Speaker 1: Pushkin hay Slight Changers. First, a quick reminder, I've launched
Speaker 1: a newsletter. I'm so excited about it. It's called Change
Speaker 1: with Maya Shunker. Every other week, I share personal reflections
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, look at my interviews on the show,
Speaker 1: bits of what I'm watching or listening to, and some
Speaker 1: prompts for you to think about as you go about
Speaker 1: your week. It's free and you can sign up at
Speaker 1: Changewithmaya dot com or click on the link in our
Speaker 1: show notes. Last week, we previewed two upcoming episodes about
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox. Today you'll hear the first one. I had
Speaker 1: this conversation with Amanda back in twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 1: it provides some valuable context about who she is and
Speaker 1: what she's been through. I really recommend listening to this
Speaker 1: episode before you tune in next week. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy it.
Speaker 2: When I was told you're guilty and you are sentenced
Speaker 2: to twenty six years, I mean everything I thought to
Speaker 2: be true about the world collapsed in on itself and
Speaker 2: I had this kind of quick an adaptation in my
Speaker 2: mind where I thought, oh, I'm not this lost tourist
Speaker 2: who's waiting to go home. I am a prisoner, like
Speaker 2: this isn't just a thing that is happening to me.
Speaker 2: This is my life, and whether or not it's based
Speaker 2: in truth, this defines me. I've just been defined a killer.
Speaker 1: That's Amanda Knox describing the moment when an Italian court
Speaker 1: found her guilty of a heinous crime she did not commit,
Speaker 1: the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kircher. Amanda was just
Speaker 1: twenty years old when this all unfolded. She spent four
Speaker 1: years in an Italian prison before she was finally exonerated
Speaker 1: and allowed to return home to America, but the reality
Speaker 1: of what she faced upon her return was not at
Speaker 1: all what she expected.
Speaker 2: When I first came home, I thought that I was
Speaker 2: going to get to have the life that I had
Speaker 2: left behind back that once this is all worked out
Speaker 2: and everyone agrees that I'm innocent, then I get to
Speaker 2: go back to my life that I lost that was
Speaker 2: on pause, and I realized that that life didn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, what happens when the world simply won't
Speaker 1: let you move on. I'm Maya Shunker and this is
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans, a show about who we
Speaker 1: are and who we become in the face of a
Speaker 1: big change, you know, to begin with it. It's so
Speaker 1: interesting for a guest with your story, you know, I
Speaker 1: would do the work of trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do I summarize for the listener what it is
Speaker 1: that this person has gone through. But because so many
Speaker 1: people have tried to appropriate your story over the years,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. I want this, Amanda.
Speaker 1: I want to hear your story.
Speaker 2: In your words, absolutely, and thank you for that. When
Speaker 2: I was twenty years old, I decided that I wanted
Speaker 2: to study abroad. I ended up choosing a program and
Speaker 2: a really small ancient city in the middle of Italy
Speaker 2: called Perusia. I moved into an apartment in a small
Speaker 2: house overlooking this beautiful valley with three other young women,
Speaker 2: two Italian girls and a British student who was just
Speaker 2: like a year older than me named Meredith. And the
Speaker 2: day after Halloween, on November first, I was hanging out
Speaker 2: with my new love fling of five days, Rafaele Salchico,
Speaker 2: and Meredith was home alone and a local burglar named
Speaker 2: Rudy Guidet broke into our home and raped and murdered her,
Speaker 2: and then fled the country. And I discovered all of
Speaker 2: this by coming home next day to take a shower
Speaker 2: and noticing that our home was in disarray I had.
Speaker 2: I brought Rafaela over, we called the police together. The
Speaker 2: police came and discovered the crime scene, Meredith's body, which
Speaker 2: fortunately I never had to see in person. But unfortunately
Speaker 2: there was a lot of frantic energy, a lot of confusion,
Speaker 2: a lot of fear in those opening. You know, days
Speaker 2: after the murder was discovered, it was immediately of tremendous
Speaker 2: public interest. International media was descending upon Perusia, talking to
Speaker 2: any single person that they possibly could. Meanwhile, I'm spending
Speaker 2: hours and hours and hours at the police station trying
Speaker 2: to help the police uncover what happened to my friend.
Speaker 2: And I spent about fifty three hours over five days
Speaker 2: in that police office, being questioned over and over and
Speaker 2: over again, telling them the same story that I've been
Speaker 2: telling them what happened that night as far as I knew,
Speaker 2: and they were telling me that I was wrong, that
Speaker 2: everything that I remembered was wrong, that I was traumatized,
Speaker 2: and that my freedom and my access to my family
Speaker 2: depended upon me remembering something that I couldn't remember, and
Speaker 2: I was alone. I was speaking of foreign language, I
Speaker 2: was without a lawyer. I was asking for my mom,
Speaker 2: I was asking for any help whatsoever, and instead I
Speaker 2: got slapped and screamed at for hours until I was
Speaker 2: willing to sign a statement that they wrote implicating my
Speaker 2: boss Patrick L. Mumba. I caved. It was the only
Speaker 2: thing that made sense to me anymore. I started to
Speaker 2: doubt my own sanity, and I signed those papers and
Speaker 2: they immediately ran off to go arrest my boss Patrick,
Speaker 2: and I was finally left alone to breathe and think
Speaker 2: straight after hours of horrible treatment, and I immediately recanted.
Speaker 2: I told them, oh my god, there's a huge mistake.
Speaker 2: I was under a lot of pressure. I don't actually
Speaker 2: remember witnessing any murder whatsoever. They wouldn't listen to me.
Speaker 2: They told me that with time my memories would come back,
Speaker 2: and that I just needed to be quiet. And like
Speaker 2: just a few days later, I was brought before a
Speaker 2: judge and finally finally told you are under investigation for
Speaker 2: the murder of Meredith Kircher.
Speaker 1: So there's a few critical moments in what you just
Speaker 1: described that I'm interested to hear more about. In particular
Speaker 1: what your psychology was like at the time, as well
Speaker 1: as how you might think differently about that experience now.
Speaker 1: And the first is you know, when you were trying
Speaker 1: to be helpful to the police right to help identify
Speaker 1: who the murderer was, they began using aggressive interrogation tactics
Speaker 1: on you. As you said, they accused you of having amnesia.
Speaker 1: It led you to engage in false confessions. And I
Speaker 1: can only imagine how traumatizing it is to go through
Speaker 1: something like that, especially when you don't understand that the
Speaker 1: human mind is in fact capable of such things, right.
Speaker 1: I think it is actually really hard for most people
Speaker 1: to appreciate the conditions under which they would be likely
Speaker 1: to generate false memories or false confessions. And I think
Speaker 1: the reason why I feel like this is such an
Speaker 1: important part of your story to bring to light is
Speaker 1: that when you are made to question your own sanity,
Speaker 1: your own ability to accurate the reason about the world
Speaker 1: around you, that is damaging. That puts you in a
Speaker 1: state where I imagine it's easy to feel broken because
Speaker 1: you start asking yourself questions like how how was I
Speaker 1: capable of that? How is I capable of implicating this?
Speaker 1: Totally innocent person. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And that's actually a really interesting way of framing
Speaker 2: that question, because of course, going into an interrogation room,
Speaker 2: you don't think I would ever say anything that would
Speaker 2: that I don't know to be true, and that would
Speaker 2: that would implicate me or not be to like you know,
Speaker 2: that could be compromising to oneself, like that's that is
Speaker 2: it's so counterintuitive. I didn't know that this was possible.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know that police could lie to you
Speaker 2: like I did. I just there was so much I
Speaker 2: didn't know, and I therefore, like my my instinct when
Speaker 2: all of this became a catastrophe was to blame myself
Speaker 2: because I didn't know who else to blame. I didn't
Speaker 2: know that there was a specific police interrogation technique designed
Speaker 2: to break down people to just admit to something. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't until a cognitive scientist who studies false confessions
Speaker 2: reached out to me, and it was while I was
Speaker 2: still in prison, it was after I had been convicted.
Speaker 2: He didn't share any research with me at first. He
Speaker 2: just said, please describe everything you can possibly remember about
Speaker 2: your interrogation and send it to me. So I did,
Speaker 2: and it was it was hard even doing that, because
Speaker 2: it was the scariest moment of my life, the most
Speaker 2: confusing moment of my life, and it's the moment of
Speaker 2: my life that I felt the most shame about because
Speaker 2: I just I couldn't explain even to myself why it happened.
Speaker 2: I honestly couldn't. I just felt like there was something
Speaker 2: wrong with me, and I was the only one in
Speaker 2: the world that had ever happened to as far as
Speaker 2: I knew, and of course everyone was judging me as
Speaker 2: a bad person because of it. And then he responded
Speaker 2: by sending me back his research, and his research showed
Speaker 2: that the exact way that they had broken me down
Speaker 2: was just like, you know, point for point, just how
Speaker 2: you break down innocent people. And that moment of relief
Speaker 2: and self forgiveness was tremendous for me because it was
Speaker 2: at that point that I really really understood that my
Speaker 2: wrongful conviction wasn't really my fault, that I had been
Speaker 2: set up, and that there were a lot of forces
Speaker 2: at play, a lot of people who had, you know,
Speaker 2: a ton of agency in this equation, and I was
Speaker 2: the least among them. I was at the mercy of
Speaker 2: people who were not just taking advantage of me, but
Speaker 2: actively trying to destroy my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like to talk for a bit about the
Speaker 1: time that you spent in prison, because you spent four
Speaker 1: years in full, but at one point you were sentenced
Speaker 1: to twenty six years in prison. Yes, and as an
Speaker 1: early twenty something, twenty six years is like your entire
Speaker 1: freaking life.
Speaker 2: It is your entire freaking life.
Speaker 1: I want to know what was your relationship with Hope
Speaker 1: during your time in prison, and I'm just curious if
Speaker 1: you can dig into that a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. And it's interesting how I had, like
Speaker 2: this tremendous shift happen because the first two years, while
Speaker 2: I was still on trial and believing that all of
Speaker 2: this was just a huge out of proportion misunderstanding, I
Speaker 2: was convinced that I was going to eventually be going home.
Speaker 2: And there were moments in that time where I was
Speaker 2: just like, oh my god, you know, I've been here
Speaker 2: so long, Like I missed my twenty first birthday that
Speaker 2: I you know, I'd always thought, oh I would go
Speaker 2: and have a drink with my dad. Nope, that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: So feeling like I was losing really important parts of
Speaker 2: my life. But ultimately thinking this is a really, really
Speaker 2: long nightmare that does have an expiration date, and that
Speaker 2: expiration date is the verdict. And my family, especially my mom,
Speaker 2: very much like that was sort of our mantra that
Speaker 2: there is a light at the end of this very
Speaker 2: long dark tunnel. And when I then was told you're
Speaker 2: guilty and you are sentenced to twenty six years, I
Speaker 2: mean everything I thought to be true about the world
Speaker 2: collapsed in on itself. I very much felt like the
Speaker 2: ground beneath me had fallen away and I had nothing
Speaker 2: to stand on. I literally collapsed between you know, my attorneys,
Speaker 2: and then the guards sort of had to carry me
Speaker 2: out of this courtroom where I'm hysterical, like unable to
Speaker 2: believe what is happening. And I had this very very
Speaker 2: i mean kind of quick an adaptation in my mind
Speaker 2: where I thought, oh, I'm not this lost tourist who's
Speaker 2: waiting to go home. I am a prisoner, Like this
Speaker 2: isn't just a thing that is happening to me. This
Speaker 2: is my life. This is my life now, and whether
Speaker 2: or not it's based in truth, this defines me. I've
Speaker 2: just been defined a killer, and I have just been
Speaker 2: told the only place that you belong is behind bars
Speaker 2: for the majority of your life. And all those things
Speaker 2: that you thought that you would get to have in
Speaker 2: your life, a family, a career, the opportunity to be
Speaker 2: with your family and watch your nephews grow and your
Speaker 2: kids grow, and all of these things that I thought
Speaker 2: were going to be a part of my life were
Speaker 2: not a part of my life. That was never going
Speaker 2: to be a part of my life, And and what
Speaker 2: is my life? Then? Who am? I? And my mom
Speaker 2: had a very different relationship with hope than I did.
Speaker 2: She didn't have that shift happen when I was convicted.
Speaker 2: She looked at this and I think just out of desperation, like, oh,
Speaker 2: the tunnel is just longer than we thought it was.
Speaker 2: But you are going to get out. You are going
Speaker 2: to be found innocent, you are going to be vindicated.
Speaker 2: You are innocent, You're my daughter. You're going to come home.
Speaker 2: And after my conviction, I wasn't sure about that anymore,
Speaker 2: Like I didn't have any reason to believe that anymore.
Speaker 2: And I ended up having really really difficult conversations with
Speaker 2: her where I said, well, I hope that happens, mom,
Speaker 2: but if it doesn't, I hope that I can achieve
Speaker 2: this goal in the prison environment, or I hope that
Speaker 2: one day I'll be able to, you know, write about
Speaker 2: my experience, so that i'm you know, at least one
Speaker 2: voice voicing my experience in this huge, you know, world
Speaker 2: of voices who are calling me a murderer, and maybe
Speaker 2: one day it'll matter. I hope that I stay healthy.
Speaker 2: I hope that I don't get sick like all these things.
Speaker 2: And my mom viewed that as a kind of mental
Speaker 2: giving up, like I had given up on the fight
Speaker 2: for my innocence. And I hadn't. It's just that I
Speaker 2: had to live. It was very apparent to me that
Speaker 2: I was not. Like at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: every day I went back to my cell, back to
Speaker 2: my cot and that's where I stayed.
Speaker 1: Amanda, how do you get through those days? I mean,
Speaker 1: you said, you're having to confront this idea of inhabiting
Speaker 1: this new identity, this identity that's been thrust upon you,
Speaker 1: which is prisoner, and it's been unjustifiably thrust upon you.
Speaker 2: Well, the first step was acknowledging that this is a community,
Speaker 2: but it is full of a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of human suffering and a lot of humanity. I lived
Speaker 2: alongside people who had done really horrible things, and these
Speaker 2: were my people, I guess is a way of saying it,
Speaker 2: like this was my community, whether I liked it or not.
Speaker 2: And I started to realize that I wasn't just sort
Speaker 2: of a separate or a part entity of it. I
Speaker 2: was an integral entity in that community. And I started
Speaker 2: to think about what is my role in it? What
Speaker 2: can I do? What is the best thing that I
Speaker 2: can do in that space? And so I ended up
Speaker 2: spending a lot of time helping people write letters. Another
Speaker 2: job was simply acting as translator. There was no translator
Speaker 2: available to any of the prisoners, so any prisoners who
Speaker 2: didn't speak Italian had no way of knowing what court
Speaker 2: documents they were signing or how to tell the doctor
Speaker 2: that they weren't feeling well. And so I was constantly
Speaker 2: called in to help other prisoners understand what was happening
Speaker 2: and translating for them.
Speaker 1: What was your contact with the outside world like during
Speaker 1: this time, I mean, did you have family and friends'
Speaker 1: emotional psychological support helping to ground you in your new reality?
Speaker 2: So the thing that was the hardest for my family
Speaker 2: was of course that they at a certain point, they
Speaker 2: couldn't hold my hand right like at the end of
Speaker 2: a visitation. They went one way and I went another.
Speaker 2: And I know that like if my mom could have
Speaker 2: traded places with me, she would have in a second,
Speaker 2: but she couldn't, So all they could do was try
Speaker 2: to remind me that I didn't belong there, that I
Speaker 2: had a home and I had a life, and I
Speaker 2: had people who cared about me waiting for me. So
Speaker 2: I had one ten minute phone call a week. Every
Speaker 2: every week, my family and friends piled into my mom's
Speaker 2: house for a six am ten minute phone call just
Speaker 2: to hear my voice and let me know that they
Speaker 2: were they remembered me, and that they cared about me.
Speaker 2: And one day I was waiting at my cell door
Speaker 2: like usual because I knew the exact time that I
Speaker 2: would go and have my call, and the guard didn't come,
Speaker 2: and I called out agente la telephonata guard guard my
Speaker 2: phone call, and I called again. No one answered. I
Speaker 2: called again, no one answered. I spent a good half
Speaker 2: an hour getting more and more anxious and miserable and
Speaker 2: desperate and crying and yelling and feeling like a caged animal,
Speaker 2: until finally a guard came up and was like, what
Speaker 2: the hell are you screaming about? And I was like,
Speaker 2: my phone call, my phone call? Have I missed my
Speaker 2: phone call? And they said, we're not doing phone calls today.
Speaker 2: We're low, we're short staffed, we're not doing phone calls today.
Speaker 2: They just approached me and were like, what are you
Speaker 2: crying about? Like shut up? And that was one of
Speaker 2: those moments where I felt like, Wow, I am subhuman
Speaker 2: right now, Like it didn't even occur to them to
Speaker 2: tell me. It didn't occur to them that would matter
Speaker 2: to me, and it was I had this moment of
Speaker 2: worry that no matter how hard my family and friends tried,
Speaker 2: our lives were diverging so drastically that we would become
Speaker 2: strangers to each other despite our best efforts, just because
Speaker 2: I was living such a different existence than they were,
Speaker 2: and my world and my opportunities and the psychological effort
Speaker 2: that I had to put in to deal with the
Speaker 2: situation that I was in was very different than theirs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, can you paint the scene for me of
Speaker 1: the day that you were acquitted? Yes, what was that day?
Speaker 1: Like that was a.
Speaker 2: Really bizarre day. I'll just have to describe it to you.
Speaker 2: So I got up, I got dressed, I did the
Speaker 2: normal going down, get into the prison van. I was
Speaker 2: brought up into the courtroom. Everyone had their final word,
Speaker 2: and the court was dismissed for the day, and I
Speaker 2: was brought back to the prison and I knew that
Speaker 2: it was going to take a long time, that I
Speaker 2: had several hours ahead of me of not knowing what
Speaker 2: was going to happen. I tried to distract myself in
Speaker 2: the meantime, and I had a very hard time of it,
Speaker 2: and ultimately my relief came when the prison chaplain, who
Speaker 2: had become a good friend of mine despite the fact
Speaker 2: that I'm actually, you know, an atheist, he invited me
Speaker 2: down into his office like usual, and we played music together.
Speaker 2: He had this keyboard and he taught me how to play,
Speaker 2: and so I started playing this song that I had learned,
Speaker 2: and he uh surreptitiously took out this tape recorder, which
Speaker 2: he was absolutely not allowed to have, and he was like,
Speaker 2: I really want to record you because this is maybe
Speaker 2: the last time I hear your voice.
Speaker 1: So we sang.
Speaker 2: We played music together. At a certain point, I sat
Speaker 2: down on the couch with him and you know, he
Speaker 2: was talking to me about how I was feeling and
Speaker 2: if I was afraid, and and eventually I went back
Speaker 2: to my cell, but I spent I spent many hours
Speaker 2: just in the office with him, just crying and talking.
Speaker 2: And then finally in the evening they brought me back
Speaker 2: in and hearing him say acquitted and that she goes free,
Speaker 2: I I I broke down at that moment too, like
Speaker 2: that I had hoped and I was afraid to hope,
Speaker 2: and so suddenly this hope was alive for me again.
Speaker 2: Suddenly I was like, if I'm in this dark tunnel
Speaker 2: and I've closed my eyes to the light that is
Speaker 2: about to hit me, I was suddenly just like flooded
Speaker 2: with light, and I collapsed again, just hysterical, just crying, crying, crying,
Speaker 2: and to such a degree that the guards who were
Speaker 2: with me, they thought that I had misunderstood the verdict.
Speaker 2: They thought that I had heard guilty, when in fact
Speaker 2: I had heard innocent, and so they were trying to
Speaker 2: tell me, no, it's okay, you won, you won, and
Speaker 2: I was just like, I know, I know. And then
Speaker 2: they brought me back to the prison to gather my thing,
Speaker 2: but not in a prison van. They put me in
Speaker 2: a police car where I could actually look out the
Speaker 2: windows and like a person again. And as I got
Speaker 2: back to the prison, like everyone was looking out their
Speaker 2: windows waiting to see it, and everyone started banging pots
Speaker 2: and pants and screaming their heads.
Speaker 1: Off, just le Berta Leerda.
Speaker 2: And then it was a whole high speed chase out
Speaker 2: of the prison to get to Rome, to where my
Speaker 2: family was, to a secret location, and it was it
Speaker 2: was very, very the most Jason Bourne scenario that I've
Speaker 2: ever been in.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans. After spending four years behind bars for a
Speaker 1: crime she did commit, Amanda Knox was finally exonerated and
Speaker 1: she soon headed back home to America.
Speaker 2: I was afraid to go to sleep, worried that it
Speaker 2: would mean that I would actually wake up in prison,
Speaker 2: like I had that moment where I was just trying
Speaker 2: to stay awake as long as I could because I
Speaker 2: was like, is this the dream? Am I just having
Speaker 2: the most vivid dream of my life? Or is this real?
Speaker 2: And when I first came home, I thought that I
Speaker 2: was going to get to have the life that I
Speaker 2: had left behind back I thought that, you know, I
Speaker 2: was under that same misconception that once this is all
Speaker 2: worked out and everyone agrees that I'm innocent, then I
Speaker 2: get to go back to being me. I get to
Speaker 2: go back to my life that I lost that was
Speaker 2: on pause. And I slowly realized that life didn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2: And the reason I knew it didn't exist anymore is
Speaker 2: because I couldn't go out of my apartment building without
Speaker 2: you know, paparazzi following me to school, and I couldn't
Speaker 2: but even beyond that, like I also couldn't meet people
Speaker 2: who hadn't heard of me before, like you know, people
Speaker 2: in my classes who were taking pictures of me and
Speaker 2: posting them to social media and saying like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I'm in you know, look who's in my class and
Speaker 2: the murderer, you know. So I knew that. I slowly
Speaker 2: realized and came to grips with the fact that not
Speaker 2: only was the outside world not going to let me
Speaker 2: go back to my life, but also I was living
Speaker 2: now with experiences that I couldn't just put behind me
Speaker 2: as if they never happened. Right, I had lived four
Speaker 2: years in prison, and I had been on trial for murder,
Speaker 2: and that, despite all of my best efforts, had left
Speaker 2: an impression on me. And now I was really really
Speaker 2: sensitive to certain things, like to this day, I do
Speaker 2: not farewell when someone accuses me of something that I
Speaker 2: didn't do, even if it's small, because it's just it's
Speaker 2: so triggering that I'm very sensitive to it and it
Speaker 2: hurts a lot. So I had to come to an
Speaker 2: understanding that the world was not the same place for
Speaker 2: me anymore. My role in it was not what I
Speaker 2: thought it could be, and I had to figure out
Speaker 2: what was the best thing that I can do and
Speaker 2: try to do it despite the fact that I also
Speaker 2: knew that there were legions of people rooting against me,
Speaker 2: hoping that I would live up to the Foxy Noxie
Speaker 2: narrative I would be just as bad as everyone thought
Speaker 2: I would be.
Speaker 1: And you were also put back on trial, right, which
Speaker 1: compounds the narrative that people want out of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Yeah. And when the Supreme Court in Italy
Speaker 2: overturned my acquittal, first of all, I didn't even realize
Speaker 2: that that was possible because it so goes it goes
Speaker 2: against what we assume here in the United States, which
Speaker 2: is when you're found innocent. It's just it's done. No,
Speaker 2: It's not like that in Italy because it's not done
Speaker 2: until the Supreme Court decides it's done. So the prosecution
Speaker 2: appealed my acquittal. My acquittal was overturned and they convicted me.
Speaker 2: I was actually sentenced to twenty eight point five years
Speaker 2: at that conviction.
Speaker 1: So what was it like then, Amanda, to be definitively exonerated?
Speaker 1: What was that day like?
Speaker 2: That was astonishing because first of all, I'm here in
Speaker 2: the United States, so I'm like logging on to all
Speaker 2: of like the live streaming Italian news channels online to
Speaker 2: see which one is going to be reporting first on
Speaker 2: what the verdict is. And I'm the only one in
Speaker 2: my entire family who can speak fluent Italian. So here
Speaker 2: we all are crowded around my laptop. Everyone is around me,
Speaker 2: and I hear definitively acquitted. I gasped. I was like
Speaker 2: I was shocked, and everyone in my family was like
Speaker 2: what what? What was what? What is it? And I
Speaker 2: was like, it's over, it's over.
Speaker 1: It's over.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it is over. And you know, of
Speaker 2: course we're all like squealing and it it was. It
Speaker 2: was over. It was it was astonishing, Like the feeling
Speaker 2: of no longer being a prey animal that is being
Speaker 2: hunted down was huge. And suddenly I felt like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, I can actually live my life. I can't
Speaker 2: just survive my life. I can live my life and
Speaker 2: no one is going to freaking stop me. I am
Speaker 2: not going to let anyone feel like they can stop
Speaker 2: me from living my life anymore. Like I'm done, Like
Speaker 2: I'm done with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting that you say that. I wonder
Speaker 1: if it is that narrative in your mind that helps
Speaker 1: you stave off feelings of resentment, because if you are
Speaker 1: too resentful, then you have let them own a piece
Speaker 1: of your future, which is the one thing that you
Speaker 1: can control. I can just so easily imagine getting consumed
Speaker 1: by resentment, because you know, it's one thing for a
Speaker 1: tragic event to happen in life, just because, like I
Speaker 1: imagine being struck by lightning, there's no object to your anger, right,
Speaker 1: but here there was malicious human intent and they haven't
Speaker 1: even shown any contrition.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, that's that's a great question, because I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people come away from me thinking that
Speaker 2: I don't actually experience anger, and I do like I
Speaker 2: have moments of like deep deep anger about what happened
Speaker 2: and how it didn't need to happen. But I also
Speaker 2: am aware that living four years in a room that
Speaker 2: was locked really really showed me that the thing that
Speaker 2: I have control over is my own mind. And that's
Speaker 2: pretty much it. And so if I am going to
Speaker 2: live my life, I need to be mindful of how
Speaker 2: I'm allowing myself to live it and what sort of
Speaker 2: feelings and thoughts I'm indulging in, because I think the
Speaker 2: important thing to remember here is that I allow myself
Speaker 2: to feel anger, but I try not to indulge in it.
Speaker 2: And that's the difference, because I think that especially when
Speaker 2: you feel righteous anger, you feel like you should entrench
Speaker 2: yourself in it and like dig deep and like and
Speaker 2: know that pain and feel that and have that be
Speaker 2: the driving force in your life, because it is righteous.
Speaker 2: It's coming from a place of like, I deserve to
Speaker 2: be angry. But just because you deserve to be angry
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that it's the thing that's going to make
Speaker 2: you your best self, And don't I don't want what
Speaker 2: happened to me to turn me into something that is
Speaker 2: not my best self. I want to. I want to
Speaker 2: still feel like I'm in control of at least one
Speaker 2: thing in my life, and that's me and how I'm
Speaker 2: reacting to a set of bad circumstances. On the one hand,
Speaker 2: your story is so exceptional and so extraordinary. On the
Speaker 2: other there are many themes that are so relatable. We
Speaker 2: all have these moments in life where we think, oh, man,
Speaker 2: this person, they really misunderstood me. If only I could
Speaker 2: clarify to them what the truth was, like what really happened, or.
Speaker 1: You know what I really mean. But we don't always
Speaker 1: get the chance to set the record straight. And you
Speaker 1: know today there are still slots of people out there
Speaker 1: who think you are guilty of a crime you didn't commit.
Speaker 1: And I want to know how you make peace with that,
Speaker 1: how you don't allow yourself to be driven insane by that,
Speaker 1: Because if you, Amanda, can come to terms with this,
Speaker 1: I imagine it could give a lot of listeners a
Speaker 1: lot of hope who are dealing with far more quotitian misconceptions.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, I appreciate also that you say that, like,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of things in my experience that is
Speaker 2: really relatable. One because actually the way that I was
Speaker 2: wrongly convicted is not very different than the way lots
Speaker 2: of people are wrongly convicted. You just don't hear about
Speaker 2: their cases quite as often. But furthermore, I also appreciate
Speaker 2: the fact that you are trying to relate to what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about and how I feel like that feeling
Speaker 2: of being misrepresented, misunderstood. People finding fault in you are
Speaker 2: stripping you of context given your situation. A lot of
Speaker 2: people reach out to me and say, like, how do
Speaker 2: I deal with the fact that people are calling me
Speaker 2: a slut in my high school? Or what do I
Speaker 2: do about how like my reputation is destroyed based upon this,
Speaker 2: like one tweet I did when I was young. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that I I find personal peace
Speaker 2: with is just knowing that, like all those people who
Speaker 2: hate me don't actually hate me, Like the person that
Speaker 2: they think they hate doesn't even exist, so it's not me,
Speaker 2: Like they're directing their hate at at target that is
Speaker 2: this sort of false version of me that doesn't really exist,
Speaker 2: and I just happen to be the face and the
Speaker 2: name that they associate with this fantasy. However, that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that I don't live with the sort of challenges
Speaker 2: that come with people having preconceived notions of me as
Speaker 2: I try to like put my work out into the
Speaker 2: world or just even you know, exist in public spaces.
Speaker 1: Can you say more about that. How does that manifest?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, I mean I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: think that maybe people come up to me and are like,
Speaker 2: you are guilty, But no, it's not how it manifests itself.
Speaker 2: It's more like I drive up to the kiosk to
Speaker 2: get on a ferry. I give them my credit card.
Speaker 2: The person sees my name on the credit card says
Speaker 2: are you that a man to knocks? And I go yes,
Speaker 2: and they say, well, I have some questions to you
Speaker 2: about your your cartwheels and what you were saying in
Speaker 2: your interrogation. Meanwhile, this is the person who's like holding
Speaker 2: onto my credit card and not giving it back to
Speaker 2: me until I answer their questions for them. So it's
Speaker 2: that kind of sense of entitlement that people have to
Speaker 2: the worst experience of my life that at any point
Speaker 2: that they happen to run into me, that continues to
Speaker 2: be this challenge. But again I also understand that here
Speaker 2: this person is who has invested themselves in the case,
Speaker 2: and this is like their one moment in their whole
Speaker 2: life where they feel like they're going to get to
Speaker 2: finally have a question answered, and so they think, I can't,
Speaker 2: you know, let this opportunity pass up, but failing to
Speaker 2: appreciate that, well, I'm in the middle of my life
Speaker 2: and my life does not revolve around answering your questions.
Speaker 2: So it's a kind of failure of empathy.
Speaker 1: Aman, I'm struck by the fact that you know, on
Speaker 1: this show a slight change of plans. It's so much
Speaker 1: about identity, our self identity, the fragility of our identity,
Speaker 1: who gets to own our identity, how our identities change
Speaker 1: over time? And to me, your story screams of these themes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you might experience that with a much greater intensity,
Speaker 1: which is that your identity in many ways has been
Speaker 1: usurped by lots of actors out in the world. But
Speaker 1: many of us feel that way, like who claims maya right?
Speaker 1: Like who gets to define who I am and what
Speaker 1: I've done?
Speaker 2: So definitely, my ongoing curse is continuing to be defined
Speaker 2: in the greater you know, human awareness, a crime that
Speaker 2: I didn't commit, as opposed to all of the things
Speaker 2: that I have done. Like the vast majority of people
Speaker 2: when they think Amanda Knox, they don't think of podcaster, journalist, writer,
Speaker 2: They think girl who was accused of murder at best, right,
Speaker 2: And my challenge has always been, well, first of all,
Speaker 2: how important is it to me for me to define
Speaker 2: my own narrative and legacy? Is that necessary for me
Speaker 2: to live the life, like to live a happy life?
Speaker 2: And you know, ultimately it's not necessary, right, Like I
Speaker 2: don't have to convince everyone in the world that I'm
Speaker 2: innocent in order to live a fulfilled life, because ultimately
Speaker 2: living a fulfilled life is on me, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: However, one of the more traumatic experiences someone can have
Speaker 2: is to not be allowed to define what their experiences
Speaker 2: mean to them. So not only like what their experience was,
Speaker 2: but what it means to them. And so doing constant
Speaker 2: processing work to define for myself what it means to
Speaker 2: me is valuable to me and also in turn valuable
Speaker 2: to others who are trying to find their own meaning
Speaker 2: to their experiences. Because there is no inherent meaning to
Speaker 2: any of our suffering, we have to make sense of
Speaker 2: it and we have to define what it means, like
Speaker 2: how big of a role it is in our life, so,
Speaker 2: you know, everything leading up to everything that happened in Italy,
Speaker 2: I lived very charmed but naive life. I was, you know,
Speaker 2: very sheltered, and you know, had a very limited perspective
Speaker 2: on things. I thought that only bad people went to
Speaker 2: prison and that I never had to think about those issues.
Speaker 2: But I also think, wow, you know, would I be
Speaker 2: would I be a good you know, would I be
Speaker 2: a good person if I hadn't gone through something so terrible,
Speaker 2: Because nothing that had ever happened to me up to
Speaker 2: that point, and I sort of took for granted that
Speaker 2: I would just be able to have the life that
Speaker 2: I wanted in a family and a career without you know,
Speaker 2: any problems. Today, I feel like I have a perspective
Speaker 2: that I having lived kind of with the lowest possible
Speaker 2: hopes and then being able to like take that perspective
Speaker 2: and try to give voice to an experience that doesn't
Speaker 2: often have a have a voice, and try to like
Speaker 2: make those connections between other people suffering and overwhelming experiences
Speaker 2: and others, because I think there is this this false
Speaker 2: idea that people can't relate to each other if they
Speaker 2: don't have the same experiences and it's like, no, we can.
Speaker 2: We can do that empathy work. We can understand how
Speaker 2: the mind works when it reacts to traumatic experiences. We
Speaker 2: can share that with each other, and we only get
Speaker 2: better for it. I feel like weirdly better for that experience,
Speaker 2: even if I would never wish it upon my worst enemy.
Speaker 1: That's profound. I mean, yeah, look, I think again, maybe
Speaker 1: this is just the part of my mind that studies
Speaker 1: human behavior for a living, but I feel like there
Speaker 1: are so many common threads in psychology that absolutely transcend
Speaker 1: the specifics of an experience. In fact, that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I built this show is to show that,
Speaker 1: you know, the cancer patient in the throes of a
Speaker 1: stage four diagnosis might have more in common with you
Speaker 1: when it comes to psychology than someone who had experience
Speaker 1: that in terms of content rivaled yours, right, And so
Speaker 1: it is all about finding those commonalities. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that in present day you're actively involved in something called
Speaker 1: the innocence network, which supports the wrongfully incarcerated, and that
Speaker 1: you have been warmly welcomed into their family.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I came home, one of the things
Speaker 2: when I came home from Italy, one of the things
Speaker 2: that I had sort of resigned myself to was this
Speaker 2: idea that I was very alone in my experience, and
Speaker 2: I was isolating. I was isolating in a big way,
Speaker 2: and my mom was worried about me. She was really
Speaker 2: worried about me. I kept doing prison things like washing
Speaker 2: my underwear in the sink and generally just kind of
Speaker 2: being a loner. And she was reached out to by
Speaker 2: the director of the Idaho Innocence Project, who said, Hey,
Speaker 2: just so you know, there's this whole world of people
Speaker 2: who work to overturn wrongful convictions here in the United
Speaker 2: States based off the Innocence Project. We all get together
Speaker 2: once a year at this conference. You need to bring Amanda,
Speaker 2: and of course my mom brings us to me. And
Speaker 2: the last thing that I want to do in the
Speaker 2: world is walk into a room full of hundreds of
Speaker 2: strangers who are going to recognize me, Like that is
Speaker 2: my worst nightmare scenario. And I was still actually convicted
Speaker 2: at the time. I had just been reconvicted, and I
Speaker 2: was doing all those like facing extradition, what if I
Speaker 2: have to turn myself in kind of things. That's the
Speaker 2: world I was living in when I walked into that
Speaker 2: basement conference room with the bad lighting and the bad
Speaker 2: carpet in Portland, Oregon, and I walked into a room.
Speaker 2: My mom sort of pushed me into the room, and
Speaker 2: these two guys immediately ran up to me and hugged
Speaker 2: me and said, you don't have to explain a thing,
Speaker 2: little sister. We know. And it's like they knew, they
Speaker 2: knew what I was most scared of walking into that room,
Speaker 2: that I was going to be recognized and have to
Speaker 2: explain myself and be judged. And I was introduced to
Speaker 2: a not just a community, but a family of people
Speaker 2: who understood and cared even though they didn't know me.
Speaker 2: And what they did for me, and that moment, these
Speaker 2: two men who had each spent over a decade in
Speaker 2: prison for crimes so they didn't commit I could probably
Speaker 2: do for someone else too. And that world has introduced
Speaker 2: me to some amazing people doing amazing work. And I
Speaker 2: try to bring light to that work and shed light
Speaker 2: on people's cases and the issues that get people wrongly convicted.
Speaker 2: Those are all things that we all can totally understand
Speaker 2: and totally fix. It is absolutely within our power and
Speaker 2: is so worth it.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. Next week Amanda returns
Speaker 1: to the show for one of the most moving and
Speaker 1: profound conversations I've ever had. We spoke about what it
Speaker 1: was like to confront the man who helped put her
Speaker 1: behind bars.
Speaker 2: I wanted to understand why, why did this happen to me?
Speaker 2: And I realized that the only way to truly understand
Speaker 2: was to ask him.
Speaker 1: That's coming up on A Slight Change of Plans. A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes our
Speaker 1: showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our
Speaker 1: producers Britney Cronin and Megan Luvin, and our sound engineer
Speaker 1: Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and
Speaker 1: Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of
Speaker 1: Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks
Speaker 1: to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks
Speaker 1: to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of
Speaker 1: Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker. See you next week.
Speaker 1: The The The