Amanda Knox || The Real Amanda Knox

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In this episode,
I talked to Amanda Knox about her wrongful conviction for
the murder of Meredith Kirscher. Her experience revealed dark truths
about the media's inclination to over sensationalize stories about young women,
and the glaring human errors in the criminal justice system.
We also touch on the topics of trauma, cancel culture,

(00:27):
cognitive biases, law, and forensic science. Throughout this episode, I
try my best to show the audience the real Amanda Knox,
not the version of her that the media has depicted.
Along those lines, I give her some of my psychological
tests to take, including my test on self actualization as
well as my psychopath test. You won't want to miss
the results or this episode. It's a really powerful episode

(00:51):
and I think you'll get a lot out of it.
So let's get right into it. I bring you Amanda Knox. Amanda,
how you doing today? Thanks for being on my podcast.
I'm doing great. I'm a little sleep deprived, so you'll
have to excuse my sleep deprived brain, but I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on. It's my pleasure. Well, does
it have anything to do with the fact that you

(01:12):
just had a new baby girl. Oh my god. Yes,
we were awake, yes, last night for a little bit together,
just wandering around the house until she fell asleep again.
So that's that's my world right now. Well, congratulations to
the birth of Eureka, mused noc Robinson. Congratulations. You know

(01:35):
you there's a specific reason why you decided to tell
the story of and kind of lead people in the journey.
You know, tell people about your journey, right. You wanted
to kind of control the narrative in a way, is
that right? Yeah? I mean so, yes. The issue that
I faced from the second I got pregnant was the
idea that my pregnancy and the birth of my child, would,

(01:55):
like every other private aspect of my life, be deemed
in the public intro and therefore not protected by privacy laws,
and that the tabloids would exploit those very intimate parts
of my life to defame me and harm me psychologically.
So I decided that I would try to disincentivize their

(02:21):
coverage and the and their sort of impulse to go
after me with paparazzi by first of all, keeping the
pregnancy journey in the birth journey to myself until I
was ready to tell it, and to tell it in
my own way, so that at the very least when
people did first hear of my daughter's existence, it would

(02:44):
be in the context of something that was exploring these
difficult positions that I'm in and that i'm and the
sort of position that I hope my daughter will be
in in the future, which is to not be treated
just like the latest scandal content for in the Amanda
knock saga. As Tom McCarthy so aptly put it, well, look,

(03:07):
that makes a lot of sense. So I'm a scientist
here and in preparation, and I really do extensive preparation
for all my guests, and you were certainly included on that.
And what just boggled my mind were some of the
things that people would just say online with no factual
support whatsoever to it. And not only that, but there
are various things I really because I really got I

(03:28):
got like really into the case in like a really
scientific way, like like you know, with just no part yeah, yeah, yeah,
no part in the horse sort of way. You know.
I was like, what is the evidence? Just and I
would really and I and I would wake up in
the middle of the night actually At one point I
was like, oh, what about this? And I would go
and I would do extensive Google search. I was like, okay,
that that that that answers that for me. Yeah, yeah, okay,

(03:49):
I get it. But then I would still see things
propagated over and over again. How do you have so
much grace in handling that? Because I noticed you don't
even respond to something like I wanted to fight for you,
and some people on my own Twitter page, I want
to be like like, are you serious, Like you didn't
even look at this like objectively whatsoever. Yeah, it's a
good question because I feel like you have the same

(04:10):
impulse as my husband. My husband is very, very protective
of me and deeply, deeply offended whenever anyone makes a
false claim about me online and vilifies me, and he's
just like so outraged by it. He's like, of all
the people in the world, why you like, of all
the people? And my relationship with it is a little

(04:33):
bit different, in part because I spent so long not
being able to defend myself at all. I was in
prison for four years between the ages of twenty and
twenty four when this was first happening, and I had
very very little opportunity to defend myself at all. So
I wonder if, in part I internalized some feelings of

(04:59):
helplessness or hope lessness. I also feel like the sort
of mental state that I was in in that time
period was one in which I realized that, oh wow,
for so many people, the truth doesn't actually matter. Just
the story matters, and the characters of that story matter
whether or not they correspond with reality. And the story

(05:21):
that I was telling myself about my own life, like
what I could expect from life, like go to school,
find love, have children, have a career like those were
all things that were also stories that I had been
telling myself, and there had been no guarantee that that
was actually going to be the course of my life.

(05:43):
And so in the prison environment, I very much suddenly
realized that there were no guarantees in life, and I
had to instead be very present with what I did have,
be very aware of what I did have, and I
didn't have much so I could catalog it. And then
since coming home, it's a little bit different because the

(06:05):
prison and trial experience is one in which absolutely what
people are saying about me out in the world very
very much impacts my right to live as a free
human being in the world. But once I was exonerated,
I realized that the game had changed. It was no
longer about my freedom. It was about my identity, and

(06:27):
that was the thing that remained the missing piece of
my life that had been stolen from me. But my
freedom and my identity are two very different things. I
can live with myself and my identity in my small
world and also understand that I don't actually have full
control over my identity in the greater world. That doesn't

(06:48):
like it does impact me, but it's not the same
as someone trying to put me in jail. So I
guess it put that into perspective. Yeah, it sounds like
you became at a PhD in psychology informally throughout this
whole press. Actually a lot of psychologists say that to me,
where they're like, Wow, some of the strategies that you
used to get through that experience are strategies that we
try to like, like therapists will share. Like one of

(07:10):
the strategies that I had, which I wouldn't even consider
a strategy I sort of intuitively did it was I
had conversations with my younger self about what she was
going to experience in the future. So in a way,
I was sort of big sister coaching myself through the
experience in order to feel like less powerless over it,

(07:33):
like and so it sort of like took a thing
that felt very much on top of me and I
put it in front of me and I sort of
disassociated from it a little bit, and that helped me
at the very least get through the day. But see,
that's textbook So for instance, George, but you didn't know it.
That's textbook psychology. You just devised it. But George Banana,

(07:55):
who was recently my podcast, actually highly recommend listening to
our chat. He just wrote a book called The End
of Trauma. He it's all about his he's one of
the leading researchers in resiliency and he's really shown that
self talk is a major major strategy. He has a
whole chapter on self talk in his book. So that's
really cool for you to hear that he was just
he's like just two episodes ago. So can you describe

(08:16):
to me what he means by self talk because I'd
be curious to know if it has to do with
the narrative of one's life, that one either feels they
have control over or they don't have control over. I'd
be interested to know that. I think he's more referring
to it an extent to which you tell yourself that
you have deep reservoirs of resiliency that are untapped, that
you can handle this, you know, saying just even saying

(08:38):
words to yourself. You know, researchers have looked at the
difference between just saying yourself, I can do this. You
know what, I've faced hard things before, you know there
will be a future, versus thinking to yourself, this is it,
you know, like there's no hope. You know, there's a
very very strong, statistically significan difference between those two conditions. Interesting. Yeah,
I think that's that squares with my own ex variance,

(09:00):
because I even would think to myself at certain times.
I went through soccer training a lot when I was
a kid, and one of the things that I told
myself to get through the very difficult soccer practices occasionally
was I would just do the little engine that could
mantra over and over my head. I think I can.
I think I can. I think I can. And the
thing I really loved about that was the uncertainty I

(09:21):
was like, I think I can. I'm not sure, but
I'm going to try. I'm going to try to get
through this day. We'll see. Well. By the way, that's
where you got the nickname Foxy Knox. So you probably
never want to hear that nickname ever again. But just
for the record, for the this is helpful for you.
For the record, you got that nickname because what you

(09:44):
kind of like, you played soccer like a fox. Like
you were like, yeah, so I was good. I mean
I was so. I was one of the smaller players,
and I was very quick, and I was I played
this position called top of the diamond, which is the
first line of defense, and it's a position where you're
constantly squirreling around or just try to steal the ball

(10:06):
away from people. So in that way, I and my
name rhymes with fox. So that's how that came about.
I want to call nickname right. I want a better one.
I want a better one than what they called me
around your age. When I was that age, they called
me scotty potty. Oh no, is there or was it
just because it runs? Well? Okay, no, no, I'll tell

(10:28):
you there was so around I'm a little bit older
than you, Amanda, but not not by that much, not
by that much. But there was something called the sour
Patch Kids cards card back in the day. Have you
ever heard of the sour Patch Kids? I mean, I
I've eaten many a sour Patch kid, but I did
not know that they came with cards. I believe they
had cards, and one of them was one of the
names of one of them was Scotty Potty. That was

(10:50):
one of the sour Patchkins. I'm pretty sure. Maybe I'm
messing up my eighties references. It was called something else.
But there were these cards, and then they were a
whole collection of these funny things. But wait, are you
thinking are you thinking of the garbage Pale kids? Yes,
the garbage Okay, okay, okay, because garbage kids just came
and like, that's a candy, that's a candy. You're right,

(11:12):
You're right, garbage pale cad Well, see you, Okay, thank you.
So you know what I'm talking about now. I've been
trying to change that narrative as an adult. I had
a girlfriend who, of her own volition called me Scottie
too haughty, and I was like, okay, okay, I like
that one better. That I love that one too, because
it's not even Scottie Hotty like she took it to

(11:33):
the next level like mc hammered it. It was. That's great.
He was a great girlfriend. I just want to say,
for the record, I appreciate her very much. So here's
a quote I found when I was listening to your
very interesting interview with Joe Rogan I thought could set
a stage for what we can really get into today.
You said, I feel like I'm constantly trapped in a

(11:55):
conversation with the fake version of me in people's minds
that keeps getting recycled over and over again. That is,
first of all, that is good writing. You're obviously a good.
Second of all, that's very powerful. That is very very powerful,
and I think a lot of us can relate. I
can relate to your story, you know, just being very young,

(12:15):
I was in special ed and for an auditory disability
I had, and I read about this a lot, and
I wrote about this in various of my books. But
the point here is that I felt as though I
was reduced to how other people decide to put a
label on me. And I feel like there's a connection
here to probably how you felt, and probably still feel
to a large degree where you want to be able

(12:35):
to create your own identity. Aren't you know, aren't you
allowed to create your own identity? And that's how I felt,
certainly as a child fighting my way. I had actually
fought my way out of special ed, and then I
fought my way into gifted ed, and then people still
saw me as the special ed kid, and I was like,
but I'm in gifted talking about I'm literally can it

(12:55):
ever change? So this idea of how gest perceptions really
influence deeply how we see people, not not just you know,
from a just a purely visual psychology point of view,
but from a human, whole person point of view. It's
amazing how it's like an optical illusion in a way.
You start to get to the evidence. You start to

(13:16):
talk to the real Amanda Knox, which, by the way,
I'm thinking of calling today's episode the real Amandon Ox.
Once you start talking to the real Amandom Knox, maybe
people's gestal will flip. But the point is the media
control back gestalt. Right, yeah, yeah, And I think you
know what's really interesting about your situation is these are
people who had direct access to you, right, Like the

(13:37):
thing that failed you and your experience was the education
system not really recognized. I mean, I already have like
a whole Like my mom is a school teacher, and
I love her and she does incredible work, and I
recognize that it's very, very difficult to be a teacher
in this world. But I do have a problem with
the education system where it seems like everyone is churned
through this system that is very very specific and doesn't

(14:02):
actually acknowledge the different ways that people learn and the
different skill sets that people have. It feels like this
conveyor belt education and if you don't fit this very
specific role, then people treat you like your lesser. It's
very interesting, and I think that maybe it's even more difficult,
and I have a lot of compassion for people who

(14:23):
find themselves having their being sort of misidentified in their
own communities, because these are people who you know and
love and care about, and they're the people who are
determining who you are that doesn't match up with your
understanding of yourself and with the evidence. In my case,
it was thousands and thousands of strangers who had no

(14:44):
access to me, who were determining who I was for
the sake of some kind of like morality tale that
they were trying to like not only sort of determine,
like you know, find us a scapegoat to p and
all of their like horrible you know, feelings about a
terrible tragedy that occurred, but also they had like this.

(15:06):
The thing about my case is that I became this
sort of blank slate onto which people could make judgments
about women and about sexuality. And very very much there
was like this morality tale being told about female sexuality
where I was the I was the stand in for
everything that people hate and fear but also are intrigued

(15:30):
about female sexuality. Oh absolutely, And you know, I think
you wouldn't mind having your Monica Winskey moment in a
sense where why aren't all the me too feminists jumping
on this? Because it really you know, when you really
look at it and you're really honest, when people are
really honest about what happened, you know, a lot of
had to do with your looks. You know, would the

(15:51):
same thing have happened if it was just your boyfriend
at the time, Raphael, you know who was convicted. This
is a real I mean, this is a real There
was a real gender and sort of how we treat
beautiful people in our society. Yeah, I mean it's astonishing
story here. Yeah, I mean it is astonishing because on
the one hand, Meredith also was a beautiful girl and

(16:12):
she was brutally murdered, and no one really paid attention
to the person who actually brutally raped and murdered her,
like what was interesting about And there's also like a
sort of tinge of racism here where the person who
actually did this was a young black man who was
disenfranchised and all of the all of the things, and

(16:36):
because people at the time were like, well, obviously he
he just you know, there's nothing interesting about him as
a criminal. What's interesting in a criminal is a female
who is a part of involved in a sexually motivated
violent crime. So the media totally overlooked the facts of
this case in order to pursue a scandalouscious story. And

(17:02):
they're you know, deep rooted reasons for that, really deep.
I mean, the more we keep digging, I'm saying, you know,
you start to realize whoa because it's not just simply
a morality. Tell you could easily if by the way,
his name was rude. You know, I want to say
his name Rudy Gude right, was the one who who
merred Meredith Kircher. So and he had been found just

(17:25):
a couple even days before in a nursery or something
broken and was found with a knife, yeah you know.
And it was only his fingerprints that were found in
the room where Mareth was merged, so these are fact
his DNA on her body, Like, yeah, he was. It's
interesting because the way that the media treated him as
well is also a weirdly off, where one they sort

(17:48):
of ignored him, and then whenever they made reference to him,
at least in Italy. I'm actually not familiar with how
they referenced him in the US and in the UK,
but at the time, they always always always referred to
him as Livoriano, the person from the Ivory Coast, which
is really interesting because yes, he was from the Ivory Coast,

(18:10):
but from what I understand, he moved to Italy and
lived in Italy with an Italian family from a young age,
so he really was an Italian. He just happened to
be born in the Ivory Coast. But like people just
really wanted to associate him as like an other, and
then once they associated him as an other, they sort

(18:32):
of sidestepped him and didn't weren't really interested in the
facts of his story, which is a young guy brought
up in a family but starts getting into trouble, starts
breaking and entering, starts doing drugs, goes down the spiral
of breaking and entering that results in the end with
a brutal rape and murder. That story very very much

(18:55):
got overlooked, and it's one that's worth looking into because
that stuff happens, and we should try to stop that
kind of stuff from happening. Anyway, Oh absolutely, oh absolutely.
Had you ever encountered him before? I hadn't seen him
around because he played basketball with the guys who lived

(19:16):
in the floor below us, and so yeah, so like
he was around, but I don't think I even really
knew his name until he was arrested. I remember, like
when I was in jail. I remember the moment I
was in prison. I was watching the news and they
showed him being arrested and they were like, you know,

(19:37):
Rudy Gadet blah blah blah arrested in Germany after fleeing
the country, and I was like, holy shit, I recognized
that guy. That that guy, like that basketball guy. That's
the guy who did it. And then I kept thinking, oh, wow,
thank goodness they found the person who did it. I'll
be released now exactly. Yeah, that's what that's the reasonable assumption.

(19:59):
That's the assumption. Yeah. I watched an interview that was
done with him where he said he first was attracted
to you, and then Meredith was kind of like the backup,
you know sort of thing. So, I mean, I know,
I know, and you know he obviously he had talked
to Meredith before. Do you reckon he was there that
day because of Meredith or he just thought it might

(20:20):
have been an empty house. I think that he probably
thought it was an empty house. That's what I'm thinking too. Yeah,
it was the holiday weekend. It was understood that, Like
I didn't know this, but apparently, you know, the Day
of the Dead, the day after Halloween is a very
common time for Italian people to go and visit their
families and spend time with their families. You know. I

(20:42):
didn't know that, but that was the reason why so
many of my Italian roommates were gone, and I had
just happened to be spending the night over at my new,
very new boyfriend's house, who I knew of several days,
and so I think that he went in there too
because he knew the house, he had seen it before.

(21:05):
He was looking to break and enter and get some money,
you know that kind of thing. Okay, So let's get
a little a picture, a bit of a picture of
Amanda Knox before this tragedy happened. So you wrote you
were a nerdy poetry and language student. You correct me
if all these things I'm saying are wrong. You were
a non drinker and non smoker. Your favorite pursuits included

(21:27):
yoga and quote, backpacking, long distances with people. I know
your favorite films were Shrek and The Full Monty, and
you like the Beatles and reading Harry Potter books. Yes,
is all correct? Yeah. The only thing that I would
say is I was an occasional drinker and an occasional
smoker at the time. But I was not heavy in
either of those situations. But I wouldn't. I don't think

(21:48):
I was ever a non drinker like I You know,
I went to parties, I went and had drinks with people,
but I was not like strict about it. Wasn't out
of control, nor was I strng about never having it
well that's what you're in your MySpace page, probably when
you're like fourteen. Oh well yes, yeah, my space was
a while yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah exactly, exactly. Yeah. Okay,

(22:12):
So I get this picture of a young child, young
girl who was just like really curious about the world,
really innocent in a way. There was a I sense,
a sort of innocence to you, you know, a sort
of like nyativity, niaevity. How do you say it? Yeah, yeah,
naivete Yeah, I think that would be accurate. I was.

(22:33):
I was the kind of person who really did well
in school, never really got into trouble, was you know,
I worked a number of jobs to like save up money,
Like I was a soccer coach for a young girls team,
and I you know was. I was also very like
romantically and sexually inexperienced. So I was definitely like a

(22:56):
late bloomer, kind of dorky news theater ren fair kind
of indivision. Yeah theater you were, Oh me too, that
is so. I was a voice major at Cardige mel
and I my dream was to be Javert and Lems.
That is amazing. I love opera and I don't have

(23:19):
the voice for it, but man, so much respect what
I could, you could you could have, you could be trained.
I think anyone can be trained. Honestly, do you ever
sing anymore? I do? I do, and I try to
take lessons every now and then. Sometimes I even I
even record something just with this microphone and uh and
kind of karaoke music like from stars from Lima's in
the background. I posted on my Twitter before. Oh cool. Yeah,

(23:42):
I was inchoired, so it's definitely not opera, but I
was inquiring and I love doing musical theater right on,
right on, you know. I my heart really breaks in
so many ways for the story. But one way is
that I really can resonate with studying abroad. You know,
when I was about twenty four twenty five, I went
over to England, to Cambridge, and I remember, I just

(24:04):
remember that what it was like. I remember, you know,
everyone like awkwardly having sex with each other, everyone drinking
for the you know, we're all away from home for
the first time. There really is an innocence there, the
last thing you would ever imagine. You know, people say
things like, well, why wasn't she more you know affected
you know outside, why is she kissing? Look, it's not
like the first thing you assume now you know, is

(24:25):
in your worldview? You know, your worldview was literally a
psychologist called it a seismic earthquake. That's what they call
it in the post traumatic growth literature, which is I'm
working on my next book on post traumatic growth. So
this topic is really front and center in my mind
right now. And there's a whole asumptive world theory that
I think might really interest you. If you want to,
I tell me more about the seismic eruption earthquake. Yeah,

(24:48):
I mean it's yeah, it's tied to this idea of
assumptive world theory where we have these traumas. And I
like to define trauma very broadly as anything any event,
because who am I to say, oh, that counts to
the trauma or that doesn't count as the trauma, right, Like,
who am I to say that it's in a lot
of waste traumas in the eye of the beholder, and
any event that causes this complete recognitive restructuring of Oh

(25:12):
I thought the world was safe. Yeah, but we're basically
your basic assumptions of the world are violated. And this
happened to you in a span of like an hour, Yes,
you know, and people are like, oh, why didn't she
act more normal, Like like there's any normal way to
act when your entire assumptive world has been violating. I
really appreciate you actually saying that, because it's something that

(25:32):
I've had a really hard time explaining to people, Like
I did not go home that morning to take a
shower knowing that I was going to come across a
crime scene, And even when it was made apparent to
me that there was a crime scene, I had this like, really,
it was so surreal to me that I felt a
little bit like disembodied, like what is happening? And also

(25:55):
am I certain what's happening? Because everyone's yelling in Italian?
Like it was so so bizarre that I had trouble
processing the experience. And you know, a lot has been
made of my behavior in those days, Like there's that
footage of Raphael and I outside of the house waiting

(26:20):
for the police to tell us to go into the
police station and he kisses me, and the amount of
times that that moment of him just sort of like
trying to do what he could, which is just kind
of hold me and kiss me and tell me I'm
gonna be okay, Like how that was twisted and distorted

(26:41):
in the media into like, oh my god, she's such
a sex fiend that she can't even keep her hands
off and outside of a murder house, it's like, what
is happening anyway? So that makes and to be clear,
I mean at that moment that if we double click
on that precise moment, it's not like you opened the
door and you see all what was inside the door.

(27:01):
I didn't, and I think people assume that as well,
just so many assumptions. I'm angry in the name of science.
I'm angry at that, you know, I'm also angry as
the human dimension to it. But I'm saying even if
you take that out, someone's like, don't be Biasedcott, I'll
be like, no. My point is there's so much evidence
to contradict so many of the of the bullshit that's
going around and that and I can't stand that when

(27:22):
there's a propagation of bullshit that really bothers me. Oh gosh, yeah,
it's man, how do you live with the propagation of bullshit?
You have to take a deep breath everywhere in this
world right now? Yeah everywhere? Yeah, I mean, and the
way I think about it is like, Okay, there is
the propagation of bullshit, but why, like why is it
that the bullshit resonates with people? Because it wouldn't be

(27:45):
propagated if it didn't resonate with people. And so that
says a deep question that I keep asking myself, like
why is the idea of a horrorsh murderer so much
more compelling to people than the idea of just a
regular human, regular human female who didn't have anything to

(28:10):
do with this and was very very confused and scared
in the days leading up to her arrest, Like you know,
I've just been thinking, is that I'm wonder there's a
general phenomenon here that no one's ever really talked about
an open, honest discourse. But if you look to see
what some of the most popular porn is, it's degrading
beautiful women. You know it allows there's something, there's something

(28:34):
there that I think there should be more research on.
I'm not saying I know the final answer. I understand
what's deep beneath it. But even my mentor I've never met,
but my mentors in since my intellectual hero Abraham Maslow
wrote a whole essay on pornography in the fifteen and sixties.
And by the way, I'm not anti pornography, and I'm
no proof, but I'm just noting a psychological phenomenon that

(29:00):
I that even Maslow noticed in the fifties and sixties.
He said, there's something where we elevate our self esteem
by getting back at all those women who rejected us,
all those beautiful women. There might be something there. Yeah,
you know, I actually think that there there is something there,
and I would love to look and I want to
ask my dominatrix friends about this. But yeah, because like

(29:22):
I was actually going to bring that up. Yeah, well,
because it's interesting because it's the flip side. But that
flip side only exists because I think there's that predominant
like let's punish the beautiful woman. And I do feel
like I have myself like had to sort of get
over that ichy feeling that maybe one of the reasons
why the police were going after me was because there

(29:46):
was this weird sort of pornographic interest in me. Like
I had this like weird feeling like are they just
focusing on me because like they have weird sexual feelings
towards me that they don't know how to do like
when they say things like oh, I had a gut
instinct that she was guilty, It's like did you or
did you have a dick instinct? Like what's going on here? No?

(30:10):
Look absolutely and there's another injustice here which is a
complete misrepresentation of the BDSM community. And this really upsets me. Yeah,
I have a whole episode in my podcast Labyrinths about this.
Did you listen to it? I listened to it. I
listened to it. I wanted to bring this up. Can
you tell a little bit about your experience of dom con?
I loved domkon. So my experience with dom con was
that I, at the time, I was exploring this idea

(30:34):
like what is up with this idea about a sex game?
Like why was that so titillating to people? What even
is a sex game? And also like do people who
take part in sex games to like they do they
how do they feel about the way that their sort
of world was represented in my case and vilified in

(30:54):
my case? And so I reached out to the premier
dominatrix ever who like came up with Dom Cohan mistress
Ian and what I found a legend and this like
amazing person who survived cancer and have done like so
many amazing things. And I reached out to her and
I was just like, hey, so I don't know, I
don't know if this makes like makes me a creeper

(31:16):
or anything, but I just was wondering if you could
tell me more about this world and what's going on there.
And she was so warm and so kind and was like,
you will be like, just come visit see for yourself.
You'll be my special guest. I'll take care of you.
I'll introduce you to people. And she really like just
over those days that I was there, I went to

(31:37):
the New Orleans one, which was it was nicely small
and sort of intimate, and everyone like there knew each other.
It was really great, and you know, clearly I was
like exposed to new ways of thinking about even just
not just sex, but about relationships like my husband and
I came away from that experience being like, you know,

(31:57):
what we should have like codes of conduct and ways
of communicating outside of the bedroom to determine like, okay,
in this in this world right now, we are going
to like focus on each other and we're going to
be really really clear communicators with each other. But there
are some times in life where I have to get
work done and you have to be a second priority

(32:17):
for me for this hour, and like we need to
communicate that so no one's feelings get hurt and no
one you know, like there's lots of ways that we
miscommunicate with each other just because we're not being explicit
about what our expectations are. And you can totally like
do away with all of the hurt that can come
from not being good communicators by just being more explicit

(32:40):
about your expectations. So that was like my big takeaway.
Not to mention, I got flogged by Mistress Cyan and
that was really cool. Well hopefully there were no video
cameras there, yes, and I was really terrified about that.
But again, BDSM community, like they are all about consent

(33:00):
and they're not going to talk about your business without
your consent. So good on them. Yeah, consent, and you
know there's care, there's care, deep deeply intertwined with it.
So I gave you a battery of psychological tests to take,
and you were such a good sport these tests. So
let me reveal some of these roles and we could
talk about them if you do you agree with them.

(33:21):
So first is top. Your top three sources of self
actualization are The first one is continued freshness of appreciation.
How has that played a role in your life? I
guess I feel lucky that whenever I encounter these, whenever
I counter something beautiful, I'm not bored. Like even if

(33:42):
I see the same even if I listened to the
same song that I really love, I still really love it,
and I appreciate that I'm sort of built that way.
So I feel grateful that I feel gratitude for things,
and I don't take things for granted. So I think
that that's a fair assessment. Oh. One thing I wanted

(34:03):
to note before we go into these results is my
husband disagreed with my results in many ways, and only
can we bring him on? Can we bring him off? Yeah? Sure,
he's just outside. I can wave him down. Hey, Bill,
you want to come in this, No, I want to
hear what he Yeah? Yeah, he's great. Now. His name

(34:26):
is Christopher, Christopher Robinson. Yeah, here, I'll scooch over so
he can. I've been on the search for the perfect
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(34:48):
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(35:55):
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(36:15):
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(37:02):
now back to this show. Hey, do you go by
Christopher or Chris? Hello? Okay, Hi? Do you go through Christopher?
Do you go by Christopher? Chris or Christopher either one? Okay? Cool? Hi,
I'm Scott. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Scott. So,
Amanda says you disagreed with some of her test results.

(37:24):
We didn't get to the dark light tryad stuff yet.
I'm curious to your thoughts on that. But so, can
you kind of hang around as we as I go
through all the results of Amanda and can you hear
a dialogue between you two about it? I'm sure? Wait,
oh I can't hear. But yeah, well, here there's another
pair of headphones. That another pair of headphones, because this
is fun we have So Amanda, what what I said

(37:46):
to him is you know we'll go one by one
and kind of here, I have a dialogue here what
he thinks. Okay, so you tell me first whether or
not you agree with it or not, and then I'll
ask him. Okay, cool, Yeah, so you just talked about
continuing depressions. I appreciate it. Do you agree, Chris, do
you agree about very very high? She scored actually one
hundred percent. Yes, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. And then the
second one was truth seeking. Yeah, I'm kind of a

(38:09):
I'm kind of a stickler for that, where I am
I even to like my my own chagrin or my
own difficulties, where like I understand that sometimes the easiest
way is to just say, you know whatever, like that's true,
that isn't true, it doesn't really matter, Let's just move on.

(38:32):
And I'm kind of a stickler for like, no, I
want to know what's true, like what is really going
on here? And I do that because I have a
sense of responsibility towards the truth that and by that
I mean I have a sense of I feel a
sense of responsibility to humans. So I feel like truth
seeking is a humanitarian thing for me, where if I

(38:54):
am always always looking for the truth, that means I'm
always looking for the truth of the humanity of the
subject that I interested in. And if I'm not willing
to always be a stickler for the truth, that means
that I may overlook the humanity of someone who I'm
interacting with. It's the weird moral dimension you have to
truth seeking, whereas for me it's more of a you're

(39:14):
just a scientific pursuit sort of thing. Yeah, you're like
more of the principle of the thing. She scored very
high on truth seeking. Yeah, no, I get that she's
scored very high. Yeah. Yes, that was her second highest.
The third one was interesting authenticity. Hmmm, authentic? How does
that play out? And what does authenticity even mean? What
does that mean to you? Well, I think that might

(39:36):
be in part due to the fact that I have,
for the majority of my adult life been accused of
being something that I'm not, and I've been accused of
being inauthentic and being a liar, and so it's become like,
I think I've overcompensated on the other end of that
to be like, no, like judge me all you want,

(39:58):
Just judge me based upon the truth. And so if
you're going to if I'm going to give you the
opportunity to judge me or anything else, like here it
is here, let me lay it all out for you
like I've got and that has But also at the
same time, like even when I was a kid, I
wasn't like a person who like my mom tells this

(40:19):
story about how like the one time I ever lied
to her about something, she sort of didn't know what
to do. Like I was like six maybe, and I
lied about drawing a stick figure on the wall, and
like she I said, she was like, Amanda, did you
do this? And I was like no, no, no, And
so she let it go for a half an hour,

(40:40):
and then like a half an hour later I came
to her sobbing, like I did it. I'm sorry. That's
kind of like what happened. That's kind of like what
happened with you in the interrogation, is you they pressured
you so much you signed something, but you felt such
an overwhelming sense of this is not true that you
a letter If I'm right, did you write a letter

(41:01):
note to one of the up detectives or something being like, look,
this wasn't true. Yeah, they and they wouldn't listen to me.
I wrote that note specifically because I kept saying, but
can I talk to you again? Can I talk to
you then? Please? What I said wasn't, I can't, I
have to recant like blah blah blah, and they just
were not interested. So I asked for a piece of
paper to write it down. Yeah, it just made me

(41:23):
think of that, and it seems analogous in a way. Yeah,
so yeah, right right to the So the next one. Look,
I'm not supposed to say the fourth one because it's
the top three, but the fourth one is. So it
was actually tied. Is it tied? Yeah, it's literally literally tied.
And that's equanimity. And I think this one is very
very relevant to your whole life. You have mentioned that
you're sort of have a stoic sort of sensibility people

(41:47):
when they said things like, oh, well, you didn't act
how a normal person would act if someone you know,
this equanimity aspect to you, in a way is what
helped get you through so much of this, right Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
like trying to not just letting my emotions take over me,
but letting them be information that I process. And I

(42:08):
don't know, it's interesting because I used to refer to
this as like deer in headlights syndrome where I would
just sort of like when something happened, I would just
be like h and I would sort of need to
process this all this information. But it but I think
equanimity is a nicer way of saying it. I think
her self assessments on the sort of light triad things

(42:31):
are now we're going to get mostly accurate. Right. I
think there's okay, there's a bit of but let's go
through them. Don't don't don't, don't, don't spoiler work. I
feel like you're I feel like you're a spoiler over.
And this is the most this is what everyone came
for the popcorn. Your psychopath score you ready dunt dun't
duh is extremely low, extremely low. You are actually not

(42:54):
a psychopath. I try. You are not a psychopath according
to my test. And you actually came out quote strongly
tip toward the light side, strongly tiped toward the light
side in my light for a dark tria test. Now,
for my fellow nerds out there, I took a science
these are there's a scientific valid test. It's not just
like like the Meyer Briggs, which isn't excited about this.

(43:14):
This takes a well validated dark triad research and my
new construct the light triad, and looks and looks within
her at all of these things. Looking mixing matching is
to come out with an output. So the output is
your strongly tip to the light side. But let's go
through each of the facets because they are super interesting
that your results. The first one is faith in humanity.
This is the one fascinates me, and you remind you.

(43:35):
So you scored very, very high in faith in humanity,
which is believing in the fundamental goodness of humans. And
you reminded me of an Anne Frank quote, which is
in spite. So she wrote this in her journal as
the Nazis were really coming up the stairs to kill her.
She wrote in her journal, in spite of everything, I
still believe that people are really good at heart. So

(43:56):
that's a direct quote from her journal. And you made
me think of that. So, Amanda, you still score high
in faith in humanity in spite of everything. Can you
kind of explain a little bit about that? How do you
you feel about that? I mean, I feel like I
don't have evidence to point to necessarily. I just have
an intuition that everyone is doing the best they can

(44:23):
even when they're not doing the best they can. Like everyone,
I feel like if I put myself in the shoes
of people who have made even like horrible, horrible decisions
and terrible mistakes the vast majority of the time, I
don't believe that they're sitting there cackling about how evil

(44:44):
they're being. I think that they're telling themselves a story
about what they're doing, how they're doing, how what they're
doing is the right thing to do. And I think
that what that means is that very often we are
all making horrible mistakes and doing, you know, perpetrating lots

(45:08):
of harm towards each other, but we're not doing it
because we want to be hurting each other, Which makes
me think that like there is deep down a fundamental
impulse for humanitarian there is a fundamental humanitarian impulse in
all of us. The other side of that is like
the moral luck question, which we explore, was that in

(45:31):
the one bite of the elephant episode, Yeah, one bite
of the elephant at a time, Yeah, do you know
Thomas Nagel's moral luck? So you know, even the talking
about the nazis from a moment ago, Like the whole
question of well if that Nazi prison guard happened to
be born in Argentina instead of Germany, would he have

(45:51):
become that guy? You know, I'm probably not right. How
much does do those external twists of fate to turn
in what our moral path is in life? And when
you take that into account, especially neither of us believe
in free will? Is another side of this. When you
get rid of free will conversations, right, then you know,

(46:14):
moral moral responsibility seems to go out the window. And
in one light, but by the other light, no one's
really No one's really morally culpable because you're just the
little meat robot doing what you were programmed to do,
or through the vicissitudes of quantum fluctuations. Right, Either way,
it's hard to blame people and hate them for their actions, right,

(46:36):
it actually leads to compassion. I think, yeah, I hear you.
I don't know if we want to open that. I
highly recommend our usher's listening to my two part series
with Sam Harris where we vehemently disagree about this. Yeah
I would, yeah, yeah, yeah. However, I read something in

(46:56):
one of your blog posts I think is illustrates your
own sense of compat even for Rudy Gueyde. So you
had said that what you're angry about is that he
just won't admit, and you know, save a lot of
people a lot of heartache and uncertainty, and just you
know that he just won't admit that he killed Meredith. However,
you say, I doubt he ever will, But if the

(47:18):
day he does, I will celebrate his rehabilitation and wish
him the best on a new and honest chapter of
his life. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. I thought
that kind of speaks maybe a little bit to your
instincts there for not defining anyone by their worst case,
even Rudy. Yeah. Yeah, And I stand by that because
I think the thing that anyone who has experienced harm

(47:40):
most wants from the person who harmed them is an
acknowledgment of the harm. Because at that point I can say,
all right, we at least are on the same page
that what happened was shouldn't have happened, and that I
have been harmed, and that you are not sort of
pretending that that harm doesn't exist or that what you

(48:01):
did didn't cause direct harm to me. Because when someone
doesn't like admit to the harm that they've caused, it
makes the person who has been harmed feel first of all,
like they're being blamed for their own harm, but also
it makes them feel unsafe, like, oh, if you don't
acknowledge what you've done, are you going to do it again?
Like if you didn't do anything wrong, well, then who's

(48:23):
to say whether or not you're going to do it again?
And so like that's that's the sort of key thing
for me, Like people make mistakes and do horrible things
all the time. That doesn't mean that it defines them.
But what does matter from a trauma standpoint is the
acknowledgment of the harm and of the action that caused
the harm. Yeah, I truly wish Rudy would do this someday. No, Okay,

(48:49):
So back to your dark trianph course. So you score
very very low in psychopathy, as I ready mentioned, which
is callousness and cynicism, and then mackie velianism you score
very very low, which is strategic exploitation and set. You know,
everyone knows the Macavilian person. They're always scheming, right, They're
always like everyone knows that person. Every time you talk
to them, they're like, oh, you know, if we move
that chess pond, then we can get this out of

(49:09):
that person. So you scored very well in that he
scored very That's not who you are according to my test. However, Yes,
however this is the most, perhaps the most. And we've
been waiting. I saved this one for a last because
I suspected this is maybe where you two disagree. Your
narcissism score was above average. Yeah, was above it. Now
it wasn't one hundred percent. It was sick. It was

(49:30):
approaching sixty percent, but it was it was. It was
greater than average by twelve point four or five percent. Yeah,
to be precise. Yeah, Now what do you two think
of that? So I think that I, because of how
much my life has been like because I've been accused
of things that I didn't do, I potentially have become

(49:52):
someone who has been deeply invested in my sense of self.
And I worry then that, like it has my narcissism
been you know, pushed up by like as a sort
of trauma response, is a kind of like shield response
to something. And I do worry about that now, Chris,
So you know, I want to hear what Chris has

(50:13):
to say about this. I think she's one of the
most selfless generous people I know, right, And I think
one of the issues with any sort of self reported
test is you have your own cognitive blind spots towards
your own behavior, tendencies to inflate good qualities or diminish

(50:34):
bad qualities, et cetera. But also there's things like imposter syndrome.
I think Amanda has a deep, deep case of imposter syndrome,
and that I think she has a big difficulty seeing
her her deeply positive traits. Actually, and if you were
to look at the dms that come in, you know

(50:54):
of people saying, Wow, you're such an inspiration to me,
Like Amanda reads those and she's like, no, I'm not.
You know, she doesn't she doesn't believe that though even
if thousands of people are saying, wow, you're so strong
and you really helped me change my life, that she
doesn't believe that. She doesn't have that that self belief.
So the idea that she's narcissistic and thinks that she's

(51:16):
a savior for people, it's not the Amanda I see.
And I'm actually, what are the you know it's better
than we do? What are the questions that score well?
I certainly can't reveal that because that's actually telling this.
It's like saying, give me the IQ test items. But
there's an interesting link here between that. I'm going to

(51:38):
send you an article I run Scientific America on the
link between a particular kind of narcissism and imposter syndrome.
It's not the kind of narcissism that most people are
aware of, but it's one that I've conducted research for
the past decade about and I've been trying to increase
awareness about because it's the one that's most linked to psychopathology,
and that's called vulnerable narcissism. Now it makes me think,
now I want to give you my vulnerable narcissism intent,

(52:00):
but vulnerable narcissists. So most people when they think of
narciss they think of the grandiose narcissist, which is chest thumping,
extroverted trump okay, right, So they think of the you know, okay,
I mean stereotypical, stereotypical I'm great, right, the person that
screams on great. But and this is something my own
healing process, So this is a very human thing. I'm

(52:22):
not I don't believe in separating we're narcissists from not narcissis.
I think we're all have narissic tendencies, but a lot
of people who have gone through trauma develop and we
found this. We've published paper showing that early childhood trauma
and violation of expectations lead to a vulnerable kind of
narcisism where the person feels shame all the time, but
the very so so shame is the number one marker

(52:44):
of it. And we found we're the first ones to
publish a paper showing the linkage to imposter syndrome. So
I'm actually going to send you I'll send you that
scientific I'll make a note to send you that scientific
American paper. And that makes sense, like the idea that like,
you know, people are saying that they or like doing
things to you, and you think, oh, they're doing it
because it's me and I'm you know, they think I'm

(53:06):
a bad person, and you're like, no, they're just they're
just doing their thing and it has nothing to do
with you. And so you are being a little bit
of a narcissist by thinking that people are being you know,
bad to you for whatever reason, Like is that what
you're talking about? It it's a smoke and fire thing,
a bit. I think when the whole world tells you
for years on end that you're an evil monster, right,
it's I think it's hard for anybody to not go

(53:29):
is there anything there you know? Or And also but
like I think it's totally true that I'm guilty of this.
Where Like I when people are like out about in
the world and I noticed that they recognize me, I think,
are they talking to me because they've heard of this
horrible story about me? Or are they or are they
just talking to me because I happen to be getting
mushrooms at the grocery store next to them grabbing a cucumber,

(53:51):
Like I do worry about that. So I this is
exactly what I helped my clients with. So I feel
like I'm giving Like do I slip into psychotherapy mode
all of a sudden? But but can I give you
some advice, just just to help you with your your
healing if I can in any way. The number one
point of why vulnerable narcisism, like at the root of
vulnan narcisism is an uncertain self esteem. Okay, there's literally

(54:14):
literally there's an entire handbook called the Handbook of Uncertain
Self Esteem there's a whole research field on this. I
suspect that's what you're plagued with. And and if you
could find a way of grounding yourself more with with
self compassion exercises. I love Sharon Salzburg's Loving Kindness meditations.

(54:34):
If you can just ground yourself with more of an
inner presence that isn't doesn't need to be validated by others,
you know where you're you don't lead with uncertainty about
your self esteem, but you lead with your authenticity that
you alreadys score high on. The more you can just
lead with your authenticity, the less you'll feel these vulnerable,
narcissistic characteristics. Does that make sense? Yeah? No, that's that's
actually really great. And I think that that that does

(54:57):
ring very true to me. I mean I'm almost like
getting sad. Yeah, I mean there's hope here. But I'm
saying there's hope. Ye A thing she's been grappling with
ever since this Italy trauma has been And it's just
something I think we talked about with LeVar Burton actually
in that in that season one episode of Labyrinths that

(55:20):
Amanda worries that the most you know, notable thing about
her forever will be a thing that didn't that she
didn't do, and that happened to her. And it's a
it's a most people don't have the opportunity to deal
with that strange circumstance where the whole world associates your

(55:41):
name and your identity and who you are and why
you matter with this thing that has nothing to do
with you. And she often wonders, will I ever contribute
to the world in any way that will matter more
and that will have an impact more than this other
thing that is not of me? And but I have

(56:02):
a radical I have a radical suggestion. And this may
sound like I've just slipped into Oprah mode, but I
have a radical, radical suggestion. Had it ever occurred to
you that, in this precise moment, you're enough? No, Like
that's it. Yeah, I do feel like your truth seekret
had entertained that hypothesis for a second, you know, like

(56:23):
maybe this precise moment, it's like, oh wait, I'm enough.
Everything else is just gravy from here. Yeah, I'll try that.
I'll do a meditation on that today. Thanks. Awesome, awesome, So, Chris,
thanks so much for joining us for this. Do you
have a man did you have I appreciate that a man,

(56:45):
Do you have a Do you have another ten to
fifteen minutes to talk about cognitive bias? I want to
be really respectful of your time. Yeah, I'm going to
hop out and attend to baby. Oh is she awake? Well,
I'm just cool jack. Oh, okay, nice to talk to you.
Thank you, Chris, Nice to you too. Didn't expect to

(57:05):
golf in that direction, but I'm actually glad. I'm glad
I did. I'm glad it did you. No, I appreciate
it too, because this is I feel like yours. Are
you okay? Yeah, Yeah, I'm okay. It's this is like
an ongoing conversation between me and Chris because, like I've
often been somewhat astounded by like how confident he is

(57:27):
in himself in the sense that, like, you know, the
sort of things that would get me down. He's just like, well,
I know that I'm a good writer, and I know
that I'm like this, that or the other, so I
don't have to worry about whether or not the world
is acknowledging that I am or not. And I struggle
with that more where I feel like I have to

(57:48):
prove myself constantly, and I'm not giving myself as much
space to just prove myself to myself. Yeah, yeah, no,
I hear you. But you know, of feeling will come
from feeling whole inner. You know innerlies. Great. Well, so
you've been really interested in cognitive bias and you learned

(58:09):
a whole lesson. Now you really wrote a nerdy blog
post that you could probably submit to a scientific journal
with this this bias, I mean you gave you know,
did you hear Mike chat with Connoment on this podcast?
By any chance? Have you listened to that one? You know,
he's Dana Common obviously, uh, one of the co founders
leading researchers of the cognitive bias literature. But you you

(58:32):
had new ones that I had never seen before gone
down you did well. I appreciate you. You're in a
safe nerdy space here, so yeah, you're You're welcome. So
you look, I thought this was really interesting. You literally
coined a new bias that I think is really a
good one, and it's called the single victim fallacy. Can
you talk a little bit about what that is because

(58:54):
I think it'll blow people's minds because it's almost dawn
on people that it could be multiple victims. Yeah, yeah, well,
and I think that just arises from these black and
white narratives. But what I observed in my own experience
was this false notion that if Meredith, the young woman
who was raped and murdered, is a victim, then anyone

(59:16):
else who is within the vicinity of the story cannot
be a victim. And similarly, like if people say, well,
Amanda's a victim, like people have treated this case as
if I'm not a real victim, that there's a real
victim and then there is me. And I wanted to
point out just because Meredith was the original victim in

(59:40):
this case doesn't mean that there couldn't be other people
who are victimized from this story. And I wanted to
point out this this like black and white thinking process
where it's like there seems to be this sort of
zero sum bias that like if there is if there's
victimization on my part, that that somehow takes a way
way from the victimization on Meredith's part. And I want

(01:00:03):
to point out, like that's absolutely not true. But I
continually have that thrown at me constantly by people online
who say, like any time that I am asserting my victim,
like how I have been victimized. I am somehow diminishing
the victimization of Meredith. And I push back against that constantly,

(01:00:26):
and I and I to the point that I felt
like I had to define a whole new bias like
about it. And I think that that happens a lot
in wrongful conviction cases, where there is this tendency for
people to say, well, because the family of the of
the original victim needs closure, we cannot explore the victimization

(01:00:47):
of someone who has been accused. Yeah, there's there's such
a horrible paradox here that Saul Cousin or Saul Cassen
has pointed out, and that's that being innocent, literally just
being innocent actually can put you an increased risk of
not being seen as innocent. You know, you even making

(01:01:08):
this point, some British tablois be like, oh, defensive, defensive, Amanda, right,
so you should he almost can't win, right, Like you know,
it's like, what am I not supposed to defend my innocence?
You know, like I should just shut up? You know
what's the alternative here? You know that I just shut up?
So yeah, that's tough. Yeah, do you, are you familiar.
I do know Saul Cassen because I know him personally

(01:01:31):
and he reached out to you when you're in jail. Yeah. Yeah,
He's a really great guy and has done a tremendous
amount to help me with to process my experience because
I what goes on in interrogation rooms was completely foreign
to me, and he very much after sort of hearing

(01:01:52):
me out what I what I experienced, shared his research
with me and I was just blown away. So anyway, well,
thanks for telling me about his work because I read
some of his papers found really interesting this paper he
wrote on the psychology of confessions. Does innocence put innocence
at risk? He said, Recent recent research suggests that actual

(01:02:12):
innocence does not protect people across a sequence of pivotal
decisions in pre interrogation interviews. Investigators commit false positive errors
presuming innocent suspects guilty, naively believing in the transparency of
their innocence. Innocent suspects we wave their rights. This is
hard to say because there's a lot of innocence and
the despier because of their denials. Innocent suspects of sid

(01:02:33):
highly confrontational interrogations. This looks like textbook Commanda Knox right
like Olive, yeah, yeah, so so grateful for his work. Well,
tell me about your keynote that you did at the
American Psychology and Law Conference. Oh, I mean I am
interested in how the question of why these things happen,

(01:02:53):
and so when I'm invited to give a talk about
this experience, I often will ask people like, well, what
about Like what about this experience? Actually it interests you?
And looking at this, I was really happy to go
to the Psychology in Law Conference because I this is
the part about wrongful convictions that I am most keen on,

(01:03:17):
Like why do first of all, innocent people end up
in this process? And how are how are these institutions
sort of built not to not to, Like I mean,
Saulcasen's research shows that there are lots of ways that
innocent people are simply not accounted for, like in the
interrogation room, where like if you make if someone accuses

(01:03:40):
you of something and you say no, no, that's not
that's not what I that's not what I did. Like
the assumption is, oh, you're a guilty person who's lying,
and not that you're an actually innocent person. And so
the ways that those course of interrogation techniques, which are
very very effective at getting guilty people to confess to crimes,
they're also very effective at getting innocent people to confess
to crimes. But beyond that, I'm also interested in not

(01:04:04):
just the psychology of the innocent person, but the psychology
of the prosecutor and the detective and why it is
that they end up honing in on the wrong person,
not out of a sense of, like you, outright evil
or corruption, but out of a sense of like human fallacy.
Because I again, like when I think back to my prosecutor,

(01:04:25):
I was never satisfied with the idea that, oh, this
is happening to me just because bad people are doing
bad things to me. Like, No, that's not what was happening.
It was more complicated than that. And so I had
to take into consideration, well, is there a kind of
confirmation bias happening here when the evidence finally came in
that showed that it was Rudy YadA and not me.

(01:04:45):
Was there a conservativism bias where they had made an
already assumption about what the case was and they were
only willing to tweak it just enough to accommodate a
new set of information, but not to contradict their previous
theory of the case. Like there are so many ways
that you know, even just the perception of me as
a human being can be best explained, like this ongoing

(01:05:09):
perception of me as like a guilty person is due
to the anchoring bias, the fact that the first piece
of information that people have ever heard about me was
that I was guilty of a terrible crime. And so
even when new evidence has come forth revealing that not
to be the case, people are biased towards the first
thing that they ever heard. And that explains a lot

(01:05:30):
of the why of my experience. It doesn't really explain
how to get out of it, but at least I
have a better understanding of the human psychology behind my experience. Yeah,
like I said, it's like you got a PhD in
psychology through this whole situation. You're referring your proscertor referring
to Giuliano Mignii, Giliano Manini. Come on, Scott, you used

(01:05:55):
to sing Italian opera. You can do better than that.
You actually did it really well. Most people are like Juliana.
If I sing it, If I sing it, I'll do
a better job. Yeah. But my take of this this
cat from watching the Netflix documentary is that he sees

(01:06:17):
himself as the modern day Sherlock Holmes. You know, he's like,
you know, he just had build up in his mind,
you know, this whole like I'm going to be the
savior of the world like this. What goes to your
point you said earlier, You know, people that do bad
things don't think in their head, oh, I'm doing a
bad thing. They think mostly it's usually I'm doing something

(01:06:37):
for the greater good. I but there's a profound narcissism
associated with a lot of those instances, because you think
in your head that you and only you are going
to save the world, and that leads to hubris, and
that leads to overconfidence, and that leads to subjectivity. Yes,
which is what happened a lot up the kazoom in
your case. Right, Yes, absolutely, But is there any chance
for a reconciliation with him or Well, that's it's an

(01:07:00):
intriguing question because it is something that I have been
contemplating and pursuing for a long time. I can't say
much about it, but yes, just because it's an ongoing project,
but it is something that is deeply important to me.
The idea that I can basically confront my accuser and

(01:07:22):
do so in a way that would be not antagonistic
but sort of restorative. Well good, I really look forward
to hearing something about that. Good for you for I mean,
I'd like to see your reckons you talk to Rudy someday. Yeah, incredible.
That would also be a very interesting experience. And I'm
not very emotional in sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's not

(01:07:48):
ready for that one. Yeah. I feel like I need
a little more time for that one. Yeah. Absolutely, we're
not going to be like I know, we're bringing OUTTL drawer,
ETL drawer, love ETL drawer. Yes, I know, I know.
And I want to thank you so much for bringing
to my attention these amazing, amazing researchers. Okay, so because

(01:08:09):
you got me down rabbit holes, I was like, oh wow,
the forensic science literature has some really serious problems. Yeah, right,
has some really serious problems. Yeah, he said. I just
want to quote something ITTL said which I completely agree with.
He said, there isn't a psychologist on this planet. He's
referring a cognitive science psychologist, which is what I am.
There isn't a cognitive psycholoist on this planet or any

(01:08:30):
other planet who can come and say that judgment, perception
or objective. It's one of the most basic cornerstones of psychology.
Yet the more you start to look into the literature,
you realize just how much how many of these techniques,
like even fingerprinting analysis, have never actually been scientifically validated.
They've been used for over one hundred years, right, So,
my gosh, like that's insane, right, like that we assume

(01:08:51):
that all these techniques are just completely objective and they
don't involve bias, when it turns out they very much do.
And should we talk about one of the seminal studies
that he conducted along those lines, where he showed that
fingerprint analysts, when given anonymous prints from cases they themselves
analyzed ten years or so ago, they were asked to

(01:09:12):
judge those same prints as a match or not, And
when they are told that the suspect confessed, the results
of their analysis often was in the opposite direction of
what they themselves had said about those very prints when
they first analyzed them. That's shocking. Yes, I hope that
everyone sort of like followed that. So like DNA e.
A fingerprint expert did a study many years ago determined,

(01:09:35):
you know, match or not match, then many many years later,
was confronted with the very same prints and came up
with a very different result based upon being told that
the person had confessed to the crime. So I it's
fat like. And this is why Saul Casson's work is
so important and important, because whether or not a person
confesses is so so biasing to people. People just can't

(01:10:00):
wrap their minds around an innocent person confessing to a crime,
so they assume that that person now must be guilty,
and even scientific experts are unable to separate their now
bias in their own objective looks at physical evidence. And
so that's why etail Drawer proposes a solution which is

(01:10:24):
linear sequential screening or unmasked sorry, linear sequential unmasking, where
you only tell the forensic experts as much information as
they need to know in order to do their job.
The fingerprint expert doesn't need to know whether or not
the suspect confessed or not in order to determine whether
or not a fingerprint is a match. So just don't

(01:10:45):
give them that biasing information. That is that simple, Yeah,
I mean, studies show possible error rates of one to
four percent in fingerprint anolysis. There's a ten percent or
more in paint, fiber and body fluid analysis alone. And
then the more I dig into this, the more I
realize all the problems with us. So here, this is
one quote I came across. You don't tell the crime

(01:11:05):
lab scientists doing the DNA, for example, what the suspect's
DNA profile looks like until they've extracted the DNA from
the evidence profile for the victim. First. I mean it's like, duh, right,
you hear that, You're like, of course, and yet that's
not what the practice is. It's not what the practice is. Yeah,
Lentini said that when Lentini this kind of methodology also
helps eliminate unwitting or unconscious bias towards linking evidence to

(01:11:27):
a suspect. So there's so many things that bring in
subjectivity into this. And these are real lives that we're
talking about, yeah, that are being wrong for convicting. And
I think that it's important to note that, like, again,
it's an unconscious bias that's impacting these these experts and
these detectives, like they're not knowingly and willingly making their

(01:11:48):
lives easier and coming up with matches to the fingerprints
because they heard someone confess that just information unconsciously buyas
to them to seeing results objective results very differently, and
as a result, it is very very important to not
not like to acknowledge that that's just the case. Like

(01:12:08):
it's not saying some kind of moral question about a
forensic expert. It's just simply this is a human problem.
This is not a you or me problem. It's a
human problem. And there's actually are you familiar with the
psychopath Test by John Ronson? I mean, I'm sure you well,
so absolutely so the yeah so I one of the

(01:12:29):
co authors of the psychopath Test is one of my
co authors on our light try and papers. Great. Yeah,
he came over. He came over to the light side. Cool. Yeah.
One of my favorite jokes from that book is John
Ronson said, as soon as I heard about confirmation bias,
I started to see it everywhere. Yeah, so good. Yeah,
it's also true, so so so true. And motivated reasoning,

(01:12:54):
you see, motivated reasoning so much. There's a whole line
of research. I'm writing an article right now for Atlantic
about this on moral tribalism and uh in group and
group narcissism, and the extent to which we overlook the
moral transgressions of people we see in are in group,
but if we have perceived them as being in our
out group, we will in ambiguous information, we'll see moral transgressions. Absolutely.

(01:13:17):
So this is this is this is very important stuff,
very important. Do you still write poetry? Is that? Do you?
Is that still in you? So? I have the most
recent poetry that I have out in the world is
a book of poems called the Cardio Tesseract that me
and my husband wrote together. It's actually a kind of
collection of poetry. Oh oh, Chris does poetry. He's lit

(01:13:44):
like two master's degrees in poetry. Kind of guys, question
like in our courtship would be reciting poems to me,
Like that's how it worked. I'm sorry, I just forgot it. No,
it's cool. It's cool. You didn't know. Why why would
you know? Yeah? No, So we're big poetry nerds. He
above all is a huge poetry nerd and is constantly

(01:14:05):
finding wonderful opportunities to share poetry with me. And one
of he's he's not much of a singer, so with
our daughter, like I do a bunch of singing at her,
he recites her poetry. Love that, Yeah, I love that.
As I told you earlier, I'm really interested in this
field of post traumatic growth. So I kind of want
to leave with a question for you. Rabbi Harold Kushner,

(01:14:26):
when he was reflecting on the death of his son,
he said, quote, I am a more sensitive person, a
more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of Aaron's
life and death than I would ever have been without it.
And I would give up all those gains in a
second if I could have my son back, If I
could choose, I would forego all the spiritual growth and
depth which has come my way because of our experiences.

(01:14:47):
But I cannot choose. So one can always think, you know,
in sort of the multiverse sort of thought experiment, what
would Amanda Knox look? What would it be to who
would she be today if this experience didn't happen with her?
But you can't choose that, and you'll never know. So
moving forward, you know, what are some of the areas
of growth that you're most excited about and that you

(01:15:08):
think genuinely came about that wouldn't have come about if
this didn't happen to you. That thank you for asking that,
and I gosh, I've that makes me so sad also
because it's like I'm a new I'm a new parent,
so I'm like newly appreciating like the depths of that sadness.
I'm really doing a great job making a fussy you are,

(01:15:30):
You're just like making all of us. Yeah, So I
think that my greatest I mean even just becoming more
attuned to the suffering of others is something that I
don't know that I had a good grasp on before
all of this, because, honestly, like I I, before everything

(01:15:52):
happened in Italy, I lived a very very blessed life.
I did not have difficulties. I am My family was
very close and very supportive. I had everything everything going
for me, and I don't think I really understood the
depths of loss and despair that human beings are capable

(01:16:17):
of and routinely experience. And so it gave me a
lot of compassion for people who experience that, and especially
for people who experience that in a very public way
and have that sort of extra dimension of suffering put
on them by people perceiving them as and judging them

(01:16:40):
while they are experiencing the worst experience of their lives.
So that is something that I have a new sort
of ingrained radar for and perspective on that I have
found to be not just useful for myself, but also
useful for people who reach out to me and feel
really alone and isolated. There's like a special, special suffering

(01:17:05):
when it comes to people who are not only experiencing
tragedy or loss or trauma, but are being judged very
publicly in the process. So no, that's actually a really
good point. Does this experience make you a little bit
more skeptical when some some people are tried in the
court of public opinion? So when everyone else is jumping

(01:17:25):
on someone, does it make you more sensitive? Yes, one
hundred percent. And I hate the idea, like it really
bugs me out, the idea that some quality about yourself
that you cannot control somehow makes it so that you
aren't suffering, Like what are we talking about? Like, No,
everyone who is being judged for some dramatic thing is

(01:17:50):
suffering and period. So I don't know it. Also, when
people say things like oh, cancel culture, isn't real. I'm like, no,
it is like people are constantly trying to like sort
of pin down people for like a one either real
or imagined transgression and like define that person entirely by

(01:18:11):
that thing and delete them, like literally cancel them. So
I don't know, it's it's I feel like judgment in
the public square is not treated with the amount of
weight that it actually carries on the person who experiences it.
Pylon culture is really real, and mob justice is often

(01:18:36):
devoid of due process and proportional sentencing, and these are
all reasons why we have a criminal justice system in
the first place, and don't just deal with transgressors out
in the open like there's a reason for that. And
so yeah, I am a firm believer that we should
have we should be way more cautious about the court

(01:18:56):
of public opinion and have a lot more skepticism towards it. Yeah,
I very much agree. Well, it looks to me like
the gestalt media narrative around you is changing. There seems
to be something in the air. You know, the Rogan appearance,
if you know the New York Times profile. In our
conversation today, my goal was quite simply for you to

(01:19:17):
just show who you are, just to show who you are.
I didn't have to do anything you are. You are
who you are, and I wanted people to see that. Yeah,
and well, thank you. You strike me as someone who's very,
very deeply empathetic, and I would even say a poetic soul,
like I feel like you have a poetic soul, right,
It does that resonate with you? Yeah, totally, it does.

(01:19:40):
And the way that I interpret that is I feel
like I see a lot of beauty even in the
stuff that hurts, which is what I feel like a
poet is constantly doing, is finding the beauty in the
pain and not you know, reveling in it, but just
like a acknowledging it. I feel like acknowledging is a

(01:20:02):
really important part of my life now. Yeah. So Victor
Frank will call that tragic optimism. It's finding the beauty
and meaning and tragedy. Thank you so much for coming
to my podcast today, man, and I hope you feel
like you were seen. I hope you feel seen. I
totally feel seen today. Thank you very much. And You've
given me a lot to think about, so I'll do that.

(01:20:24):
I'll send you some follow up. Nerdy papers and things. Yeah,
what I talked about today. Well, thanks all the best
to you all right, take care. Thanks for listening to
this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
you to join in the discussion at thus psychology podcast
dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast.

(01:20:46):
We also put up some videos of some episodes on
our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
the show, and tune in next time for more on
the mind, brain behavior, and creativity. Actual

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