debrief

What is the perfect wedding? Who is the perfect bride, the perfect daughter? In this episode, I unpack the push-pull of wanting to honor my family's customs while also staying true to myself. Interludes include the meaning of marriage in the modern world, friendship, and navigating one's own identity amidst familial roles and expectations. VIDEO PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/oqw49mbvB2Y FUL...

Men have asked me, "When are you going to have kids? You don't have much time left." To which I say: ALL THIS!! In this episode, I explore my complex feelings around the decision to have children. I draw from philosophy, the pro- and anti-natalist movements, and my own recent experience with the embryo freezing (IVF) process. Segues include climate change, personal identity as a parent, and the in...

Don't know what to do with your life? Me neither! In this episode, I reflect on my own path of pursuing a stable career first and passion second. I examine the allure of "stability," the risks of over-prioritizing passion, and whether it's possible to have both in contemporary life. Tangents include Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Elizabeth Gilbert's advice, and the parable of the Sword of Damocles....

Why are the world's most powerful and wealthiest lawyers abandoning the rule of law? In this episode, I go over the chaos wrought by the Trump Administration on the legal profession and the cowardice I see from elite law firms--Paul Weiss, Skadden, Willkie Farr, Milbank, Cadwalader, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, A&O Shearman, and Simpson Thacher. I discuss how much money these firms actually...

This is the most embarrassing announcement I've ever had to make, but I'm still making it. VIDEO PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/C37UkGJLI8E FULL ESSAY ON SUBSTACK: https://cecexie.substack.com/p/my-publisher-and-i-got-divorced TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro 02:02 - How It Started 04:09 - Getting Orphaned 08:43 - What Did I Do Wrong? 09:47 - Shame 15:45 - What's Next? This is a public episode. If y...

Surprise (episode)! I talk to Jenny Wood about our workplace anxieties—am I too weird? too bossy? too shameless when I promote my work? or *gulp* manipulative when I fake run-ins with my bosses?—and how she overcame them during her 18-year tenure at Google, where she went from an entry-level employee to an executive who ran a team that helped drive tens of billions of dollars in revenue. We go int...

Happy Tax Day! Or if you’re like me and navigating taxes while self-employed for the first time: condolences. I thought that being in a lower tax bracket meant that I would pay a lower percentage of my income in taxes (because that would make sense, right?), but it turns out this is just further evidence that I am terrible with money and finances. In this video accompaniment to my newsletter , I t...

Let’s get meta, baby! In this episode, I explore why it seems like every influencer and their mom is starting a podcast. Surprise—it’s not for the money! (Or it might be, but most influencers are going to be sorely disappointed if that’s the case.) I also reflect on my own podcasting journey since I started in October 2022. Barside (my new podcast with Alex Su and Matt Margolis) covers the latest...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit cecexie.substack.com * Supreme Court lawyer Paul Clement is representing an Indiana school district to prohibit transgender children from using their gender identity’s restroom. He’s offered a flat fee for his firm’s legal services—$100,000 to petition the Supreme Court to hear the case and another $100,000 to argue the case in front of...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit cecexie.substack.com Welcome to homeroom, the secret episodes where we get to talk about events both in the world and in our lives—just like we would back in homeroom (obviously). Here are the links and resources mentioned in this episode: The Honourable Woman (BBC miniseries) The Daily ( Golan’s Story ): Interview with a resident of Ki...

I'm back!! (Ish.) Missed my voice? Wondered what's been on my mind ever since I contemplated being a failed influencer? In this episode, I delve into social media's algorithmic imperative towards complete personal annihilation through public consumption and how that has been hindering me creatively. I share one of my biggest regrets from social media and my plan for countering these negatives goin...

It's the last day of 2022 and the last episode of Season 1! It's only fitting that we're coming full circle to reflect on how quitting a 9-5 to become an influencer is going--or more accurately, how quitting my 10-10 to become a writer (and almost necessarily by extension, a content creator) is going. To be honest, I'm pretty lost, which is why I spent a few hours this week researching three artis...

You asked for unscripted, you get somewhat unscripted! In this episode, I answer listener-submitted questions in four major domains: law; work; life strategies; and personal questions. Do I regret leaving biglaw? How did I deal with coworkers who got on my nerves? How should one handle racism/sexism/being othered by peers in elite university settings? How did I go from being a libertarian to a pro...

How do you get a book published? What does an agent do? Which publisher is the best home for your book? I answer all of these questions and more in this week's episode, informed by the crash course in publishing that I've gotten in the past nine months and my own publishing journey (which is still ongoing!). I talk about the most challenging parts of trying to pitch a book, how novels differ from...

I'm gonna be honest: I regret lifestyle vlogging. It's so easy , other creators IRL and through screens told me, All you have to do is record your life as you're living it. It's the same logic and vocabulary surrounding MLM recruitment, and the fact that I purchased vlogging equipment from their affiliate links makes me all the more aware of the pyramid-like structure of the endeavor. In this epis...

Like most other recovering prestige addicts, I evaluated where to go to law school primarily based on one thing and one thing only: the U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) law school rankings. The USNWR law school rankings has had legal education in a chokehold for over thirty years now, so it was a shock to everyone when law schools--including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and Georgetown--beg...

We're doing something a little different this week! This episode, I'm joined by Shannon of FluentlyForward to talk about all things celebrity gossip and blind items . We talk about how blind items have exploded in the past few years, how we think their rising popularity is related to societal distrust of mainstream media (and whether that's a good thing), and ponder why we as humans love talking a...

This week, I dive into a thoughtful question posed on one of my TikToks: is it anti-feminist to get married? I shuffle through my Family Law notes to give an overview of the legal history of marriage, which is unsurprisingly pretty sexist. (Yes, the Supreme Court really did rule that women couldn't be practicing lawyers.) I unpack my complicated feelings about my pending nuptials in light of the p...

On Halloween, the Supreme Court held oral arguments for two affirmative action cases , one against Harvard and one against UNC. The verdict? Well, there isn't a verdict in appellate proceedings, and we don't know yet (and probably won't for a while), but the Supreme Court does seem poised to strike down affirmative action . Being Asian American is a weird position to occupy in this debate--on the...

I have been endlessly comparing myself to others lately--namely, conventionally attractive, skinny white girls--but even hearing, "Comparison is the thief of joy," doesn't make me feel any better. (That's a Theodore Roosevelt quote, btw.) When in a spiral of self-loathing, there's really only one source for me to turn to: my old Feminist Legal Theory readings. What is woman? How can we think of be...

It's time to DTR! In this episode, I discuss my thoughts on a popular YouTuber who suddenly stopped posting on YouTube after perhaps a bad parasocial experience with her fans (and Amazon ?). Are parasocial relationships bad? Are we in one, right now? I go through the pros and cons of parasocial relationships and hypothesize why some parasocial relationships sour in more extreme (and terrifying) wa...

You know what they say--one's a point, and two's a line! This week, we unpack one of my favorite fascinations--scams and scammers. I discuss how my imposter syndrome likely impacted why I found scammers so magnetic and how scams are mostly the same old bones dressed up in new disguises . The million-dollar question is: are we all vulnerable to scams because they implicate the human condition ? Fro...

In this very first episode, I'm unpacking my thoughts on the resurfaced video from Mikayla Nogueira , one of TikTok's top beauty gurus, in which she vents about how hard being an influencer is. The backlash has prompted discussions around work and criticism of the full-time influencer, which contrast interestingly with the rise of the anti-work movement and the popularity for kids of vlogging/YouT...