is tough, but I have really strived to do it in a way that's fair to her.
- [49:35]
A
How does she feel about it?
- [49:39]
B
Well, she did at one point tell one of our producers jokingly, but also perhaps not totally jokingly, that she was gonna get on a plane and come and strangle us all.
- [49:51]
A
And then she conveniently blacked it out.
- [49:55]
B
Well, I guess we'll see. The big thematic question that hangs over the series is, like, when you see someone who is blacked out so much of their own life and also lives in fantasy in so many other ways. I mean, this is also a political parable because she is constantly imbibing right wing propaganda.
- [50:15]
A
Yeah.
- [50:15]
B
Some of which is really factually dubious. And I feel like most of us have someone at a, you know, a family dinner table, at a Thanksgiving meal who has some of those qualities. And all of us, as journalists in my community, have to grapple with this question of, like, do you give up on people who live in fantasy, People who are truly rooted in disinformation? And there are glimmers of hope in this series where I feel like my doggedness of saying, like, no, here's the police report. Here are the facts. And even in our political conversations where I'm saying, like, I'm not a partisan, but here are the facts.
- [51:00]
A
Right.
- [51:02]
B
I think that there are glimmers of hope that tell me, you know, it's not like it gets tied up with a ribbon and someone like that automatically, you know, really loves to read ProPublica all the time and is going to therapy, but where she does kind of say, like, okay, okay, I'm glad I'm confronting stuff.
- [51:22]
A
I just. I thought it was fascinating, too, this idea of taking us into the window of, like, or giving us a window to see into how a journalist might determine someone's credibility. You know, because I think, as you were saying in the beginning, that's very much, you know, a part of the process of trusting with journalism. So have you done or are you working on a documentary in that?
- [51:49]
B
Well, a number of my projects have this as some component.
- [51:53]
A
Right.
- [51:53]
B
Where like in surveilled I go and I talk to reporters on the ground in Israel who are covering the whole tech boom around surveillance technology in Tel Aviv. In this film that I mentioned earlier, endangered, I followed a number of reporters around through the pandemic and tried to tell their stories. And you know, in putting this out as an audio project and then later on tv, my hope is that people who get hooked into the kind of true crime mysteries of it then also gain an appreciation for the way journalism can cut through untruths.
- [52:30]
A
Yeah.
- [52:31]
B
And I just, I think there is a reason this profession is enshrined in the constitution and there is a reason it's so dangerous that political forces right now are using this old, historically established playbook of trying to consolidate power, using demonizing the press as a tool. The free press is not the enemy. The free press is one of our most potent tools to holding people accountable and making sure they work for our interests as a people. And I think a lot of the fragmentation in this country and the way people are set against each other comes from the thing we started talking about, the, the fragmentation of reality as well. And if you can put more good, solid facts into the world that people know they can trust because they've seen this meticulous process of checking it and people can remember there's an objective shared reality, I think that is a big first step towards unity.
- [53:36]
A
Yeah. I have a weird question because it keeps popping up for me from everything you've seen in your career and how you've reported, you know, on so many very oftentimes men who are, you know, protected by a cloak of power. Why is it so hard for them to just apologize?
- [54:00]
B
Well, I think it depends on the story. In some cases, people don't want to apologize because of the liability that incurs.
- [54:11]
A
Which I understand emotional or you mean the sort of concrete.
- [54:16]
B
Well, both, but I mean the legal liability. So I understand how someone like Harvey Weinstein, who is fighting a legal battle, trying to appeal his case, is not in the midst of that able to apologize and self confront because he has to be in the business of denying.
- [54:39]
A
Right.
- [54:40]
B
And I also understand how in cases where there's not that liability attached like cc's. There's this emotional dimension that you're talking about of it's actually, it's a pivotal line in the podcast when she says, like, self confrontation is really hard, but it can be important. And I think that it's easy for her at times to forget that and that there are a lot of psychological profiles out there in people that are all about deflecting blame and not looking inward and saying like, okay, can I, can I take responsibility for my part in what went wrong here? And I think if you spend enough years successfully avoiding that kind of self confrontation and imposition of accountability on yourself, it can become very hard. Like you lose the muscle memory. And part of what I examine in the show is the way cece has all these structures around her, including this very complicated relationship with her husband who she allegedly tried to kill.
- [55:53]
A
Right. But who now. Still there.
- [55:55]
B
Still there. And in some ways it's super messed up, but also it's like, kind of beautiful. He's very devoted to her.
- [56:04]
A
Yeah, it's fascinating.
- [56:05]
B
It's fascinating.
- [56:06]
A
I wonder how many people will see their own relationships reflected a little in that. Maybe not this, not the exact details. Right. But that sort of the dance.
- [56:19]
B
Well, I observed that in the show that, you know, you have this aspect that some of the people in this family describe as Stockholm syndrome, where he actively participates in this infrastructure of denial where she's able to say, oh, I blacked out that time that I was arrested. And then when I show her the police report, sort of turn to this, her husband Jim, and snap, like, why didn't you tell me about this? You know, which is wild. Yeah. But then there's also this aspect of he is unconditionally devoted to her at this point, even to the point where when I showed him, hey, you're in this police report saying you're afraid for your life, he's like, ah, I don't know about all that. And he is also a complicated person with many troubling and lovely traits. And I think this gets at a big part of what I try to achieve across all my work, which is I try to see people deeply and with compassion. And it's very rare in the world that there are, like, true, in a Manichean sense, like monsters, you know, and even if you find that label fitting for me as an investigative reporter, it's rarely helpful to look at someone with that reductive a lens. So even when I'm reporting on, you know, Harvey Weinstein or Les Moonves, someone who was Accused of, like, serial violent crime. I'm very conscious of the fact that they feel fear and pain as they're going through this or have family, and their family is going through a painful thing. And my job, when I'm exposing misdeeds that might create real consequences for someone, is to therefore try to imbue it with as much understanding as possible. So that's where you get in the case of not a very good murderer. These portraits of the people involved that I hope are very textured.
- [58:20]
A
Right. Well, I mean, and the texture is a lot of what's missing in today's conversations. The nuance, the appreciation for the nuance. I mean, I think what you're saying, what you were just saying now about someone being a monster and viewing them through that lens is reductive.
- [58:39]
B
I'm not saying that I've always perfectly hit that mark, but I do think it is a genuine and prominent aspect in my work that I humanize everyone, and I welcome in the complexities. And the investigative and fact checking processes are very suited to that. Like, when I go through the writing of a New Yorker piece, I'm talking to someone over and over again, and whether I'm in a conversation with them or they're dodging my calls, I'm contacting every representative to say, like, hey, can I get your input? Even privately? And I'm really listening when I get that input.
- [59:21]
A
Yeah, it's so interesting.
- [59:23]
B
I mean, I guess, you know, I've kind of mentioned the importance of journalism stuff, but that's where surveilled comes in naturally, too, that there's all of these factors that create a shrinking space, including the surveillance of journalists.
- [59:37]
A
Yeah, it is. I am not a journalist, though. I write and do podcasts. But I know the feeling of being surveilled, and that is.
- [59:48]
B
You sure do.
- [59:49]
A
I think one of the worst aspects of it is that you. Then there's a legitimacy underneath. Like, we all have paranoid thoughts at different times, but there's a whole other level of legitimacy that can come from.
- [60:05]
B
Like, when you really are being followed.
- [60:06]
A
By when you really are, or you have been. Right. And so then, you know, you just start to really. It's a whole other way to move through the world. I mean, I don't worry about that as much as I did, you know, a while back, but.
- [60:22]
B
Did Jack Palladino and his company work on your case?
- [60:26]
A
Yes.
- [60:27]
B
Palladino is interesting because he worked for the Clintons and then also worked for, I think, specifically for the campaign initially. And then I guess he continued in your era. But he was the one who, you know, was chasing after Jennifer Flowers and all this stuff and was so associated with Clinton that Jane Mayer and the New Yorker at one point wrote about him in that period in the 90s as the president's Dick.
- [60:52]
A
Wow.
- [60:54]
B
And then he was later hired by Harvey Weinstein to dig up dirt on accusers and journalists working on the story, including me. And I got a hold of a bunch of his internal memos and emails and published them. He always, in life, avoided my comment requests. And we were kind of, in that sense, adversaries, because then later he died and his obituaries were all dominated by, like, here's all this work he did for bad guys. And I got this crazy call. I hadn't even read about the news of his death, and I got a call from a guy saying, hey, you don't know me, but I was Jack Palladino's lawyer. And before he was murdered was the phrasing that was used on the tape of this voicemail, which I hadn't known about at the time. He asked that his. Some of his files be shared with you.
- [61:54]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [61:55]
B
Because he did grudgingly respect you as an investigator, and he was working on a last case that he thought that you might be able to help with, and that.
- [62:04]
A
That in and of itself is a movie.
- [62:07]
B
Well, it's. This is. You asked about other projects, and this one I actually, I can mention because we did announce it at a. At a film festival recently. It is. It is both a podcast and TV series that I'll have coming. And. And the TV series is directed by Randy Infenton.
- [62:25]
A
Oh, amazing.
- [62:25]
B
I. Basically, it's another one where I go into these complicated relationships with his widow in this case, who ran his PI Company with him, Sandra Sutherland, who's a fascinating person who I became very fond of. But where we start the relationship is like, she's kind of mad at me because she views me as someone who torched his reputation.
- [62:50]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [62:51]
B
And then gradually, as I start digging into both, looking at his historical cases, and he was around forever. They were a fascinating couple. They started a private investigation firm together. They met while they were both independently undercover in a prison system and had this kind of glamorous romance. They started this company. They early on had, like, a lot of idealistic cases. They worked for the Black Panthers.
- [63:13]
A
Oh, my God. Oh, I can't wait to watch this.
- [63:16]
B
And then the cases became, like, gradually more and more corporate in a way that she was uncomfortable with. And caused her to step away from the business. So, yeah, so each episode is a historical. And then throughout, I'm looking at the present day mystery of, like, who killed him and why.
- [63:32]
A
Oh, my God.
- [63:34]
B
Okay, so the Paladino Files. Stay tuned.
- [63:37]
A
It feels. It feels strange to ask this question now, but I always ask my guests at the end, like, if there's anything that you are personally working on reclaiming right now.
- [63:52]
B
Well, I think we've kind of talked about this, actually, that for the longest time, I wanted to run in the opposite direction from my own painful family history and that kind of broken home component of my childhood and growing up around, you know, allegations of violent crime and losing people close to me, it's the last thing you want to relive. But in the end, in the same way that I've found that my sources are better off when they confront the hard thing and speak out about it. And in the same way I've found that my own work benefits when I'm not running from anything, when I actually choose to harness that as a strength that helps me understand complicated issues. I would encourage everyone out there who has something like that in their past to look at it and not do the thing we see. And not a very good murderer of burying it and refusing to ever look at it, because it can be a hidden power if you do that tough work of going towards it instead of away.
- [65:11]
A
I think for me, a big piece of my healing and my moving forward in life was realizing that I couldn't run away from what had happened to me, who I had become defined publicly as. And I had to integrate. And I think integration, you know, was. That was the secret sauce for me.
- [65:35]
B
The name of the podcast is apt, and I'm glad we've been able to have this conversation because reclaiming is, I think, a big light motif in both of our stories.
- [65:46]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [65:47]
B
And it's. Yeah, it is tough. And I hope there's more reclaiming going on in cece and the people around her.
- [65:55]
A
Hear, hear. Thank you so much.
- [65:57]
B
Thank you, Monica.
- [65:58]
A
Thank you, honey. Oh, this was so good.
- [66:00]
B
I really liked catching up.
- [66:02]
A
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky is hosted and executive produced by me, Monica Lewinsky Production Services by WTF Media Studios. Our theme song is by Ben Benjamin, and our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez. Our story producer is Elna Baker, and our senior producer is Megan Donis for Wondery. Eliza Mills is the development producer. Our managing producer is Taylor Sniffin. Nick Ryan is our senior managing producer. Senior producers are Candace Manriquez. Wren and Emily Feldbrake. And executive producers are Dave Easton, Erin o' Flaherty and Marshall Louie.