The Wrongfully Convicted Woman Who Chose to Face Her Prosecutor | Amanda Knox

Key Takeaway

When something goes wrong today, do not immediately label it as proof that your life is off track. First let yourself feel the disappointment, anger, or grief without feeding it through rumination. Then ask: “How could this be a good thing?” Look for one way the setback could create momentum, clarify a value, deepen empathy, or prompt a useful action. You cannot control every event, but you can take responsibility for how you process and use it.

Episode Overview

Amanda Knox recounts surviving wrongful conviction, imprisonment, public vilification, and the long process of rebuilding a life after exoneration. She and Dan Harris explore finding meaning in suffering, separating identity from other people’s stories about us, metabolizing emotions rather than prolonging them, and approaching even profound harm with curiosity, firm boundaries, and compassion.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Wrongfully Convicted Woman Who Chose to Face Her Prosecutor | Amanda Knox from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hello, everybody, welcome to the 10 Percent Happier podcast, I'm your host, Dan Harris. If you're watching, you'll see that the backdrop is a little different today. I'm in what I'm semi facetiously calling 10 Percent Happier East, which is my wife's family's beach house in Montauk on the easternmost tip of Long Island. Anyway, let's get to the actual episode. I don't know about you, and I think this is just unavoidable. We all go through shit in our lives. And the question is, how are you going to deal with it?

As my longtime friend and meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, likes to say, don't waste your suffering. But here's the thing. Speaking personally, I often waste my suffering. I just kind of revert to rumination or regret or resignation. So I'm really interested to talk to somebody who's had no small amount of involuntary suffering in her life, by which I mean suffering imposed on her. She is Amanda Knox. I'm sure many of you are familiar with her. I'll let her tell her story. But just in brief, she was accused of a murder she did not commit in a country in which she was not a citizen.

And she has emerged with a number of deeply useful advice, pieces of advice and nuggets of wisdom for living a better life, a more resilient life. And she's got a new-ish book called Free, in which she lays a lot of this out. Amanda Knox, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. In brief, for the, I imagine, very few people who are unfamiliar with your story, can you just kind of lay out the basics of it? Yeah, sure.

And I don't blame anyone who isn't a true crime person. I certainly was not a true crime person until I became the center of a true crime scandal. So back in 2007, I was a 20-year-old study abroad student in Perugia, Italy. I was living with three other young women. And one day, a burglar broke into our home and raped and murdered one of my roommates. And very quickly, the detectives and the prosecution turned their attention on me. I was arrested within five days. They were pronouncing to the world, case closed.

Here's this sex murder orgy that was orchestrated between two young women. And it really took over the public's imagination. It became international headlines, you know, within days. And it was a very prolonged trial. I was in prison for four years and on trial for eight years before I was definitively exonerated and cleared of everything. But it took over my life. And I went from being an anonymous, you know, young college student to the most vilified and hated woman on the planet there for a second. I was, yeah, vilified and sexualized and all matter of insane narratives were put out there about me.

And I had to grapple with having my, not just my freedom stolen from me, but my very identity and my place in the world. I'm sorry you went through that. That is just awful. It's a little sort of trippy to be talking to you because I covered many of the beats of your story as a journalist. In fact, as I was watching, you've got a newish documentary up on Hulu. There's a little clip of me announcing one of, you know, one of the twists and turns in your story.

It was kind of trippy. I didn't know that that was coming. Let's just kind of go through the story in a little bit more detail because in Free and in your work elsewhere, including on my friend Sam Harris's Waking Up app, where you have a resilience series, you kind of talk about what you learned along the way that you're still using in your life now as a mom and as an artist and a writer. In prison, and as you mentioned, you spent many years there, I believe you got interested in Viktor Frankl's work.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So prior to all of this happening to me, I didn't have a spiritual practice. I didn't have a meditation practice. And the only sort of advice or guidance that I had was actually from soccer. Like I played soccer as a kid. And so I knew what it meant to push through pain. So like I entered into this experience thinking, okay, this is really bad and really overwhelming. And I don't have control over this. But there are adults who are going to figure it out.

And I just have to hang in there like that little kitten clinging to the branch to like, get to the end of whatever this is. It always felt like it was like a really bad dream that I was just trying to wake up from. And there was a complete shift that happened after the verdict. I was found guilty. I was sentenced to 26 years, which was longer than I'd been alive at that point. And very, very quickly, I had a full and utter existential crisis, where everything that I thought that I could count on and believe in was gone.

I very quickly had this shift in thinking of, I'm not going to wait to get my life back. I have to say that it wasn't a glamorous shift, because the first part of that shift, realizing that all the adults in the room are just a bunch of kids who are also just trying to figure things out and don't have truth and justice and all of that necessarily at the core of their ability to process things. And so that was a deeply disconcerting reality to find myself faced with.

And trigger warning, I experienced suicidal ideation. I think my brain sort of kicked into this disassociative state where I became very rational in the sense that I kept asking myself, is this life worth living? I don't get to live the life that I should be living. Is this life that I am living worth living? And the minute that I decided that it was, then became my responsibility to make it worth living. So I broke it down into segments, and I made myself responsible only for a single day.

And every single day was a new sort of rebirth, a re-asking myself of this question, is my life worth living? And what can I do to make it worth living? And I was really surprised to find that when you break it down to a day-to-day or even moment-by-moment basis, it's really easy to make your life worth living. It's shockingly simple to have some humble goal that can get you through to the next day or the next moment. And that was my plan. That was it, was just not worrying about the next day.

It was focusing on the right now, which ultimately is what we all have. Can you do that now? Can you apply that wisdom to the daily vexations out here outside the prison walls? Yes, in the sense that once you've stared into that abyss, you don't forget what that abyss looks like. I think one of the things that is a silver lining to what I went through was it was so extreme that that abyss was just right there. In prison, you are suffering. That is just period.

You are losing the most important thing that you could have, which is time, and it is your human potential, and you are trapped in a box away from everyone you love. There's no confusion about your suffering. I think outside in the free world, we feel like we should be feeling better than we do, and it's harder to identify why something doesn't feel right. I get that, and I feel those feelings arise in me, and falling back on a practice of just wait, just pause, stay curious, stay open, and it's there.

Of course, real life is constantly demanding things from you, especially I have young kids, so I'm constantly being asked to be present for them, and sometimes you lose track of being present for yourself. Then all of the little slings and arrows of your daily misfortunes can suddenly sting you again, but then you just have to fall back to that knowledge, that deep knowledge that you're okay. It's so easy to forget. I mentioned before I'm at 10% Happier East here. I'm at my wife's family's beach house ostensibly on vacation, although I'm recording a few podcasts.

This morning, I was in a bad mood, and then I was inserting what the Buddhists call the second arrow. The first arrow was the bad mood. The second arrow was why you're such a schmuck. You shouldn't be in a bad mood. You're on vacation with everybody you love. For those of us who have a meditation practice, but even if you don't, it's like this, the tides, the ebbing and flowing of remembering what you know can rescue you from suffering, forgetting, and then waking back up. Yeah, and I think the temptation of the life that you feel like you should have versus the life that you actually have.

I constantly find myself, even though that that is something I deeply know is true, that one of the biggest mistakes that I can ever make is acting like, really conducting myself as if I have a different life than the one that I have. It's the one where all of my relationships are perfect, and all of my opportunities are exactly what they should be, and all of my talents and my achievements are acknowledged exactly the way that they should be. That world is a great temptation, and it is closely linked to things like hope, which is why I have complex feelings about the feeling of hope.

I think a lot of people are afraid of accepting the life that they have because I think that they think that means that they're tolerating things that they shouldn't have to tolerate. The way that I push back against that idea is I say, no, as soon as you accept your life for what it is, that puts you in a position to be an effective agent in your own life. That's where that comes in. Yes, this comes up all the time on this show. People misunderstand acceptance as resignation, but acceptance is just seeing clearly so that you're not at war with reality.

Then you can take sane, effective action to make whatever change you're capable of making. Exactly. People ask me all the time, how do I boot up a meditation habit? If you already have a meditation habit, but it's inconsistent, another question that I get from people is, how do I maintain a consistent habit? Really, it's about having access to great teachers and having access to community. These are both of the most prominent features on my new-ish meditation app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. As part of this app, we've got some of the greatest teachers in the world who do guided meditations and also courses on various aspects of Buddhism, but the community features are really some of the most powerful aspects of the app.

You can connect to other people who also take this weird little mental training program seriously. We do weekly and sometimes more frequently than that, but at the very least, weekly live video meditation and Q&A sessions so you can meditate with me and our teachers and with all of our subscribers. It is a great way to feel supported as you embark on the often difficult process of habit formation. Go to danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy. 10% with Dan Harris, that's the name of the app.

Again, danharris.com is the place to get all the information. Oh, and I should tell you that if you sign up, you'll also get ad-free versions of this podcast. We'll be right back after this. September is World Alzheimer's Month, but most people never check their brain health until something is feeling off. I wanted to stop waiting and look at my own data. This is very important to me personally, not only because I have a father with dementia, but also a father-in-law who died of Alzheimer's. So I was very pleased and left at the opportunity when one of our sponsors, Function Health, gave me an opportunity to do some blood tests that gave me a deep look into my health metrics.

Your focus and mental stamina leave a data trail in your blood and Function tracks it. Here are some of the core biomarkers that they look at. Omega-3 index, homocysteine, MMA, and magnesium. Function members can also add on other brain-related tests like brain injury and degeneration screening tests. Check your brain and health the way I do. Function provides 160 plus lab tests for a dollar a day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Join at functionhealth.com slash happier and use the code happier25 for a $25 credit. I did mention Viktor Frankl and his workman's search for meaning.

I don't want to lose the thread on that. Can you answer your question? Yeah. So Viktor Frankl, I mean, one, what a thing to put my own life into perspective, first of all. I do think that there is absolutely something to that stoic idea of negative visualization where it's like, okay, you think your life is bad. Just imagine one thing worse and genuinely feel that sense of gratitude that you're not also in a concentration camp. So there's that level of appreciation for Viktor Frankl, but also his approach to that existential crisis question and of how he was able to observe suffering from so many different angles, not just the prisoner's suffering, but also the jailer's suffering was so interesting to me.

Um, and so if the, if there was any kind of, uh, how to survive prison pamphlet, that was the closest thing that I had ever encountered. Um, and because it, it sort of gave me insight into the experience of helplessness that was imposed upon by an oppressive force and how you can. Even then find your purpose in that kind of punishing environment was very inspiring and reassuring to me. Um, and I, and I was also in a place where I could appreciate that. Like people sent me, I think one of the biggest challenges of, of spiritual growth is you need to be in the right place at the right time in your life in order to receive the wisdom.

Like, and for it to make sense to you. I was sent, you know, the Vipassana textbooks when I was in prison and I didn't have the, the context or the background or even the, like the person to talk to, to help me philosophically and, and personally grapple with these ideas that were being introduced to me. So they went right over my head. Whereas like today, those I can great, like I can appreciate those things and, and apply them to my own practice. But like at the time, Viktor Frankl was something that was a little closer to what I understood about my life.

Um, you know, and I was aware of World War II and I was now very, very heightenedly aware of imprisonment. And so that was something that was an end. Those, those details led it to be an entry point into these broader philosophical ideas. And the basic philosophical idea, it's been a minute since I read his book. And just for those who, me too, by the way, but the basic idea is that we can find meaning in the worst of circumstances. And I think you were able to do that, even though you were super young and didn't have, you know, although you did actually have a bit of a spiritual mentor on the inside, uh, this, this priest, um, who you can talk about if you want, but you're, you, you didn't share his spiritual beliefs.

So it was a, there was a bit of a rub there. Um, but, but, but the, the basic message that I, as I understand it is, um, that, that even in these, you know, the shittiest of circumstances, there are ways to imbue it with meaning so that you can bear it. And also you, once you've accepted your life for what it is, and you can see clearly, you can see opportunities for exercising your humanity and which is ultimately your purpose. And so a great example of that, that I talk about in my book is how, as soon as I like had that existential crisis of the verdict, I suddenly realized that I wasn't just in this prison where I shouldn't have been like, that's where I was.

And I started looking around me and seeing instead of what it was taking away from me, what opportunities it was offering me. And I noticed very quickly that, for example, I was one of the only literate people that was in, that was one of the prisoners. Most of the people that I was imprisoned with were, um, either completely uneducated or very low education. Um, and, or they just didn't speak the language. And in the course of two years I had become fluent. And so I became the unofficial official, like scribe and translator for the prison.

I, I would go to people's doctor appointments and help them translate what their ailments were. I would write there. I was very much, my, my job was to, my prison hustle, as I like to call it, was to write people's letters for them. And that it was funny because I had gone to Italy because I had wanted to train to become a translator. That was my ultimate goal career wise. And oddly the universe had answered my, had, you know, had responded to what I apparently was putting out there and put me in this position where I was a very, uh, useful and necessary part of this very stricken community.

And I had a purpose and I had, I had meaning that was very gratifying, even if I was still grieving the loss of the life that I had wanted. And again, the extremity of the experience was such that it became very apparent, like how my meaning sat in that company and in that space that was very deprived and very limited. It was when I got back out into the free world that I was challenged all over again to understand my suffering and to find meaning in it, because it wasn't as obvious and excusable.

Like, it's very obvious that if you say, if you're in prison and you're like, I'm suffering, people don't go, Oh really? Like, it's not a surprise, you know? But if you're finally free after years in prison and you get, you get your life back, people sort of might have this expectation that like, Oh my gosh, you must be so happy. And it was weird to find myself still grieving and still searching for that sense of purpose and meaning and place, especially that place in humanity where, you know, the, the, the scarlet letter of being the girl accused of murder did not go away with my acquittal, with my release from prison, with my exoneration.

That's something that I live with to this day. And grappling with the question of how do you sort of feel confident and assertive about your purpose when your legacy is something that had nothing to do with you? You know? How have you answered that question for yourself? So, well, so there are a number of ways that I've gone about that. One was recognizing that though my experience is very uncommon and extreme, I'm certainly not alone in that experience. I'm not the only person that's ever been in prison for a crime they didn't commit.

I'm not the only person who's ever been publicly shamed and vilified for something they didn't do. I'm, I'm not the only woman who's ever been slut shamed. And so putting, putting myself into the broader perspective of how I fit into the context of humanity and human history has been very grounding and it's led me to have very powerful and I feel valuable, useful conversations that has been a driving factor in my journalism. So I, I, I went back to what I know, which is writing and storytelling, which is what I was studying in school.

And I went back to those foundations. I understood what, what talents and predispositions that I have inside of myself, and then I applied that to what I now knew. And, you know, it's, it is true that like I lost out on a lot of human experiences, but I also gained a lot of human experiences. My, my friend in the prison, uh, Don Salo, the, the priest, he said that I aged 40 years in 40, and he wasn't saying that because I looked like hell, like he said it because I had like, I had matured 40 years in four and that led me to have a deep sense of empathy for people who were at their extremity and, and also a deep sense of curiosity.

Like I had been, I had been given a glimpse into the, the worst humanity has to offer in terms of our behavior and our psychology. And instead of finding myself embittered and resentful and fearful of that, I became very curious about it. I wanted to understand it. And that specifically led me to going down this rabbit hole, which I talk about in my book of reaching out to my prosecutor and trying to understand him. Yeah, I was hoping to talk about that because as I mentioned, I was watching you and your husband made a documentary about it.

It's on Hulu. Remind me of the name. It's called mouth of the wolf. Um, and I, my, I have to give my husband all of the credit for it because it was not my idea to make a documentary. My idea was to just go back to Italy to confront my prosecutor. And he was like, okay, I'm just going to whip out my phone and just, just in case it ultimately became a kind of diary and love letter from him to me. Cause he was observing me from a very intimate angle, uh, grappling with some really difficult problems, like how do you deal with grief?

How do you deal with rage? How do you deal with uncertainty and having unresolved things unresolved between you and a person who has harmed you? And so he was just watching me do this, um, from a very intimate place. And I didn't really have any models for how to go about doing this. I just understood what not to do based upon what I had seen happen to me in a courtroom where the courtroom modeled for me, what an adversarial conversation is like where two people take opposing positions and dig in their heels and refuse to concede any common ground.

And a lot of people discouraged me from going about this journey. They thought it was a waste of time. They thought that I was putting myself emotionally in the hands of my prosecutor again, and they were fearful for my mental health. They were afraid that if I was depending on him, realizing that he was wrong and saying that he was sorry, that like I was going down a dark path from a mental health standpoint, that I was setting myself up for the second and third and fourth arrows that I was going to be inflicting upon myself of like deep disappointment in, in the fragility and, um, and imperfectness of humanity.

But the thing that was pushing back against that was that deep, deep curiosity in myself to discover what would happen if I did the exact opposite of what the world had taught me to do. And the exact opposite was being open to who this person was and who he really, who he really was. And a lot of people think that I did this journey because I was like, forgiveness was a really important, you know, value of mine that like when some people read my book and think, Oh, you're a forgiveness person.

Like you're a person who's really about forgiveness. And it's like, no, that's, that was not my intention at all. I was not, I was not thinking about forgiving my prosecutor. I was thinking about understanding him. And I'm wanting to know if he saw me for who I really was, as opposed to this idea of a person that he had conjured for the courtroom, if that would shatter the foundations of certainty that he had, um, that he had created for himself, that he had forged for himself.

Let me fill in some of the details on him, um, just because people may not know. His name is Manini. He, he, he, this is like case study and wrongful prosecution from, from my POV. They, they, they had the guy, Randy Gooday, who actually did the murder. His DNA and other, um, uh, evidence was all over the place. They knew they had the guy, uh, but they then invented the Manini himself invents this whole fakakta, um, theory about how you and your boyfriend at the time, Raffaele, Celestito, Celestito, I think I'm pronouncing that, Celestito, were part of the killing, even though there was no evidence to support that.

And, um, he just like doubles and triples down, even as, you know, in the face of just mountains and mountains of evidence. Yeah. So some back to, yeah. Some background on him is important. Um, yeah. So my, my wrongful conviction is actually pretty unusual in the sense that we know who committed the crime and we knew from quite early on who actually committed the crime. In most cases of wrongful convictions, what you'll hear is that they, the police focused on the wrong person. And as a result, the, the actual murderer got away with it and like went on to commit other crimes while the other person was sitting in jail in their stead.

And mine is different because like you said, very early on, uh, they were able to identify through copious DNA and, and footprint fingerprint, all of that. Evidence that was out the crime scene pointing to this known local burglar who then was, um, confessed to a friend that he had been present at the crime. And then was, you know, he had fled the country. Like there was, there's all of this copious evidence pointing to this person. The problem was that my prosecutor had already decided before the DNA had been processed from the crime scene that I was involved.

And not only was I involved, but I was an orchestrator of the crime. And so he had anchored his. bias set in, where he was determined to prove that I had orchestrated a murder orgy. And the question was, with whom? But that's classic prosecutorial tunnel vision. My prosecutor also was known for having, this was not the first time that he had been, he had had some abusive office, some prosecutorial misconduct. He had been actually charged with the crime of prosecutorial misconduct in a previous case that he had done, and he was on trial for that while he was trying me for this crime.

It's a wild situation. The detectives and the prosecutor convinced themselves that they were right, and they let their gut instinct about what the case was guide their processing of the evidence. When we have convinced ourselves of a certain idea and we have a gut feeling, it's so evident to me that our thoughts are really guided by our feelings and that our convictions are often just based upon how we feel about a thing as opposed to how rational we are about a thing. Human beings are so incredibly rational, but ultimately our logical minds are founded upon these feelings that help us determine what we consider important information or not important information.

And for my prosecutor, it wasn't important information that there was zero evidence of me at the crime scene. The important information is that I was the one who called the police. I was the one who alerted everyone to there being a crime in the first place, and I didn't look right to him. And that was more meaningful to him than the actual evidence at the crime scene. And he logicked his way into that making sense to him, and he logicked his way into convincing a judge and a jury that that made sense.

So it's not like he just convinced himself. He spun a story that captivated the world's imagination about girl-on-girl sexual violence that seemingly came out of nowhere, but was ultimately a pornographic fantasy. And it has taken 20 years to unravel. So it sounds crazy when you say it now, but at the time, it really captivated people. And I think the titillating scandal of it, again, sort of triggered people's gut feelings, and people were able to sort of make accommodations for the illogic of it because our convictions are less logical than we like to think.

Yes. Jonathan Haidt, the psychologist, often talks about the elephant and the rider. The rider is our logical brain, and the elephant, which is much larger than us as the rider, is just our gumbo of feelings, which are really often like steering, even though we are unaware of it. So you go into this meeting with Menini wanting to understand him. How did it go? So I think one thing that's really important is that I originally thought that I would get in contact with him and try to get into a room with him as soon as humanly possible.

But what happened was COVID happened. And so going to Italy and sitting face to face with my prosecutor was not an option, but I had already reached out to him. And so what ended up happening was I corresponded for two years with my prosecutor over letters and email before I actually sat down and confronted him. And that was, again, a weird silver lining to a very dramatic thing that took over lots of people's lives. But slowing down and putting myself in a position of just hearing about his day, we didn't correspond about the case in a big way.

We talked a lot about our lives and our interests. He would talk to me about his family, about his dogs and his cats. And this was also wild because I was in the process of starting a family of my own. He was always encouraging me to become a mom. It was a very, I think what was so interesting for me in that process was how talking around the thing that connected us allowed me to get a glimpse of the way that he thought. So like he would complain about a local political thing that was going on or a local news story.

And it gave me insight into things that triggered him or what his interests were or the way that his mind automatically processed things. And that helped me to then map that onto my own experience of him and recognize parallels. And then, of course, we flirted with the actual conflict between us, but we would talk indirectly about it. He asked me to watch this movie, this old movie about a detective named Detective Mike Ray. And the movie he asked me to watch was Una Vita in Gioco, which means A Life on the Line.

And he said, watch this to understand my feelings as a prosecutor of your case. Well, Una Vita in Gioco is about a detective who realizes that there is a person that he put on death row is actually innocent. And he orchestrates the release of this person and then follows him around so he can figure out who the real murderer is. It was just like, what? Like, are like, are you is this you conceding that you recognize that I'm innocent and that you were wrong? But is this like a way for you to say a thing that you don't want to say directly?

And like and then, of course, I responded to him with a Star Trek episode, which are you a Star Trek fan? No. OK, well, then I won't be specific. But like I sent him a Star Trek episode about people who struggled to communicate with each other. And there were again, there were these like glimpses over the course of our correspondence where I was like, I feel like he is open to the idea that I'm actually innocent, even if I'm not directly confronting him about it. And then the pandemic was over.

I booked a ticket. By this time I'm married. I have a one year old daughter. I tell my mom that I'm going to do this and she's pissed because she is not at all remotely curious about my prosecutor and is and thinks that this is all I have Stockholm syndrome, that I'm that it's too dangerous for me to go back to Italy, that maybe my prosecutor is luring me there so that he can falsely accuse me of something else and just throw me in prison. And she's terrified for me.

But to her credit, she doesn't tell me, no, you're not going. She says you're not going without me. And so she books a ticket as well. And we all go together to Perugia, Italy. My dear friend from prison, Don Salo Scarabattoli, the priest, he orchestrated a very private place for us to meet and he moderated our conversation, which was incredibly helpful because it was very emotional for me and it meant a lot for me to have someone there to have my back. And the way that the conversation went down was it was that like me finally directly confronting him about the very difficult, hard truths that I was struggling with from our relationship, which was I'm an innocent person that he threw in prison despite overwhelming evidence of my innocence.

And that was harmful not just to me, but to my family, to my boyfriend and his family, to my murdered friend's family, who still were confused about who actually committed the crime or not. But I had also realized that in the course of getting ready for this conversation, that if I was going there to get something from him, some kind of acknowledgement or admission, I was going to fail, like I was setting myself up for failure. And my success condition had to be what was I bringing to the table.

And so what I brought to the table was an acknowledgement of his humanity, that I didn't think that his decision to put me through this experience meant that he was a bad person. And in fact, I recognized that he had noble intentions, even if he had strayed down the wrong path and had hurt innocent people along the way. I didn't look at that and assume that he was a bad person who had bad intent. And he was very moved. He had never had an experience like this before where someone that he had prosecuted had ever reached out to him.

In fact, he wasn't even sure if it was legal for him to talk to me. He had to go check. And he didn't want to meet with me until after he had retired. So those were conditions for him. But he said that the experience for him, well, one, he didn't say he was sorry and he didn't say he was wrong. But he said that he realized that I was not the person that he thought he was prosecuting. And that if he had the opportunity to prosecute the case again today, he would not.

And that me reaching out to him was an experience of grace. His spiritual practice is Catholicism. And so what he felt like he was experiencing between me and him was grace. It had that gravity, that gravitas for him. It was a life-changing event for him. And he told me that he, you know, he cared deeply for me. He cared deeply for my family. And we wished each other well. And, you know, he kissed my cheeks. He held my hand. And we parted ways. And I walked away from that experience feeling just so powerful.

Like I had never, like I had been so helpless my entire adult life. And I had been so afraid of this person my entire adult life. And everything shifted as a matter of how I had approached that situation. I no longer felt like my well-being depended upon him. And in a weird way, it had sort of flipped. Like suddenly I felt like I was holding him and his emotions and his vulnerability and his fragility in my hands. And I had to be careful. So being able to experience both sides of him was very grounding.

And it put things in perspective for me that helped in a weird backwards way helped me forgive him in the sense that like, again, I wasn't tolerating or saying that what he did was okay. It was merely like being able to see him as a person and care about him as a person. That helped me to make it feel like my own pain wasn't at the forefront of our relationship. Most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible or worse, extremely visible, but for the wrong reasons.

I remember one year when I was a teenager, I had a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that. Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it in memory. And it was actually harder than we remember it now. That is the territory of Carrie streaming October 7th on Prime Video, the first ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. Eight episodes from Mike Flanagan with Stephen King as an executive producer.

Flanagan had described this show as a tragedy. It's about a girl who doesn't feel seen by anyone and about how small everyday acts of unkindness compound into something nobody meant to cause, which happens now at a speed and scale that would have been unimaginable not long ago. What I really appreciate about the show is that the show takes Carrie seriously as a person rather than as some sort of symbol. And the season keeps circling around one major question. Are you watching the making of a hero, a villain, or something more complicated than either of those options?

Carrie is streaming October 7th, only on Prime Video. Some journeys reveal more than a destination. They reveal what is at stake. Photographer and conservation storyteller Tom Peschak spent 396 days on the perpetual planet Amazon expedition, traveling the length of the Amazon and documenting a river system that sustains extraordinary wildlife. I've seen it up close myself, and also millions of people. On season six of Planet Visionaries, Tom takes us beyond the postcard images and into the urgency, wonder, and human stakes of protecting the Amazon. Hosted by the climber and environmental advocate Alex Honnold, Planet Visionaries meets the people turning conservation challenges into action.

In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a loyal listener to this show, you know that I am an avid worker outer. And if you are going to exercise on the regular, one thing you need, it's a non-negotiable, at least in my opinion, you need quality socks. You can't skimp on your socks. And one of the sponsors of this show. Bombas and they've been sending me these socks that I use when I work out not only when I work out but also when I'm out in the world just wearing sneakers and I want some good-looking socks I go to my Bombas on those occasions as well it's become a little bit of a source of marital discord because my wife and I compete for the Bombas socks so that's reminding me I need to go order some more long way of saying they make high-quality socks but that's not all they make they also make footwear do you know what EVA stands for neither did I but Bombas makes their sandals and slides from this super lightweight cushy waterproof EVA foam it's like walking on marshmallows they also make underwear and t-shirts the best base layers you'll ever own head over to Bombas.com slash happier and use the code happier for 20% off your first purchase that's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash happier code happier at checkout well one thing I'm interested in is you said you went in with the intention to understand and I'm just wondering whether understanding basically just is the precondition for forgiveness which inexorably results from it yeah I mean I don't know what other people's for experiences of forgiveness are and if it's important to them to understand the person I know some people go in to forgiveness like without having done the the homework of really getting into the mind and the psychology of the person who hurt them I don't know if that is a precondition but it was for me like for me to truly see this man as a person and not as a nightmare figure like I really had to see I had to put myself in a position to see him in all of his like fragile vulnerable humanity and to put myself in a position also to be the recipient of his affection and of his goodwill and that then led to this feeling of opening towards a person like I wonder if forgiveness is a reopening of yourself to people and to situations that you have closed yourself off to because they have been harmful like I don't know if that's like I'm trying to feel like figure out if what I was experiencing was forgiveness or not I just know that like I wasn't holding his crimes against me against him that sounds like you dropped a hot coal you were holding in your hand yeah yeah and again which isn't to say that like I was saying that it was okay and which isn't to say that it's not still impacting me because that's like a real like I'm still greatly impacted by the decisions that he made that have that still harmed me to this day but like the resentment towards him and was maybe the thing that dropped was like the acknowledgement that like he is a human being and he has hopes and dreams and has made mistakes and he's embarrassed and he's scared like realizing how scared he is really helped me have compassion for him because I know what it's like to be scared and like you know I have I have toddlers who when things don't go their way they throw a huge tantrum and like if anything becoming a mom has also helped me to appreciate how a lot of society's ills are because people are afraid and because they haven't accepted that things aren't going their way and so they're just lashing out and trying to like being able to hold that energy and also remain firm in like not just like taking it like I'm not just taking the whips but like being able to hold firm to be firm and gentle.

Does that make sense? It reminds me of a story that I tell a lot on the show where an aspiring meditator asks a meditation teacher in India, you talk a lot about compassion but what do I do when I leave this building and somebody tries to mug me and the teacher says you take your umbrella and you compassionately whack him. So compassion does not have to be being a punching bag it can be quite fierce but it's really about the mind that is is taking the action that's that's what matters.

Yeah and like you're not inflicting pain on another person to for to inflict pain like there are boundaries and that you can set for yourself and those might be painful for other people like the boundary might be I'm not gonna let you take my stuff and if you try to take my stuff I'll whack you with an umbrella like that's not gonna be something that he wants to get but you don't have to hate that person as you're doing it you know. I really appreciate you being so open with your story.

At this point in I would love to just step back for a second and think about some of the really and you've covered a lot of really crucial points here about how we can learn from your story. We've talked about forgiveness or the dropping of resentment we've talked about finding meaning in the worst possible things that can happen to you. In your book I believe one of your other practical pieces of advice and you'll correct me if I'm wrong here is that there's there's there's a little thing you can say to yourself when something bad happens to you which is how could this be a good thing?

Can you just say a little bit more about that? Yeah so oh my god this has been so helpful to me and again it kind of goes back to that like Viktor Frankl realization of like okay even the most bad things can be changed into meaning of like can be made meaningful for you but like I think one of the things that can potentially happen in life is when things don't go our way or when something bad happens what it feels like is an arresting of movement like you you're like you're going about your life and then suddenly you are stopped in your tracks and you are pinned down by this like hard difficult thing that you didn't want and it can it can feel like a stagnation and one of the things that I that I have found really helpful is when something bad happens and again like bad gets opened up to interpretation like you know the great Zen masters will say every day is a good day because it's absurd to sort of say if a day is bad or good like every day is a day it just is what it is and there are lots of great parables that sort of suggest that when something happens to you you don't actually know in the immediate moment if it is good or bad but let's just say that like there are bad things that happen like your friend gets raped and murdered like that's a bad thing that happened and or like you get convicted of a crime you didn't commit this is a bad thing you do not want this thing to happen anyone in the world would look on that and go that is a bad thing that happened to you okay fine it's bad but does it mean that my momentum has been arrested does that mean that like my purpose is thwarted or is there a way that this bad thing can can give me momentum is there somehow that this bad thing can actually be in service to me somehow how do I take the energy of this bad thing and divert it into something that pushes me forward or that carries me forward or that challenges me in a way that makes me a bigger person and that's something that I feel like goes way back to my old soccer days where I would go running and running until I puked and it sucked and nobody likes to puke when they when they run but like you're a better runner and you're a tougher person as a result of it and so I think being deeply grounded in the idea that a bad thing has a lot of potential energy to it that you can harness for yourself and like so when something bad happens like you know this came up in the documentary Mouth of the Wolf where one of the reasons I went back to Italy three times and one of the reasons I went back to Italy was because I was attempting to overturn my remaining wrongful conviction for a lesser crime in Italy and I was found guilty again and I was not expecting it I was fully prepared to be have my name totally cleared and it wasn't and I was I had the very you know appropriate human response of being very upset but ultimately I was like how is this a good thing how like really genuinely asking myself how is this thing that feels like it is thwarting my life and insulting my experience and gaslighting me how is this giving me momentum how is this empowering me and that has been a really useful framework so that I don't feel that sense of of dread at my own life that we can feel when things don't go our way.

It is such a useful and counterintuitive reframe of quote-unquote bad things that happen to you it for me that there has to be a little bit of a period of self pity before I can wake up and get to the okay what's good in this I need to go through the anger and all that other stuff does that make sense? Yeah no I don't think being in denial and that's something that's really important to me and it's something that's really important for especially as I raise my kids because I do think that something that made me really vulnerable very early on in the investigation was me not knowing how to process like complex feelings of pain and grief as a like you know coming home into a crime scene and somebody you know being horrifically murdered like that was not something that I was emotionally prepared for and I think that that led to some of the people's early feelings of like not really knowing what to make of me because like I was all over the place emotionally sometimes I was crying sometimes I was like laughing because I was just so overwhelmed with like oh my god I'm alive like oh my god I'm like I could have been killed like oh my god like there are so many emotions that I was processing and I wasn't really given much guidance in in how to process emotions and and how to understand what those emotions meant like I felt anger and I would be angry and I would rant at the police about how angry I was about this thing that happened and it was I think that all emotions are information and all emotions are useful and but like that we don't have to be a slave to our emotions I think like we we're the ones who experience our emotions and we should definitely experience them because otherwise we're just repressing them but then like as soon as we like allow ourselves to experiencing them then it's not even it doesn't even feel like you're letting them go it's just they let themselves out the door kind of thing is that your experience too I don't know I feel like as soon as I like really let myself have the feeling then it's like then it goes away on its own you're metabolizing it yeah it's the resistance or the compulsive re-upping of the emotion our mutual friend Sam Harris often talks about the the half-life of an emotion like anger is a minute or two if you just sit with it but we can extend it for a day a week a lifetime through mindless you know stewing and and resentment and rumination triggering just like reactivating the thing yeah we're about to leave on a family beach vacation and my wife in an act of kindness and generosity went on quince calm and ordered me some more of my favorite shorts so I'm never out of shorts to wear a couple weeks ago I got this pair of shorts from quince and I've just been wearing them like all the time so now thanks to Bianca I've got three pairs which I'm very excited about quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere organic cotton and merino wool their styles are timeless versatile and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for day after day their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $60 I think I have three or four of those they give you the softness and quality you would expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag quince also makes premium pants fitted tees I've got a bunch of their t-shirts and also polos and breathable activewear quality basics designed to work across your wardrobe and hold up to everyday wear everything at quince is priced 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen so you're paying for high-quality not brand market find your next fall favorites at quince download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash happier get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too that's QUINCE.COM slash happier we had a little pool party yesterday with some family friends they were about I would say about 10 kids in the pool at the same time and they were all playing with these great toys many of which we got from our sponsor today Wayfair including an awesome floating basketball net that my son had been dunking on on the regular there's also I don't know how to describe it it's this floating thing with holes in it and you can throw a football into it and my son has been working on a spiral in the pool with his friends.

Wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. Shop thousands of products across every style and budget whether you're trying to refresh your space for fall or transform your space for Halloween. Use filters, customer photos and reviews to find the right fit for your home. More than 20 million verified 5-star reviews help shoppers buy with confidence plus Wayfair rewards. Transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life.

Join Wayfair rewards today and get 5% back on every purchase. Head to Wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair. Every style. Every home. Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show. He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel. Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA, SIFMA. Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC. Member NYSE & SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.

His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered at www.profile-financial.com. Call to order and to get a free copy. Disclaimer! This document is a transcription and ordering complaint. The original podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com. All information on this website is purely information and should not be used as the sole basis for making financial decisions. The opinions rendered herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas Goldstein, Profile Investment Services, Ltd., or Israel National News.

Readers should consult with a professional financial advisor before making any financial decisions. Please see the complete disclaimer at https://sites.google.com. When it comes to identity and the problem of identity, we are social animals that are codependent and deeply embedded with each other. When our identities are distorted and stolen from us and we feel like we have no say in how we belong to the rest of humanity, that is an incredibly distressing experience. It's a distressing experience, and it is a debilitating experience. But something that I have discovered is that there are aspects of our identity, of our sense of self, that belong to us, and then there are aspects of our identity and our sense of self that don't belong to us.

The part of me that exists in another person's mind doesn't actually belong to me, nor am I really responsible for it, which is great because I think that one trap that we find ourselves in is feeling like we need to take responsibility for how other people think of us, and that's a trap because we don't. We don't have responsibility for that, and we can't have any say in that. But I think the more deeper issue is, what does it mean to me that who I am, the story of who I am, is a certain way in certain people's minds, in a very practical way as we exist as individuals who interact with each other and have jobs and have relationships and have families?

It matters a great deal in the sense that it impacts my opportunities in life. That doesn't mean, though, that you don't have a say or that can't give you momentum. There is potential energy that's in the story of who you are that's out there in the world, and if you can learn to harness that potential energy, you can have an impact. It has an impact on you, and you can have an impact on it. I am actively in conversation with that story that is out there about me, and I don't pretend that it doesn't exist as I move about my life.

I am the girl who was accused of murder. I am not in denial about that. I am also someone who has learned a great deal from it, which is why I can have a lovely conversation with you about it. I am not just limited to that story that exists in other people's minds. I can build off of it. But then from a deeper, deeper level, what even is this thing that is Amanda Knox? It's an idea of me, but when I ultimately sit down, there's a stillness, and it doesn't really matter what that story is because when it all comes down to it, all we have is the stillness that is here right now.

There's this deep sense of peace and relief that I feel when I meditate. I recognize that I don't have to be perpetually swept up in the story of who I am as it appears to me on a day-to-day basis. And being able to just step away from it, even for just 20 minutes a day, to rest in the thing that is always true and always there, which is just an awareness of everything and a stillness. There's a deep sense of peace that the story of who I am is just the tip of the iceberg.

Yeah, when you sit down, the way I think about it is you sit down in meditation, in the right kind of meditation or in certain styles of meditation, you can get a glimpse of what the Buddhists call emptiness or the insubstantiality of reality. To us, it looks like a solid movie, but as anybody who's a film buff knows, you look at a movie being projected on a screen. It's actually 24 individual pictures per second. What happens when you look at your mind in meditation is you see, oh my God, things are moving so quickly from thought to itch in my knee to back pain, back to more thinking.

Life is not as solid as we think it is. Looked at from that angle, what your cousin is saying behind your back to your brother-in-law doesn't really fucking matter that much. What's so interesting, what's so paradoxical is it matters and it doesn't matter. It depends on where you're standing. There's just something so liberating about even just allowing yourself a moment to be like, ha ha ha, that doesn't matter. For me, I find an immense amount of satisfaction and relief in that moment of being like, it doesn't matter.

Also, you matter and I matter and we all matter and we also don't matter. It's okay. It's just okay. We're okay. It's probably the central paradox of the spiritual life that things matter immensely and they don't matter at all. My understanding of a skillful spiritual navigation through life or contemplative navigation through life, if you don't like the word spiritual, which I don't love either, is just moving between these two perspectives and letting them aerate one another. You go too far in caring about everything that's happening.

There's a lot of misery there. You go too far toward it's all an illusion. Well, then you get pretty quickly to nihilism, but the two can blend together to help you in these moments when you're too caught up. Okay, remember the perspective of emptiness or if you're too dissociated, remember that actually, yeah, the kindness with which you treat your neighbor does matter. It does. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, the measure of whether or not I'm living a good life is how much I'm able to...

The way that I think about it is heaviness and lightness and how if you're able to hold heaviness from this place of lightness and then also as a heavy person, you're able to hold lightness gently. That, for me, feels like the right approach. There's always that tension and that balance between heaviness and lightness. Let me sneak in one last question here about a practical thing that you've learned the hard way that could benefit us. All of us, or at least most of us, have the propensity to fall into victim narratives.

You, more than almost anybody I've ever met, deserve the right to do that. And yet, victimhood really doesn't ultimately serve us that well. You have found one way to kind of reframe victimhood through this ancient Japanese art of, I hope I'm going to pronounce this correctly, kintsugi. What is that all about? I'll explain kintsugi. Kintsugi, and I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with it, but it's this practice of taking broken things, particularly bowls or cups, porcelain objects, and sometimes even purposefully breaking them so that you can repair them and highlight the cracks and the broken parts of the object as that is the object of beauty.

The fact that it was broken and that it has come back together and it is really highlighting those broken parts. And they're stronger as a result of having been broken because those cracks are now filled in with harder materials, in the same way that scar tissue can be considered something that is a sign of pain, but also of resilience and a sign of having lived and survived. And when I look at the bad things that happen to us, again, I see them as opportunities that they have embedded in them potential energy.

If we're lucky enough to survive them, there is potential energy that we can harness and that gives us momentum and that can be in the service of us as we build ourselves as human beings who are on this journey. I see the value in taking those bad experiences and retaking a sense of ownership and agency over them and not feeling like they're just things that are inflicted upon you from other people, but you have a responsibility in processing how those slings and arrows impact you and change you because it's not ultimately the thing that someone does to you that changes you.

It's how you process that and taking responsibility for that is a pushing back against that victim narrative that because something bad happens to you, you're necessarily a lesser or worse person as a result of it. Another terrible negative mindset that is self-inflicting a wound is when you feel like because you've been victimized that you deserve a life that is better than other people's or that is easier than other people's because you've already had it hard. Again, that's putting that second arrow in yourself that you're disappointed that your life isn't what you think it should be.

There are a lot of traps to victimhood because it makes you feel like, again, things should be a certain way now that you've been harmed. I don't think that people should just deny that they've been victimized. I very firmly assert I've been harmed. I shouldn't have been harmed, but how that has impacted me as a person is my responsibility, not anyone else's. Well said. Amanda Knox, you have taken this horrific miscarriage of justice and instead of becoming bitter and broken, you've turned it into something really helpful for the rest of us.

Thanks for your time. Thanks for doing that. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm 10% happier. I'll take it. I do want to remind people of the name of your book. If you're watching, you can see it right over her left shoulder. It's called Free in all caps. She also has this documentary, Mouth of the Wolf, which is an Italian expression. You can understand the derivation of it and the execution of it if you watch it. It's on Hulu. She has a resilience series on my friend Sam Harris's excellent meditation app, which is called Waking Up.

I should say I'm a little bit partial to my own meditation app. Having said that, I love Sam. It's possible to have subscriptions to both. It's true. If you want to subscribe, you can go to wakingup.com slash 10%, which may be the actual URL. Thank you again, Amanda. So nice to meet you and thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much. Just a quick note before I let you go. If you're a listener to the show and you're looking for other ways to engage with my content, let me give you some options.

Your first stop is danharris.com. That's my new website and it has information and links to my meditation app. It's where you can sign up for my free newsletter. It's where you will find all the latest information on upcoming live events that I'm doing. We've also got 10% Happier Plus, which is an ad-free subscription right inside Apple Podcasts. So that's another option. And if you would rather watch than listen, we film every episode now. Video versions are up on YouTube and Spotify. So please like and follow whether you're watching or listening.

Also, I'm on social media. I try to inject a little sanity into your feed, into the darker corners of the internet. So just search for my name, Dan Harris, and you'll find me wherever you have a scrolling habit. All right, that was a mouthful. Thank you for being here. Deuces. Rock Band Islands wrote our theme. Thanks for listening. Peace. Insurance is not one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they'll show you options that fit your budget.

So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easier to see your options. Visit progressive.com, find a rate that works for you with the Name Your Price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law. Hi, I'm Katie Duke, and I've been a nurse for over 20 years. Listen, I used to think that I was my most stylish in my 20s. But honestly, style and confidence only get better with age.

And that is why I love figs. These scrubs are beautiful, comfortable, and they are built to last. They're not those boxy, scratchy uniforms that we all started out in. No, no, no, these fit perfectly. They feel amazing, and the quality is just wow. My favorite color? Burgundy. It's chic, it's timeless, and it's even the same color as my apartment, because I'm kind of obsessed with it. And I love adding custom embroidery to make my scrubs as personal as my style. And since I work in telehealth, my embroidered figs even double as my ID badge.

It's never too late to reinvent yourself or your scrubs. Get 15% off your first order at wearfigs.com with the code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX, for 15% off your first order. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required.

$15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. We have the tech to get food delivered in 15 minutes, but we all have horror stories about buying tickets. The Game Time app gives fans the advantage. Get amazing tickets in just a few taps. Fees are included, so what you see is what you pay, and the Game Time guarantee means authentic tickets at the best price every time. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets to concerts, sports, comedy, and more with Game Time.

Download the Game Time app and create an account for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply.