The Personal Essay Is Back. The Internet Isn't Ready.
ICYMI
Slate Podcasts
3.9 • 800 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by author Leigh Stein, who landed her first book deal in the 2010s personal essay boom. With new memoirs from Lindy West and Lena Dunham, it feels like confessional writing is getting a 2020s rebirth. However, reactions to viral personal essays, like those in The Cut, prove social media has become a much different beast. Now, writing a personal essay is not only much more fraught, but can be downright dangerous. Did the personal essay change, or did we?
This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay, and you're listening to I-C-Y-M-I, or in case you missed it, Slate's podcast about internet culture. |
| 0:22.2 | And today on the show, we are joined by Lee Stein. Welcome Lee. Thank you so much for having me. Lee is the author of novels such as |
| 0:27.9 | self-care, and if you're seeing this, it's meant for you. She also writes the substack attention |
| 0:32.7 | economy all about making a career as an author in this sort of modern internet world, which, I mean, positions you perfectly for today's episode. |
| 0:42.6 | This episode is basically made in a lab for you and me. |
| 0:45.1 | Now, normally we ask our first time guests, their first internet memories. |
| 0:49.3 | I don't want to deny you that if you have something fun, but I thought it would be neat to introduce the larger theme of |
| 0:54.9 | today's episode by instead asking you, what was your first personal essay? Do you remember? |
| 1:00.5 | Man, I mean, one shameful memory that I did bring to this podcast episode is that I did write and it happened to me for XOJane. |
| 1:08.9 | Yes, iconic. Wait, what happened to you? |
| 1:11.8 | I think my title was I fell in love with an asexual. |
| 1:21.0 | And it was about this breakup where, like, he came out to me. |
| 1:24.6 | It was like, I can't be with you because I'm asexual. |
| 1:26.4 | And then I was like, but I'll still be with you anyway. Like, I love you. And then he was like, bye. And then shortly there after he got married to another woman. Oh, he was like, what do I have to say to shake you off? Yeah. Oh my God. My first personal essay that I wrote would be probably at my, the blog that I wrote for in college. It was like our, |
| 1:47.5 | we were like clearly ripping off like Gawker when we did it. And I wrote about, and it's funny in |
| 1:53.8 | hindsight, because I categorized it as like a really intense bout of hypochondria. I now know it's |
| 2:00.0 | OCD, but I had, basically, it was titled WebMD |
| 2:03.7 | ruined my life. And it was about how I got like really obsessive about a cough that I had. |
| 2:10.4 | And I was checking all these symptoms. I had myself convinced. I had like these horrible |
| 2:14.3 | diseases. And what actually ended up happening was I was having a psychosomatic |
| 2:19.9 | like cough ended up it was there but no one could find anything it was kind of now I'm saying I'm like |
| 2:24.2 | that was crazy I should read that essay again but um that was definitely my first one and then uh |
... |
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