What do you make it just like asked, missus, SAM Harris, Today I am speaking with Amanda knox. Amanda is a journalist and public speaker author of the new york times, bestselling memoir waiting to be heard. She is also a co host with her husband, Christopher robinson of the podcast cast labyrinth. Between two thousand and seven and twenty fifteen amanda spent nearly four years in italian prison

and eight years on trial for a murder that she did not commit. She has since become an advocate for criminal justice reform and media ethics, and she sits on the board of the frederick douglass project for justice anyway, was great to speak to amanda as you'll hear she's created a series for us on resilience over it. Waking Up- and I just find her story both heroin and fascinating by turns very instructive of a larger sociological phenomenon, which seems to rule our world at present when she was at the epicenter of it. Social media was just taken off, but now in the open waters of misinformation and reputational destruction in which we all now swim, mandarin strikes me as one of the canaries and the coal mine that we didn't recognize at the time, and now I bring you a man,

knox. I am here with Amanda knox. Amanda thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me so you've created a m. A wonderful series for us over at waking up on resilience and your qualifications to produce such a serious will soon become apparent. We're not gonna do a duplicate. What you did there and will am sure, we'll talk about resilience, but I just and pointing people over to waken up wherever their hearing. This sad, because you ve done something really wonderful force there can kill. I think we I can only imagine the boredom and fatigue that must attend your rehearsing all Details of this really grotesque injustice in your past, but I fear that most people, certainly many people, will recall just enough of your story to three

that you know where their smoke there's probably fire, and they they will mean it they'll. Don't know enough to know that you are in prison in ITALY and they will want recall if ever even knew it that you are wrong. We accused and that the wrongness of your conviction was a has been now fully established. So I really do think we we should just take it from the top and- and I will ask you what happened in italy, sure yeah. So what happened in ITALY? Well, this is back in two thousand and seven. I was twenty years old. I had recently arrived in this beautiful hilltop town called persia in the center of italy to study abroad, and I was there for about five weeks. I had just moved in with the

these three other young women, two of whom were italian law and turns about you, know six or seven years older than me, and then there was another exchange student from Britain who was one year older than me named meredith, and we all live together in this little cottage cut him on the. In very near the middle of town. It was just a few steps away from my university and we were doing the exchange, girls, life and then on november. First, two thousand seven. So the day after halloween I went and state over at my Why friend's house and my other two roommates laura and Filomena? They also I think I load I went to rome and filipino was staying with her boyfriend anyway long story, short most of the people in our house were gone at the time it was.

A holiday in ITALY and of the lot of people going home to his their families, and a local burglar took advantage of this fact, and broken too, are cottage into our home, and it's not fully certain if meredith was already home at that time are not. My guess is that she wasn't. My guess is that this local burglar, named Rudy good day had already broken into our apartment by the time she came home and he as soon as she got in to her room and got settled he snuck in on her and hacked her and he sexually assaulted her and brutally brutally murdered her stabbing her many times, and then he fled the country adopted a false identity and wasn't arrested until a few weeks later,

and you know this is a really horrific thing that happened. It definitely shocked the entire town. That said this of all the violences they're out there in the world. It's not the most uncommon. Unfortunately, young women get attacked by young men when their vulnerable. I think something that was very unusual was that she was home like this. This happened in her own bedroom, so. You know it was a shocking crime, it certainly shocked every one of us. I was the one room mate who first came home to discover that there was a crime scene, and I think one of the things that is a little bit unclear to people is that when I came home I did not find meredith's body right, like I I came home, and I found that my house had been broken into, but I didn't know that meredith had been murdered as soon as

I realise at my house had been broken into. I went back to my boyfriend's apartment. I grabbed him had him common check it out with me. He helped me call the police, because I don't even know how to call the police time and the police arrived, and why when they had arrived. When my other roommates had arrived, they all broke down meredith's bedroom door, which was locked and discovered her body and I actually didn't even see into the room. I never saw her body in person, thank goodness, whereas one of my roommates dead and immediately just lost her mind and this this shocking out of the blue, like seemingly utterly out of the blue violence that we couldn't understand, we didn't know who possibly could have done this, I wouldn't know why a meat

Lee alot of us started wondering if there was a serial killer on the loose, and my first instinct was while first, I guess my first first thought when I was putting together, through overhearing people yelling and in italian that meredith had been murdered was oh, my thank god, I'm alive being has. If I had been home that night, I very well could have been murdered. Two, and I wanna like emphasise at this time. I was absolutely not fluent in italian. I had taken two or three masters of introductory italian in college, so I had very minimal vocabulary alike. I remember I I had learned how to you tell a story about little red writing. Hood like I could recite a story about little red writing hood, but I certainly could not talk about

legal things or police things. Or I didn't have the vocabulary to describe a crime scene. and so when I was brought in to the police station, I did my very very best to try to describe to them why I had seen when I came home and why I had called the police and everything, and I spent five days with the police pretty much nonstop. I think the hours they were able to confirm that I was in the police station or in police custody undergoing questioning was fifty three hours. Over five day, is so a lot of time that I was just with the police. Answering the questions answering a lot of the same questions over and over again with different police officers. I was brought back to my house to sort of go through a knife drawer in

house they were asking me if I had I saw any knives missing and, an emotional roller coaster. For me, I I sort of went back and forth between feeling, like was utterly surreal and I couldn't believe this was happening and then. Suddenly getting really hit by just how horrible and real everything was Meanwhile, my mom is calling me and telling me to come home or to go to germany and with my aunt, it was really unclear how safe. I was an I really put myself in the hands of the police at this time. They reassured me that I was not only safe with them, but that I was important to them. The embers

as this multiple times that I was their most important witness, because I was very close to meredith, I lived with her. I was closer to her age. I was also exchange student and I was the one who came home and found the crime scene before any one ass, was able to touch it, and so they really wanted me to relive coming into my house and noticing what seemed off what didn't seem off? Where were things placed, and I I spent a lot of time dislike racking my brain for just the most tiniest details, because they kept telling me any small detail any little thing that may seem insignificant to you could make or break this case and when I ask them, for example, if I should go home like my mom, was asking me to go home. They told me that I absolutely should not because they really needed me to be a part of this investigation.

and a one question, and so on the point of the language barrier was there a competent, interpreter with you when you were talking to the cops or were you just trying to make the best of your bad italian at this point for fifty hours, so there were two the interpreters who were assigned to this entire case and they were required to be their fur to interpret half a dozen people who spoke only english. That included me and included all of meredith. british friends. Anyone who is close to meredith was interviewed at this time and so there were to enter workers on staff. I dont know if they were both there, always at the same time, but what that ended up. Looking like was that sometimes there was an interpreter, and sometimes there wasn't and most most of it,

I am. I did not have the benefit of having an interpreter there with me and particularly in my final interrogation. Really crucially in my final interrogation, I did not have an interpreter there with me until the very end, and that interpreter wasn't even actually an official interpreter. They were just a police officer who happened to speak english you think this would have played out totally differently. Had you not spoken a word of italian if it just if they ve you couldn't even again to have a conversation on your own, without and without a common interpreter gosh, you know that's a really interesting point, I think absolutely because it would have

wired there being a interpreter there, and so much would have changed first, while they wouldn't have been able to interview me for fifty three hours over five days like it would have been impossible to so this, the just the pace and the amount of intense conversation with me, would have been limited so and that, furthermore, the the thing that really that spurred the police to really sis I may I again what what spurred the police thoroughly suspect me on top of anybody else. There was this text message that I sent to my boss during my final interrogation or not dream of foundations. I became. during my final interrogation, but during the night of the murder. I was supposed to go and work at this local pub and

the slow night again because was the day after halloween. Most people were not going out. So my boss, texted me in the evening and said: hey, you don't have to come in and I responded him in my broken italian sheriff though she buddy I'm up without a b one said arthur, which means certainly I'll see. You later, then, have a good night and the problem with my translation was that again it was broken italian. It was my attempt to say what I just said, but the police interpreted what I said to mean: ok, certainly I'll see you I'll see you later tonight then have a good night now and or have a good evening, and so they interpreted it radically differently and had there been an interpreter there, that would have been able to be clarified. But I think your point is really really important, because I thought that because I could speak a tie,

you, bet of italian, that it was my duty to just tough it out, even when I wasn't sure if I was being understood and various times, I was given the impression that I was not understood, and I also- like I needed to try. My heart is to understand them and I am absolutely positive that there were misinterpretations on both sides of what, being sad ma. Am I remember at a certain point in my interrogation when things were getting really really heated, I settled in English. I don't know what the fuck is going on right now and one of the police officers, who is there just yelling at me, said five I know fuck fuck you and he started yelling at me and swearing at me and because he and understand why I had said the word fought. Just thought I was swearing at them, so I think it was made astronomically worse, because the police sort

I assumed that they were allowed to interrogate me without an interpreter, because I could speak the barest traces of italian and I thought that because they were doing that, I should be able to use to hold my own and be there for the sake of the investigation and release her tragic case of a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing. Ok, so I dont want to relieve you from your time line here but term. One more question at this point at what point, if recall. Did it dawned on you that you were a suspect, the orange just being encouraged to be their best possible witness, but you are now

under suspicion. So this is gonna sound, really dumb, but I didn't know that I was a suspect until I was brought before a judge days later, because in the midst of this interrogation again it was- I was constantly being referred to as this witness, and they made it clear to me that they thought that I was withholding information from them and that, like zoo, I think I need to go a step. Take a step back and to say I was brought in not because they wanted to question me, but actually because they wanted to question my boyfriend Raffaele with whom I was staying. Yeah, because my mouth or my house had been turned into a crime scene, and so they called him and at like ten thirty at night and because I was afraid to be alone anywhere. I accompanied him to the police station, and I was my plan was just to.

wait in the waiting room and do some homework while he answered a few questions for them. Well, while his interrogation was taking place, it was going longer than I thought it would. I didn't understand, why was take so long and little did I know I did not know at this time. They were a full blown interrogating him telling him that he was an idiot for, covering for me that they knew that I was lying in, that I was involved somehow and that he was my alibi, and so they were basically is trying to break him and get him to turn on me. Then. Here I am sitting in the waiting room and a cop approaches me asks me what I'm doing here I am, I tell him waiting for raffaele to finish questioning, and he said well as long as you're here, you might as well answer some questions for me and set me up in an office.

I've been in and been question in from multiple times and a woman takes a woman police officer serve takes control the situation. It asks me recount everything all over again. Where was I the night of the murder. What do I do amber what was. I do what was I doing in the morning after words. Just basically again ask me the same questions over and over again and it started out as if she seemed to think that I just didn't remember everything correctly like maybe I had mistaken the days it Ben days, since I this had happened, so she wanted to make sure that I really remember If it was this day or that day, and then she would and me to be very specific about time. Like she asked what the exact time did you have dinner and what exact time did you watch a movie and she was very much take

less about this time line, and I couldn't perfectly give her a timeline. I wasn't looking at the clock every second of that night, so I was imperfectly attempting to establish this time line and then she she told me that she knew that I was lying and that she knew that I knew more than I was saying and that you regard an interpreter with you at this moment, ass still in your your very basic italian. This is just me and her talking and I I feel like this is a misunderstanding, a thumb act. I remember you know even years after this, I remember blaming myself for how this whole interrogation went off the rails, because I was thinking, oh my god

at my italians, not good enough, and that's why she's so mad at me. What I didn't know is that you know already going into this interrogation. They had decided that I was guilty. Somehow they had already tapped my phone, for instance, they had not tapped anyone else's phone, they had brought in my boy friend to try to get him to turn on me. So this is not you know, just them questioning me off hand like they had. ere ideas about me being involved or having knowledge about this crime that I hadn't share? I wasn't forthcoming with, and so she was trying to pressure me to be forthcoming with this information an eye. What I understood understand now years later is that she thought I knew who the murder or was in that. I wasn't telling them, and so they kept pressuring me too. She, like

talk about who even to imagine who could have possibly committed this crime. Meanwhile they take my phone. They ask me to fork over my phone. I do and they go through my phone and find this text message that I sent my boss, Patrick the the night the murder, and at first I dont, even when I didn't even remember, having sent that text message. It was just not at the top of my mind. They said. Yes, you sent this text message what you made an appointment to meet with this person named patrick, whose patrick why're you covering for him. What you know. What did he do really insinuating like here? Is this part send that we know you met with on the night of the murder and your covering from him. Why are you covering from him? What a horrible thing did he do to you? You know we know you met with them. Tell us what patrick dead. This went on and on, and on means saying that I did not meet with patrick, but they didn't believe me and at a certain point

they finally bring in this interpreter whose actually police officer and she gets the on down of, what's going on, I try to explain to her desperately that they have misunderstood me and she looks at me and says. Actually I think I know what's going on. I once was in this terrible car accident and all I can remember from It- is that I was driving along and then all of us, I woke up in the hospital and I think that's what happened to you. I think you were subjected to something very, very traumatic and you don't actually remember what happened and so now you know the com station sort of chefs and they go amanda. Try to imagine what the truth is like you don't

clearly remember what the truth as we know that you met with patrick that night. We know that you know something about this crime, but you don't seem to remember because you're so traumatized- and here I am I've- been answering the same questions for five. Is my answers are never sufficient to them. I'm six thousand miles from home, I'm exhausted it's the middle of the night and at a certain point I start to trust the police more than I trust myself. I start to feel crazy in I've never felt more insane. Then I did in this moment, because I was trying to remember something that I couldn't remember, and there is a certain point where one of the police officers were standing behind me and she is she slapped me in the back of the head and just said, remember and slapped me again and said remember and in this sort of state of desperation I pieced together broken fragments.

memory to try to remember what they were asking me to remember, and it wasn't a memory it wasn't. I didn't in my mind, see Patrick the mumbai murdering ass, it was in. It was kind of like an incoherent monti. Age. I had like the vision and of the outside of my boyfriend's apartment, and then I had, vision of the basketball court that was between my house, and the university, and I had a vision, not even of patrick but of his coat. And it's so illogical and but it was me attempting to make sense of what they were telling me and from this guard old, incoherent montage. The police then went to their computer typed.

A sort of a version of it that was more coherent and told me to sign it, and I did and a few hours later they brought in the prosecutor, who I did even know was a prosecutor the time they said that it was the public on many state or the political. Many stereo was there to speak with me and I didn't know who this was I thought it was the mare, maybe my public minister, so here he comes in and he just wants to talk to me. I am told so I say okay and he wants to know if I, I heard meredith scream and I remember telling him I don't know, I don't think I remember hearing meredith scream and then he says. Well, how could you not have heard meredith scream- and I said well- I guess I heard me Scream then, like you, it was it was so much of me at this point

being utterly suggestible and just trying to connect the dots and of what they were telling me as if it were true. Meanwhile, like my mom, they had taken my phone I had placed it on the table in front of me. My mom was on her way to italy to be there like and again they had tapped my phone, so they knew this to be true. They had listened into my, phone calls and they knew my mom was arriving the next day. So the morning roles around my mom is calling me from rome and they won't. Let me answer the phone and from there a your question was. When did I know that I was a suspect, and I I bring all of this- I I sale of this to say that what's potentially, this is really hard to understand, but even at this point I didn't know that I was a suspect. They never said that

I was in trouble or alike, I guess what they said was. I was in trouble for not telling them the whole truth, and they told me that if I didn't tell them the whole truth, I would never see my family again and they wanted to know why was covering for somebody, so it very much felt like they again thought I was this most important witness and- and they just needed to help me run member that truth for them. So, even when they stripped me naked and took photographs of me and poked in prodded, my genitals even when they put handcuffs on me and let me in a police car. They told me that I was this witness and they told me they. They told me that they were bring me to make sure that there weren't signs that I had been sexually assaulted, like it was still in this sort of space where they were trying, figure out if I was also a victim of the crime as well, and maybe I was so traumatized- I didn't remember,

assaulted And- and and they brought me into this police car and drove me out of the city into the country. Side to this prison, which I didn't know, was a prison. They said that they are taking me to a holding place for my own protection and they know photograph of photographed me. They took my finger prints and they brought me to a cell, and I wasn't sure how long this was going to be. They told me. It was only going to be a few days that I would get to see my mom soon. I kept asking about my mom and they left me there and then a day or two later I was brought before a judge who finally said to me: you are accused of murdering meredith cursor. How do you plea- and that was the first then I learned what was actually going on

and I was the first time I even was introduced to my lawyers like I walked into a room where there was a judge. There were my lawyers, there is the prosecutor, the police officers, everyone was there. I have two seconds where my attorney say where your attorneys, your mother, were in contact with your mother, dont say anything I hadn't even had a chance to talk to them. Yet and then I look to the judge. The judge tells me that that I am accused. How do I plea and my jaw just drops and I wanted to say that I am innocent and this is all a big misunderstanding. But here are these attorneys that are in touch with my mom. They told me to not say anything so I say I don't say anything and then the hearings over and I'm taken back to my prison cell, and it's only after that that I get a chance to speak to my attorneys or speak to my mom, and it was just this.

From the gatt go. This thing that was so much bigger than me, and it was not a few days. It was one thousand four hundred and twenty eight days, but I stayed in that prison because of a huge misunderstanding at the very beginning, while switcher com ask experience is interesting, as I have just watch the documentary on you and on netflix, which obviously covers all this ground. But much of what you do said is new to me and it gives a a much clearer picture of the proximate com of what amounts to a fast confession. Resolute like that fast Patients are a thing and end there, They really are in a disconcerting and and hard to understand phenomenon. I'm sure there many pass into producing a false confession, but here that the one

you just described is one I've, never really thought of which was that your basically it has. framed for you that you are a witness and may yourself be a victim who is suffering some kind of a catastrophic failure of men marie and now that you're either urged that the pressure is being put on you, too free associate and think of anything that you either you can pieced together. To put you, you know back in the scene of the crime and you know you add the add to that- the language barrier and the whatever was on it. paper, you signed it some any- I mean this. Is you and I I just watched a documentary on you last night? I didn't know any of that, so while it yeah now that I know better about false confessions and thus psychology that is a part of false confessions. Eighteen, I didn't for a long time, and I spent years in prison

feeling outer utterly baffled myself, because I didn't understand what has just happened to me and I thought that There was something uniquely broken about me. Then I had just something was wrong with me, or I was a coward or at like it's. It's not like. I was sitting there knowingly and willingly making stuff up just to appease the cops right like I had internalized what they telling me and I was trying to genuinely make sense of what they were telling me, and I was scared like was scared at the idea that something horrible happened to me and that I had witnessed something horrible and couldn't remember it, and I was desperate at that point and to know what was genuinely true, and I am doubted my own sanity at that point, and you know it

for years that I felt completely alone and like no one would understand what I had been through. I didn't even and then interesting, lay in the here's, a person that you should. If your curious about the psychology of all of this, you should, in our view, the sin incredible guy named Ansal cason, he's a professor who studies, boss, confessions and he he also has talked about the various kinds of false confessions, and he reached out to me, because you know it's a big clamorous case and one that involves a false confessions who he reached out, and the first thing he did was ask me. If I could, just recount every day

you tell I could remember about my interrogation. He didn't say you didn't like prompt me with anything. He just said just tell me what you can remember and I wrote a road it all down. I sent him a letter and it was only after I sent him a letter like explaining everything. I could remember that he sent me a copy of a paper that he had written called the psychology of false confessions. Does innocence, put innocence at risk and in it he details exactly how certain police, interrogation techniques break down a innocent persons, sort of will and sense of agency, and even some

if sanity in the interrogation room, then that includes things like isolating them and you know put it in it's in the middle of the night, not giving them food, not giving them water. You know all of these various factors and then it breaks down how different people are broken. Some people are are broken because a police suggests a mitigating factor and says hey if you, if you go along with This will take. You will have your back and you only have like a year in jail whatever, so they they do it tis sort of they feel like the cops, don't believe them, and so they think I'm just going to say that I did it and then the cops will be him on my side and they show me some mercy. I'll say: However, they need me to say to get out of this situation on a lot of people sort of lose them sense of long term consequences when they are being paraded an so they'll do.

They'll do and say anything just to get out of the immediate situation of stress, but then there is this other situation called it an internalized, false confession, where the person is made to genuinely believe that they must be that what the police are too. That is true, and so very often this looks like you, blacked out, you don't remember, we know you're a good person so were discussed I too will need to unravel the truth for you and you will confess to it and it will all be okay, and so it's that was the kind of that I was subjected to. And yet well, it's a fascinating thing and of all of the like criminal justice stuff that I get involved in now. The one that I'm most passionate about is false confessions and the things that we can do to like in the interrogation room too.

Make it not as possible a hum like there there's some really just common sense things that you can do like record interrogations like videotape them record them have some kind of a record so that people can later go back and say: oh look at that they that person didn't have actual knowledge that only though the killer would now the police told him on our three that the murder was committed with a rope and so like it stuff like that? That ends up in a lot of cases being just a he said. She said situation in the court room where the police say well. Only the killer would know that the person was murdered with a rope, and so he must have done it, and it's like no. You actually just slip that information to him without you even realising that, because it's not like these things happen because

police officers are uniquely trying to go out of their way to get innocent people to lie and an implicate themselves? It's because they have a bias. They think they have the person who committed the crime, are they think they know who is not being forthcoming with the truth, and so they do everything they possibly can to gaslight and convince this person to give. then what they want to hear- and it just so happens that in a lot of cases it's not the truth and so the my interrogation was not recorded. It was which is astonishing to me, because there are recordings of my phone calls. There are other recordings of me from just in the police station like that. It's not, I wasn't even being questioned, they were just list

sitting in the room to me and my boyfriend talking, so they were obviously like surveillance me, but then, when that final interrogation was happening, none of it was recorded, and so it was just my word against the police about what happened. While one of the most unnerving things over, but about your experience as portrayed in this documentary again it documentary is just gotta, Amanda knox right on netflix, yeah and vote for it. How did you feel about that? Do what was it you did that Was that a an appropriate window onto at least up until the moment it was shot the the experience or reserve image? Would you recommend that people watch that oh yeah. I do. I think that it's a really interesting

window for a couple of reasons. Big. It's not like it's a perfect window into my experience, but it's not my documentary right. It was these documentary. Film makers, who are interested in how a story goes so off the rails, and so a lot of the documentary is really interests. Ed, in how the media played a role in how my case proceeded, and it played a huge well because talk about that yeah we'll get into that. We can get into that, but I do recommend it because I think the one thing that they did really well was they didn't speak for anyone like they made a point of only making the documentary if the key players were all available and willing to be interviewed, and so that that was

that was my boyfriend. That was the prosecutor. That was you, know the independence of genetic experts, so they were able to get everyone to agree to be interviewed and before they release this documentary into the world, they showed it to all of us. Every one who had been interviewed for the documentary had a chance to see it, and you know, comment on it and I think what's really noteworthy interesting. Is that- every single one of us, or so I'm told up you know, approved of the way that we were portrayed would reduce absolutely astounding when you watch the the footage of the project, her. I mean it if some of the most damaging footage I have ever seen of just the misfiring,

a human brain and the you know an arrow and a person who had really complete control over your fate, and it's just I I just was terrifying to watch a buffoon of this magnitude have control over somebody's life I may I just I couldn't believe what I was hearing from the prosecutor yeah. I remember all throughout the ah the first trial I mean I was in prison for over two years before I received a verdict, because you know I was. I was arrested and there was eight months of ongoing investigation. Then there were a few months before I had my first ever trial hearing so and then my trial lasted for a whole year, so it a long time before I had anything what I thought was going to be closure over, this whole train wreck of situation and that entire time

even when things were going horribly in the courtroom and horribly and media horrible things are being said about me, I knew it was all false. and so I a part of me genuinely oh, no, not apart me. All of me believed that I was going home like it was just a matter of time before the adults in the room figured out what was gone on and it didn't matter what crazy things were being said about me in the media matter that you know my prosecutor was in the court room like make Hang up what I was saying to meredith, while murdering her like he had this like vision of what I would have been saying to her while stabbing her to death, and he was like a man who was probably telling her. This is what you get for being such a stuck up. Prude like that kind of like it was thou, level of just made up starve, and I was sitting there thinking this is so the assembly, absurd, I'm guy and the right

is going to happen, I'm going to go home, and- and that's also what my parents told me like. I think I want to emphasize again that I was twenty years old when all of this was hap. name, and so I didn't really know how the world worked. I didn't know what to expect from the situation I really relied on my parents in a big way to tell me like what is gonna happen to me and they always told me there's a light at the end of the tunnel like we're going to get through. This, I knows, is a really dark time. But there is a light at the end of this tunnel and we all believed that the light was the verdict. We were just waiting for the verdict, and so when the verdict came back guilty, I had the biggest existential crisis of my life and everything. I thought that I could rely on in the world just shattered

and I was brought back to the prison so utterly bewildered that I wasn't even crying. I just was I was in shock and it took me a long time to to sort of process and unravel what this meant for my life, but in that sort of immediate moment I realise that what I was not just waiting to go home- I was you know I I was not living someone else's life by mistake like this was my life and an eye that that was it just like. Oh my god, this is my life and is not a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm just in this tunnel. indefinitely? I was sentenced to twenty six years. And that was longer that I had been alive at that point. So I then,

over the next. You know days and weeks and months had to reevaluate. What I thought my life was in ways that I didn't really have to before the verdict, because I thought that this was just like some weird limbo that I was in and young I want to get too, how you coped with the verdict and the prospect of just spending twenty six years in prison for a crime you have committed, but I still want to understand the various. So causal

pieces here, because a wound that theirs is just as a sociological phenomenon is just astounding. What you found yourself in the center of matches take the case of the the lead prosecutor for a moment of heat, so people should watch this documentary just to see this guy talk and he's palpably deranged by his catholicism as sort of the backdrop to his thinking about the lurid sexuality that must have the cause of this murder rights are hidden. I don't need to draw up a forthright in case study on him, but its palpable just war. What this this. I imagination is running a mark and one of the more interesting and insidious things that, happens very early on? Is that your fault it and in it prosecutors, mind and an impression the minds of others. for having an inappropriate emotional response to the murder rate of it people are watching you and the other camera.

trained on you more less? It seems you're immediately watching Do you know your demeanor than usual moment to moment, expressions of emotion in all that you're not expressing either As you know, the police go in and out of the house, which is now a crime scene and There is almost a year, the protagonist income moves novel, the stranger right who gets convicted for not crying at his mother's funeral radically. You are you just you didn't have this big expression of bereavement but everyone's ignoring the contacts me he what how you had known meredith for what three weeks at this point yeah. I had known her for about three weeks, yeah right. So this is not your best friend on on earth who has been murdered and also, as as you pointed like, you haven't, you're being studied while you're you're lucky. You never saw her.

you're right, you're, not you haven't, witnessed the things people are assuming you have witnessed as their study in your demeanor to see your reaction to the body. The horrors that occurred in that house- again, and to have this all being driven by the intuitions of this era. Fabulist repressed catholic are really just proper clown. You know as you I it. Obviously you have much more experience of him than I do, but just to watch this documentary and every effect with that he could have been pleased with how he came off in it is just dumb a testament to pure delusion on his part.

yeah. I think that I think he believes what he says, and so he has a lot of bias that colored the way that he viewed me and that he viewed the facts. I mean, I think one of the things that really astonishes me about this case in particular, is your. You know, you're, right and I'd love to talk to you about how much emphasis was put on my behavior and when I did crier when I didn't cry like there is so much selection bias, and that also, but like one of things, it's really astonishing for me about this cases. It's a lie. Like a lot of wrongful convictions and a lot of ways, there's a lot of things that are just like by the book wrongful conviction stuff, like you, have crazy witnesses that come

Fourth months later, who are completely unreliable? You have jailhouse niches that come up like there's a little bit of all of the things that lead to wrongful convictions, including like bad forensic evidence. You know all of that, but, like one thing, that's really unusual about my case is that we know who did it might. It's not like it's. There is now that I am acquitted in my boyfriend is acquitted. The people are like well, who, who did it then like? We know who did it like? There was copious evidence of this known, local burglar named Rudy good day. He had left his dna in it like in meredith's body. Like his his hand, print and foot prints were found in her blood and

he fled the country immediately after the murder and adopted a false identity like she's there there is so much that is. It is just obvious what happened, but the problem was that they didn't know this at the time that they arrested, me they they didn't. Have you know, though, the fingerprints back from that the frenzied you know, people they didn't? Have the dna results back yet, so they were really just going like by the time they arrested me and my boyfriend. They they were just going off of got instinct and their got instinct in large part had to do with a lot of pressure like there was already tv cameras that were park. across the street, from our house, like just zooming, in on our driveway just hours after meredith's body had been discovered and is so. The police felt at an incredible amount of pressure to come up with answers as

quickly as humanly possible, and there is a lot of discussion about my behaviour. When did I cry when did I not cry their art assumptions about what I understood or what I knew at various times like there's, this famous scene of that may be the most viewed Two seconds of my life are of me outside of my house. In the am you know, a few out like an hour or two after this crime scene was discovered. My boyfriend Raffaele is standing next to me, just sort of like holding me it's cold, so he sort a comforting me put his jacket around me and he looks me in the eyes and we, we kiss each other, and do you know it's not like we're making out? We just give each other's some sort of kisses Tis, said comfort each other and that those two seconds of my life were then taken.

And put in the media on loop in slow. motion just like, as if people could read into that moment and say this is the moment we knew that she was guilty, because here she is kissing her boyfriend and not crying, and what people don't know is. At that moment, I had not seen the the crime scene, unlike my other roommate, who is there who was crying hysterically. Nor was I fully aware of what was even in the room that they found. I knew that that something bad was in there because they people screaming people were crying, but I was hearing people yell and speak in very rapid italian, and so I wasn't sure that meredith was even killed. I knew that there was something in meredith's room. I heard a foot. I heard that

word for arm war. I heard the word blood, and so I was trying to. He's together, is there like a severed foot in meredith room, I have no idea what's going on and I slowly pieced together with rough alleys, help that there is a body found in meredith's room. It was cut. Heard by a blanket. It was near the arm war and there was a foot sticking out from underneath the blanket louvre, the blanket the prosecutors I believe that only a woman murderer would have thought too every woman with a blanket right like that that that proves that joy, and her of the murderer I literally confirmation, bias and action right, like you, ve already by the time that he's making this claim they ve already arrested a woman right me but those sentences could have come out of his mouth in any context confirming or disk firming anything it's just patently

insane and hid it is just yet like I'd, love to know where the statistics of that- or it was incredibly depressing to see. There are no guard rails on within the system to protect from that of the obvious waywardness of this guy's mind I mean it's just you know, I'm not a psychologist, not a condition, but Jesus Christ. There was a thing to behold watching a documentary. Well,

It's like really disconcerting for me. Is it's not like you know. The prosecutor is absolutely king in in the world like he doesn't just get to arrest any old person. I mean he does get to arrest any old person he wants, but the fact that it like it, continued for so long like, for instance, when I was arrested, my boyfriend was arrested. My boss, Patrick Lumumba, was arrested, and you know the very next day people are showing up at the police office saying we know that patrick is innocent. We were with him the night of the crime we allure was a whole big group of

Thus at his pub together like this is impossible and instead of releasing Patrick on that evidence on the numerous numerous eyewitnesses who you know who came forward- and you know it was the only thing that was even implicating him was this nonsense confession that was totally incoherent. They held him forward to full weeks. I believe like he was in prison for two weeks and they only released him once they had arrested rudy giddy once they had some like the limited forensics that they are able to bring back that showed Rudy today's fingerprints. That was that was only when they finally, let him go, and what, for me, is really troubling. Is you know a judge signed off on this and

the later along down the line, another judge agreed that we deserve, instead of just throwing the case out, they sent us on to trial, and then I went through a years worth of trial and what is convicted, and so for me, it's not just the prosecutor, it's like how many people, along the way, bought in two exactly that same sentiment. Only a woman would cover a body with a blanket. Oh, of course, no one like no one stopped to think that there was bias and no one. Yet no one really gave much thought to the fact that I had no motive to give at this crime that I had no history of mental illness. Or violence that I didn't have a relationship with the person who actually killed her. That they had physical evidence of him at the crime scene and so

It really came down to this power of storytelling and this and the impact of first impression and- and even I mean I hate to say it. But it's like I felt like people were having a sort of mc cobb pornographic fantasy about me, and and on top of that there is the issue of saving face, because I was arrested very quickly and then the forensic evidence came forward, pointing not to me and not to my boyfriend and not to Patrick, but to this known, burglar named Rudy good day, and instead of just halting the process there and saying oh, we were wrong. We arrested the wrong people- let's, let's put this in a whole thing back on track. They just swapped patrick out and put rudy good day in and orchestrated this theory.

About me, having used my feminine wiles, to convince these two men who had no relationship with each other to out of the blue just with no premeditation whatsoever. or go to my house and rape, my room mate for me and then hold her down, so I could stab her to death, talk about the role of the media played in those from this is that it comes through pretty well in this film, or maybe you know, this was to media, but it was important laid at the tabloid press that just had a feeling frenzy here, and you know that the threat of embarrassing the italy it was obvious and underwriting this. The sun cost fallacy. Rightly they they have it they had committed to. You is the guilty party and there they didn't want to suffer. The public embarrassment of firm, changing their minds seemed five term. This is entirely per.

social media is a correct or with social media just beginning so too Seven was the year the iphone came out. We already had facebook, but it wasn't your grandma's facebook it was. It was still pretty hip at the time, although we were passed my space at that point, I think we had all moved on from my space, so moving toward her twitter is two thousand and nine room. Yes, so that came afterwards I'd I came home to twitter and was astonished at the world and how to change but yeah. You know, there's I feel like in a lot of ways I'm kind of patient zero of of a social media conviction because it really was the first time that it wasn't just the media and the tabloid media. That was covering everything. It was also these echo chain

birds that were arising in the social media sphere, where they were capturing people's attention and really like fondling, very different kinds of infamy. ten, and this is actually a really important lens to look at when people analyze my behaviour, because you know people look backwards and justify why the accusations against me makes sense, and I think one of the issues is that a lot of you balls access to me was strictly mediated by the media. They added I d Get to see me furred until I went to trial like over a year after I was arrested, and so they only had like those glimpses that the media were able to get of me in those five days leading up to my arrest and that's where this selection. Biased comes into play because so much of my behavior or my alleged behaviour is what what is going to capture peoples

pension, and so they zoom in on that kiss that between me and Raphael and they interview p bull who say- oh amanda, wasn't crying when I hugged her and they don't know that when I was alone, I would break down and cry and or when they hear it from the prosecutor, thy did breakdown and cry. They say. Oh, she broke down and cry because She was looking through the knife drawer and suddenly remembered a horrible thing about knives like there's so much of people projecting their own project. is about what my my behavior meant and I actually like go in depth about this subject, in particular on one episode of my podcast brenda when I interviewed Malcolm Gladwell, mamma dont, know if you were near able to listen to you because Malcolm Gladwell covered my case in his book talking to strangers, and I

I appreciated it and oh in a big way, because he, you know from the very beginning, says route good day murdered meredith culture like the number of people in the media, who just conveniently forget that or like the headline is man who killed amanda, knox's roommate released from prison like every one, so meredith is completely gone in that headline than rudy. Today's completely forgotten that headline that again, this whole tragic thing: centres around me, even though I am totally peripheral to it, and malcolm Gladwell perspective was that some people are just

their behaviour is mismatched to their actual reality. So some people act guilty, but are innocent or act innocent, but our guilty- and in my case I'm just one of those rare people who act guilty but am really innocent, and that wig me out because again, that is him sort of putting the onus of what went wrong in the interpretation of all of the facts of this ace on me, which was the whole problem from the beginning. Every one was looking at me for answers that I did not have and he missed the point of all the cognitive biases that shaped. How might behaviour was perceived because the police were the ones who had the actual agency in this equation. They were the ones who were arresting people. They were the ones who are coming up with the theory of a crime.

and then it was you know the the media who was there that was supposed to be this check and balance against this incredible power that the state has to arrest and and imprison people, and instead of you, know exercising that power to hold people to account. People in power to account they just piled on and were like tell us more juicy details about what crazy things Amanda's doing next and yeah, so it it's. I think that when you go back and retroactively justify your already pre determined conclusion like Amanda knox guilty amanda knox crazy. You can find whatever you want in in the footage to confirm

what you already believe and I think that's one of this that's what was so scary about the case for me was realizing that the truth didn't matter to people like it, and it was I. I was just this blank slate onto which people were projecting their own fantasies, and you know it didn't matter that even the physics of the prosecution's theory was impossible, like they were suggesting that I was This realm being a part of this horrific fight to sexually assault and and brutally murdered. My roommate, like she fought back like she, has defence wounds on her body, I'm supposedly I'm taking part in this brutal crime.

But I leave no single trace of myself at this crime scene and when that is revealed, the prosecution says well, she must have gone back to the the crime scene and cleaned up all traces of herself, and this was this is just what they put forward. This is- and this is their explanation for why there's all this evidence of rudy good days, dna but None of me. they say well. Amanda must have gone in and clean up all heard you nay and left olive Rudy today's dna, so that she could frame him for the crime. There's no, nine of cleaning agents. There is no sign that this crime scene has been cleaned up, but that's just because they are finding a reason to continue to believe what they already believe and what sir

scary about this is, I dont think this was some sort of like conscious thing that anyone was doing. I think that this was happening unconsciously or if we want to get into like the free will question. It was just the thought that came to them and they didn't have control over that thought and, and they just pursued it and pursued it. Despite the fact that you know, even during my first trial people were, beginning to question that you know they were told. There was all this damning evidence and when it all rolled out some people weren't convinced others were so. It was tough. I want to return to what life was like for you after the verdict, if you want to talk about that at all, but I'm actually most interested in what life has been like since lily leaving prison and but what you ve had to confront me or your sort of in some ways you're in a

a new president. None is quite better than the old one I can imagine by your stolen in the fairly surreal situation, I been in a world where many people's being approved. Mary association with you- is that something off What happened and again probably where there's smoke, there's fire it's just safe to assume so any, and there are many people who, just frankly think you're guilty, and I think, if nothing has changed since that documentary meredith family. Are among those people, so I'm just wondering what it's like to confront, that kind of reputational lock in where ah either you're just you're, seeing the evidence of people Those unwillingness to change their mind, no matter what the counter evidence again and again, in this case a counter evidences, despite the obvious incentives to the contrary. The big was the supreme court in ITALY

the fully exonerated you and detailed what a a masterpiece of incompetence the investigation was hm yeah. That's a great question. That's what I call the now what question and it's complicated in part, because I was released from prison in two thousand and eleven, but I wasn't like fully exonerated. Yet I had been acquitted, but in italy, prosecutors are allowed. you appeal verdicts as well, and so my acquittal was appealed, am it was overturned. I was tried for the same. The crime. Again I was, did you did you, you didn't return to italy for that trial? No, I did not. So this all was happening in absentia and I was convicted again and I was sentenced to twenty eight and a half years of so they raised the sentence

and it wasn't until march of twenty fifteen, so eight years after I had this whole ordeal began that the supreme court ruled that I was. I was innocent they said, there were stunning flaws in the investigation and that had been biased from the big winning by all the media pressure- and so I I returned to the world I may I returned to the world's in twenty alive and as the girl who was accused of murder. A lot of people just didn't know. I existed until that moment and so my my legacy in the world, was a initiation with murder and the anchoring bias that people had towards me was associating me with a horrific crime I am, and so now I'm I'm alien, did from other people in the world, because one I have no

idea. If anyone in the world has had my experience, I certainly don't know anyone and two like everyone I meet from now on, is going to meet this double gang. Our version of me that exists their imagination, and I know that every single per send that I encounter is going to have an idea of me that is going to be like a veil that is between me and them, and I have no idea what that idea of me looks like in their imagination. I dont know what media they have consumed. I I have no idea. All I know is that people assume see me with a horrific thing that I didn't do and for the worst experience of my life,

there's no escaping at, like. I had this brief moment of thinking that I was going to get to go back to being an anonymous college student again, and that was very, very quickly revealed to be a very naive hope, because I couldn't four months years, even I couldn't go out and public without somebody photographing without people paparazzi. Following me, I would like to school and they would take pictures of me on my route to school and then once I'm in school went once I'm on camp as there are allowed on campus, but other students are in their taking pictures of me and posting them on social media, and so I was perplexed Surely, under a spotlight that was a spotlight where the worst possible light was on me. It wasn't just a spotlight. It was the worst possible spotlight, like any interpretation of me, and what I did was viewed through the worst possible land.

and this is in part because I was exonerated for murder, but not for slander. So, at the same, I- am that I was tried for murder. I was also being tried for aid different crime, slander, that was associated with those statements that I signed during my interrogation, Patrick mamma. I was eventually, you know, released from prison and found to be completely extraneous this crime- and he was suing me for defamation and in italy- a slander is a is not a civil crime it. So it's a criminal case and so I was being tried in the very same killed court room at the very same time for slander and murder, and I was found guilty of slander. And so around the world. I was perceived as this lyre, who was acquitted of murder, but probably just for a technicality,

and even if I was in assent, I was a you know an savory individual who had put an innocent man behind bars. I was probably racist. The number of people who accuse me of that being the result of racism, and not realising that those interrogations were the scariest experience of my life and that I was one hundred percent coerced. and the forgetting, even that I recanted those statements hours after I was out of the pressure cooker of the interrogation, so yeah there's been, trying to I feel like I was a part of humanity again after going through. All of this was a tremendous challenge. I I I really thought that you know here. I am a free person.

I wasn't really free and in a lot of the ways that counted, I was still living the worst experience of my life and I was still living a very limited existence defined forever, if not for a horrible thing that I didn't do then for the worst experience of my life. So what do you talk about the? I know you however, this somewhat in europe your series on resilience, but what has been useful for you in finding some equanimity with it all of these forces and events and the thoughts of others that you cannot control right, I mean you can take me back to prison or it can be put to the

the moment in your encounters with social media. How? How have you found a balanced mind, given that there's so much you really can't directly influence that same. Did you while this is the part where I get to thank you. Ah SAM. because you are really the reason why I meditate now and meditate, She has been an and readily huge relief for me further the myriad ways that I discuss in the series and in particular the way that you were able to like my previous encounters with meditation before

Europe was a little more on the wu and which did not really resonate with me, and so I wasn't able to really fully grasp the deep insights like. Is there a self and what does it mean to not have a self, and what does it mean to look for the looker and the way just the way that you were able to make it so practical and and sort of just put it in the hands of the individual meditated, like just experience it for themselves without any dogma attached to? It was, What allowed me to really find that those truths through my own meditation practice, which were an incredible relief.

That said there were certain things that I was surprised that I had intuitions about without having had a previous meditation practice like even in the prison environment. There were certain intuitions that I had that. Helped me along the way. One of those big intuitions was that I couldn't believe that the people who were subjecting me to this horrific experience we're doing it knowingly, like. I absolutely could not imagine my prosecutor and the police officers just sitting there in their offices like chuckling. Themselves about how they had put an innocent person in jail, and so I wasn't living with this delusion that there are just evil people in the world who are out to get you which would have distorted my understanding of my circumstances in every.

Quality in a way that I dont think would have been helpful to me as an individual learning to be a person in the world. Instead, I had this intuition that there was something deeper at play and that maybe I could even understand it, because how many times have I had wrong intuitions about things in the world- and it made me suffer less to have that sort of limited amount of compassion for the people who were putting me through this experience and it made I feel a little bit less helpless. It made me feel a little more hopeful that there is a possibility of understanding and connection, even if there wasn't right now, and even if I was in a very antagonistic relationship with

seemed like the entire world. Other intuitions that I had lake. I thought I was going crazy lake. I would have conversations with my younger self in prison, because I didn't really know how to survive this situation, that I was an eye instead, like unconsciously or consciously it's hard to say at this point, would sort of big sister. I said to the experience by very vividly imagining a younger version of myself about twelve years old, who would sit across from me on my bunk in mysel and just ask questions about what was happening and it was It was a way for me to process what was happening to me, but I was also like practicing mehta like I was wish, king well upon this younger.

A version of myself who didn't know that some horrible thing was about to happen to her like she just was completely with it was almost like. I was trying to prepare her for this horrible experience that she was going to go through, and that was the way that I was coaching myself through the experience in the moment. And but feels kind of meditative. So but yeah I mean I, I've had intuitions that have led me on a path towards curiosity and compassion and pushing myself to have the courage to embrace those ideas in those intuitions against a backdrop of people who are telling me. You know this is all happening because italy is corrupt and your prosecutors evil and I just felt like that. Wasn't true, or you know, people who are telling me, it's all my fault like there's a huge contingent of people who

think that, even if I am innocent this holes, went awry because of me, like it's my fault. This bad thing happened to me and for a while. I internalized that, because, near one lone voice against a million voices. You you're, probably the crazy one, but when I took a step back and I've been fortunate enough to be able to do this as a free person and looked back I can look back and say no. I was doing the very best I could in a fairy scary and uncertain situation that I was utterly unprepared for and no this was not my fault and I feel at peace with that. So what do you make of people's commitment to maintaining their belief in your guilt cause it administers it's. A kind of biogas might be some version of the song,

ass fallacy in others a kind of motivated reasoning, but there's it's almost. This is obviously not unique to your case. We see this everywhere this actually that one of my favorite, points that turn Nietzsche ever made was the idea here he said, and in some form, when you force people to change their opinion about you, they hold the effort. It takes them very much against you- is- has just delightful it'll turn their. Where is she sees me? You can just see this. They like it when you for your arguing with somebody and there really dug in with their cherished opinion on something whatever it is, and you present counter evidence. You see this unwillingness is. Is this attitude of just but grudging each increment of counter evidence that it there's an attachment? It's like a very buddhist mental framing here, which is that seems appropriate, which is that the people are attached,

The way they think things are and be push on those attachments at your peril, because he just use your creating your cognitive dissonance for their militants, just an unpleasant experience for them to look back. And all the hours they spent dance on your grave satan for them to have to realise that they were in a part of some monstrous misperception and feel at ease to some degree culpable in or tarnished by that had how do you think about make others This is all the anonymous trawls out there, but then there's meredith family. How do you think about the people who are maintaining a parent conviction of your guilt even worse. So much has now known about what happened and didn't happen yeah. You know I actually feel for people because I think to real.

eyes that you were not only so wrong, but so wrong and in such a harmful way, is a devastating thing to realise, and it's something that it's totally human to want to rebel against at every point like the sunk cost, isn't just that they were wrong and that's embarrassing. The sunk cost is that they hurt someone in the process of being wrong and so it's not just the in miss information, and it's not just the ego of wanting to be right. I think that people are afraid of what it means about them if they were this wrong and that its much easier for them to believe that there is something wrong with me to have deserved the harm that I suffered, and so I think it goes to

people identifying with their ideas and when put on the spot and even when, having you know, em, like plain evidence, put in front of them that what they believe is wrong. It feels to them like. What you are saying is that their a bad person and that's why they can't grasped the just the just the plane, hard cold facts of it, because it's charge with emotional residence and with a sense of it, implicating them and their identity and who they imagine themselves to be as people and on this as well think about when I think about my prosecutor like I would not want to be my prosecutor like for my legacy, to be what it is and I I completely understand

Why someone who is not yet fully ready to em- race, with full self awareness, the reality of the situation, would prefer the delusion and would protect the delusion at all costs neuron. What what? What is the status of public opinion in italy around this case now. Well, you know it's interesting. I because of the messages that I receive on social media. I was under the impression that I am basically the oj simpson of ITALY. However, however, there have been some really interesting developments that you know

There have been some pod casts and even investigative journalism done. That has explored the the side of the events where I am actually innocent and- and it's coming from, you know like some fringe we'd like there's. This is really famous wrapper, who is one hundred percent like has done deep into the case and on this really long podcast series about it in italy, very famous italian wrapper whose like who takes the the very rapidly stance of like fucked, up these handle them and uses me as an example of that, but also their have just been some really interesting. Legal developments like I appealed my slander conviction to the european court of human rights and they ruled in my favor,

and you know that it was gonna just end there, except they just passed a new law in ITALY that made it possible to revisit old cases or like definitive cases based upon international court rulings and mice, slander, conviction, just this just in october, was overturned hmm so and then you know just recently like yesterday or the day before, Rudy gay day, so the person who murdered Meredith he was released from prison a few years ago, having served thirteen years of a sixteen year sentence and he was just re arrested for assaulting his girlfriend and so how it feels like in like tiny little increments. There has been coming ted coming to jean, this in in ITALY. In in these,

small ways and they're not pronounced. It's not like you're gonna, see you're, not seeing headlines in italy being oh, my gosh, we were so wrong about Amanda. Instead you're just seeing this sort of quiet realisation of own here's the I who, who was actually we have evidence who committed the crime he's now you know, assaulting other young women who amanda, you know living her life and and doing the best she can and everything that she says still

is corroborated by the evidence. It it's. So I'm I'm hoping that there's this slow change and I actually have started seeing some people in just like the m comments to me on online of italian people who have reached out and said that they were really sorry because they believed it all when it was going on. They just believed the media's representation of the case at the time and, and only recently did they look back with clear eyes with the with the benefit of hindsight and realise how wrong they were, and they they apologize me on behalf or apologize to me on behalf of their entire country, so has Rudy good day ever acknowledged his guilt and and your innocent, sir. I know you, oh no, oh now, so the first time that he was

ever he ever even mentioned me was while he was still on the run and he was skyping with a friend of mine is who he didn't know, was corroborating with the police, so the police had already arrested me yeah, but they then got the fingerprints back. They identified ruediger days. They were looking for Rudy gay day and they contact a number of his friends and they and one of his friends agreed to contact rudy, while the police were listening in to their skype conversation and when this friend talked reading a day he asked about me like what about amanda? What does amanda have do at this and riddick a day said. A man doesn't have anything to do with this. Mrs, while rubies like runaway he's in germany, he's on the run- and he says that I had not that a man and oxen nothing to do with it and leave it at this point he wasn't admitting to having committed the crime he was. He was admitting to what he was

admitting to being there when the crime occurred, and he said that some one else did at some man came into the house and murdered meredith. While he was in the bathroom. He said that he was on the toilet, listening to a few songs, while on the toilet and while he was in the bathroom, somebody came into the house and murdered meredith and then when he realized what happened, he ran out their confronted the guy and went into meredith's room and tried to save her and that's how he got off the blight oliver his hands. So this is his claim and it was only one he was arrested. He was found in germany arrested extradited back to italy that he changed his story and said no in fact, man I was there too, and it was the

the man that I confronted was Raffaele her boyfriend and they're. Trying to pen their crime on me because I'm a black eye, and so he this is his story. He has a history of breaking and entering. He has a history of confronting people with knives. It's a lie, but it's a lie that he continues to hold on to and when he has been interviewed even recently about the case after he was released from prison. He continues to say that I committed this crime with Raffaele and that he had nothing to do with it. What is rough always experience? Pin Raffaele, as experience has been awful just awful because he new me for only a few days before this crime occurred. I think we had known each other for five days. Yes, even we referred to him as your boyfriend all this time, but this is a boyfriend,

it yeah. It's me, I would say it's more realistic to say we were having our sort of romantic fling that young kids are doing. We're like you really liked me and I really like tat, but we are only five days into this like relationship no like we collect very quickly aloud One of my roommates called us peach on genie, which means little love birds and he so he knew me as of a few days. I think, by the time we were arrested. He had known me for eight or nine days, and so here's this girl that he is now on four eight or nine days he's my alibi and his family, the police. Everyone are urging him to just throw me under the bus, because they're, like you dont know this girl from adam? He only knew her for a few days,

you are now implicated in this crime just because you're her alibi like just give the police what they want and say that she left your house and committed this crime and- and you had nothing to do with it and he refused. He stood up and he stood up for me and he stood up for the truth and he refused to lie, and so he ended up get it. Sentenced alongside me. Perhaps lawyer got confused by thought. There was a moment and in the documentary was that suggested that he had turned on you as well that under pretence that moment of interrogation, they describe where you're also in the end, they policing and with him, and you get, it becomes a kind of her a prisoner s dilemma situation where your butt being interrogated simultaneously in and they they come to. You saying that he's basic some of you out and said that your alibi was a lie. Had he not

cracked in any is so. Yes, he had cracked, but under the same kind of pressure that I had and was so yes, the police came to me and you know hours into this interrogation and told me that Raffaele now said that I had asked him to lie for me and and all of that. Meanwhile, they had been telling him things like. How do you know that she was there with you all night when you were sleeping? She could have left you while you were sleeping, and you know so he did. He did say in that, or at least that's what the statement says, that the statement says that he was. He was lying for me, but very quickly again. He as soon as he is not in that pressure cooker of the interrogation room. He reverts you know back to the truth and defends me and at his own peril, because I don't think the police were really into the

didn't him in the first place, and so here is going this entire experience. He also has no history of violence. No no motive to commit. This crime has no idea who rudy day is and in his own book about the case. He talks about how he felt like mr nobody that the media, the prosecution, nobody actually cared about him as a person. He was just a kind of attachment to me. He was an appendage. g and which is actually some in some ways. Diagnostic of this psychological motivations of everyone paying attention to the case rome and the fact that you were so much more interesting than he was, is somehow interesting yeah, I think, and the journalist who is interviewed for the netflix documentary says it best when he was like it's girl on girl crime. This is

that's sexy at cells, we don't want to hear about another guy, raping and murdering a young woman. We want to hear about a young woman raping and murdering a young woman were, and then of course, because we are at this weird juncture and media. What was being reported in the town, lloyd's in italy was then being recycled until legitimate news abroad, because people were desperate to just get any information to cover the case They weren't doing a lot of their own independent reporting. They were just reporting what they found and the people on the ground were not necessarily being the most reliable or you know, and then you have to look at how this is all a part of the defending of newsrooms. That has been happening since the mid two thousands like. If they don't have-

people to send to italy to report on this case. While there is going to recycle what they see, other people reporting on it, and so there was all this reporting, but it was all just echoes of each other. Just you know, veiled copycats of what they were hearing from. Who knows what station in ITALY and you know there were there- are news programmes in ITALY that were interviewing psychics about me. Who would you know, put their hand over a picture of me and and talk about how I was guilty like it was worse now. I would take mosaics over that lead. Prosecutor. He's he's he's an amateur psychic, it back a failure for a moment what his past experience been. in the aftermath up until the present Emily been in ITALY. This whole time right, yeah. This is his home country ray so in a lot of ways, he's Ben

more entrenched in it than I have, because it's not like he doesn't have name recognition like people recognise his face and recognise his name there. Even if his name is not in the headlines, in as much as minors, but ass? It is highly likely minor, oj simpson of ITALY. S yeah and he's had a horrible experiences like he's been cat fished by a reporter on tinder he's attempted over

and over again, to just go back to having a quiet, legitimate computer, engineer job and has consistently found difficulty finding work, because people don't want to be associated with him and it's just Ben this insane uphill battle word door after door after door has been closed in his face and he still feels in a lot of ways like MR nobody, because even in the aftermath of all of this happening, he doesn't feel like his innocence has been recognised, and I I one hundred per cent feel for him, and he is he still. I think he's still still feels more trapped than I do. You know when one I've seen him and I in I've gone back to italy to see him. I couldn't help.

but feel just me here. I am with a husband and two children at this point and in a lot of ways, I've been able to move on and be at peace in ways that he has not. He has not at peace and I'm just devastated for him, but I you know, I can't I can't be at peace for him. So it's hard well amanda powers of resilience are quite obvious. Is there anything in the here has only limited we haven't touched you eat. What do you want to say anything about your thoughts on criminal justice perform or any anything else you've been paying attention to. I mean I really enjoy your free well series, and particularly when you talked about how the lack of free will relates to criminal justice in

After all, it's a position. That is that I agree with my one hundred per cent em on board with tee we don't have free will, and why do you even think we have free well that doesn't make any sense. Its is not coherent and the how we're so deluded to think that you know that punishment makes sense as if a person could have done differently and for me that the resolution is that the retributive impulse make sends me that there are some areas where many scenarios were, I think punishment in some form makes sense just along pragmatic lines, because this is the thing that's going to deter that sort of crime. So I'm everything I'm giving you a parking ticket right, that's punishment, right and so yeah. We want parking tickets because we we wouldn't want people just park in their cars for four days and in

and you know in front of a store, but damn yea is that their idea that people really do deserve to suffer for what they've done that? That's the that the event the vengeance component of it yan and the arts criminal justice system doesn't make sense. If you remove their at like the wolf just the severity of punishment that we see doesn't make sense. Furred deterrents, like I think, their studies that show that, like it's more the certainty of being caught, that deters people, then the severity of the punishment, and so we need to look when we think about what works for a criminal justice system when we think about trying to incentivize good social behaviour, which is what we should be thinking. When we think about our criminal justice system, we need to a man, we need to look at what works, and unfortunately, just huge sentences and death penalties, don't work,

a lot of ways and- and they don't make sense because the only reason there really justified and and implemented as because people feel like they want to inflict suffering after suffering, has been experienced and that's their idea of fairness. That's only fair and our mind and for me just it doesn't make sense, but the one thing that makes sense it's interesting to be having this conversation in the aftermath of what we. What we just talk about because so you take some unlike Rudy today right I'm not especially sanguine about letting him a prison after sixteen years. Move that for that sort of crime, unless you can tell yourself a story that he is so fundamentally changed in prison. That

no longer a risk to the public that you know. I think a life sentence for murder in many cases make sense, because many of these people show every aptitude for re offending right, and so yeah yeah yeah, no definitely and rudy today, since I think that that make sense- and I think when you you have it's the quarantine model. You have to be able to do some kind of competent psychological evaluation to assess what the risk factor of this person, as in other cases. There are people who made mistakes when they were seventeen years old who are given life sentences and when their thirty three,

There are truly no longer a threat to society and at that point we're only holding them in prison again because of that retributive reason, and so that's the unfortunate thing that I see is just suffering for the sake of suffering but like when I think about the people who harmed me and that you know includes routing a day and directly what I care about. is not their suffering, but my safety and the safety of other people and their safety and the possible quality of incentive advising you know their experience of the world where they can be well and not inflict pain on other people. I do not want. You know rudy get aid to suffer. That's not that's not what I want. I want to feel safe and you know I would. We want to be rude eager day, because I feel like he's somewhere Who are you

sleep is interacting in the word like trying to get his needs met in world in an incredibly brutal and an effective way, and I feel bad for him at the same time that I'm scared of see I don't have I'm making sense, nipping, may well you're, not me I can tell you you're not making sense to anyone who who has not absorbed the you may against free freewill right. So big the people who are convinced that freewill, as is a thing and that people are there, are the true the authors of themselves and the the buck really stops there with that conscious intention to do bad things more, then they might be confused at this point, the conversation, but you know I've gone around that track so many times and that my argument is there for well defined at both on it on my pakistan in waken up that thing go do that, but it's just the simplest way to see it

My point of view is that if you just imagine a person's life line right you just, we cannot go back in time, even with the worst person your you. you take hitler right. While you know hitler, forty years old is exactly the person. You know you want you want to assassinate and will in its superior, no one killed him at that point. Or even the year before, or even the year before, that or even five years before that. But at some point, when you will you go back in his biography, you know one point: he is a two year old and he's the two year old who's destined to become adolf hitler and at some level you have to count that that to your old unlucky, renewable looking for what reasons genes environment sunk A combination of those two things even if you imagine everyone has an immortal saw while he did. He didn't pick us all, so he got unlucky, we in the in the act of plasma department. So this is nothing he is nothing.

Two year old wasn't control over and in each increment of time Moving forward gives only the illusion of control once once you actually get down to the business of honestly tallying. You know all of the influences for every moment of thought and intention and behavior in the human brain and in mind and life right as justice, no, no one invented themselves, no one's wearing, no one. No one can pick the next thought that arises all by itself. You know you don't know what you are going to think next until the thought itself arises so anyway, that's quite confounding. many people, but it's the crucial thing, is that it doesn't leave us with the ethical and any judicial opinion that everyone

is not guilty by reason of insanity. Right they'll use, you empty all the jails, you know and just there's nothing to do. No, it's just like you just have to you. You view people much more like forces of nature and and as said before you know. If we couldn't imprison hurricanes, we would ripe executive. There is enormous harm, yeah yeah, it's another reason why I feel lucky like when I think of free, while I feel I feel just feel so lucky because even thinking back on, you know the difference between me and Raffaele and how at peace I am in a lot of ways and how at not at peace. He is. I just feel like I got lucky to be the kind of person who was able to find some level of he's. I just remembered one other thing: I wanted to ask you about sam cause. I don't I don't get to have this opportunity very often to talk to someone who

also has a double gang or version of themselves out there in the world that is very often misrepresented. How have you handled that situation? Well, you know I'm quite humble to be talking to you about this, because my version of this problem is, I imagine, you know, infinite test my smaller than your own. And yet I think I have less compassion for my trolls and and aliphatic. You have justice played in this conversation. It's certainly helpful for me to view them as as sincere but nonetheless kind of malfunctioning robots when when when that is in fact the case you know I am in many cases I'm confronted with with evidence of of insincerity which bothers me, and there I feel like my moral outrage circuits her, probably too

and up to high, because I I view myself is having some kind of public facing responsibility to deal with these issues. So when I run into bad faith, attacks and bad faith arguments, it tries me a little crazier than it needs to. I don't tend to take things personally in the way that I think some people suspect relax. I'm outraged by something. It's not that I have internalized. This attack against mail is more adjusted. I just find it term. I am if it sort of way What drives and crazy about tromp rice like it's a phenomenon though in the world the chest I just think it so dysfunctional and and create, and so much manifest harm to everyone to me, which is its become almost impossible to talk about the important

things and it's this layer is vividly the contamination of sort of a reputational attacks. You know and and misinformation, which has have such a polluted information landscape and it's the upon italy's. My view is only growing worse and and social media really, as the main vehicle of all of this toxicity, so you having stepped off of twitter, was just to produce a sea change in my data to experience manchester's you I have not even one percent of feed the hassle I had in my life around any of these issues now that I've stepped off twitter, but stepping up twitter was eight in some senses are safe and admission that if I could say that this for which is in fact at all and in many ways I mean it's not that it's useless it has. It is obvious uses

This tool is no longer available to me right in my understanding in deciding to just step out of this arena, because is for me, become too annoying in a hurry as much as I could correct for the annoyance. It just me that the thing that I've said this before so apologies to the audience, if I'm, if I'm boring them, if they've heard this for tenth time, but it was obvious that it was a source of stress and toxicity for quite some time for me, but the thing that convinced me to just yank it from my life was that I think it was. It was actually deluding me about other people like I was. It was given you're sands, even though I was quite consciously trying to correct for it, it was good in the sense that people were Some may they really are I am more psychopaths than there their are. There are, and I just felt I was just meditating on em, on an hourly basis on the awfulness of other people

was, it was again if it would be wanting to think that all this is this is real. the accurate unseen into people's minds and that people are given me they're, otherwise, private thoughts and their there. The exactly this awful. But if I really do feel that the incentives of the platform we're just making things quite a bit worsen than they really are, and it is kind of a funhouse mirror. Why you just getting this grotesque distortion that ones collaborating in producing, but nonetheless it is a it, showing you a digital, stimulate of the public square that is started in all kinds of ways toward the worst were the worst in us. So you know no longer looking into that mirror on on it. You know really ever and occasionally look at twitter or some other social media platform, just as eight as a news feed to see something. But in real time, but even then may I go for days and weeks without

I mean that I some so it's not part of my My news, diet, even anymore and Niels, say not putting anything out there. S really quite humbling to discover what a big change awaited me after getting off twitter as in which is a testament to just how unaware I was that it had done. Find my my view of the war. Well then, in my view of myself in the world to some degree for years like I felt like I had a living with a sense of digital reputation and sometimes is through and still there remained I've been told by people that I'm occasionally trending on twitter, even now, but in None of it matters to me and may like it has no contact with my consciousness, even when it does, and even even when someone tells me I'm trendy on twitter. That means nothing to me right images aided it's, so it's

it was very, very weird. I just feel like. I am returned to the real world in a way that is surprising and it's quite a relief, hmm yeah. I'm a a, I feel that I try to stay off social media as much as possible, though it is also the same place where there has been a conduit to kind people like people who have like I said before. I have gone out of their way to reach out and say: oh my god. I was wrong about you and I'm so sorry, I treated you like a monster as like entertainment. So there's there's that, but, like you know, even if you're not on social media, there's still a version of you that exists in people's minds, and that's it also. Whether or not you participate is not necessarily

relevant to you just being a thing by not idea of a person in someone's mind, and it sounds like it doesn't bother you that there are just weird avatars, a view that live in other peoples. Mines- and I I think, that's interesting because for me I also tend to feel like a lot of the the love and I hate that is projected at the idea of me doesn't really have to do with me, and so I wonder if that something you relate to. yeah. Well, I clearly dozens in most cases for me, because its so. Miss targeted among the people who really hate me for my views, almost invariably don't understand my views radically they ve been misled by a clear, poorer,

a meme or something, and so he and I have people out there who hate me, because they think I want to execute a nuclear first strike on the muslim world right and there's like there are people you knocked up. Otherwise, professional journalists are people who are imagined to be professional journalists who have been going around for twenty years. Saying that that's what I what I said in in my first book, and so you know I've been dealing that was before social media, a vacuum in two thousand and four I guessed it, but before social media was really doing much of anything and certainly before I had any knowledge of it. So I was dealing with and the misinformation problem, even just in a journalistic context. The moment I published anything, but yes, just at a certain point, you recognize that all you can do is try to ensure that you've clearly represented your your views somewhere and

a case. I have repeated those views up to them to the limits of boredom my own and end any any possible audiences. On this point at least a dozen topics that have been deemed controversial, and then you just have to who assume that anyone who really wants to understand whether you worth, hating will do the work to have actually encounter your views, as you ve put them out there. And then you just have to recognize you don't have control for immediacy. You users can't control it. The thing that would be more interesting to confront is, or which occasionally happens, is a really cutting criticism. You know even bordering on hatred that is valid right, like that. You hardly recognize it. Ok, that person actually see something about me that I dont like right. I get why they

written me off as a as a moron or as a in or as evil or as a mirror or whatever is like this? That this thing is. I wish I wasn't like that. So that that would be fun. That would be interesting. I can't say I've had that experience much and I've had glimmers of it, where somebody will point out. Certainly if anyone point out a mistake, I've made, you know, I feel that's useful and if it, if it's ever embarrassing, I am still certainly grateful for it and want to correct all those given a place where that's possible, but there's so much of it is just a hallucination on the part of. The trolls and the critics based on this information that could have a commitment to maintaining again is made comes back to nietzsche's point like once their view, of you has solidified once they have gone into print with their dunk. On this view of yours at you never even held then

any effort to change their mind as you know that they hold it against you for all the effort it causes them and had sir issues a very weird part of human psychology thee, the double down condition that everyone has, even when it would would seem logical error or factually impossible, yeah, I have you been tempted to get off of all social media or, oh, my god, every single day I've been tempted to get off of social media, and I I sat very strong limits, but I've I've had to really deep personalize it and a lot of ways and its to the extent that, like even so at this point now, my husband is the one who will look at my dams first to serve, protect me and then let me know,

one has something nice to say, but, like it doesn't mean, I'm not exposed to like the headlines that that come up and then one of the things that like continues, the sort of hot me, especially with this sort of idea of me out in the world, is again people have this anchoring bias about my identity and my identity is, you know a counterpoint. two meredith's identity, people sort of associate me being alive with meredith being dad, and so often I have found that people sort of resent me just for like being alive when she is, is. ed. I think I have spoken about what you ve called the single victim fallacy, yeah yeah exactly, and it's really it's

I I feel like her and I are like two sides of a coin and whenever sort of I pop up and and live my life or exist, it's it's viewed and in many people's eyes as like an affront to meredith's memory, which is really tough because she's also on I an idea and so many people's minds and and in some ways, I not by choice. I also feel responsible for her image in the world is merely because my name keeps getting associated with her death and because people horribly dont really seem all that much interested in her adena. It's it's a weird thing that I am continuing to to grasp

with an eye at and again I don't get the chance very often to talk to somebody who has even a somewhat similar experience to me as being an idea in other people's imaginations, yeah that plays into the plot points of their own life story and, like you know, the number of people who have chosen you to be the the cartoon villain that they want to take down because they're on their own journey of righteousness is interesting. To me, it might be a professional necessity for you or anyone else to maintain a presence on various social media platforms. May I you know, I obviously I have a cunt that this or the marketing presence that you know my team will send out. Just you know be post on various platforms that that I never look But for me, twitter was the one, the one that I engage with an end use and that really was made there and I think he aims there's something lost by not having it. But I just gotta tell you it's a tender view life,

like a it's almost like a vast dinner party right where you get to decide. who you want to sit down with and talk to, and you know keep company with and whose, whose advice you are going to seek and whose, whose input you really want and who you're going to take the time to debate and disagree with and you can pick your battles and and when you look at what the experience is like for some like mayor, and I can only imagine someone like you on a platform like acts and your view you looking at. random people decide to tell you what they pretend to think about you. a moment by moment basis. For me, I just stepped back and think Why would I want to do this? I got like this then visit these people Why would I? Why would I invite this person? This anonymous person to the dinner party Did I get it? You know this. Is you know it's friday?

neither this I among to get this friday back right. This is so how much how much time I gonna spend contemplating this person's opinion of me. He'd have before I go, then go hang out with my kids or my wife, warm friends. as I get just because it has seemed like a professional necessity for so many people and because it you know again, there you do get these dopamine ergic moments of goodness, where you two circuits exactly what you would hope. It would be. You get connected with with a person who you're a fan of, say, you know so it had its utility, but so much of it is just this insane an encounter with people who are deciding to be at their worst again, because all the variables or tune so as to incentivize them to be their worst there performing for gino in front of their crowd at you and hoping to win points for it and not nothing. Is it really at stake and in many cases,

for them, because there you know that there are living under a pseudonym were issues corrupting of so much both in public and in private. That I don't know I I am not not urging you to do your ex account, but it some I gotta say it's. It really is quite amazing, touches not have that in one's life. You know it is somewhat analogous to like. If, if there were a protest in front of your house right now, you have if you had a mob of people. I have every time you you left, you opened your front door, there were Four hundred people out there are ready to tell you that, you're the scum of the earth, and then he got a few people out. There who say: yea amanda. We love you right, but still there always someone out there who's just going to say, you're, scum,

If you could wave a magic wand and have all those people forget where you live right so that you can have walk, got your front door, have a nice empty street. Why wouldn't you do that right into that? And that's that's essentially what happened when got cut off to a yeah. No, I mean it sounds like utter relief and something that I hope one day that I can aspire to having the big issue for me is that I still feel very, very deeply stock in the rapporteur should all whole mike. I sort of emerged in to the the world as girl accused of murder, and I thought I could like go about my life and not care about and not have an impact me but, as you know, like lived the life of an anonymous person, but I was not really given that opportunity, and so instead, like I looked at social media as an opportunity to be one

the person who was representing me in a sea of people who were already representing me and and having a but an actual impact on my life and in my career and what I was able to do and how's able to move through the world. And it's been a really interests during the journey, because I still you know, walk this line of having of just offending people by existing and and being like what they don't expect me to be like I, I can't tell you the number of people who just seem kind of mad, that I don't live up to their expectations, of who I am and they get frustrated or confused or or look at anything, I say and in through the lens of the way. They expect me to behave, and I don't know I think, that I feel a lot of pressure to assert who I am because there was this false image of

we put out in a world so like that was just on em, like on all the billboards and and Is this one story being told about me for so long and I live with this interesting dilemma of how much do I want to interact with that and and not like in a reactionary way, but just understanding that there is a space for me to just exist as I am and hope that that speaks louder, then the thing that came before or that the thing that the story that persists, but I mean here I am talking to you- and that means a huge amount to me, because I never thought that after everything I went through, I would end up talking to some one like you about issues like this, and I would have this opportunity to share my work and perspective on waking up

your europe has been tremendously helpful to me, like really its midst made a huge difference in my life, and I really really appreciate you giving me the opportunity just to just be You who I am and not an idea of a person just right now, so thank you. Nurse while the honour is mine. Has really am it straight to have yours collaborator over waken up into talking to you here- and here I am just I'm happy to be on team amanda now at any given time and for everything you're doing and dumb. If people want to pay attention to, what's going on for you, I know you got a bunch of other projects in the works that term yet have different time lines associated with him. So if people want to follow you wear where's! The best is acts the best place or do you have another spot? You want people to be longing for you. You know

people can send me, I'm just direct messages through my to the contact farm on my website. Knox robinson dot com, but if you want to follow me on social media, I'm on acts at amanda knox and on instagram at a moment ox and that's a great way to keep up with what I'm doing and yeah. I have a lot of stuff. That's really exciting! That's in the works And if you haven't listen to the waking up resilience series tens in our last action. Yes, thanks again Amanda. Thank you. Sam the