Amanda Knox || The Real Amanda Knox

cognitive biases, law, and forensic science. Throughout this episode, I try my best to show the audience the real Amanda Knox, not the version of her that the media has depicted. Along those lines, I give her some of my psychological tests to take, including my test on self actualization as well as my psychopath test. You won't want to miss the results or this episode. It's a really powerful episode and I think you'll get a lot out of it.

So let's get right into it. I bring you Amanda Knox. Amanda, how you doing today? Thanks for being on my podcast. I'm doing great. I'm a little sleep deprived, so you'll have to excuse my sleep deprived brain, but I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. It's my pleasure. Well, does it have anything to do with the fact that you just had a new baby girl. Oh my god. Yes, we were awake, yes, last night for a little bit together, just wandering around the house until she fell asleep again.

So that's that's my world right now. Well, congratulations to the birth of Eureka, mused noc Robinson. Congratulations. You know you there's a specific reason why you decided to tell the story of and kind of lead people in the journey. You know, tell people about your journey, right. You wanted to kind of control the narrative in a way, is

that right? Yeah? I mean so, yes. The issue that I faced from the second I got pregnant was the idea that my pregnancy and the birth of my child, would, like every other private aspect of my life, be deemed in the public intro and therefore not protected by privacy laws, and that the tabloids would exploit those very intimate parts of my life to defame me and harm me psychologically.

So I decided that I would try to disincentivize their coverage and the and their sort of impulse to go after me with paparazzi by first of all, keeping the pregnancy journey in the birth journey to myself until I was ready to tell it, and to tell it in my own way, so that at the very least when people did first hear of my daughter's existence, it would be in the context of something that was exploring these difficult positions that I'm in and that i'm and the

sort of position that I hope my daughter will be in in the future, which is to not be treated just like the latest scandal content for in the Amanda knock saga. As Tom McCarthy so aptly put it, well, look, that makes a lot of sense. So I'm a scientist here and in preparation, and I really do extensive preparation for all my guests, and you were certainly included on that. And what just boggled my mind were some of the things that people would just say online with no factual

support whatsoever to it. And not only that, but there are various things I really because I really got I got like really into the case in like a really scientific way, like like you know, with just no part yeah, yeah, yeah, no part in the horse sort of way. You know. I was like, what is the evidence? Just and I would really and I and I would wake up in the middle of the night actually At one point I was like, oh, what about this? And I would go

and I would do extensive Google search. I was like, okay, that that that that answers that for me. Yeah, yeah, okay, I get it. But then I would still see things propagated over and over again. How do you have so much grace in handling that? Because I noticed you don't even respond to something like I wanted to fight for you, and some people on my own Twitter page, I want to be like like, are you serious, Like you didn't

even look at this like objectively whatsoever. Yeah, it's a good question because I feel like you have the same impulse as my husband. My husband is very, very protective of me and deeply, deeply offended whenever anyone makes a false claim about me online and vilifies me, and he's just like so outraged by it. He's like, of all the people in the world, why you like, of all the people? And my relationship with it is a little bit different, in part because I spent so long not

being able to defend myself at all. I was in prison for four years between the ages of twenty and twenty four when this was first happening, and I had very very little opportunity to defend myself at all. So I wonder if, in part I internalized some feelings of helplessness or hope lessness. I also feel like the sort of mental state that I was in in that time period was one in which I realized that, oh wow,

for so many people, the truth doesn't actually matter. Just the story matters, and the characters of that story matter whether or not they correspond with reality. And the story that I was telling myself about my own life, like what I could expect from life, like go to school, find love, have children, have a career like those were all things that were also stories that I had been telling myself, and there had been no guarantee that that was actually going to be the course of my life.

And so in the prison environment, I very much suddenly realized that there were no guarantees in life, and I had to instead be very present with what I did have, be very aware of what I did have, and I didn't have much so I could catalog it. And then since coming home, it's a little bit different because the prison and trial experience is one in which absolutely what people are saying about me out in the world very very much impacts my right to live as a free

human being in the world. But once I was exonerated, I realized that the game had changed. It was no longer about my freedom. It was about my identity, and that was the thing that remained the missing piece of my life that had been stolen from me. But my freedom and my identity are two very different things. I can live with myself and my identity in my small world and also understand that I don't actually have full

control over my identity in the greater world. That doesn't like it does impact me, but it's not the same as someone trying to put me in jail. So I guess it put that into perspective. Yeah, it sounds like you became at a PhD in psychology informally throughout this whole press. Actually a lot of psychologists say that to me, where they're like, Wow, some of the strategies that you used to get through that experience are strategies that we

try to like, like therapists will share. Like one of the strategies that I had, which I wouldn't even consider a strategy I sort of intuitively did it was I had conversations with my younger self about what she was

going to experience in the future. So in a way, I was sort of big sister coaching myself through the experience in order to feel like less powerless over it, like and so it sort of like took a thing that felt very much on top of me and I put it in front of me and I sort of disassociated from it a little bit, and that helped me at the very least get through the day. But see, that's textbook So for instance, George, but you didn't know it.

That's textbook psychology. You just devised it. But George Banana, who was recently my podcast, actually highly recommend listening to our chat. He just wrote a book called The End of Trauma. He it's all about his he's one of the leading researchers in resiliency and he's really shown that self talk is a major major strategy. He has a whole chapter on self talk in his book. So that's really cool for you to hear that he was just

he's like just two episodes ago. So can you describe to me what he means by self talk because I'd be curious to know if it has to do with the narrative of one's life, that one either feels they have control over or they don't have control over. I'd be interested to know that. I think he's more referring to it an extent to which you tell yourself that you have deep reservoirs of resiliency that are untapped, that you can handle this, you know, saying just even saying

words to yourself. You know, researchers have looked at the difference between just saying yourself, I can do this. You know what, I've faced hard things before, you know there will be a future, versus thinking to yourself, this is it, you know, like there's no hope. You know, there's a very very strong, statistically significan difference between those two conditions. Interesting. Yeah, I think that's that squares with my own ex variance, because I even would think to myself at certain times.

I went through soccer training a lot when I was a kid, and one of the things that I told myself to get through the very difficult soccer practices occasionally was I would just do the little engine that could mantra over and over my head. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. And the thing I really loved about that was the uncertainty I was like, I think I can. I'm not sure, but I'm going to try. I'm going to try to get through this day. We'll see. Well. By the way, that's

where you got the nickname Foxy Knox. So you probably never want to hear that nickname ever again. But just for the record, for the this is helpful for you. For the record, you got that nickname because what you kind of like, you played soccer like a fox. Like you were like, yeah, so I was good. I mean

I was so. I was one of the smaller players, and I was very quick, and I was I played this position called top of the diamond, which is the first line of defense, and it's a position where you're constantly squirreling around or just try to steal the ball away from people. So in that way, I and my name rhymes with fox. So that's how that came about. I want to call nickname right. I want a better one. I want a better one than what they called me around your age. When I was that age, they called

me scotty potty. Oh no, is there or was it just because it runs? Well? Okay, no, no, I'll tell you there was so around I'm a little bit older than you, Amanda, but not not by that much, not by that much. But there was something called the sour Patch Kids cards card back in the day. Have you ever heard of the sour Patch Kids? I mean, I I've eaten many a sour Patch kid, but I did not know that they came with cards. I believe they had cards, and one of them was one of the

names of one of them was Scotty Potty. That was one of the sour Patchkins. I'm pretty sure. Maybe I'm messing up my eighties references. It was called something else. But there were these cards, and then they were a whole collection of these funny things. But wait, are you thinking are you thinking of the garbage Pale kids? Yes, the garbage Okay, okay, okay, because garbage kids just came

and like, that's a candy, that's a candy. You're right, You're right, garbage pale cad Well, see you, Okay, thank you. So you know what I'm talking about now. I've been trying to change that narrative as an adult. I had a girlfriend who, of her own volition called me Scottie too haughty, and I was like, okay, okay, I like that one better. That I love that one too, because it's not even Scottie Hotty like she took it to the next level like mc hammered it. It was. That's great.

He was a great girlfriend. I just want to say, for the record, I appreciate her very much. So here's a quote I found when I was listening to your very interesting interview with Joe Rogan I thought could set a stage for what we can really get into today. You said, I feel like I'm constantly trapped in a conversation with the fake version of me in people's minds that keeps getting recycled over and over again. That is, first of all, that is good writing. You're obviously a good.

Second of all, that's very powerful. That is very very powerful, and I think a lot of us can relate. I can relate to your story, you know, just being very young, I was in special ed and for an auditory disability I had, and I read about this a lot, and I wrote about this in various of my books. But the point here is that I felt as though I was reduced to how other people decide to put a

label on me. And I feel like there's a connection here to probably how you felt, and probably still feel to a large degree where you want to be able to create your own identity. Aren't you know, aren't you allowed to create your own identity? And that's how I felt,

certainly as a child fighting my way. I had actually fought my way out of special ed, and then I fought my way into gifted ed, and then people still saw me as the special ed kid, and I was like, but I'm in gifted talking about I'm literally can it ever change? So this idea of how gest perceptions really influence deeply how we see people, not not just you know, from a just a purely visual psychology point of view,

but from a human, whole person point of view. It's amazing how it's like an optical illusion in a way. You start to get to the evidence. You start to talk to the real Amanda Knox, which, by the way, I'm thinking of calling today's episode the real Amandon Ox. Once you start talking to the real Amandom Knox, maybe people's gestal will flip. But the point is the media

control back gestalt. Right, yeah, yeah, And I think you know what's really interesting about your situation is these are people who had direct access to you, right, Like the thing that failed you and your experience was the education system not really recognized. I mean, I already have like a whole Like my mom is a school teacher, and I love her and she does incredible work, and I recognize that it's very, very difficult to be a teacher

in this world. But I do have a problem with the education system where it seems like everyone is churned through this system that is very very specific and doesn't actually acknowledge the different ways that people learn and the different skill sets that people have. It feels like this conveyor belt education and if you don't fit this very

specific role, then people treat you like your lesser. It's very interesting, and I think that maybe it's even more difficult, and I have a lot of compassion for people who find themselves having their being sort of misidentified in their own communities, because these are people who you know and love and care about, and they're the people who are determining who you are that doesn't match up with your

understanding of yourself and with the evidence. In my case, it was thousands and thousands of strangers who had no access to me, who were determining who I was for the sake of some kind of like morality tale that they were trying to like not only sort of determine, like you know, find us a scapegoat to p and all of their like horrible you know, feelings about a terrible tragedy that occurred, but also they had like this.

The thing about my case is that I became this sort of blank slate onto which people could make judgments about women and about sexuality. And very very much there was like this morality tale being told about female sexuality where I was the I was the stand in for everything that people hate and fear but also are intrigued about female sexuality. Oh absolutely, And you know, I think you wouldn't mind having your Monica Winskey moment in a sense where why aren't all the me too feminists jumping

on this? Because it really you know, when you really look at it and you're really honest, when people are really honest about what happened, you know, a lot of had to do with your looks. You know, would the same thing have happened if it was just your boyfriend at the time, Raphael, you know who was convicted. This is a real I mean, this is a real There was a real gender and sort of how we treat beautiful people in our society. Yeah, I mean it's astonishing

story here. Yeah, I mean it is astonishing because on the one hand, Meredith also was a beautiful girl and she was brutally murdered, and no one really paid attention to the person who actually brutally raped and murdered her, like what was interesting about And there's also like a sort of tinge of racism here where the person who actually did this was a young black man who was disenfranchised and all of the all of the things, and because people at the time were like, well, obviously he

he just you know, there's nothing interesting about him as a criminal. What's interesting in a criminal is a female who is a part of involved in a sexually motivated violent crime. So the media totally overlooked the facts of this case in order to pursue a scandalouscious story. And they're you know, deep rooted reasons for that, really deep. I mean, the more we keep digging, I'm saying, you know, you start to realize whoa because it's not just simply

a morality. Tell you could easily if by the way, his name was rude. You know, I want to say his name Rudy Gude right, was the one who who merred Meredith Kircher. So and he had been found just a couple even days before in a nursery or something broken and was found with a knife, yeah you know. And it was only his fingerprints that were found in the room where Mareth was merged, so these are fact

his DNA on her body, Like, yeah, he was. It's interesting because the way that the media treated him as well is also a weirdly off, where one they sort of ignored him, and then whenever they made reference to him,

at least in Italy. I'm actually not familiar with how they referenced him in the US and in the UK, but at the time, they always always always referred to him as Livoriano, the person from the Ivory Coast, which is really interesting because yes, he was from the Ivory Coast, but from what I understand, he moved to Italy and lived in Italy with an Italian family from a young age, so he really was an Italian. He just happened to

be born in the Ivory Coast. But like people just really wanted to associate him as like an other, and then once they associated him as an other, they sort of sidestepped him and didn't weren't really interested in the facts of his story, which is a young guy brought up in a family but starts getting into trouble, starts breaking and entering, starts doing drugs, goes down the spiral of breaking and entering that results in the end with

a brutal rape and murder. That story very very much got overlooked, and it's one that's worth looking into because that stuff happens, and we should try to stop that kind of stuff from happening. Anyway, Oh absolutely, oh absolutely. Had you ever encountered him before? I hadn't seen him around because he played basketball with the guys who lived in the floor below us, and so yeah, so like he was around, but I don't think I even really knew his name until he was arrested. I remember, like

when I was in jail. I remember the moment I was in prison. I was watching the news and they showed him being arrested and they were like, you know, Rudy Gadet blah blah blah arrested in Germany after fleeing the country, and I was like, holy shit, I recognized that guy. That that guy, like that basketball guy. That's the guy who did it. And then I kept thinking, oh, wow, thank goodness they found the person who did it. I'll

be released now exactly. Yeah, that's what that's the reasonable assumption. That's the assumption. Yeah. I watched an interview that was done with him where he said he first was attracted to you, and then Meredith was kind of like the backup, you know sort of thing. So, I mean, I know, I know, and you know he obviously he had talked to Meredith before. Do you reckon he was there that day because of Meredith or he just thought it might have been an empty house. I think that he probably

thought it was an empty house. That's what I'm thinking too. Yeah, it was the holiday weekend. It was understood that, Like I didn't know this, but apparently, you know, the Day of the Dead, the day after Halloween is a very common time for Italian people to go and visit their

families and spend time with their families. You know. I didn't know that, but that was the reason why so many of my Italian roommates were gone, and I had just happened to be spending the night over at my new, very new boyfriend's house, who I knew of several days, and so I think that he went in there too because he knew the house, he had seen it before. He was looking to break and enter and get some money,

you know that kind of thing. Okay, So let's get a little a picture, a bit of a picture of Amanda Knox before this tragedy happened. So you wrote you were a nerdy poetry and language student. You correct me if all these things I'm saying are wrong. You were a non drinker and non smoker. Your favorite pursuits included yoga and quote, backpacking, long distances with people. I know your favorite films were Shrek and The Full Monty, and you like the Beatles and reading Harry Potter books. Yes,

is all correct? Yeah. The only thing that I would say is I was an occasional drinker and an occasional smoker at the time. But I was not heavy in either of those situations. But I wouldn't. I don't think I was ever a non drinker like I You know, I went to parties, I went and had drinks with people, but I was not like strict about it. Wasn't out of control, nor was I strng about never having it well that's what you're in your MySpace page, probably when

you're like fourteen. Oh well yes, yeah, my space was a while yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah exactly, exactly. Yeah. Okay, So I get this picture of a young child, young girl who was just like really curious about the world, really innocent in a way. There was a I sense, a sort of innocence to you, you know, a sort of like nyativity, niaevity. How do you say it? Yeah, yeah, naivete Yeah, I think that would be accurate. I was.

I was the kind of person who really did well in school, never really got into trouble, was you know, I worked a number of jobs to like save up money, Like I was a soccer coach for a young girls team, and I you know was. I was also very like romantically and sexually inexperienced. So I was definitely like a late bloomer, kind of dorky news theater ren fair kind of indivision. Yeah theater you were, Oh me too, that

is so. I was a voice major at Cardige mel and I my dream was to be Javert and Lems. That is amazing. I love opera and I don't have the voice for it, but man, so much respect what I could, you could you could have, you could be trained. I think anyone can be trained. Honestly, do you ever sing anymore? I do? I do, and I try to take lessons every now and then. Sometimes I even I even record something just with this microphone and uh and kind of karaoke music like from stars from Lima's in

the background. I posted on my Twitter before. Oh cool. Yeah, I was inchoired, so it's definitely not opera, but I was inquiring and I love doing musical theater right on, right on, you know. I my heart really breaks in so many ways for the story. But one way is that I really can resonate with studying abroad. You know, when I was about twenty four twenty five, I went over to England, to Cambridge, and I remember, I just

remember that what it was like. I remember, you know, everyone like awkwardly having sex with each other, everyone drinking for the you know, we're all away from home for the first time. There really is an innocence there, the last thing you would ever imagine. You know, people say things like, well, why wasn't she more you know affected you know outside, why is she kissing? Look, it's not like the first thing you assume now you know, is

in your worldview? You know, your worldview was literally a psychologist called it a seismic earthquake. That's what they call it in the post traumatic growth literature, which is I'm working on my next book on post traumatic growth. So this topic is really front and center in my mind right now. And there's a whole asumptive world theory that I think might really interest you. If you want to, I tell me more about the seismic eruption earthquake. Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's tied to this idea of

assumptive world theory where we have these traumas. And I like to define trauma very broadly as anything any event, because who am I to say, oh, that counts to the trauma or that doesn't count as the trauma, right, Like, who am I to say that it's in a lot of waste traumas in the eye of the beholder, and any event that causes this complete recognitive restructuring of Oh I thought the world was safe. Yeah, but we're basically

your basic assumptions of the world are violated. And this happened to you in a span of like an hour, Yes, you know, and people are like, oh, why didn't she act more normal, Like like there's any normal way to

act when your entire assumptive world has been violating. I really appreciate you actually saying that, because it's something that I've had a really hard time explaining to people, Like I did not go home that morning to take a shower knowing that I was going to come across a crime scene, And even when it was made apparent to me that there was a crime scene, I had this like, really, it was so surreal to me that I felt a little bit like disembodied, like what is happening? And also

am I certain what's happening? Because everyone's yelling in Italian? Like it was so so bizarre that I had trouble

processing the experience. And you know, a lot has been made of my behavior in those days, Like there's that footage of Raphael and I outside of the house waiting for the police to tell us to go into the police station and he kisses me, and the amount of times that that moment of him just sort of like trying to do what he could, which is just kind of hold me and kiss me and tell me I'm gonna be okay, Like how that was twisted and distorted in the media into like, oh my god, she's such

a sex fiend that she can't even keep her hands off and outside of a murder house, it's like, what is happening anyway? So that makes and to be clear, I mean at that moment that if we double click on that precise moment, it's not like you opened the door and you see all what was inside the door. I didn't, and I think people assume that as well, just so many assumptions. I'm angry in the name of science. I'm angry at that, you know, I'm also angry as

the human dimension to it. But I'm saying even if you take that out, someone's like, don't be Biasedcott, I'll be like, no. My point is there's so much evidence to contradict so many of the of the bullshit that's going around and that and I can't stand that when there's a propagation of bullshit that really bothers me. Oh gosh, yeah, it's man, how do you live with the propagation of bullshit? You have to take a deep breath everywhere in this

world right now? Yeah everywhere? Yeah, I mean, and the way I think about it is like, Okay, there is the propagation of bullshit, but why, like why is it that the bullshit resonates with people? Because it wouldn't be

propagated if it didn't resonate with people. And so that says a deep question that I keep asking myself, like why is the idea of a horrorsh murderer so much more compelling to people than the idea of just a regular human, regular human female who didn't have anything to do with this and was very very confused and scared in the days leading up to her arrest, Like you know, I've just been thinking, is that I'm wonder there's a general phenomenon here that no one's ever really talked about

an open, honest discourse. But if you look to see what some of the most popular porn is, it's degrading beautiful women. You know it allows there's something, there's something there that I think there should be more research on. I'm not saying I know the final answer. I understand what's deep beneath it. But even my mentor I've never met, but my mentors in since my intellectual hero Abraham Maslow wrote a whole essay on pornography in the fifteen and sixties.

And by the way, I'm not anti pornography, and I'm no proof, but I'm just noting a psychological phenomenon that I that even Maslow noticed in the fifties and sixties. He said, there's something where we elevate our self esteem by getting back at all those women who rejected us, all those beautiful women. There might be something there. Yeah, you know, I actually think that there there is something there, and I would love to look and I want to

ask my dominatrix friends about this. But yeah, because like I was actually going to bring that up. Yeah, well, because it's interesting because it's the flip side. But that flip side only exists because I think there's that predominant like let's punish the beautiful woman. And I do feel like I have myself like had to sort of get over that ichy feeling that maybe one of the reasons why the police were going after me was because there

was this weird sort of pornographic interest in me. Like I had this like weird feeling like are they just focusing on me because like they have weird sexual feelings towards me that they don't know how to do like when they say things like oh, I had a gut instinct that she was guilty, It's like did you or did you have a dick instinct? Like what's going on here? No? Look absolutely and there's another injustice here which is a

complete misrepresentation of the BDSM community. And this really upsets me. Yeah, I have a whole episode in my podcast Labyrinths about this. Did you listen to it? I listened to it. I listened to it. I wanted to bring this up. Can you tell a little bit about your experience of dom con? I loved domkon. So my experience with dom con was that I, at the time, I was exploring this idea like what is up with this idea about a sex game? Like why was that so titillating to people? What even

is a sex game? And also like do people who take part in sex games to like they do they how do they feel about the way that their sort of world was represented in my case and vilified in my case? And so I reached out to the premier dominatrix ever who like came up with Dom Cohan mistress Ian and what I found a legend and this like amazing person who survived cancer and have done like so

many amazing things. And I reached out to her and I was just like, hey, so I don't know, I don't know if this makes like makes me a creeper or anything, but I just was wondering if you could tell me more about this world and what's going on there. And she was so warm and so kind and was like, you will be like, just come visit see for yourself. You'll be my special guest. I'll take care of you.

I'll introduce you to people. And she really like just over those days that I was there, I went to the New Orleans one, which was it was nicely small and sort of intimate, and everyone like there knew each other.

It was really great, and you know, clearly I was like exposed to new ways of thinking about even just not just sex, but about relationships like my husband and I came away from that experience being like, you know, what we should have like codes of conduct and ways of communicating outside of the bedroom to determine like, okay, in this in this world right now, we are going to like focus on each other and we're going to

be really really clear communicators with each other. But there are some times in life where I have to get work done and you have to be a second priority for me for this hour, and like we need to communicate that so no one's feelings get hurt and no one you know, like there's lots of ways that we miscommunicate with each other just because we're not being explicit

about what our expectations are. And you can totally like do away with all of the hurt that can come from not being good communicators by just being more explicit about your expectations. So that was like my big takeaway. Not to mention, I got flogged by Mistress Cyan and that was really cool. Well hopefully there were no video cameras there, yes, and I was really terrified about that.

But again, BDSM community, like they are all about consent and they're not going to talk about your business without your consent. So good on them. Yeah, consent, and you know there's care, there's care, deep deeply intertwined with it. So I gave you a battery of psychological tests to take, and you were such a good sport these tests. So let me reveal some of these roles and we could talk about them if you do you agree with them.

So first is top. Your top three sources of self actualization are The first one is continued freshness of appreciation. How has that played a role in your life? I guess I feel lucky that whenever I encounter these, whenever I counter something beautiful, I'm not bored. Like even if I see the same even if I listened to the same song that I really love, I still really love it, and I appreciate that I'm sort of built that way. So I feel grateful that I feel gratitude for things,

and I don't take things for granted. So I think that that's a fair assessment. Oh. One thing I wanted to note before we go into these results is my husband disagreed with my results in many ways, and only can we bring him on? Can we bring him off? Yeah? Sure, he's just outside. I can wave him down. Hey, Bill, you want to come in this, No, I want to hear what he Yeah? Yeah, he's great. Now. His name is Christopher, Christopher Robinson. Yeah, here, I'll scooch over so

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now back to this show. Hey, do you go by Christopher or Chris? Hello? Okay, Hi? Do you go through Christopher? Do you go by Christopher? Chris or Christopher either one? Okay? Cool? Hi, I'm Scott. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Scott. So, Amanda says you disagreed with some of her test results. We didn't get to the dark light tryad stuff yet. I'm curious to your thoughts on that. But so, can you kind of hang around as we as I go through all the results of Amanda and can you hear

a dialogue between you two about it? I'm sure? Wait, oh I can't hear. But yeah, well, here there's another pair of headphones. That another pair of headphones, because this is fun we have So Amanda, what what I said to him is you know we'll go one by one and kind of here, I have a dialogue here what he thinks. Okay, so you tell me first whether or not you agree with it or not, and then I'll ask him. Okay, cool, Yeah, so you just talked about

continuing depressions. I appreciate it. Do you agree, Chris, do you agree about very very high? She scored actually one hundred percent. Yes, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. And then the second one was truth seeking. Yeah, I'm kind of a I'm kind of a stickler for that, where I am I even to like my my own chagrin or my own difficulties, where like I understand that sometimes the easiest way is to just say, you know whatever, like that's true, that isn't true, it doesn't really matter, Let's just move on.

And I'm kind of a stickler for like, no, I want to know what's true, like what is really going on here? And I do that because I have a sense of responsibility towards the truth that and by that I mean I have a sense of I feel a sense of responsibility to humans. So I feel like truth seeking is a humanitarian thing for me, where if I am always always looking for the truth, that means I'm always looking for the truth of the humanity of the

subject that I interested in. And if I'm not willing to always be a stickler for the truth, that means that I may overlook the humanity of someone who I'm interacting with. It's the weird moral dimension you have to truth seeking, whereas for me it's more of a you're just a scientific pursuit sort of thing. Yeah, you're like more of the principle of the thing. She scored very high on truth seeking. Yeah, no, I get that she's scored very high. Yeah. Yes, that was her second highest.

The third one was interesting authenticity. Hmmm, authentic? How does that play out? And what does authenticity even mean? What does that mean to you? Well, I think that might be in part due to the fact that I have, for the majority of my adult life been accused of being something that I'm not, and I've been accused of being inauthentic and being a liar, and so it's become like, I think I've overcompensated on the other end of that to be like, no, like judge me all you want,

Just judge me based upon the truth. And so if you're going to if I'm going to give you the opportunity to judge me or anything else, like here it is here, let me lay it all out for you like I've got and that has But also at the same time, like even when I was a kid, I wasn't like a person who like my mom tells this story about how like the one time I ever lied to her about something, she sort of didn't know what

to do. Like I was like six maybe, and I lied about drawing a stick figure on the wall, and like she I said, she was like, Amanda, did you do this? And I was like no, no, no, And so she let it go for a half an hour, and then like a half an hour later I came to her sobbing, like I did it. I'm sorry. That's

kind of like what happened. That's kind of like what happened with you in the interrogation, is you they pressured you so much you signed something, but you felt such an overwhelming sense of this is not true that you a letter If I'm right, did you write a letter note to one of the up detectives or something being like, look, this wasn't true. Yeah, they and they wouldn't listen to me. I wrote that note specifically because I kept saying, but can I talk to you again? Can I talk to

you then? Please? What I said wasn't, I can't, I have to recant like blah blah blah, and they just were not interested. So I asked for a piece of paper to write it down. Yeah, it just made me think of that, and it seems analogous in a way. Yeah, so yeah, right right to the So the next one. Look, I'm not supposed to say the fourth one because it's the top three, but the fourth one is. So it was actually tied. Is it tied? Yeah, it's literally literally tied.

And that's equanimity. And I think this one is very very relevant to your whole life. You have mentioned that you're sort of have a stoic sort of sensibility people when they said things like, oh, well, you didn't act how a normal person would act if someone you know, this equanimity aspect to you, in a way is what helped get you through so much of this, right Yeah, yeah, absolutely, like trying to not just letting my emotions take over me,

but letting them be information that I process. And I don't know, it's interesting because I used to refer to this as like deer in headlights syndrome where I would just sort of like when something happened, I would just be like h and I would sort of need to process this all this information. But it but I think equanimity is a nicer way of saying it. I think her self assessments on the sort of light triad things

are now we're going to get mostly accurate. Right. I think there's okay, there's a bit of but let's go through them. Don't don't don't, don't, don't spoiler work. I feel like you're I feel like you're a spoiler over. And this is the most this is what everyone came for the popcorn. Your psychopath score you ready dunt dun't duh is extremely low, extremely low. You are actually not a psychopath. I try. You are not a psychopath according

to my test. And you actually came out quote strongly tip toward the light side, strongly tiped toward the light side in my light for a dark tria test. Now, for my fellow nerds out there, I took a science these are there's a scientific valid test. It's not just like like the Meyer Briggs, which isn't excited about this. This takes a well validated dark triad research and my new construct the light triad, and looks and looks within her at all of these things. Looking mixing matching is

to come out with an output. So the output is your strongly tip to the light side. But let's go through each of the facets because they are super interesting that your results. The first one is faith in humanity. This is the one fascinates me, and you remind you. So you scored very, very high in faith in humanity, which is believing in the fundamental goodness of humans. And you reminded me of an Anne Frank quote, which is

in spite. So she wrote this in her journal as the Nazis were really coming up the stairs to kill her. She wrote in her journal, in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. So that's a direct quote from her journal. And you made me think of that. So, Amanda, you still score high in faith in humanity in spite of everything. Can you kind of explain a little bit about that? How do you you feel about that? I mean, I feel like I

don't have evidence to point to necessarily. I just have an intuition that everyone is doing the best they can even when they're not doing the best they can. Like everyone, I feel like if I put myself in the shoes of people who have made even like horrible, horrible decisions and terrible mistakes the vast majority of the time, I don't believe that they're sitting there cackling about how evil

they're being. I think that they're telling themselves a story about what they're doing, how they're doing, how what they're

doing is the right thing to do. And I think that what that means is that very often we are all making horrible mistakes and doing, you know, perpetrating lots of harm towards each other, but we're not doing it because we want to be hurting each other, Which makes me think that like there is deep down a fundamental impulse for humanitarian there is a fundamental humanitarian impulse in

all of us. The other side of that is like the moral luck question, which we explore, was that in the one bite of the elephant episode, Yeah, one bite of the elephant at a time, Yeah, do you know Thomas Nagel's moral luck? So you know, even the talking about the nazis from a moment ago, Like the whole question of well if that Nazi prison guard happened to be born in Argentina instead of Germany, would he have

become that guy? You know, I'm probably not right. How much does do those external twists of fate to turn in what our moral path is in life? And when you take that into account, especially neither of us believe in free will? Is another side of this. When you get rid of free will conversations, right, then you know,

moral moral responsibility seems to go out the window. And in one light, but by the other light, no one's really No one's really morally culpable because you're just the little meat robot doing what you were programmed to do, or through the vicissitudes of quantum fluctuations. Right, Either way, it's hard to blame people and hate them for their actions, right, it actually leads to compassion. I think, yeah, I hear you.

I don't know if we want to open that. I highly recommend our usher's listening to my two part series with Sam Harris where we vehemently disagree about this. Yeah I would, yeah, yeah, yeah. However, I read something in one of your blog posts I think is illustrates your own sense of compat even for Rudy Gueyde. So you had said that what you're angry about is that he just won't admit, and you know, save a lot of people a lot of heartache and uncertainty, and just you

know that he just won't admit that he killed Meredith. However, you say, I doubt he ever will, But if the day he does, I will celebrate his rehabilitation and wish him the best on a new and honest chapter of his life. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. I thought that kind of speaks maybe a little bit to your instincts there for not defining anyone by their worst case,

even Rudy. Yeah. Yeah, And I stand by that because I think the thing that anyone who has experienced harm most wants from the person who harmed them is an acknowledgment of the harm. Because at that point I can say, all right, we at least are on the same page that what happened was shouldn't have happened, and that I have been harmed, and that you are not sort of pretending that that harm doesn't exist or that what you

did didn't cause direct harm to me. Because when someone doesn't like admit to the harm that they've caused, it makes the person who has been harmed feel first of all, like they're being blamed for their own harm, but also it makes them feel unsafe, like, oh, if you don't acknowledge what you've done, are you going to do it again? Like if you didn't do anything wrong, well, then who's to say whether or not you're going to do it again?

And so like that's that's the sort of key thing for me, Like people make mistakes and do horrible things all the time. That doesn't mean that it defines them. But what does matter from a trauma standpoint is the acknowledgment of the harm and of the action that caused the harm. Yeah, I truly wish Rudy would do this someday. No, Okay,

So back to your dark trianph course. So you score very very low in psychopathy, as I ready mentioned, which is callousness and cynicism, and then mackie velianism you score very very low, which is strategic exploitation and set. You know, everyone knows the Macavilian person. They're always scheming, right, They're always like everyone knows that person. Every time you talk to them, they're like, oh, you know, if we move that chess pond, then we can get this out of

that person. So you scored very well in that he scored very That's not who you are according to my test. However, Yes, however this is the most, perhaps the most. And we've been waiting. I saved this one for a last because I suspected this is maybe where you two disagree. Your narcissism score was above average. Yeah, was above it. Now it wasn't one hundred percent. It was sick. It was approaching sixty percent, but it was it was. It was

greater than average by twelve point four or five percent. Yeah, to be precise. Yeah, Now what do you two think of that? So I think that I, because of how much my life has been like because I've been accused of things that I didn't do, I potentially have become someone who has been deeply invested in my sense of self. And I worry then that, like it has my narcissism been you know, pushed up by like as a sort of trauma response, is a kind of like shield response

to something. And I do worry about that now, Chris, So you know, I want to hear what Chris has to say about this. I think she's one of the most selfless generous people I know, right, And I think one of the issues with any sort of self reported test is you have your own cognitive blind spots towards your own behavior, tendencies to inflate good qualities or diminish bad qualities, et cetera. But also there's things like imposter syndrome.

I think Amanda has a deep, deep case of imposter syndrome, and that I think she has a big difficulty seeing her her deeply positive traits. Actually, and if you were to look at the dms that come in, you know of people saying, Wow, you're such an inspiration to me, Like Amanda reads those and she's like, no, I'm not. You know, she doesn't she doesn't believe that though even if thousands of people are saying, wow, you're so strong and you really helped me change my life, that she

doesn't believe that. She doesn't have that that self belief. So the idea that she's narcissistic and thinks that she's a savior for people, it's not the Amanda I see. And I'm actually, what are the you know it's better than we do? What are the questions that score well? I certainly can't reveal that because that's actually telling this. It's like saying, give me the IQ test items. But

there's an interesting link here between that. I'm going to send you an article I run Scientific America on the link between a particular kind of narcissism and imposter syndrome. It's not the kind of narcissism that most people are aware of, but it's one that I've conducted research for the past decade about and I've been trying to increase awareness about because it's the one that's most linked to psychopathology,

and that's called vulnerable narcissism. Now it makes me think, now I want to give you my vulnerable narcissism intent, but vulnerable narcissists. So most people when they think of narciss they think of the grandiose narcissist, which is chest thumping, extroverted trump okay, right, So they think of the you know, okay, I mean stereotypical, stereotypical I'm great, right, the person that screams on great. But and this is something my own

healing process, So this is a very human thing. I'm not I don't believe in separating we're narcissists from not narcissis. I think we're all have narissic tendencies, but a lot of people who have gone through trauma develop and we found this. We've published paper showing that early childhood trauma and violation of expectations lead to a vulnerable kind of narcisism where the person feels shame all the time, but the very so so shame is the number one marker

of it. And we found we're the first ones to publish a paper showing the linkage to imposter syndrome. So I'm actually going to send you I'll send you that scientific I'll make a note to send you that scientific

American paper. And that makes sense, like the idea that like, you know, people are saying that they or like doing things to you, and you think, oh, they're doing it because it's me and I'm you know, they think I'm a bad person, and you're like, no, they're just they're just doing their thing and it has nothing to do with you. And so you are being a little bit of a narcissist by thinking that people are being you know, bad to you for whatever reason, Like is that what

you're talking about? It it's a smoke and fire thing, a bit. I think when the whole world tells you for years on end that you're an evil monster, right, it's I think it's hard for anybody to not go is there anything there you know? Or And also but like I think it's totally true that I'm guilty of this. Where Like I when people are like out about in the world and I noticed that they recognize me, I think, are they talking to me because they've heard of this

horrible story about me? Or are they or are they just talking to me because I happen to be getting mushrooms at the grocery store next to them grabbing a cucumber, Like I do worry about that. So I this is exactly what I helped my clients with. So I feel like I'm giving Like do I slip into psychotherapy mode all of a sudden? But but can I give you some advice, just just to help you with your your healing if I can in any way. The number one point of why vulnerable narcisism, like at the root of

vulnan narcisism is an uncertain self esteem. Okay, there's literally literally there's an entire handbook called the Handbook of Uncertain Self Esteem there's a whole research field on this. I suspect that's what you're plagued with. And and if you could find a way of grounding yourself more with with self compassion exercises. I love Sharon Salzburg's Loving Kindness meditations.

If you can just ground yourself with more of an inner presence that isn't doesn't need to be validated by others, you know where you're you don't lead with uncertainty about your self esteem, but you lead with your authenticity that you alreadys score high on. The more you can just lead with your authenticity, the less you'll feel these vulnerable, narcissistic characteristics. Does that make sense? Yeah? No, that's that's actually really great. And I think that that that does

ring very true to me. I mean I'm almost like getting sad. Yeah, I mean there's hope here. But I'm saying there's hope. Ye A thing she's been grappling with ever since this Italy trauma has been And it's just something I think we talked about with LeVar Burton actually in that in that season one episode of Labyrinths that Amanda worries that the most you know, notable thing about her forever will be a thing that didn't that she

didn't do, and that happened to her. And it's a it's a most people don't have the opportunity to deal with that strange circumstance where the whole world associates your name and your identity and who you are and why you matter with this thing that has nothing to do with you. And she often wonders, will I ever contribute to the world in any way that will matter more and that will have an impact more than this other thing that is not of me? And but I have

a radical I have a radical suggestion. And this may sound like I've just slipped into Oprah mode, but I have a radical, radical suggestion. Had it ever occurred to you that, in this precise moment, you're enough? No, Like that's it. Yeah, I do feel like your truth seekret had entertained that hypothesis for a second, you know, like maybe this precise moment, it's like, oh wait, I'm enough. Everything else is just gravy from here. Yeah, I'll try that.

I'll do a meditation on that today. Thanks. Awesome, awesome, So, Chris, thanks so much for joining us for this. Do you have a man did you have I appreciate that a man, Do you have a Do you have another ten to fifteen minutes to talk about cognitive bias? I want to be really respectful of your time. Yeah, I'm going to hop out and attend to baby. Oh is she awake? Well, I'm just cool jack. Oh, okay, nice to talk to you. Thank you, Chris, Nice to you too. Didn't expect to

golf in that direction, but I'm actually glad. I'm glad I did. I'm glad it did you. No, I appreciate it too, because this is I feel like yours. Are you okay? Yeah, Yeah, I'm okay. It's this is like an ongoing conversation between me and Chris because, like I've often been somewhat astounded by like how confident he is in himself in the sense that, like, you know, the

sort of things that would get me down. He's just like, well, I know that I'm a good writer, and I know that I'm like this, that or the other, so I don't have to worry about whether or not the world is acknowledging that I am or not. And I struggle with that more where I feel like I have to prove myself constantly, and I'm not giving myself as much space to just prove myself to myself. Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you. But you know, of feeling will come

from feeling whole inner. You know innerlies. Great. Well, so you've been really interested in cognitive bias and you learned a whole lesson. Now you really wrote a nerdy blog post that you could probably submit to a scientific journal with this this bias, I mean you gave you know, did you hear Mike chat with Connoment on this podcast? By any chance? Have you listened to that one? You know, he's Dana Common obviously, uh, one of the co founders

leading researchers of the cognitive bias literature. But you you had new ones that I had never seen before gone down you did well. I appreciate you. You're in a safe nerdy space here, so yeah, you're You're welcome. So you look, I thought this was really interesting. You literally coined a new bias that I think is really a good one, and it's called the single victim fallacy. Can you talk a little bit about what that is because I think it'll blow people's minds because it's almost dawn

on people that it could be multiple victims. Yeah, yeah, well, and I think that just arises from these black and white narratives. But what I observed in my own experience was this false notion that if Meredith, the young woman who was raped and murdered, is a victim, then anyone else who is within the vicinity of the story cannot be a victim. And similarly, like if people say, well, Amanda's a victim, like people have treated this case as if I'm not a real victim, that there's a real

victim and then there is me. And I wanted to point out just because Meredith was the original victim in this case doesn't mean that there couldn't be other people who are victimized from this story. And I wanted to point out this this like black and white thinking process where it's like there seems to be this sort of zero sum bias that like if there is if there's victimization on my part, that that somehow takes a way way from the victimization on Meredith's part. And I want

to point out, like that's absolutely not true. But I continually have that thrown at me constantly by people online who say, like any time that I am asserting my victim, like how I have been victimized. I am somehow diminishing the victimization of Meredith. And I push back against that constantly, and I and I to the point that I felt like I had to define a whole new bias like

about it. And I think that that happens a lot in wrongful conviction cases, where there is this tendency for people to say, well, because the family of the of the original victim needs closure, we cannot explore the victimization of someone who has been accused. Yeah, there's there's such a horrible paradox here that Saul Cousin or Saul Cassen has pointed out, and that's that being innocent, literally just being innocent actually can put you an increased risk of

not being seen as innocent. You know, you even making this point, some British tablois be like, oh, defensive, defensive, Amanda, right, so you should he almost can't win, right, Like you know, it's like, what am I not supposed to defend my innocence? You know, like I should just shut up? You know what's the alternative here? You know that I just shut up? So yeah, that's tough. Yeah, do you, are you familiar. I do know Saul Cassen because I know him personally

and he reached out to you when you're in jail. Yeah. Yeah, He's a really great guy and has done a tremendous amount to help me with to process my experience because I what goes on in interrogation rooms was completely foreign to me, and he very much after sort of hearing me out what I what I experienced, shared his research with me and I was just blown away. So anyway, well, thanks for telling me about his work because I read some of his papers found really interesting this paper he

wrote on the psychology of confessions. Does innocence put innocence at risk? He said, Recent recent research suggests that actual innocence does not protect people across a sequence of pivotal decisions in pre interrogation interviews. Investigators commit false positive errors presuming innocent suspects guilty, naively believing in the transparency of their innocence. Innocent suspects we wave their rights. This is hard to say because there's a lot of innocence and

the despier because of their denials. Innocent suspects of sid highly confrontational interrogations. This looks like textbook Commanda Knox right like Olive, yeah, yeah, so so grateful for his work. Well, tell me about your keynote that you did at the American Psychology and Law Conference. Oh, I mean I am interested in how the question of why these things happen, and so when I'm invited to give a talk about this experience, I often will ask people like, well, what

about Like what about this experience? Actually it interests you? And looking at this, I was really happy to go to the Psychology in Law Conference because I this is the part about wrongful convictions that I am most keen on, Like why do first of all, innocent people end up

in this process? And how are how are these institutions sort of built not to not to, Like I mean, Saulcasen's research shows that there are lots of ways that innocent people are simply not accounted for, like in the interrogation room, where like if you make if someone accuses you of something and you say no, no, that's not that's not what I that's not what I did. Like the assumption is, oh, you're a guilty person who's lying,

and not that you're an actually innocent person. And so the ways that those course of interrogation techniques, which are very very effective at getting guilty people to confess to crimes, they're also very effective at getting innocent people to confess

to crimes. But beyond that, I'm also interested in not just the psychology of the innocent person, but the psychology of the prosecutor and the detective and why it is that they end up honing in on the wrong person, not out of a sense of, like you, outright evil or corruption, but out of a sense of like human fallacy. Because I again, like when I think back to my prosecutor, I was never satisfied with the idea that, oh, this is happening to me just because bad people are doing

bad things to me. Like, No, that's not what was happening. It was more complicated than that. And so I had to take into consideration, well, is there a kind of confirmation bias happening here when the evidence finally came in that showed that it was Rudy YadA and not me. Was there a conservativism bias where they had made an already assumption about what the case was and they were only willing to tweak it just enough to accommodate a new set of information, but not to contradict their previous

theory of the case. Like there are so many ways that you know, even just the perception of me as a human being can be best explained, like this ongoing perception of me as like a guilty person is due to the anchoring bias, the fact that the first piece of information that people have ever heard about me was that I was guilty of a terrible crime. And so even when new evidence has come forth revealing that not to be the case, people are biased towards the first

thing that they ever heard. And that explains a lot of the why of my experience. It doesn't really explain how to get out of it, but at least I have a better understanding of the human psychology behind my experience. Yeah, like I said, it's like you got a PhD in psychology through this whole situation. You're referring your proscertor referring to Giuliano Mignii, Giliano Manini. Come on, Scott, you used to sing Italian opera. You can do better than that.

You actually did it really well. Most people are like Juliana. If I sing it, If I sing it, I'll do a better job. Yeah. But my take of this this cat from watching the Netflix documentary is that he sees himself as the modern day Sherlock Holmes. You know, he's like, you know, he just had build up in his mind, you know, this whole like I'm going to be the

savior of the world like this. What goes to your point you said earlier, You know, people that do bad things don't think in their head, oh, I'm doing a bad thing. They think mostly it's usually I'm doing something for the greater good. I but there's a profound narcissism associated with a lot of those instances, because you think in your head that you and only you are going to save the world, and that leads to hubris, and

that leads to overconfidence, and that leads to subjectivity. Yes, which is what happened a lot up the kazoom in your case. Right, Yes, absolutely, But is there any chance for a reconciliation with him or Well, that's it's an intriguing question because it is something that I have been contemplating and pursuing for a long time. I can't say much about it, but yes, just because it's an ongoing project, but it is something that is deeply important to me.

The idea that I can basically confront my accuser and do so in a way that would be not antagonistic but sort of restorative. Well good, I really look forward to hearing something about that. Good for you for I mean, I'd like to see your reckons you talk to Rudy someday. Yeah, incredible. That would also be a very interesting experience. And I'm not very emotional in sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's not ready for that one. Yeah. I feel like I need

a little more time for that one. Yeah. Absolutely, we're not going to be like I know, we're bringing OUTTL drawer, ETL drawer, love ETL drawer. Yes, I know, I know. And I want to thank you so much for bringing to my attention these amazing, amazing researchers. Okay, so because you got me down rabbit holes, I was like, oh wow, the forensic science literature has some really serious problems. Yeah, right,

has some really serious problems. Yeah, he said. I just want to quote something ITTL said which I completely agree with. He said, there isn't a psychologist on this planet. He's referring a cognitive science psychologist, which is what I am. There isn't a cognitive psycholoist on this planet or any other planet who can come and say that judgment, perception or objective. It's one of the most basic cornerstones of psychology.

Yet the more you start to look into the literature, you realize just how much how many of these techniques, like even fingerprinting analysis, have never actually been scientifically validated. They've been used for over one hundred years, right, So, my gosh, like that's insane, right, like that we assume that all these techniques are just completely objective and they don't involve bias, when it turns out they very much do.

And should we talk about one of the seminal studies that he conducted along those lines, where he showed that fingerprint analysts, when given anonymous prints from cases they themselves analyzed ten years or so ago, they were asked to judge those same prints as a match or not, And when they are told that the suspect confessed, the results of their analysis often was in the opposite direction of what they themselves had said about those very prints when

they first analyzed them. That's shocking. Yes, I hope that everyone sort of like followed that. So like DNA e. A fingerprint expert did a study many years ago determined, you know, match or not match, then many many years later, was confronted with the very same prints and came up with a very different result based upon being told that the person had confessed to the crime. So I it's fat like. And this is why Saul Casson's work is so important and important, because whether or not a person

confesses is so so biasing to people. People just can't wrap their minds around an innocent person confessing to a crime, so they assume that that person now must be guilty, and even scientific experts are unable to separate their now

bias in their own objective looks at physical evidence. And so that's why etail Drawer proposes a solution which is linear sequential screening or unmasked sorry, linear sequential unmasking, where you only tell the forensic experts as much information as they need to know in order to do their job. The fingerprint expert doesn't need to know whether or not the suspect confessed or not in order to determine whether or not a fingerprint is a match. So just don't

give them that biasing information. That is that simple, Yeah, I mean, studies show possible error rates of one to four percent in fingerprint anolysis. There's a ten percent or more in paint, fiber and body fluid analysis alone. And then the more I dig into this, the more I realize all the problems with us. So here, this is one quote I came across. You don't tell the crime lab scientists doing the DNA, for example, what the suspect's DNA profile looks like until they've extracted the DNA from

the evidence profile for the victim. First. I mean it's like, duh, right, you hear that, You're like, of course, and yet that's not what the practice is. It's not what the practice is. Yeah, Lentini said that when Lentini this kind of methodology also helps eliminate unwitting or unconscious bias towards linking evidence to a suspect. So there's so many things that bring in subjectivity into this. And these are real lives that we're

talking about, yeah, that are being wrong for convicting. And I think that it's important to note that, like, again, it's an unconscious bias that's impacting these these experts and these detectives, like they're not knowingly and willingly making their lives easier and coming up with matches to the fingerprints because they heard someone confess that just information unconsciously buyas to them to seeing results objective results very differently, and

as a result, it is very very important to not not like to acknowledge that that's just the case. Like it's not saying some kind of moral question about a forensic expert. It's just simply this is a human problem. This is not a you or me problem. It's a human problem. And there's actually are you familiar with the psychopath Test by John Ronson? I mean, I'm sure you well, so absolutely so the yeah so I one of the co authors of the psychopath Test is one of my

co authors on our light try and papers. Great. Yeah, he came over. He came over to the light side. Cool. Yeah. One of my favorite jokes from that book is John Ronson said, as soon as I heard about confirmation bias, I started to see it everywhere. Yeah, so good. Yeah, it's also true, so so so true. And motivated reasoning, you see, motivated reasoning so much. There's a whole line

of research. I'm writing an article right now for Atlantic about this on moral tribalism and uh in group and group narcissism, and the extent to which we overlook the moral transgressions of people we see in are in group, but if we have perceived them as being in our out group, we will in ambiguous information, we'll see moral transgressions. Absolutely. So this is this is this is very important stuff, very important. Do you still write poetry? Is that? Do you?

Is that still in you? So? I have the most recent poetry that I have out in the world is a book of poems called the Cardio Tesseract that me and my husband wrote together. It's actually a kind of collection of poetry. Oh oh, Chris does poetry. He's lit like two master's degrees in poetry. Kind of guys, question like in our courtship would be reciting poems to me, Like that's how it worked. I'm sorry, I just forgot it. No, it's cool. It's cool. You didn't know. Why why would

you know? Yeah? No, So we're big poetry nerds. He above all is a huge poetry nerd and is constantly finding wonderful opportunities to share poetry with me. And one of he's he's not much of a singer, so with our daughter, like I do a bunch of singing at her, he recites her poetry. Love that, Yeah, I love that. As I told you earlier, I'm really interested in this field of post traumatic growth. So I kind of want

to leave with a question for you. Rabbi Harold Kushner, when he was reflecting on the death of his son, he said, quote, I am a more sensitive person, a more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of Aaron's life and death than I would ever have been without it. And I would give up all those gains in a second if I could have my son back, If I could choose, I would forego all the spiritual growth and depth which has come my way because of our experiences.

But I cannot choose. So one can always think, you know, in sort of the multiverse sort of thought experiment, what would Amanda Knox look? What would it be to who would she be today if this experience didn't happen with her? But you can't choose that, and you'll never know. So moving forward, you know, what are some of the areas of growth that you're most excited about and that you think genuinely came about that wouldn't have come about if

this didn't happen to you. That thank you for asking that, and I gosh, I've that makes me so sad also because it's like I'm a new I'm a new parent, so I'm like newly appreciating like the depths of that sadness. I'm really doing a great job making a fussy you are,

You're just like making all of us. Yeah, So I think that my greatest I mean even just becoming more attuned to the suffering of others is something that I don't know that I had a good grasp on before all of this, because, honestly, like I I, before everything happened in Italy, I lived a very very blessed life. I did not have difficulties. I am My family was

very close and very supportive. I had everything everything going for me, and I don't think I really understood the depths of loss and despair that human beings are capable

of and routinely experience. And so it gave me a lot of compassion for people who experience that, and especially for people who experience that in a very public way and have that sort of extra dimension of suffering put on them by people perceiving them as and judging them while they are experiencing the worst experience of their lives.

So that is something that I have a new sort of ingrained radar for and perspective on that I have found to be not just useful for myself, but also useful for people who reach out to me and feel really alone and isolated. There's like a special, special suffering when it comes to people who are not only experiencing tragedy or loss or trauma, but are being judged very publicly in the process. So no, that's actually a really

good point. Does this experience make you a little bit more skeptical when some some people are tried in the court of public opinion? So when everyone else is jumping on someone, does it make you more sensitive? Yes, one hundred percent. And I hate the idea, like it really bugs me out, the idea that some quality about yourself that you cannot control somehow makes it so that you aren't suffering, Like what are we talking about? Like, No, everyone who is being judged for some dramatic thing is

suffering and period. So I don't know it. Also, when people say things like oh, cancel culture, isn't real. I'm like, no, it is like people are constantly trying to like sort of pin down people for like a one either real or imagined transgression and like define that person entirely by

that thing and delete them, like literally cancel them. So I don't know, it's it's I feel like judgment in the public square is not treated with the amount of weight that it actually carries on the person who experiences it. Pylon culture is really real, and mob justice is often devoid of due process and proportional sentencing, and these are all reasons why we have a criminal justice system in the first place, and don't just deal with transgressors out

in the open like there's a reason for that. And so yeah, I am a firm believer that we should have we should be way more cautious about the court of public opinion and have a lot more skepticism towards it. Yeah, I very much agree. Well, it looks to me like the gestalt media narrative around you is changing. There seems to be something in the air. You know, the Rogan appearance,

if you know the New York Times profile. In our conversation today, my goal was quite simply for you to just show who you are, just to show who you are. I didn't have to do anything you are. You are who you are, and I wanted people to see that. Yeah, and well, thank you. You strike me as someone who's very, very deeply empathetic, and I would even say a poetic soul, like I feel like you have a poetic soul, right, It does that resonate with you? Yeah, totally, it does.

And the way that I interpret that is I feel like I see a lot of beauty even in the stuff that hurts, which is what I feel like a poet is constantly doing, is finding the beauty in the pain and not you know, reveling in it, but just like a acknowledging it. I feel like acknowledging is a really important part of my life now. Yeah. So Victor Frank will call that tragic optimism. It's finding the beauty

and meaning and tragedy. Thank you so much for coming to my podcast today, man, and I hope you feel like you were seen. I hope you feel seen. I totally feel seen today. Thank you very much. And You've given me a lot to think about, so I'll do that. I'll send you some follow up. Nerdy papers and things. Yeah, what I talked about today. Well, thanks all the best to you all right, take care. Thanks for listening to

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