Speaker 1: Pushkin hey slight changed listeners. It's Maya this summer. We're
Speaker 1: revisiting four of your all time favorite episodes. For the
Speaker 1: third episode in the series, we're hearing from Amanda Knox.
Speaker 1: I had read so much about Amanda's story over the years,
Speaker 1: but I still found myself surprised and awed by what
Speaker 1: she shared with me in this conversation. She's one of
Speaker 1: the most psychologically wise people I've ever met, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited for you to listen to this for the first
Speaker 1: time or to revisit 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
Speaker 1: commit the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kircher. Amanda was
Speaker 1: just twenty years old when this all unfolded. She spent
Speaker 1: four years in an Italian prison before she was finally
Speaker 1: exonerated and allowed to return home to America, but the
Speaker 1: reality of what she faced upon her return was not
Speaker 1: at 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 interesting.
Speaker 1: Typically 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 in your.
Speaker 2: Words, absolutely, and thank you for that. When I was
Speaker 2: twenty years old, I decided that I wanted to study abroad.
Speaker 2: I ended up choosing a program in a really small,
Speaker 2: ancient city in the middle of Italy called Perusia. I
Speaker 2: moved into an apartment in a small house overlooking this
Speaker 2: beautiful valley with three other young women, two Italian girls
Speaker 2: and a British student who was just like a year
Speaker 2: older than me named Meredith. And the day after Halloween,
Speaker 2: on November first, I was hanging out with my new
Speaker 2: love fling of five days, Rafaeli Salchico, and Meredith was
Speaker 2: home alone and a local burglar named Rudi Gaudet broke
Speaker 2: into our home and raped and murdered her and then
Speaker 2: fled the country. And I discovered all of this by
Speaker 2: coming home next day to take a shower and noticing
Speaker 2: that our home was in disarray. I had I brought
Speaker 2: Raphaela over, we called the police together. The police came
Speaker 2: and discovered the crime scene, Meredith's body, which fortunately I
Speaker 2: never had to see in person, but unfortunately there was
Speaker 2: a lot of frantic energy, a lot of confusion, a
Speaker 2: lot of fear. In those opening days after the murder
Speaker 2: was discovered, it was immediately of tremendous public interest. International
Speaker 2: media was descending upon Perusia, talking to any single person
Speaker 2: that they possibly could. Meanwhile, I'm spending hours and hours
Speaker 2: and hours at the police station trying to help the
Speaker 2: police uncover what happened to my friend. And I spent
Speaker 2: about fifty three hours over five days in that police office,
Speaker 2: being questioned over and over and over again, telling them
Speaker 2: the same story that I've been telling them, what happened
Speaker 2: that as far as I knew, and they were telling
Speaker 2: me that I was wrong, that everything that I remembered
Speaker 2: was wrong, that I was traumatized, and that my freedom
Speaker 2: and my access to my family depended upon me remembering
Speaker 2: something that I couldn't remember. And I was alone, I
Speaker 2: was speaking of foreign language, I was without a lawyer,
Speaker 2: I was asking for my mom, I was asking for
Speaker 2: any help whatsoever, and instead I got slapped and screamed
Speaker 2: at for hours until I was willing to sign a
Speaker 2: statement that they wrote implicating my boss Patrick the Mumba.
Speaker 2: I caved. It was the only thing that made sense
Speaker 2: to me anymore. I started to doubt my own sanity
Speaker 2: and I signed those papers and they immediately ran off
Speaker 2: to go arrest my boss Patrick, and I was finally
Speaker 2: left alone to breathe and think straight after hours of
Speaker 2: horrible treatment, and I immediately recanted. I told them, oh
Speaker 2: my god, there's a huge mistake. I was under a
Speaker 2: lot of pressure. I don't actually remember witnessing any murder whatsoever.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't listen to me. They told me that with time,
Speaker 2: my memories would come back, and that I just needed
Speaker 2: to be quiet, And like just a few days later,
Speaker 2: I was brought before a judge and finally finally told
Speaker 2: you are under investigation for 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 accurately reason about the world around you,
Speaker 1: that is damaging. That puts you in a state where
Speaker 1: I imagine it's easy to feel broken because you start
Speaker 1: asking yourself questions like how is I capable of that?
Speaker 1: How is I capable of implicating this totally 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 else who else to blame. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that there was a specific police interrogation technique
Speaker 2: designed to break down people to just admit to something.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until a cognitive scientist who studies false
Speaker 2: confessions reached out to me, and it was while I
Speaker 2: was 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 mean,
Speaker 2: everything I thought to be true about the world collapsed
Speaker 2: in on itself. I very much felt like the ground
Speaker 2: beneath me had fallen away and I had nothing to
Speaker 2: stand on. I literally collapsed between my attorneys and then
Speaker 2: the guards sort of had to carry me out of
Speaker 2: this courtroom where I'm hysterical, like unable to believe what
Speaker 2: is happening. And I had this very very i mean
Speaker 2: kind of quick an adaptation in my mind where I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm not this lost tourist who's waiting to go home.
Speaker 2: I am a prisoner, Like this isn't just a thing
Speaker 2: that is happening to me. This is my life. This
Speaker 2: is my life now, and whether or not it's based
Speaker 2: in truth, this defines me. I've just been defined a killer,
Speaker 2: and I have just been told the only place that
Speaker 2: you belong is behind bars for the majority of your life.
Speaker 2: And all those things that you thought that you would
Speaker 2: get to have in your life, a family, a career,
Speaker 2: the opportunity to be with your family and watch your
Speaker 2: nephews grow and your kids grow, and all of these
Speaker 2: things that I thought were going to be a part
Speaker 2: of my life were not a part of my life.
Speaker 2: That was never going to be a part of my life,
Speaker 2: and what is my life? Then? Who am? I? And
Speaker 2: my mom had a very different relationship with hope than
Speaker 2: I did. She didn't have that shift happen when I
Speaker 2: was convicted. She looked at this and I think just
Speaker 2: out of desperation, like, oh, the tunnel is just longer
Speaker 2: than we thought it was. But you are going to
Speaker 2: get out. You are going to be found innocent, you
Speaker 2: are going to be vindicated. You are innocent, You're my daughter,
Speaker 2: You're going to come home. And after my conviction, I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure about that anymore, Like I didn't have any
Speaker 2: reason to believe that anymore. And I ended up having
Speaker 2: really really difficult conversations with her where I said, well,
Speaker 2: I hope that happens, mom, But if it doesn't, I
Speaker 2: hope that I can achieve this goal in the prison environment.
Speaker 2: Or I hope that one day I'll be able to,
Speaker 2: you know, write about my experience so that i'm you know,
Speaker 2: at least one voice voicing my experience in this huge,
Speaker 2: you know, world of voices who are calling me a murderer,
Speaker 2: and maybe one day it'll matter. I hope that I
Speaker 2: stay healthy. I hope that I don't get sick like
Speaker 2: all these things. And my mom viewed that as a
Speaker 2: kind of mental giving up, like I had given up
Speaker 2: on the fight for my innocence. And I hadn't. It's
Speaker 2: just that I had to live. It was very apparent
Speaker 2: to me that I was not like at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, every day I went back to my cell,
Speaker 2: back to 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
Speaker 2: it like this, this was my community, whether I liked
Speaker 2: it or not. And I started to realize that I
Speaker 2: wasn't just sort of a separate or a part entity
Speaker 2: of it. I was an integral entity in that community.
Speaker 2: And I started to think about what is my role
Speaker 2: in it? What can I do? What is the best
Speaker 2: thing that I can do in that space? And so
Speaker 2: I ended up spending a lot of time helping people
Speaker 2: write letters. Another job was simply acting as translator. There
Speaker 2: was no translator available to any of the prisoners, so
Speaker 2: any prisoners who didn't speak Italian had no way of
Speaker 2: knowing what court documents they were signing or how to
Speaker 2: tell the doctor that they weren't feeling well. And so
Speaker 2: I was constantly called in to help other prisoners understand
Speaker 2: what was happening 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 was,
Speaker 2: of course that they at a certain point they couldn't
Speaker 2: hold my hand, right like at the end of a visitation,
Speaker 2: they went one way and I went another. And I
Speaker 2: know that like if my mom could have traded places
Speaker 2: with me, she would have in a second, but she couldn't.
Speaker 2: So all they could do was try to remind me
Speaker 2: that I didn't belong there, that I had a home
Speaker 2: and I had a life, and I had people who
Speaker 2: cared about me waiting for me. So I had one
Speaker 2: ten minute phone call a week. Every every week, my
Speaker 2: family and friends piled into my mom's house for a
Speaker 2: six am ten minute phone call just to hear my
Speaker 2: voice and let me know that they were they remembered me,
Speaker 2: and that they cared about me. And one day I
Speaker 2: was waiting at my cell door like usual because I
Speaker 2: knew the exact time that I would go and have
Speaker 2: my call, and the guard didn't come, and I called
Speaker 2: out agente la telephonata guard guard my phone call, and
Speaker 2: I called again. No one answered. I called again, No
Speaker 2: one answered. I spent a good half an hour getting
Speaker 2: more and more anxious and miserable and desperate and crying
Speaker 2: and yelling and feeling like a caged animal, until finally
Speaker 2: a guard came up and was like, what the hell
Speaker 2: are you screaming about? And I was like, my phone call,
Speaker 2: my phone call? Have I missed my phone call? And
Speaker 2: they said, we're not doing phone calls today, we're low,
Speaker 2: we're short staffed, we're not doing phone calls today. They
Speaker 2: just approached me and were like, what are you crying about?
Speaker 2: Like shut up? And that was one of those moments
Speaker 2: where I felt like, Wow, I am subhuman right now,
Speaker 2: Like it didn't even occur to them to tell me.
Speaker 2: It didn't occur to them that would matter to me,
Speaker 2: and it was. I had this moment of worry that
Speaker 2: no matter how hard my family and friends tried, our
Speaker 2: lives were diverging so drastically that we would become strangers
Speaker 2: to each other despite our best efforts, just because I
Speaker 2: was living such a different existence than they were, and
Speaker 2: my world and my opportunities and the psychological effort that
Speaker 2: I had to put in to deal with the situation
Speaker 2: that I was in was very different than theirs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you paint the scene for me of the
Speaker 1: day that you were acquitted?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: What was that day?
Speaker 2: Like? That was a really bizarre day that I'll just
Speaker 2: have to describe it to you. So I got up,
Speaker 2: I got dressed, I did the normal going down, get
Speaker 2: into the prison van. I was brought up into the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Everyone had their final word and the court was dismissed
Speaker 2: for the day, and I was brought back to the
Speaker 2: prison and I knew that it was going to take
Speaker 2: a long time, that I had several hours ahead of me.
Speaker 2: Of not knowing what was going to happen. I tried
Speaker 2: to distract myself in the meantime, and I had a
Speaker 2: very hard time of it. And ultimately my relief came
Speaker 2: when the prison chaplain, who had become a good friend
Speaker 2: of mine, despite the fact that I'm actually, you know,
Speaker 2: an atheist, he invited me down into his office like usual,
Speaker 2: and we played music together. He had this keyboard and
Speaker 2: he taught me how to play, and so I started
Speaker 2: playing this song that I had learned, and he uh
Speaker 2: surreptitiously took out this tape recorder, which he was absolutely
Speaker 2: not allowed to have, and he was like, I really
Speaker 2: want to record you because this is maybe the last
Speaker 2: time I hear your voice. So we sang, we played
Speaker 2: music together. At a certain point, I sat down on
Speaker 2: the couch with him, and you know, he was talking
Speaker 2: to me about how I was feeling and if I
Speaker 2: was afraid, and and eventually I went back to my cell,
Speaker 2: but I spent I spent many hours just in the
Speaker 2: office with him, just crying and talking. And then finally
Speaker 2: in the evening they brought me back in and hearing
Speaker 2: him say acquitted and that she goes free, I I
Speaker 2: I broke down at that moment too, like that I
Speaker 2: had hoped and I was afraid to hope, and so
Speaker 2: suddenly this hope was alive for me again. Suddenly I
Speaker 2: was like, if I'm in this dark tunnel and I've
Speaker 2: closed my eyes to the light that is about to
Speaker 2: hit me, I was suddenly just like flooded with light,
Speaker 2: 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 things,
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 this to the prison, like everyone was looking
Speaker 2: out their windows waiting to see it, and ever one
Speaker 2: started banging pots and pants and screaming their heads.
Speaker 1: Off, just le Berda le Berta.
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 very,
Speaker 2: very the most Jason Bourne scenario that I've 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 didn't 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 or is
Speaker 2: this real? And when I first came home, I thought
Speaker 2: that I was going to get to have the life
Speaker 2: that I had left behind back I thought that, you know,
Speaker 2: I was under that same misconception that once this is
Speaker 2: all worked out and everyone agrees that I'm innocent, then
Speaker 2: I get to go back to being me. I get
Speaker 2: to go back to my life that I lost that
Speaker 2: was on pause, and I slowly realized. I realized that
Speaker 2: that life didn't exist anymore. And the reason I knew
Speaker 2: it didn't exist anymore, is because I couldn't go out
Speaker 2: of my apartment building without you know, paparazzi following me
Speaker 2: to school, and I couldn't. But even beyond that, like
Speaker 2: I also couldn't meet people who hadn't heard of me before,
Speaker 2: like you know, people in my classes who are taking
Speaker 2: pictures of me and posting them to social media and
Speaker 2: saying like, oh my god, I'm in you know, look
Speaker 2: who's in my class. And the murderer, you know. So
Speaker 2: I knew that. I slowly realized and came to grips
Speaker 2: with the fact that not only was the outside world
Speaker 2: not going to let me go back to my life,
Speaker 2: but also I was living now with experiences that I
Speaker 2: couldn't just put behind me as if they never happened. Right,
Speaker 2: I had lived four years in prison, and I had
Speaker 2: been on trial for murder, and that, despite all of
Speaker 2: my best efforts, had left an impression on me. And
Speaker 2: now I was really really sensitive to certain things, like
Speaker 2: I to this day, I do not I do not
Speaker 2: farewell when someone accuses me of something that I didn't do,
Speaker 2: even if it's small, because it's just it's so triggering
Speaker 2: that I'm very sensitive to it. And it hurts a lot.
Speaker 2: So I had to come to an understanding that the
Speaker 2: world was not the same place for me anymore. My
Speaker 2: role in it was not what I thought it could be,
Speaker 2: and I had to figure out what was the best
Speaker 2: thing that I can do and try to do it
Speaker 2: despite the fact that I also knew that there were
Speaker 2: legions of people rooting against me, hoping that I would
Speaker 2: live up to the Foxy Noxie narrative that I would
Speaker 2: be just as bad as everyone thought 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 round 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?
Speaker 1: What is it? And I was like, it's over. It's over.
Speaker 2: It's over. Oh my god, it is over. And you know,
Speaker 2: of course, we're all like squealing and it it was.
Speaker 2: It was over. It was. It was astonishing, Like the
Speaker 2: feeling of no longer being a prey animal that is
Speaker 2: being hunted down was huge, and suddenly I felt like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I can actually live my life. I
Speaker 2: can't just survive my life. I can live my life
Speaker 2: and no one is going to freaking stop me. I
Speaker 2: am not going to let anyone feel like they can
Speaker 2: stop me from living my life anymore, Like I'm done,
Speaker 2: Like I'm done with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting saying that. You say that. I
Speaker 1: wonder if it is that narrative in your mind that
Speaker 1: helps you stave off feelings of resentment, because if you
Speaker 1: are too resentful, then you have let them own a
Speaker 1: piece of your future, which is the one thing that
Speaker 1: you can control. I can just so easily imagine getting
Speaker 1: consumed by resentment, because you know, it's one thing for
Speaker 1: a tragic event to happen in life, just because, like
Speaker 1: I imagine being struck by lightning, there's no object to
Speaker 1: your anger, right, but here there was malicious human intent
Speaker 1: and they haven't 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.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, your story is so exceptional and
Speaker 1: so extraordinary. On the other there are many themes that
Speaker 1: are so relatable we all have these moments in life
Speaker 1: where we think, oh, man, this person they really misunderstood me.
Speaker 1: If only I could clarify to them what the truth was,
Speaker 1: like what really happened, or you know what I really mean.
Speaker 1: But we don't always get the chance to set the
Speaker 1: record straight. And you know, today there are still swots
Speaker 1: of people out there who think you are guilty of
Speaker 1: a crime you didn't commit. And I want to know
Speaker 1: how you make peace with that, how you don't allow
Speaker 1: yourself to be driven insane by that, Because if you, Amanda,
Speaker 1: can come to terms with this, I imagine it could
Speaker 1: give a lot of listeners a lot of hope who
Speaker 1: 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 find personal peace with
Speaker 2: is just knowing that, like all those people who hate
Speaker 2: me don't actually hate me, Like the person that they
Speaker 2: think they hate doesn't even exist, so it's not me,
Speaker 2: Like they're directing their hate at target that is this
Speaker 2: 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 put my work out into the world
Speaker 2: 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 knock? And I go yes,
Speaker 2: and they say, well, I have some questions to you
Speaker 2: about your cartwheels and what you were saying in your interrogation. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: this is the person who's like holding onto my credit
Speaker 2: card and not giving it back to me until I
Speaker 2: answer their questions for them. So it's that kind of
Speaker 2: sense of entitlement that people have to the worst experience
Speaker 2: of my life that at any point that they happen
Speaker 2: to run into me, that continues to be this challenge.
Speaker 2: But again I also understand that here this person is
Speaker 2: who has invested themselves in the case, and this is
Speaker 2: like their one moment in their whole life where they
Speaker 2: feel like they're going to get to finally have a
Speaker 2: question answered, and so they think, I can't, you know,
Speaker 2: let this opportunity pass up, but failing to appreciate that, well,
Speaker 2: I'm in the middle of my life and my life
Speaker 2: does not revolve around answering your questions. So it's a
Speaker 2: 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 by a crime
Speaker 2: that I didn't commit, as opposed to all of the
Speaker 2: things that I have done. Like the vast majority of
Speaker 2: people 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 be would
Speaker 2: I be a good you know, would I be a
Speaker 2: good person if I hadn't gone through something so terrible
Speaker 2: because nothing bad 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 in a
Speaker 2: perspective that I having lived kind of with the lowest
Speaker 2: possible hopes and then being able to take that perspective
Speaker 2: and try to give voice to an experience that doesn't
Speaker 2: often have a voice, and try to make those connections
Speaker 2: between other people suffering and overwhelming experiences and others, because
Speaker 2: I think there is this false idea that people can't
Speaker 2: relate to each other if they don't have the same experiences.
Speaker 2: And it's like, no, we can. We can do that
Speaker 2: empathy work. We can understand how the mind works when
Speaker 2: it reacts to traumatic experiences. We can share that with
Speaker 2: each other, and we only get better for it. I
Speaker 2: feel like weirdly better for that experience, even if I
Speaker 2: 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. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when I came home, one of the things when
Speaker 2: I came home from Italy, one of the things that
Speaker 2: I had sort of resigned myself to was this idea
Speaker 2: that I was very alone in my experience and I
Speaker 2: was isolating. I was isolating in a big way, and
Speaker 2: my mom was worried about me. She was really worried
Speaker 2: about me. I kept doing prison things like washing my
Speaker 2: underwear and the sink and generally just kind of being
Speaker 2: a loner, and she was reached out to by the
Speaker 2: director of the Idaho Innocence Project, who said, Hey, just
Speaker 2: so you know, there's this whole world of people who
Speaker 2: work to overturn wrongful convictions here in the United States
Speaker 2: based off the Innocence Project. We all get together once
Speaker 2: a year at this conference. You need to bring Amanda.
Speaker 2: And of course my mom brings this 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: not just a community, but a family of people who
Speaker 2: understood and cared even though they didn't know me. And
Speaker 2: what they did for me, and that moment, these two
Speaker 2: men who had each spent over a decade in prison
Speaker 2: for crimes they didn't commit, I could probably do for
Speaker 2: someone else too. And that world has introduced me to
Speaker 2: some amazing people doing amazing work, and I try to
Speaker 2: bring light to that work and shed light on people's
Speaker 2: cases and the issues that get people wrongly convicted. Those
Speaker 2: are all things that we all can totally understand and
Speaker 2: totally fix. It is absolutely within our power and is
Speaker 2: so worth it.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed my
Speaker 1: conversation with Amanda Knox, i'd recommend you check out another
Speaker 1: conversation I had with Betty Bogombe. In an effort to
Speaker 1: bring an end to violence in Northern Uganda in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, Betty decided to engage directly with the notorious
Speaker 1: warlord Joseph Coney. Her unwavering dedication to finding peace and
Speaker 1: fighting for her values is inspiring. We'll link to that
Speaker 1: episode in the show notes. A Slight Change of Plans
Speaker 1: is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Shunker.
Speaker 1: The Slight Change family includes Tyler Green our senior producer,
Speaker 1: Jen Guerra, our senior editor, Ben Talladay, our sound engineer,
Speaker 1: Emily Rosstek our associate producer, and Neil Lavelle our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Louis Scara wrote our theme song and Ginger Smith helped
Speaker 1: arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. So big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: including Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, Lee tal Malade, and Heather Fame,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Schunker. See you next week.
Speaker 2: I have to be mindful about what songs I sing
Speaker 2: at karaoke, Like if any song has like a hint
Speaker 2: of like a fem fatal kind of character in it,
Speaker 2: like people are going to read into that right like
Speaker 2: or you know, if I like I dress up in
Speaker 2: a costume for Halloween and I post it to Instagram,
Speaker 2: and I you know, people read into that and say, oh,
Speaker 2: look what again, What a weird character she is. She's
Speaker 2: wearing a costume, and it's like, well, or I'm just
Speaker 2: a regular person wearing a costume.