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