Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to Amanda Knox about her wrongful conviction for
Speaker 1: the murder of Meredith Kirscher. Her experience revealed dark truths
Speaker 1: about the media's inclination to over sensationalize stories about young women,
Speaker 1: and the glaring human errors in the criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: We also touch on the topics of trauma, cancel culture,
Speaker 1: cognitive biases, law, and forensic science. Throughout this episode, I
Speaker 1: try my best to show the audience the real Amanda Knox,
Speaker 1: not the version of her that the media has depicted.
Speaker 1: Along those lines, I give her some of my psychological
Speaker 1: tests to take, including my test on self actualization as
Speaker 1: well as my psychopath test. You won't want to miss
Speaker 1: the results or this episode. It's a really powerful episode
Speaker 1: and I think you'll get a lot out of it.
Speaker 1: So let's get right into it. I bring you Amanda Knox. Amanda,
Speaker 1: how you doing today? Thanks for being on my podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. I'm a little sleep deprived, so you'll
Speaker 1: have to excuse my sleep deprived brain, but I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. It's my pleasure. Well, does
Speaker 1: it have anything to do with the fact that you
Speaker 1: just had a new baby girl. Oh my god. Yes,
Speaker 1: we were awake, yes, last night for a little bit together,
Speaker 1: just wandering around the house until she fell asleep again.
Speaker 1: So that's that's my world right now. Well, congratulations to
Speaker 1: the birth of Eureka, mused noc Robinson. Congratulations. You know
Speaker 1: you there's a specific reason why you decided to tell
Speaker 1: the story of and kind of lead people in the journey.
Speaker 1: You know, tell people about your journey, right. You wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of control the narrative in a way, is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah? I mean so, yes. The issue that
Speaker 1: I faced from the second I got pregnant was the
Speaker 1: idea that my pregnancy and the birth of my child, would,
Speaker 1: like every other private aspect of my life, be deemed
Speaker 1: in the public intro and therefore not protected by privacy laws,
Speaker 1: and that the tabloids would exploit those very intimate parts
Speaker 1: of my life to defame me and harm me psychologically.
Speaker 1: So I decided that I would try to disincentivize their
Speaker 1: coverage and the and their sort of impulse to go
Speaker 1: after me with paparazzi by first of all, keeping the
Speaker 1: pregnancy journey in the birth journey to myself until I
Speaker 1: was ready to tell it, and to tell it in
Speaker 1: my own way, so that at the very least when
Speaker 1: people did first hear of my daughter's existence, it would
Speaker 1: be in the context of something that was exploring these
Speaker 1: difficult positions that I'm in and that i'm and the
Speaker 1: sort of position that I hope my daughter will be
Speaker 1: in in the future, which is to not be treated
Speaker 1: just like the latest scandal content for in the Amanda
Speaker 1: knock saga. As Tom McCarthy so aptly put it, well, look,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. So I'm a scientist
Speaker 1: here and in preparation, and I really do extensive preparation
Speaker 1: for all my guests, and you were certainly included on that.
Speaker 1: And what just boggled my mind were some of the
Speaker 1: things that people would just say online with no factual
Speaker 1: support whatsoever to it. And not only that, but there
Speaker 1: are various things I really because I really got I
Speaker 1: got like really into the case in like a really
Speaker 1: scientific way, like like you know, with just no part yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no part in the horse sort of way. You know.
Speaker 1: I was like, what is the evidence? Just and I
Speaker 1: would really and I and I would wake up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night actually At one point I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, what about this? And I would go
Speaker 1: and I would do extensive Google search. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: that that that that answers that for me. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I get it. But then I would still see things
Speaker 1: propagated over and over again. How do you have so
Speaker 1: much grace in handling that? Because I noticed you don't
Speaker 1: even respond to something like I wanted to fight for you,
Speaker 1: and some people on my own Twitter page, I want
Speaker 1: to be like like, are you serious, Like you didn't
Speaker 1: even look at this like objectively whatsoever. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: good question because I feel like you have the same
Speaker 1: impulse as my husband. My husband is very, very protective
Speaker 1: of me and deeply, deeply offended whenever anyone makes a
Speaker 1: false claim about me online and vilifies me, and he's
Speaker 1: just like so outraged by it. He's like, of all
Speaker 1: the people in the world, why you like, of all
Speaker 1: the people? And my relationship with it is a little
Speaker 1: bit different, in part because I spent so long not
Speaker 1: being able to defend myself at all. I was in
Speaker 1: prison for four years between the ages of twenty and
Speaker 1: twenty four when this was first happening, and I had
Speaker 1: very very little opportunity to defend myself at all. So
Speaker 1: I wonder if, in part I internalized some feelings of
Speaker 1: helplessness or hope lessness. I also feel like the sort
Speaker 1: of mental state that I was in in that time
Speaker 1: period was one in which I realized that, oh wow,
Speaker 1: for so many people, the truth doesn't actually matter. Just
Speaker 1: the story matters, and the characters of that story matter
Speaker 1: whether or not they correspond with reality. And the story
Speaker 1: that I was telling myself about my own life, like
Speaker 1: what I could expect from life, like go to school,
Speaker 1: find love, have children, have a career like those were
Speaker 1: all things that were also stories that I had been
Speaker 1: telling myself, and there had been no guarantee that that
Speaker 1: was actually going to be the course of my life.
Speaker 1: And so in the prison environment, I very much suddenly
Speaker 1: realized that there were no guarantees in life, and I
Speaker 1: had to instead be very present with what I did have,
Speaker 1: be very aware of what I did have, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have much so I could catalog it. And then
Speaker 1: since coming home, it's a little bit different because the
Speaker 1: prison and trial experience is one in which absolutely what
Speaker 1: people are saying about me out in the world very
Speaker 1: very much impacts my right to live as a free
Speaker 1: human being in the world. But once I was exonerated,
Speaker 1: I realized that the game had changed. It was no
Speaker 1: longer about my freedom. It was about my identity, and
Speaker 1: that was the thing that remained the missing piece of
Speaker 1: my life that had been stolen from me. But my
Speaker 1: freedom and my identity are two very different things. I
Speaker 1: can live with myself and my identity in my small
Speaker 1: world and also understand that I don't actually have full
Speaker 1: control over my identity in the greater world. That doesn't
Speaker 1: like it does impact me, but it's not the same
Speaker 1: as someone trying to put me in jail. So I
Speaker 1: guess it put that into perspective. Yeah, it sounds like
Speaker 1: you became at a PhD in psychology informally throughout this
Speaker 1: whole press. Actually a lot of psychologists say that to me,
Speaker 1: where they're like, Wow, some of the strategies that you
Speaker 1: used to get through that experience are strategies that we
Speaker 1: try to like, like therapists will share. Like one of
Speaker 1: the strategies that I had, which I wouldn't even consider
Speaker 1: a strategy I sort of intuitively did it was I
Speaker 1: had conversations with my younger self about what she was
Speaker 1: going to experience in the future. So in a way,
Speaker 1: I was sort of big sister coaching myself through the
Speaker 1: experience in order to feel like less powerless over it,
Speaker 1: like and so it sort of like took a thing
Speaker 1: that felt very much on top of me and I
Speaker 1: put it in front of me and I sort of
Speaker 1: disassociated from it a little bit, and that helped me
Speaker 1: at the very least get through the day. But see,
Speaker 1: that's textbook So for instance, George, but you didn't know it.
Speaker 1: That's textbook psychology. You just devised it. But George Banana,
Speaker 1: who was recently my podcast, actually highly recommend listening to
Speaker 1: our chat. He just wrote a book called The End
Speaker 1: of Trauma. He it's all about his he's one of
Speaker 1: the leading researchers in resiliency and he's really shown that
Speaker 1: self talk is a major major strategy. He has a
Speaker 1: whole chapter on self talk in his book. So that's
Speaker 1: really cool for you to hear that he was just
Speaker 1: he's like just two episodes ago. So can you describe
Speaker 1: to me what he means by self talk because I'd
Speaker 1: be curious to know if it has to do with
Speaker 1: the narrative of one's life, that one either feels they
Speaker 1: have control over or they don't have control over. I'd
Speaker 1: be interested to know that. I think he's more referring
Speaker 1: to it an extent to which you tell yourself that
Speaker 1: you have deep reservoirs of resiliency that are untapped, that
Speaker 1: you can handle this, you know, saying just even saying
Speaker 1: words to yourself. You know, researchers have looked at the
Speaker 1: difference between just saying yourself, I can do this. You
Speaker 1: know what, I've faced hard things before, you know there
Speaker 1: will be a future, versus thinking to yourself, this is it,
Speaker 1: you know, like there's no hope. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: very very strong, statistically significan difference between those two conditions. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that squares with my own ex variance,
Speaker 1: because I even would think to myself at certain times.
Speaker 1: I went through soccer training a lot when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and one of the things that I told
Speaker 1: myself to get through the very difficult soccer practices occasionally
Speaker 1: was I would just do the little engine that could
Speaker 1: mantra over and over my head. I think I can.
Speaker 1: I think I can. I think I can. And the
Speaker 1: thing I really loved about that was the uncertainty I
Speaker 1: was like, I think I can. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to try. I'm going to try to get
Speaker 1: through this day. We'll see. Well. By the way, that's
Speaker 1: where you got the nickname Foxy Knox. So you probably
Speaker 1: never want to hear that nickname ever again. But just
Speaker 1: for the record, for the this is helpful for you.
Speaker 1: For the record, you got that nickname because what you
Speaker 1: kind of like, you played soccer like a fox. Like
Speaker 1: you were like, yeah, so I was good. I mean
Speaker 1: I was so. I was one of the smaller players,
Speaker 1: and I was very quick, and I was I played
Speaker 1: this position called top of the diamond, which is the
Speaker 1: first line of defense, and it's a position where you're
Speaker 1: constantly squirreling around or just try to steal the ball
Speaker 1: away from people. So in that way, I and my
Speaker 1: name rhymes with fox. So that's how that came about.
Speaker 1: I want to call nickname right. I want a better one.
Speaker 1: I want a better one than what they called me
Speaker 1: around your age. When I was that age, they called
Speaker 1: me scotty potty. Oh no, is there or was it
Speaker 1: just because it runs? Well? Okay, no, no, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you there was so around I'm a little bit older
Speaker 1: than you, Amanda, but not not by that much, not
Speaker 1: by that much. But there was something called the sour
Speaker 1: Patch Kids cards card back in the day. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of the sour Patch Kids? I mean, I
Speaker 1: I've eaten many a sour Patch kid, but I did
Speaker 1: not know that they came with cards. I believe they
Speaker 1: had cards, and one of them was one of the
Speaker 1: names of one of them was Scotty Potty. That was
Speaker 1: one of the sour Patchkins. I'm pretty sure. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: messing up my eighties references. It was called something else.
Speaker 1: But there were these cards, and then they were a
Speaker 1: whole collection of these funny things. But wait, are you
Speaker 1: thinking are you thinking of the garbage Pale kids? Yes,
Speaker 1: the garbage Okay, okay, okay, because garbage kids just came
Speaker 1: and like, that's a candy, that's a candy. You're right,
Speaker 1: You're right, garbage pale cad Well, see you, Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: So you know what I'm talking about now. I've been
Speaker 1: trying to change that narrative as an adult. I had
Speaker 1: a girlfriend who, of her own volition called me Scottie
Speaker 1: too haughty, and I was like, okay, okay, I like
Speaker 1: that one better. That I love that one too, because
Speaker 1: it's not even Scottie Hotty like she took it to
Speaker 1: the next level like mc hammered it. It was. That's great.
Speaker 1: He was a great girlfriend. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: for the record, I appreciate her very much. So here's
Speaker 1: a quote I found when I was listening to your
Speaker 1: very interesting interview with Joe Rogan I thought could set
Speaker 1: a stage for what we can really get into today.
Speaker 1: You said, I feel like I'm constantly trapped in a
Speaker 1: conversation with the fake version of me in people's minds
Speaker 1: that keeps getting recycled over and over again. That is,
Speaker 1: first of all, that is good writing. You're obviously a good.
Speaker 1: Second of all, that's very powerful. That is very very powerful,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of us can relate. I
Speaker 1: can relate to your story, you know, just being very young,
Speaker 1: I was in special ed and for an auditory disability
Speaker 1: I had, and I read about this a lot, and
Speaker 1: I wrote about this in various of my books. But
Speaker 1: the point here is that I felt as though I
Speaker 1: was reduced to how other people decide to put a
Speaker 1: label on me. And I feel like there's a connection
Speaker 1: here to probably how you felt, and probably still feel
Speaker 1: to a large degree where you want to be able
Speaker 1: to create your own identity. Aren't you know, aren't you
Speaker 1: allowed to create your own identity? And that's how I felt,
Speaker 1: certainly as a child fighting my way. I had actually
Speaker 1: fought my way out of special ed, and then I
Speaker 1: fought my way into gifted ed, and then people still
Speaker 1: saw me as the special ed kid, and I was like,
Speaker 1: but I'm in gifted talking about I'm literally can it
Speaker 1: ever change? So this idea of how gest perceptions really
Speaker 1: influence deeply how we see people, not not just you know,
Speaker 1: from a just a purely visual psychology point of view,
Speaker 1: but from a human, whole person point of view. It's
Speaker 1: amazing how it's like an optical illusion in a way.
Speaker 1: You start to get to the evidence. You start to
Speaker 1: talk to the real Amanda Knox, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of calling today's episode the real Amandon Ox.
Speaker 1: Once you start talking to the real Amandom Knox, maybe
Speaker 1: people's gestal will flip. But the point is the media
Speaker 1: control back gestalt. Right, yeah, yeah, And I think you
Speaker 1: know what's really interesting about your situation is these are
Speaker 1: people who had direct access to you, right, Like the
Speaker 1: thing that failed you and your experience was the education
Speaker 1: system not really recognized. I mean, I already have like
Speaker 1: a whole Like my mom is a school teacher, and
Speaker 1: I love her and she does incredible work, and I
Speaker 1: recognize that it's very, very difficult to be a teacher
Speaker 1: in this world. But I do have a problem with
Speaker 1: the education system where it seems like everyone is churned
Speaker 1: through this system that is very very specific and doesn't
Speaker 1: actually acknowledge the different ways that people learn and the
Speaker 1: different skill sets that people have. It feels like this
Speaker 1: conveyor belt education and if you don't fit this very
Speaker 1: specific role, then people treat you like your lesser. It's
Speaker 1: very interesting, and I think that maybe it's even more difficult,
Speaker 1: and I have a lot of compassion for people who
Speaker 1: find themselves having their being sort of misidentified in their
Speaker 1: own communities, because these are people who you know and
Speaker 1: love and care about, and they're the people who are
Speaker 1: determining who you are that doesn't match up with your
Speaker 1: understanding of yourself and with the evidence. In my case,
Speaker 1: it was thousands and thousands of strangers who had no
Speaker 1: access to me, who were determining who I was for
Speaker 1: the sake of some kind of like morality tale that
Speaker 1: they were trying to like not only sort of determine,
Speaker 1: like you know, find us a scapegoat to p and
Speaker 1: all of their like horrible you know, feelings about a
Speaker 1: terrible tragedy that occurred, but also they had like this.
Speaker 1: The thing about my case is that I became this
Speaker 1: sort of blank slate onto which people could make judgments
Speaker 1: about women and about sexuality. And very very much there
Speaker 1: was like this morality tale being told about female sexuality
Speaker 1: where I was the I was the stand in for
Speaker 1: everything that people hate and fear but also are intrigued
Speaker 1: about female sexuality. Oh absolutely, And you know, I think
Speaker 1: you wouldn't mind having your Monica Winskey moment in a
Speaker 1: sense where why aren't all the me too feminists jumping
Speaker 1: on this? Because it really you know, when you really
Speaker 1: look at it and you're really honest, when people are
Speaker 1: really honest about what happened, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: had to do with your looks. You know, would the
Speaker 1: same thing have happened if it was just your boyfriend
Speaker 1: at the time, Raphael, you know who was convicted. This
Speaker 1: is a real I mean, this is a real There
Speaker 1: was a real gender and sort of how we treat
Speaker 1: beautiful people in our society. Yeah, I mean it's astonishing
Speaker 1: story here. Yeah, I mean it is astonishing because on
Speaker 1: the one hand, Meredith also was a beautiful girl and
Speaker 1: she was brutally murdered, and no one really paid attention
Speaker 1: to the person who actually brutally raped and murdered her,
Speaker 1: like what was interesting about And there's also like a
Speaker 1: sort of tinge of racism here where the person who
Speaker 1: actually did this was a young black man who was
Speaker 1: disenfranchised and all of the all of the things, and
Speaker 1: because people at the time were like, well, obviously he
Speaker 1: he just you know, there's nothing interesting about him as
Speaker 1: a criminal. What's interesting in a criminal is a female
Speaker 1: who is a part of involved in a sexually motivated
Speaker 1: violent crime. So the media totally overlooked the facts of
Speaker 1: this case in order to pursue a scandalouscious story. And
Speaker 1: they're you know, deep rooted reasons for that, really deep.
Speaker 1: I mean, the more we keep digging, I'm saying, you know,
Speaker 1: you start to realize whoa because it's not just simply
Speaker 1: a morality. Tell you could easily if by the way,
Speaker 1: his name was rude. You know, I want to say
Speaker 1: his name Rudy Gude right, was the one who who
Speaker 1: merred Meredith Kircher. So and he had been found just
Speaker 1: a couple even days before in a nursery or something
Speaker 1: broken and was found with a knife, yeah you know.
Speaker 1: And it was only his fingerprints that were found in
Speaker 1: the room where Mareth was merged, so these are fact
Speaker 1: his DNA on her body, Like, yeah, he was. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because the way that the media treated him as
Speaker 1: well is also a weirdly off, where one they sort
Speaker 1: of ignored him, and then whenever they made reference to him,
Speaker 1: at least in Italy. I'm actually not familiar with how
Speaker 1: they referenced him in the US and in the UK,
Speaker 1: but at the time, they always always always referred to
Speaker 1: him as Livoriano, the person from the Ivory Coast, which
Speaker 1: is really interesting because yes, he was from the Ivory Coast,
Speaker 1: but from what I understand, he moved to Italy and
Speaker 1: lived in Italy with an Italian family from a young age,
Speaker 1: so he really was an Italian. He just happened to
Speaker 1: be born in the Ivory Coast. But like people just
Speaker 1: really wanted to associate him as like an other, and
Speaker 1: then once they associated him as an other, they sort
Speaker 1: of sidestepped him and didn't weren't really interested in the
Speaker 1: facts of his story, which is a young guy brought
Speaker 1: up in a family but starts getting into trouble, starts
Speaker 1: breaking and entering, starts doing drugs, goes down the spiral
Speaker 1: of breaking and entering that results in the end with
Speaker 1: a brutal rape and murder. That story very very much
Speaker 1: got overlooked, and it's one that's worth looking into because
Speaker 1: that stuff happens, and we should try to stop that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff from happening. Anyway, Oh absolutely, oh absolutely.
Speaker 1: Had you ever encountered him before? I hadn't seen him
Speaker 1: around because he played basketball with the guys who lived
Speaker 1: in the floor below us, and so yeah, so like
Speaker 1: he was around, but I don't think I even really
Speaker 1: knew his name until he was arrested. I remember, like
Speaker 1: when I was in jail. I remember the moment I
Speaker 1: was in prison. I was watching the news and they
Speaker 1: showed him being arrested and they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: Rudy Gadet blah blah blah arrested in Germany after fleeing
Speaker 1: the country, and I was like, holy shit, I recognized
Speaker 1: that guy. That that guy, like that basketball guy. That's
Speaker 1: the guy who did it. And then I kept thinking, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: thank goodness they found the person who did it. I'll
Speaker 1: be released now exactly. Yeah, that's what that's the reasonable assumption.
Speaker 1: That's the assumption. Yeah. I watched an interview that was
Speaker 1: done with him where he said he first was attracted
Speaker 1: to you, and then Meredith was kind of like the backup,
Speaker 1: you know sort of thing. So, I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, and you know he obviously he had talked
Speaker 1: to Meredith before. Do you reckon he was there that
Speaker 1: day because of Meredith or he just thought it might
Speaker 1: have been an empty house. I think that he probably
Speaker 1: thought it was an empty house. That's what I'm thinking too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the holiday weekend. It was understood that, Like
Speaker 1: I didn't know this, but apparently, you know, the Day
Speaker 1: of the Dead, the day after Halloween is a very
Speaker 1: common time for Italian people to go and visit their
Speaker 1: families and spend time with their families. You know. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that, but that was the reason why so
Speaker 1: many of my Italian roommates were gone, and I had
Speaker 1: just happened to be spending the night over at my new,
Speaker 1: very new boyfriend's house, who I knew of several days,
Speaker 1: and so I think that he went in there too
Speaker 1: because he knew the house, he had seen it before.
Speaker 1: He was looking to break and enter and get some money,
Speaker 1: you know that kind of thing. Okay, So let's get
Speaker 1: a little a picture, a bit of a picture of
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox before this tragedy happened. So you wrote you
Speaker 1: were a nerdy poetry and language student. You correct me
Speaker 1: if all these things I'm saying are wrong. You were
Speaker 1: a non drinker and non smoker. Your favorite pursuits included
Speaker 1: yoga and quote, backpacking, long distances with people. I know
Speaker 1: your favorite films were Shrek and The Full Monty, and
Speaker 1: you like the Beatles and reading Harry Potter books. Yes,
Speaker 1: is all correct? Yeah. The only thing that I would
Speaker 1: say is I was an occasional drinker and an occasional
Speaker 1: smoker at the time. But I was not heavy in
Speaker 1: either of those situations. But I wouldn't. I don't think
Speaker 1: I was ever a non drinker like I You know,
Speaker 1: I went to parties, I went and had drinks with people,
Speaker 1: but I was not like strict about it. Wasn't out
Speaker 1: of control, nor was I strng about never having it
Speaker 1: well that's what you're in your MySpace page, probably when
Speaker 1: you're like fourteen. Oh well yes, yeah, my space was
Speaker 1: a while yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah exactly, exactly. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I get this picture of a young child, young
Speaker 1: girl who was just like really curious about the world,
Speaker 1: really innocent in a way. There was a I sense,
Speaker 1: a sort of innocence to you, you know, a sort
Speaker 1: of like nyativity, niaevity. How do you say it? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: naivete Yeah, I think that would be accurate. I was.
Speaker 1: I was the kind of person who really did well
Speaker 1: in school, never really got into trouble, was you know,
Speaker 1: I worked a number of jobs to like save up money,
Speaker 1: Like I was a soccer coach for a young girls team,
Speaker 1: and I you know was. I was also very like
Speaker 1: romantically and sexually inexperienced. So I was definitely like a
Speaker 1: late bloomer, kind of dorky news theater ren fair kind
Speaker 1: of indivision. Yeah theater you were, Oh me too, that
Speaker 1: is so. I was a voice major at Cardige mel
Speaker 1: and I my dream was to be Javert and Lems.
Speaker 1: That is amazing. I love opera and I don't have
Speaker 1: the voice for it, but man, so much respect what
Speaker 1: I could, you could you could have, you could be trained.
Speaker 1: I think anyone can be trained. Honestly, do you ever
Speaker 1: sing anymore? I do? I do, and I try to
Speaker 1: take lessons every now and then. Sometimes I even I
Speaker 1: even record something just with this microphone and uh and
Speaker 1: kind of karaoke music like from stars from Lima's in
Speaker 1: the background. I posted on my Twitter before. Oh cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was inchoired, so it's definitely not opera, but I
Speaker 1: was inquiring and I love doing musical theater right on,
Speaker 1: right on, you know. I my heart really breaks in
Speaker 1: so many ways for the story. But one way is
Speaker 1: that I really can resonate with studying abroad. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was about twenty four twenty five, I went
Speaker 1: over to England, to Cambridge, and I remember, I just
Speaker 1: remember that what it was like. I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone like awkwardly having sex with each other, everyone drinking
Speaker 1: for the you know, we're all away from home for
Speaker 1: the first time. There really is an innocence there, the
Speaker 1: last thing you would ever imagine. You know, people say
Speaker 1: things like, well, why wasn't she more you know affected
Speaker 1: you know outside, why is she kissing? Look, it's not
Speaker 1: like the first thing you assume now you know, is
Speaker 1: in your worldview? You know, your worldview was literally a
Speaker 1: psychologist called it a seismic earthquake. That's what they call
Speaker 1: it in the post traumatic growth literature, which is I'm
Speaker 1: working on my next book on post traumatic growth. So
Speaker 1: this topic is really front and center in my mind
Speaker 1: right now. And there's a whole asumptive world theory that
Speaker 1: I think might really interest you. If you want to,
Speaker 1: I tell me more about the seismic eruption earthquake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, it's tied to this idea of
Speaker 1: assumptive world theory where we have these traumas. And I
Speaker 1: like to define trauma very broadly as anything any event,
Speaker 1: because who am I to say, oh, that counts to
Speaker 1: the trauma or that doesn't count as the trauma, right, Like,
Speaker 1: who am I to say that it's in a lot
Speaker 1: of waste traumas in the eye of the beholder, and
Speaker 1: any event that causes this complete recognitive restructuring of Oh
Speaker 1: I thought the world was safe. Yeah, but we're basically
Speaker 1: your basic assumptions of the world are violated. And this
Speaker 1: happened to you in a span of like an hour, Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, and people are like, oh, why didn't she
Speaker 1: act more normal, Like like there's any normal way to
Speaker 1: act when your entire assumptive world has been violating. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you actually saying that, because it's something that
Speaker 1: I've had a really hard time explaining to people, Like
Speaker 1: I did not go home that morning to take a
Speaker 1: shower knowing that I was going to come across a
Speaker 1: crime scene, And even when it was made apparent to
Speaker 1: me that there was a crime scene, I had this like, really,
Speaker 1: it was so surreal to me that I felt a
Speaker 1: little bit like disembodied, like what is happening? And also
Speaker 1: am I certain what's happening? Because everyone's yelling in Italian?
Speaker 1: Like it was so so bizarre that I had trouble
Speaker 1: processing the experience. And you know, a lot has been
Speaker 1: made of my behavior in those days, Like there's that
Speaker 1: footage of Raphael and I outside of the house waiting
Speaker 1: for the police to tell us to go into the
Speaker 1: police station and he kisses me, and the amount of
Speaker 1: times that that moment of him just sort of like
Speaker 1: trying to do what he could, which is just kind
Speaker 1: of hold me and kiss me and tell me I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be okay, Like how that was twisted and distorted
Speaker 1: in the media into like, oh my god, she's such
Speaker 1: a sex fiend that she can't even keep her hands
Speaker 1: off and outside of a murder house, it's like, what
Speaker 1: is happening anyway? So that makes and to be clear,
Speaker 1: I mean at that moment that if we double click
Speaker 1: on that precise moment, it's not like you opened the
Speaker 1: door and you see all what was inside the door.
Speaker 1: I didn't, and I think people assume that as well,
Speaker 1: just so many assumptions. I'm angry in the name of science.
Speaker 1: I'm angry at that, you know, I'm also angry as
Speaker 1: the human dimension to it. But I'm saying even if
Speaker 1: you take that out, someone's like, don't be Biasedcott, I'll
Speaker 1: be like, no. My point is there's so much evidence
Speaker 1: to contradict so many of the of the bullshit that's
Speaker 1: going around and that and I can't stand that when
Speaker 1: there's a propagation of bullshit that really bothers me. Oh gosh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's man, how do you live with the propagation of bullshit?
Speaker 1: You have to take a deep breath everywhere in this
Speaker 1: world right now? Yeah everywhere? Yeah, I mean, and the
Speaker 1: way I think about it is like, Okay, there is
Speaker 1: the propagation of bullshit, but why, like why is it
Speaker 1: that the bullshit resonates with people? Because it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: propagated if it didn't resonate with people. And so that
Speaker 1: says a deep question that I keep asking myself, like
Speaker 1: why is the idea of a horrorsh murderer so much
Speaker 1: more compelling to people than the idea of just a
Speaker 1: regular human, regular human female who didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with this and was very very confused and scared
Speaker 1: in the days leading up to her arrest, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I've just been thinking, is that I'm wonder there's a
Speaker 1: general phenomenon here that no one's ever really talked about
Speaker 1: an open, honest discourse. But if you look to see
Speaker 1: what some of the most popular porn is, it's degrading
Speaker 1: beautiful women. You know it allows there's something, there's something
Speaker 1: there that I think there should be more research on.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I know the final answer. I understand
Speaker 1: what's deep beneath it. But even my mentor I've never met,
Speaker 1: but my mentors in since my intellectual hero Abraham Maslow
Speaker 1: wrote a whole essay on pornography in the fifteen and sixties.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I'm not anti pornography, and I'm
Speaker 1: no proof, but I'm just noting a psychological phenomenon that
Speaker 1: I that even Maslow noticed in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: He said, there's something where we elevate our self esteem
Speaker 1: by getting back at all those women who rejected us,
Speaker 1: all those beautiful women. There might be something there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually think that there there is something there,
Speaker 1: and I would love to look and I want to
Speaker 1: ask my dominatrix friends about this. But yeah, because like
Speaker 1: I was actually going to bring that up. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: because it's interesting because it's the flip side. But that
Speaker 1: flip side only exists because I think there's that predominant
Speaker 1: like let's punish the beautiful woman. And I do feel
Speaker 1: like I have myself like had to sort of get
Speaker 1: over that ichy feeling that maybe one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why the police were going after me was because there
Speaker 1: was this weird sort of pornographic interest in me. Like
Speaker 1: I had this like weird feeling like are they just
Speaker 1: focusing on me because like they have weird sexual feelings
Speaker 1: towards me that they don't know how to do like
Speaker 1: when they say things like oh, I had a gut
Speaker 1: instinct that she was guilty, It's like did you or
Speaker 1: did you have a dick instinct? Like what's going on here? No?
Speaker 1: Look absolutely and there's another injustice here which is a
Speaker 1: complete misrepresentation of the BDSM community. And this really upsets me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a whole episode in my podcast Labyrinths about this.
Speaker 1: Did you listen to it? I listened to it. I
Speaker 1: listened to it. I wanted to bring this up. Can
Speaker 1: you tell a little bit about your experience of dom con?
Speaker 1: I loved domkon. So my experience with dom con was
Speaker 1: that I, at the time, I was exploring this idea
Speaker 1: like what is up with this idea about a sex game?
Speaker 1: Like why was that so titillating to people? What even
Speaker 1: is a sex game? And also like do people who
Speaker 1: take part in sex games to like they do they
Speaker 1: how do they feel about the way that their sort
Speaker 1: of world was represented in my case and vilified in
Speaker 1: my case? And so I reached out to the premier
Speaker 1: dominatrix ever who like came up with Dom Cohan mistress
Speaker 1: Ian and what I found a legend and this like
Speaker 1: amazing person who survived cancer and have done like so
Speaker 1: many amazing things. And I reached out to her and
Speaker 1: I was just like, hey, so I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this makes like makes me a creeper
Speaker 1: or anything, but I just was wondering if you could
Speaker 1: tell me more about this world and what's going on there.
Speaker 1: And she was so warm and so kind and was like,
Speaker 1: you will be like, just come visit see for yourself.
Speaker 1: You'll be my special guest. I'll take care of you.
Speaker 1: I'll introduce you to people. And she really like just
Speaker 1: over those days that I was there, I went to
Speaker 1: the New Orleans one, which was it was nicely small
Speaker 1: and sort of intimate, and everyone like there knew each other.
Speaker 1: It was really great, and you know, clearly I was
Speaker 1: like exposed to new ways of thinking about even just
Speaker 1: not just sex, but about relationships like my husband and
Speaker 1: I came away from that experience being like, you know,
Speaker 1: what we should have like codes of conduct and ways
Speaker 1: of communicating outside of the bedroom to determine like, okay,
Speaker 1: in this in this world right now, we are going
Speaker 1: to like focus on each other and we're going to
Speaker 1: be really really clear communicators with each other. But there
Speaker 1: are some times in life where I have to get
Speaker 1: work done and you have to be a second priority
Speaker 1: for me for this hour, and like we need to
Speaker 1: communicate that so no one's feelings get hurt and no
Speaker 1: one you know, like there's lots of ways that we
Speaker 1: miscommunicate with each other just because we're not being explicit
Speaker 1: about what our expectations are. And you can totally like
Speaker 1: do away with all of the hurt that can come
Speaker 1: from not being good communicators by just being more explicit
Speaker 1: about your expectations. So that was like my big takeaway.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, I got flogged by Mistress Cyan and
Speaker 1: that was really cool. Well hopefully there were no video
Speaker 1: cameras there, yes, and I was really terrified about that.
Speaker 1: But again, BDSM community, like they are all about consent
Speaker 1: and they're not going to talk about your business without
Speaker 1: your consent. So good on them. Yeah, consent, and you
Speaker 1: know there's care, there's care, deep deeply intertwined with it.
Speaker 1: So I gave you a battery of psychological tests to take,
Speaker 1: and you were such a good sport these tests. So
Speaker 1: let me reveal some of these roles and we could
Speaker 1: talk about them if you do you agree with them.
Speaker 1: So first is top. Your top three sources of self
Speaker 1: actualization are The first one is continued freshness of appreciation.
Speaker 1: How has that played a role in your life? I
Speaker 1: guess I feel lucky that whenever I encounter these, whenever
Speaker 1: I counter something beautiful, I'm not bored. Like even if
Speaker 1: I see the same even if I listened to the
Speaker 1: same song that I really love, I still really love it,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate that I'm sort of built that way.
Speaker 1: So I feel grateful that I feel gratitude for things,
Speaker 1: and I don't take things for granted. So I think
Speaker 1: that that's a fair assessment. Oh. One thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to note before we go into these results is my
Speaker 1: husband disagreed with my results in many ways, and only
Speaker 1: can we bring him on? Can we bring him off? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: he's just outside. I can wave him down. Hey, Bill,
Speaker 1: you want to come in this, No, I want to
Speaker 1: hear what he Yeah? Yeah, he's great. Now. His name
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Speaker 1: now back to this show. Hey, do you go by
Speaker 1: Christopher or Chris? Hello? Okay, Hi? Do you go through Christopher?
Speaker 1: Do you go by Christopher? Chris or Christopher either one? Okay? Cool? Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Scott. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Scott. So,
Speaker 1: Amanda says you disagreed with some of her test results.
Speaker 1: We didn't get to the dark light tryad stuff yet.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to your thoughts on that. But so, can
Speaker 1: you kind of hang around as we as I go
Speaker 1: through all the results of Amanda and can you hear
Speaker 1: a dialogue between you two about it? I'm sure? Wait,
Speaker 1: oh I can't hear. But yeah, well, here there's another
Speaker 1: pair of headphones. That another pair of headphones, because this
Speaker 1: is fun we have So Amanda, what what I said
Speaker 1: to him is you know we'll go one by one
Speaker 1: and kind of here, I have a dialogue here what
Speaker 1: he thinks. Okay, so you tell me first whether or
Speaker 1: not you agree with it or not, and then I'll
Speaker 1: ask him. Okay, cool, Yeah, so you just talked about
Speaker 1: continuing depressions. I appreciate it. Do you agree, Chris, do
Speaker 1: you agree about very very high? She scored actually one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. Yes, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. And then the
Speaker 1: second one was truth seeking. Yeah, I'm kind of a
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a stickler for that, where I am
Speaker 1: I even to like my my own chagrin or my
Speaker 1: own difficulties, where like I understand that sometimes the easiest
Speaker 1: way is to just say, you know whatever, like that's true,
Speaker 1: that isn't true, it doesn't really matter, Let's just move on.
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of a stickler for like, no, I
Speaker 1: want to know what's true, like what is really going
Speaker 1: on here? And I do that because I have a
Speaker 1: sense of responsibility towards the truth that and by that
Speaker 1: I mean I have a sense of I feel a
Speaker 1: sense of responsibility to humans. So I feel like truth
Speaker 1: seeking is a humanitarian thing for me, where if I
Speaker 1: am always always looking for the truth, that means I'm
Speaker 1: always looking for the truth of the humanity of the
Speaker 1: subject that I interested in. And if I'm not willing
Speaker 1: to always be a stickler for the truth, that means
Speaker 1: that I may overlook the humanity of someone who I'm
Speaker 1: interacting with. It's the weird moral dimension you have to
Speaker 1: truth seeking, whereas for me it's more of a you're
Speaker 1: just a scientific pursuit sort of thing. Yeah, you're like
Speaker 1: more of the principle of the thing. She scored very
Speaker 1: high on truth seeking. Yeah, no, I get that she's
Speaker 1: scored very high. Yeah. Yes, that was her second highest.
Speaker 1: The third one was interesting authenticity. Hmmm, authentic? How does
Speaker 1: that play out? And what does authenticity even mean? What
Speaker 1: does that mean to you? Well, I think that might
Speaker 1: be in part due to the fact that I have,
Speaker 1: for the majority of my adult life been accused of
Speaker 1: being something that I'm not, and I've been accused of
Speaker 1: being inauthentic and being a liar, and so it's become like,
Speaker 1: I think I've overcompensated on the other end of that
Speaker 1: to be like, no, like judge me all you want,
Speaker 1: Just judge me based upon the truth. And so if
Speaker 1: you're going to if I'm going to give you the
Speaker 1: opportunity to judge me or anything else, like here it
Speaker 1: is here, let me lay it all out for you
Speaker 1: like I've got and that has But also at the
Speaker 1: same time, like even when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: wasn't like a person who like my mom tells this
Speaker 1: story about how like the one time I ever lied
Speaker 1: to her about something, she sort of didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do. Like I was like six maybe, and I
Speaker 1: lied about drawing a stick figure on the wall, and
Speaker 1: like she I said, she was like, Amanda, did you
Speaker 1: do this? And I was like no, no, no, And
Speaker 1: so she let it go for a half an hour,
Speaker 1: and then like a half an hour later I came
Speaker 1: to her sobbing, like I did it. I'm sorry. That's
Speaker 1: kind of like what happened. That's kind of like what
Speaker 1: happened with you in the interrogation, is you they pressured
Speaker 1: you so much you signed something, but you felt such
Speaker 1: an overwhelming sense of this is not true that you
Speaker 1: a letter If I'm right, did you write a letter
Speaker 1: note to one of the up detectives or something being like, look,
Speaker 1: this wasn't true. Yeah, they and they wouldn't listen to me.
Speaker 1: I wrote that note specifically because I kept saying, but
Speaker 1: can I talk to you again? Can I talk to
Speaker 1: you then? Please? What I said wasn't, I can't, I
Speaker 1: have to recant like blah blah blah, and they just
Speaker 1: were not interested. So I asked for a piece of
Speaker 1: paper to write it down. Yeah, it just made me
Speaker 1: think of that, and it seems analogous in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, right right to the So the next one. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to say the fourth one because it's
Speaker 1: the top three, but the fourth one is. So it
Speaker 1: was actually tied. Is it tied? Yeah, it's literally literally tied.
Speaker 1: And that's equanimity. And I think this one is very
Speaker 1: very relevant to your whole life. You have mentioned that
Speaker 1: you're sort of have a stoic sort of sensibility people
Speaker 1: when they said things like, oh, well, you didn't act
Speaker 1: how a normal person would act if someone you know,
Speaker 1: this equanimity aspect to you, in a way is what
Speaker 1: helped get you through so much of this, right Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: like trying to not just letting my emotions take over me,
Speaker 1: but letting them be information that I process. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's interesting because I used to refer to
Speaker 1: this as like deer in headlights syndrome where I would
Speaker 1: just sort of like when something happened, I would just
Speaker 1: be like h and I would sort of need to
Speaker 1: process this all this information. But it but I think
Speaker 1: equanimity is a nicer way of saying it. I think
Speaker 1: her self assessments on the sort of light triad things
Speaker 1: are now we're going to get mostly accurate. Right. I
Speaker 1: think there's okay, there's a bit of but let's go
Speaker 1: through them. Don't don't don't, don't, don't spoiler work. I
Speaker 1: feel like you're I feel like you're a spoiler over.
Speaker 1: And this is the most this is what everyone came
Speaker 1: for the popcorn. Your psychopath score you ready dunt dun't
Speaker 1: duh is extremely low, extremely low. You are actually not
Speaker 1: a psychopath. I try. You are not a psychopath according
Speaker 1: to my test. And you actually came out quote strongly
Speaker 1: tip toward the light side, strongly tiped toward the light
Speaker 1: side in my light for a dark tria test. Now,
Speaker 1: for my fellow nerds out there, I took a science
Speaker 1: these are there's a scientific valid test. It's not just
Speaker 1: like like the Meyer Briggs, which isn't excited about this.
Speaker 1: This takes a well validated dark triad research and my
Speaker 1: new construct the light triad, and looks and looks within
Speaker 1: her at all of these things. Looking mixing matching is
Speaker 1: to come out with an output. So the output is
Speaker 1: your strongly tip to the light side. But let's go
Speaker 1: through each of the facets because they are super interesting
Speaker 1: that your results. The first one is faith in humanity.
Speaker 1: This is the one fascinates me, and you remind you.
Speaker 1: So you scored very, very high in faith in humanity,
Speaker 1: which is believing in the fundamental goodness of humans. And
Speaker 1: you reminded me of an Anne Frank quote, which is
Speaker 1: in spite. So she wrote this in her journal as
Speaker 1: the Nazis were really coming up the stairs to kill her.
Speaker 1: She wrote in her journal, in spite of everything, I
Speaker 1: still believe that people are really good at heart. So
Speaker 1: that's a direct quote from her journal. And you made
Speaker 1: me think of that. So, Amanda, you still score high
Speaker 1: in faith in humanity in spite of everything. Can you
Speaker 1: kind of explain a little bit about that? How do you
Speaker 1: you feel about that? I mean, I feel like I
Speaker 1: don't have evidence to point to necessarily. I just have
Speaker 1: an intuition that everyone is doing the best they can
Speaker 1: even when they're not doing the best they can. Like everyone,
Speaker 1: I feel like if I put myself in the shoes
Speaker 1: of people who have made even like horrible, horrible decisions
Speaker 1: and terrible mistakes the vast majority of the time, I
Speaker 1: don't believe that they're sitting there cackling about how evil
Speaker 1: they're being. I think that they're telling themselves a story
Speaker 1: about what they're doing, how they're doing, how what they're
Speaker 1: doing is the right thing to do. And I think
Speaker 1: that what that means is that very often we are
Speaker 1: all making horrible mistakes and doing, you know, perpetrating lots
Speaker 1: of harm towards each other, but we're not doing it
Speaker 1: because we want to be hurting each other, Which makes
Speaker 1: me think that like there is deep down a fundamental
Speaker 1: impulse for humanitarian there is a fundamental humanitarian impulse in
Speaker 1: all of us. The other side of that is like
Speaker 1: the moral luck question, which we explore, was that in
Speaker 1: the one bite of the elephant episode, Yeah, one bite
Speaker 1: of the elephant at a time, Yeah, do you know
Speaker 1: Thomas Nagel's moral luck? So you know, even the talking
Speaker 1: about the nazis from a moment ago, Like the whole
Speaker 1: question of well if that Nazi prison guard happened to
Speaker 1: be born in Argentina instead of Germany, would he have
Speaker 1: become that guy? You know, I'm probably not right. How
Speaker 1: much does do those external twists of fate to turn
Speaker 1: in what our moral path is in life? And when
Speaker 1: you take that into account, especially neither of us believe
Speaker 1: in free will? Is another side of this. When you
Speaker 1: get rid of free will conversations, right, then you know,
Speaker 1: moral moral responsibility seems to go out the window. And
Speaker 1: in one light, but by the other light, no one's
Speaker 1: really No one's really morally culpable because you're just the
Speaker 1: little meat robot doing what you were programmed to do,
Speaker 1: or through the vicissitudes of quantum fluctuations. Right, Either way,
Speaker 1: it's hard to blame people and hate them for their actions, right,
Speaker 1: it actually leads to compassion. I think, yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we want to open that. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend our usher's listening to my two part series
Speaker 1: with Sam Harris where we vehemently disagree about this. Yeah
Speaker 1: I would, yeah, yeah, yeah. However, I read something in
Speaker 1: one of your blog posts I think is illustrates your
Speaker 1: own sense of compat even for Rudy Gueyde. So you
Speaker 1: had said that what you're angry about is that he
Speaker 1: just won't admit, and you know, save a lot of
Speaker 1: people a lot of heartache and uncertainty, and just you
Speaker 1: know that he just won't admit that he killed Meredith. However,
Speaker 1: you say, I doubt he ever will, But if the
Speaker 1: day he does, I will celebrate his rehabilitation and wish
Speaker 1: him the best on a new and honest chapter of
Speaker 1: his life. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. I thought
Speaker 1: that kind of speaks maybe a little bit to your
Speaker 1: instincts there for not defining anyone by their worst case,
Speaker 1: even Rudy. Yeah. Yeah, And I stand by that because
Speaker 1: I think the thing that anyone who has experienced harm
Speaker 1: most wants from the person who harmed them is an
Speaker 1: acknowledgment of the harm. Because at that point I can say,
Speaker 1: all right, we at least are on the same page
Speaker 1: that what happened was shouldn't have happened, and that I
Speaker 1: have been harmed, and that you are not sort of
Speaker 1: pretending that that harm doesn't exist or that what you
Speaker 1: did didn't cause direct harm to me. Because when someone
Speaker 1: doesn't like admit to the harm that they've caused, it
Speaker 1: makes the person who has been harmed feel first of all,
Speaker 1: like they're being blamed for their own harm, but also
Speaker 1: it makes them feel unsafe, like, oh, if you don't
Speaker 1: acknowledge what you've done, are you going to do it again?
Speaker 1: Like if you didn't do anything wrong, well, then who's
Speaker 1: to say whether or not you're going to do it again?
Speaker 1: And so like that's that's the sort of key thing
Speaker 1: for me, Like people make mistakes and do horrible things
Speaker 1: all the time. That doesn't mean that it defines them.
Speaker 1: But what does matter from a trauma standpoint is the
Speaker 1: acknowledgment of the harm and of the action that caused
Speaker 1: the harm. Yeah, I truly wish Rudy would do this someday. No, Okay,
Speaker 1: So back to your dark trianph course. So you score
Speaker 1: very very low in psychopathy, as I ready mentioned, which
Speaker 1: is callousness and cynicism, and then mackie velianism you score
Speaker 1: very very low, which is strategic exploitation and set. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone knows the Macavilian person. They're always scheming, right, They're
Speaker 1: always like everyone knows that person. Every time you talk
Speaker 1: to them, they're like, oh, you know, if we move
Speaker 1: that chess pond, then we can get this out of
Speaker 1: that person. So you scored very well in that he
Speaker 1: scored very That's not who you are according to my test. However, Yes,
Speaker 1: however this is the most, perhaps the most. And we've
Speaker 1: been waiting. I saved this one for a last because
Speaker 1: I suspected this is maybe where you two disagree. Your
Speaker 1: narcissism score was above average. Yeah, was above it. Now
Speaker 1: it wasn't one hundred percent. It was sick. It was
Speaker 1: approaching sixty percent, but it was it was. It was
Speaker 1: greater than average by twelve point four or five percent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to be precise. Yeah, Now what do you two think
Speaker 1: of that? So I think that I, because of how
Speaker 1: much my life has been like because I've been accused
Speaker 1: of things that I didn't do, I potentially have become
Speaker 1: someone who has been deeply invested in my sense of self.
Speaker 1: And I worry then that, like it has my narcissism
Speaker 1: been you know, pushed up by like as a sort
Speaker 1: of trauma response, is a kind of like shield response
Speaker 1: to something. And I do worry about that now, Chris,
Speaker 1: So you know, I want to hear what Chris has
Speaker 1: to say about this. I think she's one of the
Speaker 1: most selfless generous people I know, right, And I think
Speaker 1: one of the issues with any sort of self reported
Speaker 1: test is you have your own cognitive blind spots towards
Speaker 1: your own behavior, tendencies to inflate good qualities or diminish
Speaker 1: bad qualities, et cetera. But also there's things like imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1: I think Amanda has a deep, deep case of imposter syndrome,
Speaker 1: and that I think she has a big difficulty seeing
Speaker 1: her her deeply positive traits. Actually, and if you were
Speaker 1: to look at the dms that come in, you know
Speaker 1: of people saying, Wow, you're such an inspiration to me,
Speaker 1: Like Amanda reads those and she's like, no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: You know, she doesn't she doesn't believe that though even
Speaker 1: if thousands of people are saying, wow, you're so strong
Speaker 1: and you really helped me change my life, that she
Speaker 1: doesn't believe that. She doesn't have that that self belief.
Speaker 1: So the idea that she's narcissistic and thinks that she's
Speaker 1: a savior for people, it's not the Amanda I see.
Speaker 1: And I'm actually, what are the you know it's better
Speaker 1: than we do? What are the questions that score well?
Speaker 1: I certainly can't reveal that because that's actually telling this.
Speaker 1: It's like saying, give me the IQ test items. But
Speaker 1: there's an interesting link here between that. I'm going to
Speaker 1: send you an article I run Scientific America on the
Speaker 1: link between a particular kind of narcissism and imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1: It's not the kind of narcissism that most people are
Speaker 1: aware of, but it's one that I've conducted research for
Speaker 1: the past decade about and I've been trying to increase
Speaker 1: awareness about because it's the one that's most linked to psychopathology,
Speaker 1: and that's called vulnerable narcissism. Now it makes me think,
Speaker 1: now I want to give you my vulnerable narcissism intent,
Speaker 1: but vulnerable narcissists. So most people when they think of
Speaker 1: narciss they think of the grandiose narcissist, which is chest thumping,
Speaker 1: extroverted trump okay, right, So they think of the you know, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean stereotypical, stereotypical I'm great, right, the person that
Speaker 1: screams on great. But and this is something my own
Speaker 1: healing process, So this is a very human thing. I'm
Speaker 1: not I don't believe in separating we're narcissists from not narcissis.
Speaker 1: I think we're all have narissic tendencies, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people who have gone through trauma develop and we
Speaker 1: found this. We've published paper showing that early childhood trauma
Speaker 1: and violation of expectations lead to a vulnerable kind of
Speaker 1: narcisism where the person feels shame all the time, but
Speaker 1: the very so so shame is the number one marker
Speaker 1: of it. And we found we're the first ones to
Speaker 1: publish a paper showing the linkage to imposter syndrome. So
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to send you I'll send you that
Speaker 1: scientific I'll make a note to send you that scientific
Speaker 1: American paper. And that makes sense, like the idea that like,
Speaker 1: you know, people are saying that they or like doing
Speaker 1: things to you, and you think, oh, they're doing it
Speaker 1: because it's me and I'm you know, they think I'm
Speaker 1: a bad person, and you're like, no, they're just they're
Speaker 1: just doing their thing and it has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with you. And so you are being a little bit
Speaker 1: of a narcissist by thinking that people are being you know,
Speaker 1: bad to you for whatever reason, Like is that what
Speaker 1: you're talking about? It it's a smoke and fire thing,
Speaker 1: a bit. I think when the whole world tells you
Speaker 1: for years on end that you're an evil monster, right,
Speaker 1: it's I think it's hard for anybody to not go
Speaker 1: is there anything there you know? Or And also but
Speaker 1: like I think it's totally true that I'm guilty of this.
Speaker 1: Where Like I when people are like out about in
Speaker 1: the world and I noticed that they recognize me, I think,
Speaker 1: are they talking to me because they've heard of this
Speaker 1: horrible story about me? Or are they or are they
Speaker 1: just talking to me because I happen to be getting
Speaker 1: mushrooms at the grocery store next to them grabbing a cucumber,
Speaker 1: Like I do worry about that. So I this is
Speaker 1: exactly what I helped my clients with. So I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm giving Like do I slip into psychotherapy mode
Speaker 1: all of a sudden? But but can I give you
Speaker 1: some advice, just just to help you with your your
Speaker 1: healing if I can in any way. The number one
Speaker 1: point of why vulnerable narcisism, like at the root of
Speaker 1: vulnan narcisism is an uncertain self esteem. Okay, there's literally
Speaker 1: literally there's an entire handbook called the Handbook of Uncertain
Speaker 1: Self Esteem there's a whole research field on this. I
Speaker 1: suspect that's what you're plagued with. And and if you
Speaker 1: could find a way of grounding yourself more with with
Speaker 1: self compassion exercises. I love Sharon Salzburg's Loving Kindness meditations.
Speaker 1: If you can just ground yourself with more of an
Speaker 1: inner presence that isn't doesn't need to be validated by others,
Speaker 1: you know where you're you don't lead with uncertainty about
Speaker 1: your self esteem, but you lead with your authenticity that
Speaker 1: you alreadys score high on. The more you can just
Speaker 1: lead with your authenticity, the less you'll feel these vulnerable,
Speaker 1: narcissistic characteristics. Does that make sense? Yeah? No, that's that's
Speaker 1: actually really great. And I think that that that does
Speaker 1: ring very true to me. I mean I'm almost like
Speaker 1: getting sad. Yeah, I mean there's hope here. But I'm
Speaker 1: saying there's hope. Ye A thing she's been grappling with
Speaker 1: ever since this Italy trauma has been And it's just
Speaker 1: something I think we talked about with LeVar Burton actually
Speaker 1: in that in that season one episode of Labyrinths that
Speaker 1: Amanda worries that the most you know, notable thing about
Speaker 1: her forever will be a thing that didn't that she
Speaker 1: didn't do, and that happened to her. And it's a
Speaker 1: it's a most people don't have the opportunity to deal
Speaker 1: with that strange circumstance where the whole world associates your
Speaker 1: name and your identity and who you are and why
Speaker 1: you matter with this thing that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with you. And she often wonders, will I ever contribute
Speaker 1: to the world in any way that will matter more
Speaker 1: and that will have an impact more than this other
Speaker 1: thing that is not of me? And but I have
Speaker 1: a radical I have a radical suggestion. And this may
Speaker 1: sound like I've just slipped into Oprah mode, but I
Speaker 1: have a radical, radical suggestion. Had it ever occurred to
Speaker 1: you that, in this precise moment, you're enough? No, Like
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah, I do feel like your truth seekret
Speaker 1: had entertained that hypothesis for a second, you know, like
Speaker 1: maybe this precise moment, it's like, oh wait, I'm enough.
Speaker 1: Everything else is just gravy from here. Yeah, I'll try that.
Speaker 1: I'll do a meditation on that today. Thanks. Awesome, awesome, So, Chris,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us for this. Do you
Speaker 1: have a man did you have I appreciate that a man,
Speaker 1: Do you have a Do you have another ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes to talk about cognitive bias? I want to
Speaker 1: be really respectful of your time. Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 1: hop out and attend to baby. Oh is she awake? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just cool jack. Oh, okay, nice to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Chris, Nice to you too. Didn't expect to
Speaker 1: golf in that direction, but I'm actually glad. I'm glad
Speaker 1: I did. I'm glad it did you. No, I appreciate
Speaker 1: it too, because this is I feel like yours. Are
Speaker 1: you okay? Yeah, Yeah, I'm okay. It's this is like
Speaker 1: an ongoing conversation between me and Chris because, like I've
Speaker 1: often been somewhat astounded by like how confident he is
Speaker 1: in himself in the sense that, like, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of things that would get me down. He's just like, well,
Speaker 1: I know that I'm a good writer, and I know
Speaker 1: that I'm like this, that or the other, so I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about whether or not the world
Speaker 1: is acknowledging that I am or not. And I struggle
Speaker 1: with that more where I feel like I have to
Speaker 1: prove myself constantly, and I'm not giving myself as much
Speaker 1: space to just prove myself to myself. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I hear you. But you know, of feeling will come
Speaker 1: from feeling whole inner. You know innerlies. Great. Well, so
Speaker 1: you've been really interested in cognitive bias and you learned
Speaker 1: a whole lesson. Now you really wrote a nerdy blog
Speaker 1: post that you could probably submit to a scientific journal
Speaker 1: with this this bias, I mean you gave you know,
Speaker 1: did you hear Mike chat with Connoment on this podcast?
Speaker 1: By any chance? Have you listened to that one? You know,
Speaker 1: he's Dana Common obviously, uh, one of the co founders
Speaker 1: leading researchers of the cognitive bias literature. But you you
Speaker 1: had new ones that I had never seen before gone
Speaker 1: down you did well. I appreciate you. You're in a
Speaker 1: safe nerdy space here, so yeah, you're You're welcome. So
Speaker 1: you look, I thought this was really interesting. You literally
Speaker 1: coined a new bias that I think is really a
Speaker 1: good one, and it's called the single victim fallacy. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about what that is because
Speaker 1: I think it'll blow people's minds because it's almost dawn
Speaker 1: on people that it could be multiple victims. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and I think that just arises from these black and
Speaker 1: white narratives. But what I observed in my own experience
Speaker 1: was this false notion that if Meredith, the young woman
Speaker 1: who was raped and murdered, is a victim, then anyone
Speaker 1: else who is within the vicinity of the story cannot
Speaker 1: be a victim. And similarly, like if people say, well,
Speaker 1: Amanda's a victim, like people have treated this case as
Speaker 1: if I'm not a real victim, that there's a real
Speaker 1: victim and then there is me. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: point out just because Meredith was the original victim in
Speaker 1: this case doesn't mean that there couldn't be other people
Speaker 1: who are victimized from this story. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: point out this this like black and white thinking process
Speaker 1: where it's like there seems to be this sort of
Speaker 1: zero sum bias that like if there is if there's
Speaker 1: victimization on my part, that that somehow takes a way
Speaker 1: way from the victimization on Meredith's part. And I want
Speaker 1: to point out, like that's absolutely not true. But I
Speaker 1: continually have that thrown at me constantly by people online
Speaker 1: who say, like any time that I am asserting my victim,
Speaker 1: like how I have been victimized. I am somehow diminishing
Speaker 1: the victimization of Meredith. And I push back against that constantly,
Speaker 1: and I and I to the point that I felt
Speaker 1: like I had to define a whole new bias like
Speaker 1: about it. And I think that that happens a lot
Speaker 1: in wrongful conviction cases, where there is this tendency for
Speaker 1: people to say, well, because the family of the of
Speaker 1: the original victim needs closure, we cannot explore the victimization
Speaker 1: of someone who has been accused. Yeah, there's there's such
Speaker 1: a horrible paradox here that Saul Cousin or Saul Cassen
Speaker 1: has pointed out, and that's that being innocent, literally just
Speaker 1: being innocent actually can put you an increased risk of
Speaker 1: not being seen as innocent. You know, you even making
Speaker 1: this point, some British tablois be like, oh, defensive, defensive, Amanda, right,
Speaker 1: so you should he almost can't win, right, Like you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, what am I not supposed to defend my innocence?
Speaker 1: You know, like I should just shut up? You know
Speaker 1: what's the alternative here? You know that I just shut up?
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's tough. Yeah, do you, are you familiar.
Speaker 1: I do know Saul Cassen because I know him personally
Speaker 1: and he reached out to you when you're in jail. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's a really great guy and has done a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount to help me with to process my experience because
Speaker 1: I what goes on in interrogation rooms was completely foreign
Speaker 1: to me, and he very much after sort of hearing
Speaker 1: me out what I what I experienced, shared his research
Speaker 1: with me and I was just blown away. So anyway, well,
Speaker 1: thanks for telling me about his work because I read
Speaker 1: some of his papers found really interesting this paper he
Speaker 1: wrote on the psychology of confessions. Does innocence put innocence
Speaker 1: at risk? He said, Recent recent research suggests that actual
Speaker 1: innocence does not protect people across a sequence of pivotal
Speaker 1: decisions in pre interrogation interviews. Investigators commit false positive errors
Speaker 1: presuming innocent suspects guilty, naively believing in the transparency of
Speaker 1: their innocence. Innocent suspects we wave their rights. This is
Speaker 1: hard to say because there's a lot of innocence and
Speaker 1: the despier because of their denials. Innocent suspects of sid
Speaker 1: highly confrontational interrogations. This looks like textbook Commanda Knox right
Speaker 1: like Olive, yeah, yeah, so so grateful for his work. Well,
Speaker 1: tell me about your keynote that you did at the
Speaker 1: American Psychology and Law Conference. Oh, I mean I am
Speaker 1: interested in how the question of why these things happen,
Speaker 1: and so when I'm invited to give a talk about
Speaker 1: this experience, I often will ask people like, well, what
Speaker 1: about Like what about this experience? Actually it interests you?
Speaker 1: And looking at this, I was really happy to go
Speaker 1: to the Psychology in Law Conference because I this is
Speaker 1: the part about wrongful convictions that I am most keen on,
Speaker 1: Like why do first of all, innocent people end up
Speaker 1: in this process? And how are how are these institutions
Speaker 1: sort of built not to not to, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: Saulcasen's research shows that there are lots of ways that
Speaker 1: innocent people are simply not accounted for, like in the
Speaker 1: interrogation room, where like if you make if someone accuses
Speaker 1: you of something and you say no, no, that's not
Speaker 1: that's not what I that's not what I did. Like
Speaker 1: the assumption is, oh, you're a guilty person who's lying,
Speaker 1: and not that you're an actually innocent person. And so
Speaker 1: the ways that those course of interrogation techniques, which are
Speaker 1: very very effective at getting guilty people to confess to crimes,
Speaker 1: they're also very effective at getting innocent people to confess
Speaker 1: to crimes. But beyond that, I'm also interested in not
Speaker 1: just the psychology of the innocent person, but the psychology
Speaker 1: of the prosecutor and the detective and why it is
Speaker 1: that they end up honing in on the wrong person,
Speaker 1: not out of a sense of, like you, outright evil
Speaker 1: or corruption, but out of a sense of like human fallacy.
Speaker 1: Because I again, like when I think back to my prosecutor,
Speaker 1: I was never satisfied with the idea that, oh, this
Speaker 1: is happening to me just because bad people are doing
Speaker 1: bad things to me. Like, No, that's not what was happening.
Speaker 1: It was more complicated than that. And so I had
Speaker 1: to take into consideration, well, is there a kind of
Speaker 1: confirmation bias happening here when the evidence finally came in
Speaker 1: that showed that it was Rudy YadA and not me.
Speaker 1: Was there a conservativism bias where they had made an
Speaker 1: already assumption about what the case was and they were
Speaker 1: only willing to tweak it just enough to accommodate a
Speaker 1: new set of information, but not to contradict their previous
Speaker 1: theory of the case. Like there are so many ways
Speaker 1: that you know, even just the perception of me as
Speaker 1: a human being can be best explained, like this ongoing
Speaker 1: perception of me as like a guilty person is due
Speaker 1: to the anchoring bias, the fact that the first piece
Speaker 1: of information that people have ever heard about me was
Speaker 1: that I was guilty of a terrible crime. And so
Speaker 1: even when new evidence has come forth revealing that not
Speaker 1: to be the case, people are biased towards the first
Speaker 1: thing that they ever heard. And that explains a lot
Speaker 1: of the why of my experience. It doesn't really explain
Speaker 1: how to get out of it, but at least I
Speaker 1: have a better understanding of the human psychology behind my experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's like you got a PhD in
Speaker 1: psychology through this whole situation. You're referring your proscertor referring
Speaker 1: to Giuliano Mignii, Giliano Manini. Come on, Scott, you used
Speaker 1: to sing Italian opera. You can do better than that.
Speaker 1: You actually did it really well. Most people are like Juliana.
Speaker 1: If I sing it, If I sing it, I'll do
Speaker 1: a better job. Yeah. But my take of this this
Speaker 1: cat from watching the Netflix documentary is that he sees
Speaker 1: himself as the modern day Sherlock Holmes. You know, he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, he just had build up in his mind,
Speaker 1: you know, this whole like I'm going to be the
Speaker 1: savior of the world like this. What goes to your
Speaker 1: point you said earlier, You know, people that do bad
Speaker 1: things don't think in their head, oh, I'm doing a
Speaker 1: bad thing. They think mostly it's usually I'm doing something
Speaker 1: for the greater good. I but there's a profound narcissism
Speaker 1: associated with a lot of those instances, because you think
Speaker 1: in your head that you and only you are going
Speaker 1: to save the world, and that leads to hubris, and
Speaker 1: that leads to overconfidence, and that leads to subjectivity. Yes,
Speaker 1: which is what happened a lot up the kazoom in
Speaker 1: your case. Right, Yes, absolutely, But is there any chance
Speaker 1: for a reconciliation with him or Well, that's it's an
Speaker 1: intriguing question because it is something that I have been
Speaker 1: contemplating and pursuing for a long time. I can't say
Speaker 1: much about it, but yes, just because it's an ongoing project,
Speaker 1: but it is something that is deeply important to me.
Speaker 1: The idea that I can basically confront my accuser and
Speaker 1: do so in a way that would be not antagonistic
Speaker 1: but sort of restorative. Well good, I really look forward
Speaker 1: to hearing something about that. Good for you for I mean,
Speaker 1: I'd like to see your reckons you talk to Rudy someday. Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 1: That would also be a very interesting experience. And I'm
Speaker 1: not very emotional in sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: ready for that one. Yeah. I feel like I need
Speaker 1: a little more time for that one. Yeah. Absolutely, we're
Speaker 1: not going to be like I know, we're bringing OUTTL drawer,
Speaker 1: ETL drawer, love ETL drawer. Yes, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: And I want to thank you so much for bringing
Speaker 1: to my attention these amazing, amazing researchers. Okay, so because
Speaker 1: you got me down rabbit holes, I was like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: the forensic science literature has some really serious problems. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: has some really serious problems. Yeah, he said. I just
Speaker 1: want to quote something ITTL said which I completely agree with.
Speaker 1: He said, there isn't a psychologist on this planet. He's
Speaker 1: referring a cognitive science psychologist, which is what I am.
Speaker 1: There isn't a cognitive psycholoist on this planet or any
Speaker 1: other planet who can come and say that judgment, perception
Speaker 1: or objective. It's one of the most basic cornerstones of psychology.
Speaker 1: Yet the more you start to look into the literature,
Speaker 1: you realize just how much how many of these techniques,
Speaker 1: like even fingerprinting analysis, have never actually been scientifically validated.
Speaker 1: They've been used for over one hundred years, right, So,
Speaker 1: my gosh, like that's insane, right, like that we assume
Speaker 1: that all these techniques are just completely objective and they
Speaker 1: don't involve bias, when it turns out they very much do.
Speaker 1: And should we talk about one of the seminal studies
Speaker 1: that he conducted along those lines, where he showed that
Speaker 1: fingerprint analysts, when given anonymous prints from cases they themselves
Speaker 1: analyzed ten years or so ago, they were asked to
Speaker 1: judge those same prints as a match or not, And
Speaker 1: when they are told that the suspect confessed, the results
Speaker 1: of their analysis often was in the opposite direction of
Speaker 1: what they themselves had said about those very prints when
Speaker 1: they first analyzed them. That's shocking. Yes, I hope that
Speaker 1: everyone sort of like followed that. So like DNA e.
Speaker 1: A fingerprint expert did a study many years ago determined,
Speaker 1: you know, match or not match, then many many years later,
Speaker 1: was confronted with the very same prints and came up
Speaker 1: with a very different result based upon being told that
Speaker 1: the person had confessed to the crime. So I it's
Speaker 1: fat like. And this is why Saul Casson's work is
Speaker 1: so important and important, because whether or not a person
Speaker 1: confesses is so so biasing to people. People just can't
Speaker 1: wrap their minds around an innocent person confessing to a crime,
Speaker 1: so they assume that that person now must be guilty,
Speaker 1: and even scientific experts are unable to separate their now
Speaker 1: bias in their own objective looks at physical evidence. And
Speaker 1: so that's why etail Drawer proposes a solution which is
Speaker 1: linear sequential screening or unmasked sorry, linear sequential unmasking, where
Speaker 1: you only tell the forensic experts as much information as
Speaker 1: they need to know in order to do their job.
Speaker 1: The fingerprint expert doesn't need to know whether or not
Speaker 1: the suspect confessed or not in order to determine whether
Speaker 1: or not a fingerprint is a match. So just don't
Speaker 1: give them that biasing information. That is that simple, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, studies show possible error rates of one to
Speaker 1: four percent in fingerprint anolysis. There's a ten percent or
Speaker 1: more in paint, fiber and body fluid analysis alone. And
Speaker 1: then the more I dig into this, the more I
Speaker 1: realize all the problems with us. So here, this is
Speaker 1: one quote I came across. You don't tell the crime
Speaker 1: lab scientists doing the DNA, for example, what the suspect's
Speaker 1: DNA profile looks like until they've extracted the DNA from
Speaker 1: the evidence profile for the victim. First. I mean it's like, duh, right,
Speaker 1: you hear that, You're like, of course, and yet that's
Speaker 1: not what the practice is. It's not what the practice is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Lentini said that when Lentini this kind of methodology also
Speaker 1: helps eliminate unwitting or unconscious bias towards linking evidence to
Speaker 1: a suspect. So there's so many things that bring in
Speaker 1: subjectivity into this. And these are real lives that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, yeah, that are being wrong for convicting. And
Speaker 1: I think that it's important to note that, like, again,
Speaker 1: it's an unconscious bias that's impacting these these experts and
Speaker 1: these detectives, like they're not knowingly and willingly making their
Speaker 1: lives easier and coming up with matches to the fingerprints
Speaker 1: because they heard someone confess that just information unconsciously buyas
Speaker 1: to them to seeing results objective results very differently, and
Speaker 1: as a result, it is very very important to not
Speaker 1: not like to acknowledge that that's just the case. Like
Speaker 1: it's not saying some kind of moral question about a
Speaker 1: forensic expert. It's just simply this is a human problem.
Speaker 1: This is not a you or me problem. It's a
Speaker 1: human problem. And there's actually are you familiar with the
Speaker 1: psychopath Test by John Ronson? I mean, I'm sure you well,
Speaker 1: so absolutely so the yeah so I one of the
Speaker 1: co authors of the psychopath Test is one of my
Speaker 1: co authors on our light try and papers. Great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he came over. He came over to the light side. Cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite jokes from that book is John
Speaker 1: Ronson said, as soon as I heard about confirmation bias,
Speaker 1: I started to see it everywhere. Yeah, so good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also true, so so so true. And motivated reasoning,
Speaker 1: you see, motivated reasoning so much. There's a whole line
Speaker 1: of research. I'm writing an article right now for Atlantic
Speaker 1: about this on moral tribalism and uh in group and
Speaker 1: group narcissism, and the extent to which we overlook the
Speaker 1: moral transgressions of people we see in are in group,
Speaker 1: but if we have perceived them as being in our
Speaker 1: out group, we will in ambiguous information, we'll see moral transgressions. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So this is this is this is very important stuff,
Speaker 1: very important. Do you still write poetry? Is that? Do you?
Speaker 1: Is that still in you? So? I have the most
Speaker 1: recent poetry that I have out in the world is
Speaker 1: a book of poems called the Cardio Tesseract that me
Speaker 1: and my husband wrote together. It's actually a kind of
Speaker 1: collection of poetry. Oh oh, Chris does poetry. He's lit
Speaker 1: like two master's degrees in poetry. Kind of guys, question
Speaker 1: like in our courtship would be reciting poems to me,
Speaker 1: Like that's how it worked. I'm sorry, I just forgot it. No,
Speaker 1: it's cool. It's cool. You didn't know. Why why would
Speaker 1: you know? Yeah? No, So we're big poetry nerds. He
Speaker 1: above all is a huge poetry nerd and is constantly
Speaker 1: finding wonderful opportunities to share poetry with me. And one
Speaker 1: of he's he's not much of a singer, so with
Speaker 1: our daughter, like I do a bunch of singing at her,
Speaker 1: he recites her poetry. Love that, Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: As I told you earlier, I'm really interested in this
Speaker 1: field of post traumatic growth. So I kind of want
Speaker 1: to leave with a question for you. Rabbi Harold Kushner,
Speaker 1: when he was reflecting on the death of his son,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, I am a more sensitive person, a
Speaker 1: more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of Aaron's
Speaker 1: life and death than I would ever have been without it.
Speaker 1: And I would give up all those gains in a
Speaker 1: second if I could have my son back, If I
Speaker 1: could choose, I would forego all the spiritual growth and
Speaker 1: depth which has come my way because of our experiences.
Speaker 1: But I cannot choose. So one can always think, you know,
Speaker 1: in sort of the multiverse sort of thought experiment, what
Speaker 1: would Amanda Knox look? What would it be to who
Speaker 1: would she be today if this experience didn't happen with her?
Speaker 1: But you can't choose that, and you'll never know. So
Speaker 1: moving forward, you know, what are some of the areas
Speaker 1: of growth that you're most excited about and that you
Speaker 1: think genuinely came about that wouldn't have come about if
Speaker 1: this didn't happen to you. That thank you for asking that,
Speaker 1: and I gosh, I've that makes me so sad also
Speaker 1: because it's like I'm a new I'm a new parent,
Speaker 1: so I'm like newly appreciating like the depths of that sadness.
Speaker 1: I'm really doing a great job making a fussy you are,
Speaker 1: You're just like making all of us. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: think that my greatest I mean even just becoming more
Speaker 1: attuned to the suffering of others is something that I
Speaker 1: don't know that I had a good grasp on before
Speaker 1: all of this, because, honestly, like I I, before everything
Speaker 1: happened in Italy, I lived a very very blessed life.
Speaker 1: I did not have difficulties. I am My family was
Speaker 1: very close and very supportive. I had everything everything going
Speaker 1: for me, and I don't think I really understood the
Speaker 1: depths of loss and despair that human beings are capable
Speaker 1: of and routinely experience. And so it gave me a
Speaker 1: lot of compassion for people who experience that, and especially
Speaker 1: for people who experience that in a very public way
Speaker 1: and have that sort of extra dimension of suffering put
Speaker 1: on them by people perceiving them as and judging them
Speaker 1: while they are experiencing the worst experience of their lives.
Speaker 1: So that is something that I have a new sort
Speaker 1: of ingrained radar for and perspective on that I have
Speaker 1: found to be not just useful for myself, but also
Speaker 1: useful for people who reach out to me and feel
Speaker 1: really alone and isolated. There's like a special, special suffering
Speaker 1: when it comes to people who are not only experiencing
Speaker 1: tragedy or loss or trauma, but are being judged very
Speaker 1: publicly in the process. So no, that's actually a really
Speaker 1: good point. Does this experience make you a little bit
Speaker 1: more skeptical when some some people are tried in the
Speaker 1: court of public opinion? So when everyone else is jumping
Speaker 1: on someone, does it make you more sensitive? Yes, one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. And I hate the idea, like it really
Speaker 1: bugs me out, the idea that some quality about yourself
Speaker 1: that you cannot control somehow makes it so that you
Speaker 1: aren't suffering, Like what are we talking about? Like, No,
Speaker 1: everyone who is being judged for some dramatic thing is
Speaker 1: suffering and period. So I don't know it. Also, when
Speaker 1: people say things like oh, cancel culture, isn't real. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: it is like people are constantly trying to like sort
Speaker 1: of pin down people for like a one either real
Speaker 1: or imagined transgression and like define that person entirely by
Speaker 1: that thing and delete them, like literally cancel them. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's I feel like judgment in
Speaker 1: the public square is not treated with the amount of
Speaker 1: weight that it actually carries on the person who experiences it.
Speaker 1: Pylon culture is really real, and mob justice is often
Speaker 1: devoid of due process and proportional sentencing, and these are
Speaker 1: all reasons why we have a criminal justice system in
Speaker 1: the first place, and don't just deal with transgressors out
Speaker 1: in the open like there's a reason for that. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, I am a firm believer that we should
Speaker 1: have we should be way more cautious about the court
Speaker 1: of public opinion and have a lot more skepticism towards it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I very much agree. Well, it looks to me like
Speaker 1: the gestalt media narrative around you is changing. There seems
Speaker 1: to be something in the air. You know, the Rogan appearance,
Speaker 1: if you know the New York Times profile. In our
Speaker 1: conversation today, my goal was quite simply for you to
Speaker 1: just show who you are, just to show who you are.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to do anything you are. You are
Speaker 1: who you are, and I wanted people to see that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and well, thank you. You strike me as someone who's very,
Speaker 1: very deeply empathetic, and I would even say a poetic soul,
Speaker 1: like I feel like you have a poetic soul, right,
Speaker 1: It does that resonate with you? Yeah, totally, it does.
Speaker 1: And the way that I interpret that is I feel
Speaker 1: like I see a lot of beauty even in the
Speaker 1: stuff that hurts, which is what I feel like a
Speaker 1: poet is constantly doing, is finding the beauty in the
Speaker 1: pain and not you know, reveling in it, but just
Speaker 1: like a acknowledging it. I feel like acknowledging is a
Speaker 1: really important part of my life now. Yeah. So Victor
Speaker 1: Frank will call that tragic optimism. It's finding the beauty
Speaker 1: and meaning and tragedy. Thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: to my podcast today, man, and I hope you feel
Speaker 1: like you were seen. I hope you feel seen. I
Speaker 1: totally feel seen today. Thank you very much. And You've
Speaker 1: given me a lot to think about, so I'll do that.
Speaker 1: I'll send you some follow up. Nerdy papers and things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what I talked about today. Well, thanks all the best
Speaker 1: to you all right, take care. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at thus psychology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast.
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Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
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Speaker 1: the mind, brain behavior, and creativity. Actual