Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts http://bit.ly/ThisPastWeekend_ Theo sits down with Amanda Knox to talk about Ren Fairs, justice, and faith. Check out Amanda’s podcast The Truth About True Crime https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-truth-about-true-crime-with-amanda-knox/id1439490091 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode brought to you by Express VPN 3 months free with a 1 year package at https://ExpressVPN.com/THEO Betterhelp Get 10% off your first month with promo code THEO at https://Betterhelp.com/THEO ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Find Theo Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEKV_MOhwZ7OEcgFyLKilw ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Producer Nick https://instagram.com/realnickdavis ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music “Shine” - Bishop Gunn http://bit.ly/Shine_BishopGunn ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gunt Squad www.patreon.com/theovon Name Aaron Rasche Adam White Alaskan Rock Vodka Alex Hitchins Alex Person Alex Petralia Alex Wang Alexa harvey Andrew Valish Angelo Raygun Annmarie Reilly Anthony Holcombe Ashley Konicki Audrey Hodge Ayako Akiyama Bad Boi Benny Ben Deignan Ben in thar.. Benjamin Herron Benjamin Streit Bobby Hogan Brandon Carla Huffman CharCheezy Christina Peters Christopher Becking Claire Tinkler Cody Cummings Cody Kenyon Cody Marsh Crystal Dakota Montano Dan Draper Dan Perdue Danielle Fitzgerald Danny Crook David Christopher David Smith David Witkowski Dentist the menace Diana Morton Dionne Enoch Doug C Dusty Baker Em Jay Fast Eddie Faye Dvorchak Felicity Black Gillian Neale Ginger Levesque Grant Stonex Greg Salazar Gunt Squad Gary J Garcia Jamaica Taylor James Briscoe James Hunter Jameson Flood Jeffrey Lusero Jenna Sunde Jeremy Siddens Jeremy Weiner Jim Floyd Joaquin Rodriguez Joe Dunn Joel Henson Joey Piemonte John Kutch Johnathan Jensen Jon Blowers Jon Ross Jordan R Josh Cowger Josh Nemeyer Joy Hammonds Justin Doerr Justin L justin marcoux Kennedy Kenton call Kevin Best Kirk Cahill kristen rogers Kyle Baker Lacey Ann Laszlo Csekey Lawrence Abinosa Leighton Fields Luke Bennett Madeline Garland Madeline Matthews Mandy Picke'l Mariah Marisa Bruno Matt Nichols Matthew David Meaghan Lewis Mike Mikocic Mike Nucci Mike Poe Mona McCune Nick Roma Nikolas Koob Noah Bissell OK Qie Jenkins Ranger Rick Robyn Tatu Ruben Prado Ryan Hawkins Ryan Walsh Sagar Jha Sarah Anderson Sean Scott Secka Kauz Shane Pacheco Shannon potts Shona MacArthur Stephen Trottier Suzanne O'Reilly Theo Wren Thomas Adair Tim Greener Timothy Eyerman Todd Ekkebus Tom Cook Tom Kostya Tugzy Mills Tyler Harrington (TJ) Vanessa Amaya Victor Montano Vince Gonsalves William Reid Peters Yvonne Zeke HarrisSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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You know, after your whole experience through you know being incarcerated and accusations and everything, do you where does do you have like who do you who do you blame the most?
Do you feel like congrats when you guys are in condition?
Yeah.
The wedding date isn't yet, right?
Yeah, the wedding date.
I saw the meteor man of Willie Cole.
Oh, you did?
Yay, okay, cool.
It really inspired me.
That was a production that Chris manufactured on a Sunday when I was the most unsuspecting.
Like, you could tell I was the most unsuspecting because I was in my pajamas.
I was sewing a wizard cloak.
Like, I was down on that floor.
And to like hear this missile, it sounded like a missile to me that he like, he rigged up our entire house and our entire backyard with, you know, secret speakers and like lights so that when I came down, he like dug a fog machine like underground underneath the meteorite so that it was smoking.
Yeah.
And it's, it's great.
Like he had this thing.
Really, you should ask Chris about it, but like he had manufactured this whole thing for, he was working on it with his brother for a year.
Oh, wow.
So like, and then just one day he was like, today's the day.
And so he made the rounds and like brought champagne to my parents.
And then while I was like, he was running errands while I was sewing my cloak.
And here I was.
Oh, yeah.
It sounds like a Disney.
He was running errands while I was sewing my cloak.
It sounds like a new, like a, like a deleted scene from Shrek or something, you know.
I remember.
Or like a Renaissance fair, maybe.
We go to plenty of Renaissance fairs.
In fact, we even out-Renaissanced faired a Renaissance fair once.
Really?
Yes.
And Ren fairs.
I'm going to throw out the term because people don't know.
I've been to a few.
I've been caught into some, I would almost say misdemeanor crimes at a few of them, but people call them Ren fairs, right?
Yes.
Okay, good.
I like to use that term when I can.
This is the only time that's going to be a lot of fun.
That's a politically correct term.
Yeah.
Just kind of a little bit of slang, you know, we were at a wren fair.
Sure, yeah.
No, his brother, Chris's brother is a professional knight.
Like he runs the Seattle Knights where they do jousting and choreograph, like choreographed fight scenes, and they get hired by Ren Fairs to put on shows.
So where they're doing the jousting and the fighting, and they're using actual swords and actual armor.
So whenever we go to a Renaissance fair, we get hooked up with their gear.
Oh, I see.
And we can outspeed.
We have passes at a Ren Fair.
Absolutely.
We have 100% like full access Ren Fair.
And this one time we went to.
So if people are wondering what's going on with Amanda Knock, she has backstage passes at a Renaissance fair.
Yes, yeah.
I could tell you the goings on.
Yeah.
And a recent engagement that kind of like puts like a, it kind of puts a nice charm into your life.
Yes.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
This is the stuff that people don't know about me.
People think they know a lot of things about me, but really I'm just a nerd who likes to wear costumes and go to Ren Fairs.
Now, Ren Fairs, I feel like Ren Fair is kind of, are they, is their arch rival kind of like a carnival, like the small town carney folk?
I feel like those people probably, I could see them kind of getting into some fist-a-cuffs at night or something, you know?
You know, I know there's some crossover.
I do know that some performers who come to Renaissance fairs do perform at carnivals as well.
Like there was this one amazing woman who trained a bunch of rats to like do acrobatics with her.
Oh, yeah.
Which was great.
I sure did.
And she was awesome.
And she goes to the Ren Fairs and the carnivals.
Carnivals, I wish, I don't know.
I feel like carnivals just make me feel sick.
I don't know.
Maybe it's a little seedier.
They get you hopped up on the sugar, then they shake you up with the machinery.
It's kind of an old school.
Yeah.
It's very, it's a lot more adrenaline rush than I think I can handle.
I just tend to feel a little nauseated.
Yeah.
So I don't go to carnivals very often.
So ren fairs, yeah.
I would say, yeah, a ren fair is almost like a carnival minus the nausea.
Yes.
There's more and more playfulness because you're like, you go and you're not exactly in character, but you're playing pretend.
Like everyone's just kind of playing pretend with each other and they're getting their hair braided so they can look more renaissance-y.
And like the idea is to just sort of like let your inner nerd embrace itself.
Yeah.
And like there, it's, you know, these are some places where like it's the one place that somebody feels at home.
Like the, you know, to be nerdy in the world.
Like, yeah, you can be a cool nerd in this world, but not everyone's a cool nerd.
Some people are just straight up nerds.
Yeah.
And like when you are allow yourself to get into costume and just like just nerd out and it's so sweet and it's so fun.
I love it.
Yeah.
It's kind of like you see people like, yeah, you'll see like a fair maiden there.
You'll see like a lot of wooden swords.
You hear a lot about corset gasms.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, really?
Have you heard of a corset gasms?
I've seen honestly some big tits at a Renaissance.
Yes.
Like if you come out, that's the place to let them on display.
You like sunburnt cleavage, dude.
Yes.
That is the place.
And Minnesota has a lot of big ones, too.
I know that.
Yeah, I've heard about them.
I've never actually been to those before, but I think me and Chris are going to be going with his brother and wife and their best friend.
They all do Ren Fair stuff together.
I think we're going to be going down to this big one in Texas in November.
Wow.
And I'm really excited.
Apparently, it is like 10 times as big as any of them that are here in Washington State.
Dang.
Yeah.
So it's just like a world to an alternate reality to explore while wearing dope costumes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And more peaceful times, I think, in a way, maybe.
Well, I don't know if they had dragons back then.
They wish they had dragons.
They really do.
Yeah, I just wish they had dragons.
That's it.
Yeah.
I mean, it depends on the fair because it's still a fair.
Like, you know, there's still going to be some fair food.
I don't know.
I find it really exciting.
I think that I love watching his brother do his thing.
Yeah.
Like doing, like, they are swinging real swords at each other.
And occasionally, like, he'll get like a sharp elbow to the face, and he'll have like his face cut open.
And it's like, this is real.
Yeah.
The only difference is no one's actually trying to kill each other.
They look like they are.
And occasionally someone gets hurt.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ren fares.
You know, I went when I was, actually, I went a couple years ago.
I'll be honest.
You know, I'm trying to lie about it.
But I went a few years ago and it was, what was it like?
Oh, it started raining.
So suddenly like behind the scene, like everything kind of became like the world's kind of got mixed because everybody's trying to stay dry.
So you had a lot of people that weren't like in, you know, in like Ren garb, like trying to get into the wren holes and stuff.
And stuff got a little, shelter became, it was a commodity.
Well, yeah, especially because a lot of these fairs are, end up being sort of put out into these fields.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And like all the water just accumulates in these fields.
And like the Ren Fair that I go to in Washington State very often, like, you know, it's there and then like it has to disappear at the end of the Ren Fair.
And then that field gets recycled into something else.
And I've used it before to do a mud run, which is to do like an obstacle like mud course.
So that's like the week after ren fair, it's mud running.
Yeah, it's mud running.
People don't realize like, that's crazy.
I wonder what the field thinks.
I wonder what the field's like, oh, who's on my back this week?
Oh, thankfully it's the Renfair.
They're pretty calm.
And then it's these mud freaks.
And then the mud freaks are like chugging beer and like getting really dirty.
And that's also a great use of random grass field.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah.
The one that I went to was way out in the middle of nowhere.
And we went when I was in school.
I was in like a special class.
And so they would take us out there.
And one time they're like, okay, you have to dress up.
And I was, I didn't understand the concept of Renaissance fairs.
And I was Peter Pan.
That works.
No, it worked, but it was.
You were in the kind of right time period in terms of fairy tale.
Like that totally, they have, they have like Robin Hood themed Ren fairs.
That's who I think I meant to be was Robin Hood and I just messed up.
You know?
And my whole costume, we didn't sew it.
It was all just tie.
It was like a bunch of stuff.
And then I wrapped myself in fishing twine, right, to hold it all together.
So it was way bizarre.
I'm having trouble visualizing this, but I, do you have pictures?
I think there's some drawings or sketches of it back in the day.
But it was definitely kind of a seedy look.
They were pretty much the same thing, Robin Hood and Peter Pan.
Yeah, totally.
You're fine.
As long as you have the tunic, the green tunic, you fit in.
I think I got offended, though, when people called me Robin Hood.
That was my problem.
Oh, you were like versus Peter.
Yeah, that's what I had.
And I fly.
That's right.
So really, it was just the way I interacted with it.
I never grow up.
Yeah, the way I interacted with the world there.
You know, I kind of brought, I think, a bad attitude as well.
It could have been the twine, too.
It was 30-pound test, and it was really, really tight.
You know, there are people walking around in chainmail and like legit armor out there, though.
Like 90 pounds of crap in 90-degree weather.
Oh, yeah.
I saw a guy drinking WD-40 out there one day, and I was like, oh, man, he needs it.
Or mead, just so much mead.
Oh, yeah, and that's beer, right?
Well, it's very sugary.
I think it's more like wine, but like extremely sugary.
It's like honey.
It's like, it tends to have like a honey flavor.
Like a pork almost or something.
Yeah, yeah.
And people get shit-faced on that.
Wow.
Dang.
It's a lot of fun.
Cooked out on some meat, huh?
Some lean, too.
I think it's gotten a little bit urban in some of these rent payers.
It's starting to, things are getting strange.
Thanks for coming in.
Thank you for having me.
Actually, I admit that I had not heard your podcast before, but what convinced me to come on is one of my best friends said that yours is the best podcast ever, and she has the biggest crush on you.
So in case you want to meet someone who's also amazing, she moved over all the way to Italy to be supportive of me and visit me in prison.
She's an incredible person, and she has a big fat crush on you.
Oh, dang.
And she's ex-Mormon, which I find that ex-Mormons are the best people ever.
Yeah, they're pretty.
Yeah, I've heard some things about them.
I mean, they're, yeah, Mormons are really, really unique.
When I, like, one time I was walking through the Mormon place in Utah, like Park City, I mean, you're not allowed to go to the temple, yeah, but the tabernacle.
And they had like, they had like 19 weddings going on.
Like, I was in like four ceremonies just on accident.
I was just like, just like, accidentally just would just walk in different paths.
Wow, you got lucky.
I've been there before multiple times, and I've never seen a wedding there.
I've only wished, like, I've walked into that tabernacle and been like, God, I wish someone was singing here.
Because they do.
They're incredible singers.
They're incredible musicians.
And they have a really great sense of community.
They're really supportive of each other.
And, you know, then there's all the crazy dogma.
Yeah, there's a lot of rough dogma with everything.
I feel like these days you hear more about the dogma so much of everything than you do about like the good stuff.
Like the goodness.
The humanity.
Yes.
No, that's my big issue is like I'm constantly coming face to face with different kinds of dogmas.
And they don't have to be established dogmas.
They can be like the whole vilification narrative is something that I find that's like, well, we've decided that somebody is a monster and now what?
And for me, you know, I feel like my job now in the world, having been mischaracterized as a monster, but also having like lived next to people who have been imprisoned for years for things that they actually did do is be like, well, it's a lot more complicated.
People are people and the reason they do things are not for monstrous reasons most of the time.
It's usually a human reason.
And we don't like to – They want to have a scapegoat.
They want to like hold someone up as a symbol and say, this is something that we can hate.
Do you think that it's the greater society that?
Because I find that it appears that way, certainly, like through the news and through media, for sure.
But person to person, I find that it's not that.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Sure, sure, sure, totally.
And I'm not disagreeing with you.
I'm just saying it's interesting that, yeah, like as a, as a as a mass, as a, especially like if you like, go like with the news and media, it's like, yes, it's like, let's put a pen in this.
This is, you know, we want, yeah, we need like an angel, we need a devil, we need, you know, we need figures, you know, to get people excited and to get them engaged.
But then when you go to humans, it seems like there is more of a care about the people a lot of times.
There is more empathy than you get through the narrative that's in the news.
Yes, I think that on a person-to-person basis, the instinct that another human being is across from you and you automatically empathize with them because they have eyes and they have a nose and they have a mouth and they look like you because they're a human, like that instinct kicks in.
But there's another instinct that we all have, which is to stop thinking.
And, you know, we're like, we're, God, I think it was, have you read a lot of Jonathan Haight?
I think you would like him.
He talks about like the reasons why people come into conflict with each other despite the fact that, you know, they're all good people and they're all thinking people and feeling people.
And one of the reasons is like, you know, we're like 80% chimp and like 20% B. And like the B part of us sort of like latches onto a group and then just agrees with everything in that group and otherizes anyone outside of that group.
And so I find it interesting.
I don't know from your experience, like how many people have to come together into a group before they start thinking like a group as opposed to like an individual who sees another human being across from them.
Have you noticed that?
You know, I've been amazed at just like through podcasting and stuff, like the amount of people that are good in the world.
That's what I find just by going out and doing comedy shows and having people come out to them.
But just good people.
Like I've just been amazed.
It's really kind of changed a little bit of my perception sometimes, I think, of the world, especially like through the news, you know, and like the mainstream media.
Like, I mean, I feel like that got so spoiled.
Like it's always bad news.
It's always bad.
And now it's gotten to the point where I think, but I think most people do not believe it anymore.
I think that most people realize that it's bad and they know that they're being, that it's a trick or that it's a, you know, and I hate to say that, you know, your experience, there's probably a lot of experiences over the past 25 years that were like paramount to probably people realizing that why this is, there's no value here of me giving myself to this anymore because they don't even care like what's, what's real.
Like I have more empathy than this news does.
So at a certain point, I'm not, if I keep taking it in and believing it, then I'm doing almost a disservice to my, to who I am as a, as a person.
Yeah, I think that's a fair point.
I also think, though, that we're sort of teaching ourselves how to think less thoroughly just by like the way that we're consuming a lot of information.
A lot of information is coming our way and like flashing across our eyes and like triggering an emotional response.
And then that emotional response happens and then it's gone and we stop thinking about it.
And I think we are, I don't know, I get both sides of it.
And just, you know, even from personal experience, getting both sides of it, where on the one hand, we have such a hunger for like depth and human connection.
And that's why a lot of the media is responding to that and trying to create these difficult, you know, gray space narratives.
And on the other hand, we have also an outrage culture.
And both of those are real.
And like the flippancy with which, the casualness with which we decide, oh, I hate that person or, oh, that person's worthless.
Or, oh, like, it's just, it's so quick.
Yeah.
Is it two different uses, though, almost do you feel like sometimes?
Like, there's a me that's that like will react to something like through television or through online and and and make a choice, you know, pass a judgment.
And then there's a me that's and that me almost doesn't even seem real.
I feel like that's the same me that would engage with like like flirting with women online and that sort of stuff sometimes where it's like it feels almost like a video game of not real life.
I wish I knew that what that was like.
I'm I'm not I mean it's it's fascinating.
Like I obviously can't date online.
So I haven't had that experience, but I've definitely, I mean, lots of people our age are doing online dating and are experiencing each other in a very different way.
Like it's not like you run across them and you see them in context, in an element, interacting with people.
What you do is you read their profile and find out what their interests are.
And if you have the same interest, maybe that means that you'll get along.
But I don't know, you can have completely different interests and actually get along.
And that's when it's the real connection.
Yeah, I think connection, I think overall, it seems like connection is just a thing that it's almost like I wonder if it'll be like in a museum at some point.
Like it's funny, I was talking to my niece a couple of months ago and I was talking about imagination and she thought it was an app.
She hadn't heard of it.
Oh, sweetheart.
And it broke my heart.
And she's very smart and very capable and, but it was just very bizarre to me.
Yeah, imagination.
Is there an app for that?
Yeah.
Can I outsource?
I don't think I have that.
She's like, I don't think my mom lets me.
I think that's under parental control, she said.
That she doesn't know if.
I'm like, no, no, no, no.
It's just inside of you.
It's like this thing that.
Yeah, let's do it right now.
Let's not tell your mom.
It's like one of your few apps, you know?
Do you have like, you know, after your whole experience through, you know, being incarcerated and accusations and everything, do you, where does, do you have like, who do you, who do you blame the most?
Do you feel like?
Oh, hmm.
I think you might be surprised that, you know, as much as like the blame game was happening at me, I don't really Think of it in terms of blame.
You know, I don't, I had a long time to like sit in my cell and wonder why this was happening to me.
And, you know, that's still a question that bothers me.
Like, just why me?
Why me of all people in the world to have this happen to them?
Why?
And I don't have a sufficient answer for that, but I don't think that it's a specific person that I feel the need to blame.
I think human beings fail to see each other all the time, every day.
And it's not like it's someone's fault.
You know, I'm trying to like, one thing that I'm doing right now is I'm trying to reach out to my prosecutor because, you know, the easy and automatic response to any of these situations is to be like, fuck that guy.
He's a bad dude and he did something bad to me.
Right.
But I've never found that to be a very satisfactory answer to why.
It doesn't answer my why question.
Yeah.
You know, like, yeah, it gives you like kind of a, like a cane a little bit, but it doesn't really give you like a real place to stand kind of.
Yeah.
And I'm, I don't know if it's just my disposition, but I don't like lashing out does not feel satisfact, like doesn't satisfy me in any way possible.
I think I remember like one time wanting to like punch a pillow once and I was just like, oh, and it was like for some stupid thing, like maybe like traffic or something.
And I was like, oh, that's what everyone's feeling all the time, wanting to like punch something.
Like, now I know what that feels like.
So I don't know.
But I guess I mean also like in a sense of like, was there a group that, and not even a specific group or person, but was it more like the country?
Was it more the was it more the media?
Was it the news?
Was it the police there that was the thing that you're like, it seems like they were the ones that kept the ball rolling?
Because it seemed bizarre that you were going through all this.
I think from, you know, I consider myself just kind of an everyman.
It seemed like, like you didn't seem like somebody that would kill someone to me easily.
And even with the information from the case.
But you probably displayed behaviors where I was like, oh, if I think, you know, she seems like someone that's unique or aloof or whimsical.
And I could see that kind of fitting like, obviously, a wild story.
But was it more the media that kept you that, do you think one of them influenced more the fact that you were stuck there for so long that you had to go through all of this?
Do you think?
I think that it's like everything, it's a lot more complicated than it would be nice if it were because it's a combination of factors.
It's a combination of the law and like what was legally allowed, what the police were legally allowed to do to me.
Were they illegally allowed to psychologically torture me in an interrogation room?
Well, yes and no.
Are they human beings and is their instinct to feel confirmation bias and to only see what they want to see and sort of ignore or disregard things that don't go with their pre, with their prejudice?
Like these are all factors that came into play and I can't just pinpoint one reason why it happened.
You know, it's a lot of reasons.
Do you feel like that they that they started to think that it was sexy that they had not sexy, but that it was you know there was it was I think sex played a role but again not just for one person because like there's the journalist who goes here's this like here are two fresh-faced young women and and now it's sex on like girl on girl crime and that's sexy.
And then on the other hand, there's a, you know, some police officers or prosecutors who are looking at a crime scene and looking at a body and seeing that there were signs of sexual violence.
And so getting this like sexuality in their head and coming from a different culture and a different time than I was and having prejudgments about my own sexuality or the way that my sexuality even appeared to them because they didn't even really know what kind of sexual person I was.
They just kind of assumed things based on the fact that I was an American girl.
And so there's a lot of that that goes into play.
Do you think that the police there started to kind of get off on the attention that they were getting at a certain point and played into their own like almost like they would keep up things keep up the narrative and not and you know not veer off and not even want to veer off because it gave them it almost romanticized their position that's what I'm trying to say I think it probably had more to do with them wanting to protect or
you know they they wanted to maintain that they were professionals with integrity and when their when their humanity came into play when their prejudices came into play when they made mistakes like many of us admitting that they had made that mistake like they they can say like for there's this cognitive dissonance where they can say I'm a professional and I'm acting with integrity and and in a certain moment for some people like they get on the defensive and
they say that therefore I cannot make a mistake like how can you point to me and say like I'm a professional with an integrity how can you tell me that I made a mistake and it's like well I'm sorry you made a mistake right it's okay you made one yeah but like it became an issue then it became became the blame game like very quickly it became well whose fault is like this is a fucked up situation whose fault it is like whose fault is it and under what light can we cast like how fucked up the situation is because we start with
this death of a young woman yeah and there there's no escaping that this is a tragedy and this is this is the story of young women throughout history being targeted and abused and and murdered because they're really taken they've taken it some miles over the decades they have and and like And so we start with that.
And then it becomes a tragedy on top of a tragedy on top of a tragedy.
And how the focus gets turned from one thing to another.
Being like someone that's obviously dramatic and likes.
I could see you being in drama club in school.
Totally wasn't drama club.
Okay.
So was I. So I've been in some really bad plays.
One time I was in, I think, I was in Sherlock Holmes.
Oh, who were you?
I was Watson, right?
Great role.
But I changed it to Holmes.
I got real like Latino the night of the performance and I didn't tell anybody.
Wait, what?
And I was like, what's happening, Holmes?
So it put a whole spin, like my own selfish spin on everything.
And?
And it ruined everybody else's experience of the night.
But for me, it was, you know, I just kind of took things.
You were a play for yourself.
Okay.
It really was.
Even though it was a lot of other people's, you know, because so many people have worked so hard for this night.
And then, you know, it's just like me with a bad accent kind of cannibalized it.
Shoot, what was I going to ask you?
It was something that was good, too.
She seems like theater.
Oh, yeah.
So at a certain point, did it become, were you able to laugh at the fact that it became like a comedy of heirs?
Or did you never even get to that place of like, or were you always in a place of suffering whenever you were locked up?
So, I mean, it's, again, a complicated answer to that question.
When I was in prison, I realized that like my body sort of reset itself to a new emotional default setting where like I, you know, I was a type of person who used to wake up in the morning and hear the birds sing and be like, yeah, another day.
Sweet.
And I changed so that I woke up and I would wake up and say, another day.
Another day.
We're going to get through this day.
And I'm not going to think about tomorrow because if I have to think about getting through tomorrow, it's not, I can't get through today.
So I need to get through today.
It's almost like a recovery program.
It's almost like somebody that's on like 12-step recovery.
You know, they say one day at a time, that sort of thing.
Yeah, except you don't know if you're ever going to recover.
Yeah.
Because like, I had no idea when I was ever going to get out, if I was ever going to get out.
Did it feel like it paused your ability to be like a family member?
That was the hardest part.
Actually, I had a moment this past weekend.
I'm the oldest of four sisters.
And my youngest sister is 11 years younger than me.
And she just turned 21 this week.
And a couple things to know about that.
It means that when I left, she was under 10 years old.
She was like nine years old when I left.
She's a fun age, too.
Yeah, she was becoming a person.
And I was gone.
By the time I got back, she was a young woman with her badonka donk and her nails.
And, you know, like she was a young woman.
Oh, yeah, these cops, they call them.
And I wasn't there.
I didn't get to be there for her and be her big sister as she was moving from child to young woman.
And it hit me really hard over the weekend when like my dad was doing her 21 run because like my dad got like a van and he had an itinerary.
We were going to go to like the pool hall and then we were going to do karaoke.
All the things you can do now this year.
Yeah, exactly.
And so like he got us all, piled us all in a van and we all went out.
And I, a lot of things are going on in my mind, but I was thinking, okay, I didn't get a 21 run.
I turned 21 in prison and that's fine.
That's okay because I'm here for my sister.
But then the reminder that like this time had passed and she was a young woman, like she was a legit young woman now who could go drinking with me now, like I missed, I missed her.
Yeah.
And she missed me and I wasn't there.
And how did you keep in touch?
How were you able to maintain a sense of sisterhood while you were gone?
So I was writing letters every day.
That was how I so what I would do.
For you.
That's pretty empowering, I bet.
Just to have that one thing that you can do.
It's the one thing.
Yeah.
That and sit-ups.
But like, yeah, I got really good at sit-ups.
But, you know, I was allowed to have like 10 pictures with me in the cell.
And what I would do is I would have, I would, when I was getting ready to do a letter, I would take the picture of the person that I was going to be writing to and just stare at it.
And like, it got to the point where it's like a crazy person.
I would like touch their face and like try to feel like I was physically present with them.
And then I would write a letter and I would just like talk to the picture of them.
And, you know, my little, my littlest sisters were a little too young to know how to interact that way.
And writing is not their medium.
I'm constantly rewriting their essays for them.
But like, yeah, I'm from the past.
And then like, but my, the oldest of my younger sisters, she had to become the big sister all of a sudden.
And she would write to me asking for advice for how to be the big sister.
And that was huge.
That meant a lot to me.
I think even more than she knows.
The fact that she just asked.
Yeah.
Because I wasn't there.
Yeah, she takes her on the role, kind of.
Yeah.
And she recognized with me being gone that there were things about being the big sister that she didn't know, that like that I had been doing the whole time without her realizing it.
Wow.
And so she grew to have like an appreciation for me that she didn't have before.
But then coming home, what I found is, you know, I thought that I was going to go back to being The person I was, and I was going to have the life that I had been stolen from for a while.
I was just going to kind of go back to doing that, and that's not what happens.
So, like, she's still kind of the big sister.
And I'm kind of the weird alien person.
Do you feel like a different, do you still feel like a sister?
Do you feel like a stepmom?
Do you feel like an aunt?
I'm just wondering if there's a little bit of not reality change because obviously these are your sisters and this is your family.
Yes.
And, but do you feel, are you still able, did it, did being in prison, and I say locked up, I think it's pretty dope, but does it make you feel like did you lose, can you still feel their love as much as before?
Do you think it affected your ability to feel like other people's?
So what it did is before all of this happened, I was very, very, very close to my sisters.
And in the kind, and there's a closeness that you get by being physically present with someone.
Like you just know their, you know, their little, you know that they chew with their mouth open sometimes when they're looking at their phones.
And you know, like, you know, those little tics that people have, the way that they pace themselves through life that you don't get when you are at a distance.
And what I've found is I haven't yet been able to reclaim that kind of knowledge of them.
And nor they of me, because we spent developmental periods of our life having very, very different life experiences.
And so we don't, we have so much in common because we've gone through a trauma that affected us all.
But we all experienced it very differently.
And I think that's fascinating to think of how each person experienced it.
Yeah.
So there's, there's a, I mean, that's the whole tragedy of these issues is it's not just the person at ground zero.
It's the whole world around them that suddenly like gets sucked into this black hole of suffering.
Yeah, it seems like, and it seems like the part that really affected, or it sounds like one of the things that affected you the most was that you not even that people weren't there for you, that you couldn't be there for other people.
That was the hardest one.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you can't like, you can't replicate time lost with someone.
Yeah.
You can't.
Like, I can't go back and be there the first time my little sister, you know, snuck out and got drunk and needed someone to pick her up at a party.
Yeah.
Like I wasn't there.
Yeah.
Right.
That was my other little sister.
And do they must know how much you care, though?
I feel like you seem like one of those people that it's easy for, like, or they would get used to it pretty quick.
Chris, you probably know, huh?
They know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, they, they do.
But do you feel like that, is it part of it that you don't know if you'll ever be able to make it all the way up?
If that makes any sense, kind of.
Yeah.
Sometimes I feel like, I love people, but they're never going to know how much I love them.
And it's hard to really sometimes even show how much you really care about somebody, no matter what you do as a human, you know?
Yeah, sometimes I do worry that the way that I communicate love is potentially alien to them.
Like, you know, and I'm pretty easygoing.
Like, I'll go and like have them put the makeup on me or do my hair or whatever.
Like, those are nice ways that you can interact with someone and just by spending time with them doing something that they like.
Like, my little sister loves makeup.
And so I can sit there and be like, do go nuts.
Like, do Picasso on me.
Like, it's great.
And I can do that.
And that's like a great way to connect with her.
But I worry that they don't know how to do that with me.
Oh, I see.
Like, they don't know how to do it.
Like they may treat you different.
Yeah.
Because like I'm I feel like they too are trying to reckon with the fact that everywhere I go, there's a doppelganger of me in the room, which is the foxynoxy, which is the trauma, which is the infamy, which is that experience.
Yeah.
Well, well, yeah, but all those things or whatever you want to call it.
I mean, I deal with a little bit of it myself, like even just as, you know, as my career has changed in the past year, you know, it's become bigger.
You know, it's like I'm like my person, whoever I am sometimes to people is already there before I've got there, you know, and there's nothing sometimes it's like now I used to be able to be myself completely one-on-one.
And now it's like I find I have to like they already have a head start with me in one direction, positively or negatively, or even maybe just sideways.
But they have a head start with our interaction before I even get to them.
And so I'm always either playing from ahead or playing from behind and just trying to make things even most of the time is what I feel like I'm trying to do.
And I feel bad because like a lot of times what it means is you kind of have to have a conversation about like the idea of you or the idea of me that's kind of sitting there between you.
And you kind of have to deconstruct that just in order to reach them.
Because otherwise you also don't feel like you're on fair ground.
And I feel bad for the other person as well because they're like, well, I know you.
You don't know me.
Who does that make me?
Like, who am I?
You know, and that sucks.
So I don't know.
Yeah.
Like, oh, sorry, I'm an accused murder.
You know, my bad.
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Do are there things that you miss?
Like I find like, you know, I was in the hospital for a little bit when I was young, right?
A couple weeks and I was sick and I was scared, right?
And my family was scared.
But when I got out of there, there were still a couple things that like I really missed about it, even though it was like a scary time.
Are there small things that you miss about being incarcerated that you didn't?
But like little things that people wouldn't even think about.
I don't mean like, you know, recess or anything if you guys had that, but I mean like, because rarely do you, does someone get taken out of their life for any reason?
I mean, unless it's getting abducted by aliens or what happened to you or if somebody falls in like a sinkhole or something.
But there's very few opportunities to like kind of to get pulled.
I mean, just in a moment, get taken out of your life on this total side path?
The only thing that I can think of is I wish I had more time to read now and I had plenty of time to read.
But honestly, I would never, ever wish imprisonment on anyone.
No, it's I think Sam Harris asked a really good question in his podcast where he says, like, you know, the worst experience of your life, you would never want to go through it again.
But is there anything that you're glad?
Like, is there any part of you that is glad that you went through it?
So like you wouldn't do it again.
I would never do that again.
I would never wish it upon someone.
I think that the experience of being torn from the world and subjected to incredibly dehumanizing treatment in the prison system definitely gave me perspective of the different ways that like human beings suffer that I didn't know just because I was, you know, I was also 20. I didn't, you know, I didn't know.
Yeah, who's even thinking?
Who can even really understand that at a large level?
Yeah.
So like I was suddenly plunged into a very real world of human suffering that I, again, would never wish upon anyone in like extreme ways.
But I do love reading and I don't get to read as much as I would love these days.
So that's the, it's literally the like the brightest star that I can offer you right now because prison sucks and like locked up sounds cool, but it's not cool.
It's really not.
And I'm, I'm sorry to like be a Debbie Downer two and like kind of burst the bubble or anything, but it's like, it's, it's really hard to put like a nice sheen on prison when it's really just a lot of people who are hurting and in pain and being and and no one cares because they're supposed to be in pain.
Right.
And and um and no one's getting better.
Oh, yeah.
I can see that.
I could really, really see that.
I'm reading this book right now about I think it's called Connections by Joanne Hari.
Is that that book?
Remember we tried to get maybe have them come in?
And it's just talking about like they talk about like a large woman, a Woman that suffers with obesity or eating disorders.
And that the treatment for it is all these different diets and stuff like that.
And then one time they talk about whenever they sat down with a woman, she had gotten molested or sexually abused at a certain time when she was young.
And that's when she started eating more so she didn't look attractive to men.
So that if she didn't look attractive to men, then it would never happen again.
Yeah, this book, it's really been, to me, it's been really neat.
But it's just amazing how like the treatments that we have sometimes, and I think we're finding this out more now because we're a little bit more concerned with who people are on the inside.
Hypothetically, in some ways, than it used to be probably, you know, 50 years ago and it was just like, oh, you're bad.
You go to jail.
You know, we hang the keys over here.
You know, I think we're still migrating out of that whole kind of old philosophy.
Yeah.
Did you find, like after being in there in these environments, did you find that did you feel like it was effective?
Did you feel like it was, that the system is effective?
What I noticed is that the vast majority of people who were in there, whether they were guilty or not, the vast majority of them were guilty, all of them felt like victims, like they were being abused, like they were being abused by a greater system that the justice system was being a bully towards them.
Like they, you know, they're a lot of times impoverished, a lot of times dealing with trauma and mental issues.
A lot of times, you know, they aren't making great choices, but they're also saying to themselves, well, how many great choices do I have?
Like I'm human garbage to you people.
And now you like lock me up in this environment to make me suffer even more.
Fuck you.
Like that's a lot of the right and it gives a whole other chip on their shoulder.
Exactly.
And then they feel even more justified to like break the rules because they're like, you don't.
I was like, you guys like didn't play the cards out neatly.
Like it's not fair.
It's not fair.
And so like they're, they're also victims of the unfairness of the greater structures that led them into the prison environment.
And then it's like insult to injury to be in the prison environment.
And it's tough when you have so many people and it's all a system that's very bureaucratic and stuff.
And it's like, how do you, at that point, it's really hard to get one-on-one attention.
It's hard to get really what you need.
It's almost like a cattle system.
I'm sure it feels like that.
Does it?
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's.
What were like your conditions like?
So I've never, I've been only once into a prison here in the U.S. to visit.
I was doing like a yoga behind bars.
I was like trying to support this organization called Yoga Behind Bars, which were these women who are going into prisons and trying to give people skills for like dealing with trauma through meditation or through just like body movements.
Because a lot of our trauma is being held in our bodies and we don't have access to them.
And so they were trying to give them access to their bodies in order to experience it more positively.
Yeah, it's cool.
Yeah, I do yoga with Adrian sometimes off of the internet, off of YouTube.
Adrian?
Yeah, have you ever seen it?
I have.
Yoga with Adrian.
She's just one of the first people that comes up when you do like yoga instructions.
Oh, it's good.
Yeah, it's good.
I mean, I like it.
There's all different types.
Anyway, yeah.
So the conditions that are compared to the U.S. and the ones that you had in Italy, what are those?
Yeah, so I didn't have to wear a uniform.
Most of us just wore sweatpants because there were limitations on what you could wear.
But mostly we all just lived in sweatpants 24-7.
And another difference for me, and I think it again depends on prison to prison, but I was locked in my cell for most of the day.
So you weren't, there weren't like common areas where people were, you know, working out or going to school.
We didn't have those kind of facilities.
So you were either trapped in your room or you had like your hour of outside time in this like concrete box.
And it wasn't nice out there?
No, it was a concrete box.
Oh, wow.
With a roof on it or it's okay?
I did not have a roof, thank goodness.
So I could see the sun.
I could see the sky.
Did you find yourself starting to almost pray to the sun?
Like, was there any like, like, did the sun become like this different friend that was out there?
I'm just kind of wondering.
It depended on what side of the prison you were on.
Oh, really?
In the sense that like, depending on if your cell faced east or faced west, the sun could be your best friend if you were in the east because you got really nice morning sunlight.
But if you lived in the west side, it became this excruciating torturer because like the sun would come in in the summer and just cook you.
And like, I was, it was a very happy day when I was moved onto the east side of the prison.
Moving on up.
Moving on up to the east side.
Were there people that were friendly in there?
Yes.
And again, everything is complicated.
Right.
So I know these questions are kind of base in some way.
Like, I'm just trying to like.
Yes.
So trying to give a scenario, right?
Like, so there are.
Yeah, I'm trying to see how you stayed human and like with what other humans.
Certainly.
So there are different kinds of relationships that you can develop in a prison environment that are resembling of friendly or friendship.
A lot of times you try to develop some kind of relationship like that with your cellmate because you're trapped in a room with them.
And you have to like problem solve and find solutions for how to live together when you're two very, very different people who are living on edge emotionally.
Wow.
And sometimes that works and sometimes that doesn't, depending upon a lot of factors, like what is your background?
How do you like to spend your time?
Do you like a lot of people inside will want to just watch TV all day and watch soap operas and like play cards.
Great way to spend your time.
Wasn't the way that I like to spend my time.
I spent my time reading.
And sometimes.
Do they think you were a nerd or anything like that?
Well, a lot of them, it was a little worse than that.
Some of them felt like I was better than them.
Yeah, because a lot of them were illiterate.
Yeah.
So oh, yeah, you show a book to some illiterate people, dude.
They're going to think you're Thomas Jefferson.
Totally.
And like you're showing off.
And like I had people who were experiencing mental illness who were very paranoid, who like when I was like writing letters or I was journaling, thought that I was writing about them.
And because they couldn't read it, they were just convinced that it was about them.
And I had someone like take my journal and just rip it to shreds because she was convinced that I was writing about her.
And so like, it's again, it's like so different than the real world because you, you're interacting with people who are living like animals, being treated like animals that can just get plucked up out of their cell and move and shipped off to another prison at any moment.
So like any time, like any relationship that you might establish is also kind of a liability because you could also have that relationship taken away from you at any moment.
And so like you have to be careful about who you have a relationship and why.
And usually it's a utilitarian kind of relationship.
Like, oh, if I'm, if I don't play cards with this person in my cell, they're going to get mad at me and they're going to gang up on me.
So it's good for me to spend an hour of my day playing cards with this person because we're all keep peace.
Yeah.
So there's a lot of keeping peace more so than like camaraderie.
Right.
A lot of just like mitigating what's going on, making sure that was there any, is there any like dating or is there a dating life?
Were there women that were attracted to you?
Did you have to deal with that kind of thing in prison?
Yes.
That's definitely a thing.
And I would almost think that that would be a luxury.
You know, I've never been like homosexual, I don't think, anyway.
I mean, I got caught up on some drugs one time and I don't know what happened, but this guy had to go to the airport, but it was, but yeah, I could imagine that things get, you know.
So if you're wondering, well, I never hooked up with anyone, but I did have someone.
Did you have a, like, but even like, I've had friends that I, like, but did you, did you almost have somebody that you loved in a way?
Like, because it was like.
No, I wasn't so lonely as that.
I mean, I was fortunate that I always had a foothold outside of the prison, which was for me always the real world.
Like, I never was so alone that I felt like prison was my world.
And it's very easy to get to that place.
So I had friends and family who were constantly riding with me.
And also, like, love and sex were the last things on my mind at that point.
Like, I could have continued a relationship with my co-defendant, who was my boyfriend before everything came out.
But, like, as soon as we got into that prison environment and the stakes were so heightened and like everything, it seemed like the only thing that mattered was like trying to get the truth out.
The last thing that I was thinking about was like love and sex.
I felt very alone.
Did part of this, parts of you die almost a little bit?
Like, do they disappear a little?
Because that's such a vibrant time for us in our lives to be like just sexual and to be like not curious, but just to be alive.
Yeah.
So what I can say is that prior, so I was in prison for two years before I was convicted.
And then I was in prison another two years before I was acquitted the first time.
And in the two years leading up to my conviction, I was entirely asexual.
And then my conviction happened.
And I was like, holy shit, I've just been sentenced to 26 years in prison.
I guess I have to like reimagine my life as being an imprisoned life.
And that's actually when I taught myself how to masturbate.
I didn't know how to masturbate before then.
And was that 23, probably 22?
I was 22. Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
So nobody taught you in high school or something.
I guess nobody's going to teach you, but.
I was a late bloomer.
Oh, yeah.
Honestly.
I was a late bloomer.
I never really felt comfortable with my own sexuality.
And I never felt like I was a sexual human being.
A lot of people comment about like, oh, Foxy Noxy, like you have this look.
You're like super hypersexual.
But what a dichotomy.
I don't know if dichotomy is the right word because I don't know that many of all the words that are right, but it's like, what a total opposite then.
Yeah.
How bizarre.
Yeah.
I was not like a sexual person in high school.
I was a virgin until college.
And even then, I was like, I had to learn what an orgasm was.
Like, it wasn't like an obvious thing for me.
And I didn't have good sexual experiences until like after prison, really.
I'm sure.
Yeah.
So I just didn't know until I, well, no, no.
There was something before that.
Sorry, Chris.
And Chris is her fiancé who's here.
He's really picked up the slack.
That's what I heard.
It's true.
We do have a really great sex life.
And actually, we were on the way over here, my friend Madison, who has the biggest crush on me.
Yeah.
She, she sounds very nice.
She's like a really cool, outgoing woman.
Yeah, she's great.
And she sent me this one of your conversations with a young woman named Danielle, I think, who was a virgin.
And then you were talking about losing her virginity.
And then we were like, oh my God, what if he asks you about sex?
And I was like, well, I guess I'll just tell him everything.
You know, because I've had someone do the really mean way of asking me about the whole Foxy Noxy thing, which is to be like, so are you a dominatrix?
Like, is your kink to like hurt people?
Like, what is your fucking thing?
Like, are you the kinkiest?
Like, are you kinky?
And I'm like, well, first of all, you're making kinky people sound like evil people.
And kinky people are great.
Yeah.
Formally rather than translating people.
No.
They're good people.
It's just two lots over from your Ren Fair.
Exactly.
I mean, they're up in the Ren Fair.
You just have to ask the leathermaker for the other stuff.
But like, I'm really boring.
I'm not good at sex.
You know, like, so, I mean, I thought I was good at it a little bit, like, kind of around high school.
And then it's been a little bit, not downhill, but it's been certainly going off the edge of the hill since.
Really?
Why?
I just don't like it.
It makes me real nervous, I think, a lot of times.
And then It's a form of communication, I've discovered.
Yeah, so I could see that making me nervous.
Yeah, okay.
Well, you communicate for a living.
What do you do?
Yeah, barely, though.
Barely.
Like, I don't even know how I got this job sometimes, but I mean, I'm happy to have it.
I just, but yeah, I don't, I just can't imagine what that would be like because then you're in this whole other world.
Everybody's like, oh, you're this sexual being.
And you're like, were you just like, did your whole life must have seemed like almost a like a reaction, like a joke or something?
Did it be like, what's your name?
Well, what it ended up becoming was it became whatever anybody wanted it to become in order to fit the narrative that they were pushing, in order to make the money that they were making.
And so, and that continues to this day where like someone decides that like my existence only means this, like Amanda is a villain.
Therefore, every the confirmation bias comes down again and everything she does, if it's, if it's a good thing, that's a nice thing, well, we're just going to ignore that.
And if it's something that I like anything possible to like flip and like distort and rip out of context to to turn into the worst possible light, like they'll do that.
And that's, that continues to be this to this day.
So there's this like constant, I'm constantly reminded of the avenues people are, or the actions people are taking to see another human being.
Like you asking me to sit down here across from you and you talk to me about Renfair, like I feel like you're trying to see me as a person.
And that's so refreshing.
And like, I get why my friend has a crush on you.
And then like, and like communication, like, yeah, well, communication is sexy, right?
Like, so, and it is a form of, in, communication is a form of sex and sex is a form of communication.
So if you think of it that way, it should be easy.
Yeah.
But then like, and like the, on the other flip side of it, like it is so, so ugly when it doesn't matter who you are or what you do or how even how much you reach out to a human being, like they just shut down and there's a wall of hatred that that comes from being a puppet in their eyes.
Like you're just a puppet.
You're just an object.
You're an idea and you don't get to be treated like a human being.
Wow.
I don't know.
It's so weird.
I don't know if this is just me.
No, this makes a lot of sense.
And it actually leads into something like the media did you so wrong.
And in some ways, the media did me so right.
Like, I think that one thing that's important is...
I mean that you can't put the media, like a lot of people act like the media is this like big one-eyed monster that like stomps around the world and crushes people with its might.
And it's not.
It's a conglomeration of people who have platforms and have the ability to analyze information or not.
And I think that there was journalism that was asking hard questions and attempting to unravel the easy narrative that was being pushed out there.
And then there were people who were just like, oh, it's such an easy quick buck to like do a salacious headline and just repeat that headline that someone else wrote over in Italy.
And like, I don't have to think about it.
It's just an easy, it's an easy artist.
It's just a money.
It's just a financial thing.
Yeah.
There's no, yeah, there's not even a human edge to it.
But I guess what I was thinking of is now, like, is it hard to now, it's like, I know you have a podcast, you have a platform and you're talking a lot about justice.
And your podcast, I want to get the name of it again.
I'll mention it at the beginning, but what is it again?
The truth about true crime.
The truth about true crime.
And true crime is, I mean, I watched probably two episodes of something last night, you know, and I don't even know what it was, but it's like, dude, I love it, you know?
If there's somebody, if they find some bones or there's buried treasure.
What do you love about it?
Count me in.
I'm curious about this because I was never a true crime person until I became the subject of a true crime.
And so I come at the true crime genre not as a fan, but as someone who understands the human consequences of true crime.
And so I'm always trying to unpack the easy narrative that surrounds a lot of these crimes.
That's a good question you have, and I'll answer it right before, so I don't forget this question.
Do you feel like then, because so many people are so obsessed with crime, with true crime, with other people's really trauma, it's almost… That's the story.
Right.
Do you feel almost like we needed someone and not even an egotistical way?
Do you ever feel like we needed someone to go through this gauntlet that you went through, to come out of it with your perspective now?
Because I've never even heard someone say that I look at it from this other perspective.
Right.
Because that perspective is going – could really help change a lot of other people's, the way that we view and consume this stuff at such a crazy rate.
Do you feel like a little bit that – That's kind of like a fate question where it's like, oh, did this need to happen?
Like, I don't know if it needed to happen.
It did happen.
And I find myself constantly up against, like, having a perspective that doesn't match up with the perspective that most people have.
Wow.
You know, like when Epstein killed himself in prison, a lot of people's like first sort of flippant reaction to it was, good riddance, the motherfucker went after young girls and like abused young girls.
And that is all true.
He was a motherfucker.
But did he deserve to die in prison?
Did he deserve to, was it, is it our responsibility now that he was in our custody to like, you know, I believe that anyone should be allowed to kill themselves anytime.
Like that's, that's a different issue.
But like when he's in our custody and we are responsible towards that person, we should not be flippant about someone killing themselves when they are in our care.
It's like that's for me, like I was like, that's like someone else killing themselves, like it, it's not something to be flippant about.
Right, because you're saying it reflects on our ability to so that a prison also is a place where there should be care.
Is that kind of?
If we, yes, absolutely.
Like these are people who are now at our mercy.
Like that's, that's the, The reality of a prison environment is you are you have put someone fully at the mercy of our justice system and our society, and we are responsible for that person now.
And it's not just like a good riddance.
Like a lot of people have that like attitude of like good riddance, throw the way, throw away the key.
I hope he gets raped in prison.
I hope that they, you know, kill themselves.
And that's not what prison is for.
It's funny, I think it's some of my thought was maybe well, I thought that they would hopefully find a way to learn from this guy.
Sure.
Yeah.
I mean, that was originally the intention of prison.
Like before there was prison, there was dungeons where you were kept until you actually had the punishment that you were supposed to get, which was a corporeal punishment.
You had your hand cut off.
You were beaten.
You were killed.
That was the punishment for a crime.
And then people came along who were like, that is just brutal.
We need to understand that human beings have souls because they were religious and they have the opportunity to have some kind of redemption.
But we have to kind of force that redemption on them.
So we're going to remove them from society and put them in a position of forced contemplation.
And that was what the prison environment was for.
But it was also like weirdly a way of punishing people's souls instead of their bodies.
So like the prison environment, weirdly, the purpose of it was to kind of be a soul-crushing experience for the sake of redemption.
I don't know how successful it is at redeeming.
Like redemption, does redemption come from being soul-crushed?
Like in my experience, no.
In my experience, most of the people who end up in that soul-crushing environment just end up hating society even more and feeling motivated to like be angry at society.
And so like, it's the issue of like, what do we do with people who have done wrongs in society is really, really complicated and has to address like how human beings really react to external things being forced upon them.
And I think the most people's reaction is just, fuck those guys.
They're human garbage.
Yeah.
And, you know, human garbage or not, they're human and they belong to our society.
Recyclables, you're saying.
Yeah.
So, yes.
You've been in there with them.
Yeah.
Was it was it tough to probably show people how much you cared while you were in there?
Like if you're a caring person, I imagine and you go into it would be tough probably because it would be hard to show some people are so, you know, some people have, you know, done so many bad things or in so much shame or just filled with hatred or suffering in different ways that it would probably be tough at some times to show people that you cared even.
Actually, it's really easy to show someone that you care.
In prison, I mean, though.
In prison or even outside of prison, I think the thing that to show someone that you care is if you're present with them right now, because right now is the only thing that matters.
It doesn't matter what happened yesterday.
It matters what's happening right now between you and me.
And I don't care what you did yesterday.
Can I help you write a letter to your mom because you can't write?
Like, I can do that.
I don't care what you did.
And that's the way that I showed caring to people is like, I never asked them what crime they did.
I didn't care.
It didn't matter to me.
And it does matter in like the greater scheme of things because like we can't just act like crimes don't matter.
Right.
Of course.
But if we're talking about like having a human, like a human connection with another person, all that matters is right now.
And that is giving that person the opportunity to be a better version of themselves right now, not tomorrow, not yesterday, just right now.
And that's all that matters.
With the platform that you have now, is it tough to use the, do you ever feel like confused or disjointed about using media now because like realizing the power that it has, you know, after you kind of went through a lot of, you know, different pressure cookers of it or, you know, it was kind of put upon you in a lot of ways.
Do you feel, did it take some time for you to say, okay, I'm going to use the same like airwaves and wavelengths that kind of damaged me to fight my own fight for what to me kind of feels like justice sort of seems to be yes, very central to the whole issue is the idea of justice.
Does justice exist?
Is justice is a construct that we've created and that we have to agree upon?
Is justice a consensus?
Is justice something universal?
How do we enact justice in our world?
Like these are all questions that I'm grappling with every day.
And, you know, it wasn't so much a question for me about the ethicalness or not of like being a media person.
Because again, I don't think of media as this monstrous entity.
It's a collection of individuals and it's a tool.
And you can use that tool for good or you can use that tool for bad.
And I think that I can use that tool for good.
The question for me was, what is that going to cost me?
Because every time I put myself out there in the world, it comes with a cost.
There's a question.
Like me being here right now talking to you, you know, it's not just a conversation.
It's an opportunity for us to like share ideas with people.
And how people react to those ideas is one thing.
How they react to us as human beings is another.
And, you know, I was for a long time, I was hiding.
Like I didn't want to have to be answerable to other people's hatred and judgment that wasn't coming from a place of judging even me.
It was judging an idea of me that had been created, not of me.
And so like being in constant conversation with Foxy Noxy is difficult, but I've realized that I do have a different perspective that I think is useful and at the very least is in service of people who are suffering, who don't often get recognized as victims of a thing, as victims of a justice system.
And I try to give voice to that.
I feel a responsibility, particularly because a lot of people who go through these issues, nobody cares.
A person could have spent 20, like there are plenty of people I know who spent like 20 plus years in prison and no one cares.
And for some reason, they care about me because I like have, you know, I'm a girl.
Like, I don't know.
Like, it's whatever the reasons are that people get so mad or so interested in me is an opportunity for me to flip that around and go, but did you know that like there's not only is there a human being in me, but there's a whole world of humanity that's behind the kind of hatred that we just throw at people who are accused of crimes.
Wow.
And what can we do about that?
So like, I feel a responsibility and I feel that media is a very powerful tool that should be used ethically and responsibly.
And I try to do that.
Am I successful?
Am I as successful as the people who like write really flippant headlines without doing any research in order to just vilify the next person?
No, unfortunately, no.
I think you will be, though.
You think so?
I have no idea.
I think you have such a unique and special way of like being able to, first of all, think and talk at the same time.
That's a massive skill.
And also.
Is that not your skill?
Oh, no.
That's not my skill.
It really isn't.
I don't know.
Like, I saw you, like, I was.
It really is not my skill.
I mean, I saw you talking to Danielle the Virgin, and you were just kind of there, and you were present with her.
Yeah.
And like, listening is thinking.
Like, listening is feel.
I think thinking and feeling often get like separated out as if they're like separate things.
But I think feelings are information.
And if you're processing your feelings, you're thinking, you're processing information.
Yeah.
And it sounds like that's what you do with a lot of people.
Yeah, I think I was good at it in the beginning.
I think I'm still okay with it.
I just have to get a little bit more connected with myself.
I just kind of like lost connection a little bit.
And just even in the past month or two, I've just been kind of exhausted a little.
So I realize I got to kind of recharge my batteries and stuff.
And even just thinking about different things, you know.
Well, what's going on with you?
I think just probably, I think I've just been burnt out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was just like doing so much stuff that I just like I was basically kind of living my dreams and I wasn't even, I couldn't even like feel, I wasn't having like any joy almost.
I was like, man, I'm just.
You know what?
Like I've kind of had that like this whole summer is just been like nose to the grindstone, like trying to tell these stories about vigilantism for this season of the podcast.
Right.
And like on the one hand, I'm having incredible conversations with people who are like in real moments of their lives making decisions that take them out of the norm.
Like a guy who's a trucker who like goes around and tries to expose child predators online and a guy who then puts on a mask and a cape and goes out and like beats up people who are bullying other people.
Like these are people who are taking action and they're visualizing and they're taking action and they're making decisions and I'm having these incredible emotional conversations with them.
And then I go back and I just like, you have to just plug and write and research and just like get the work done.
And it has been draining for me too.
Well, you have to do all the work that people didn't do for, that they didn't do for you probably too.
Yeah.
And that's, that's when, and that's, that is satisfying to me because it's like, I know what people didn't do for me.
Yeah.
And I don't want to make that mistake with someone else.
Like I know what I needed.
And like the ability to offer that to someone else is like so, so satisfying.
And I'm sure you have like incredible conversations with people, but then you kind of come away from them and you're like, where am I?
Like I've just been like in that other person's world and now I have to get work done and I have to schedule meetings and I have to like, you know, do all of the technological work and like the emails, the endless emails.
And it feels like less meaningful than that one thing.
I mean, you got to get out there.
Like I've been telling myself I need to go swing dancing more.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I look, I think that sounds like a nice thing.
Does Christopher swing dance or no?
Yes.
We are legit.
Oh, we guys are high on the guys are hot to trot.
What do you do, though?
What do I like to do?
Well, it was funny because I like doing comedy and I've always liked it.
And then recently it just became a little bit, it just became like a little bit me.
Like I felt like I was on a conveyor belt of my own life and I was just kind of going and I was like kind of there at the controls kind of, but I wasn't really like involved almost, even though I was doing everything.
And so now I'm trying to take a little bit of a step back.
And actually I got a job.
I'm going to do some work out of town for about a month and a half.
And so it's going to, but it's going to keep me in one place.
And I'm just going to take a little bit of time to my a little more time to myself.
Is it like a media kind of or comedy thing or is it like a construction job?
It's a film, actually.
It's going to be a movie.
Yeah, this guy, this actor hit me up personally, just about a movie.
You know, I never really had any intentions of doing anything like that.
But this guy, like literally like three people in the world maybe could have asked me, and I feel like this guy maybe was one of them.
So I'm going to try it out.
And also, I think part of me just needs a new experience.
It's not even like a big role.
That's what I was going to say.
But I need something to kind of just kind of remind me of what's going on, you know, just a little change of pace.
But also that like life can be different.
Like that's the other thing that I think new experiences are so important about is like we kind of all sort of dig our own trench and then we forget that like life could be a different way.
And like I always have this like weird little fantasy in the back of my head of like disappearing into like the mountains and making cuckoo clocks.
And that's like my weird little fantasy when I just, when I feel like too stuck and I'm like, I'm just too stuck in this fucking life that I'm in.
Like I'm like, or I could just go and like be a troll in the mountains and make cuckoo clocks.
That could also be my life.
I think, do you, when you look back at your, how you, when you originally got incarcerated, do you see how like, like you don't seem like somebody that would ever kill someone.
You don't even seem like somebody that would probably, I could see you maybe trying, you know, jarring up some fireflies overnight, honestly.
You know?
What?
Fireflies, you know?
What does that mean?
Oh, jarring them up.
I could see you killing them.
And then the poor things like that.
Yeah, it was an accident.
You didn't know you were going to kill a couple of them.
You know what I'm saying?
You had all good intentions.
You just wanted like a little night light that you could carry with you to the restroom.
It would be magical.
Yes, very quick.
I could see you doing something like that.
But do you see when people are like, do you see like that just...
of it was some uh something that people were projecting onto me and i was a convenient canvas for that um because nobody knew who i was right like i was a nobody and so that meant that i could be an anybody and then once people decided what that person was like having that be corrected like you know yes you you see me right now i'm this is how i am um and
uh i i honestly feel like a lot of the negative things that people have felt about me have been a projection of their some something some kind of like nightmarish imagination that they have they've just projected onto me um because again it's like a confirmation bias you see what you want to see and if you want to see like someone could look at me right now and say oh i'm sitting here i'm daring to sit here like talk talking to someone as if like i am not a fucking
murderer and like me i'm just constantly like just my very like a lot of people feel that my very existence is an affront to meredith's memory and that like the very fact that people even know my name and and know that i exist is an offense that i am that i am committing against meredith's family and so like when my own just existence is a problem like anything can be a problem right so oh it must be such a is
it sometimes a battle to get going every day in some ways like or is it like uh or does some days it just kind of you kind of have moments where it just you forget that not forget but i never forget um i don't think i'll ever forget um but my life is not just what other people think of me in fact the majority of my life is not that the majority of my life is who i love and and and what what work i'm doing because i love the work
that i'm doing um it's the question of now what and and the most the beautiful thing about my life right now is i'm i can ask that question um and i suppose that the question never fully went away even in prison i was thinking well i guess this is my life i didn't think this was going to be my life but how do i like how do i live my best life and so brave i don't know i mean
it's that or kill yourself like it's it really is did you like i just wonder sometimes i guess a lot of us always i guess here's a lot of people wonder if they went to prison who they would be oh sure um one thing okay here's something that's like really sad um a thought that i have again like i feel like i'm such a um i don't think so i so okay i worry that i wouldn't be a great
person if it weren't for everything that i went through like i would be an okay person i've always been a nice person i've always like rooted for the underdog and i did you know i was you know doing musicals and i would probably still be going to run fairs but like i and that makes you a good person i think it helps a little yeah but like you know before all this happened i didn't know about what poverty and mental illness looked like and how that affected people and i didn't know what the justice system was doing to people and
i did never was on my radar you never would have known i never would have known and so like i think that i would have lived a much more clueless existence um but i hope not i hope that like i would have had other experiences that would have allowed me to grow it's hard to say though i i hate playing the what if game because on the one hand like i do think about i wasn't there and i wasn't there when my sister turned like turned into a teenager and i wasn't there to see her like i wasn't there to like go and get her training bra with her i wasn't there and
that means that and i'm never gonna get that back but on the other hand like i've i got a crash course in humanity um and i feel like i've done a lot of hard work to absorb um meaning and compassion from all of that um and i'm proud of that and i want to share that with people and i and i think that's a good thing yeah um yeah it seems um man
it's just it's such uh there's so much like i guess kind of like forgiveness in your story sort of or not forgiveness but just it's like you didn't even kind of take that route of like blame and yeah a lot of people ask me about forgiveness and i'm like well i don't even feel like i've like floating above your perception of it all um do you feel like uh do you relate to different characters now like villains whenever you see stuff on television do you relate to
more like jessica rabbit or cruella deville people like to think she was just cute but she was trouble she was trouble but she was also just had you know roger rabbit's back the whole time so like sweet yeah i i've been compared to jessica rabbit before which is hilarious to me um but but from the i'm not bad i'm just drawn that way kind of way and so people have used that on me before um uh i don't
relate to cruella deville because i love animals right but get me in a room with cruella deville and i think that i could uncover things about her that that i i i kind of pride myself on being willing to speak to anyone i i will talk to anyone i've lived with people who killed their own children so like i can i feel comfortable speaking to someone and being willing to like be present with them again like
it's not like i who you are right now is a product of all of the things that came before you, but I'm interested in the things that are happening right now.
And there could be something blossoming right now that's like a humanitarian, like a momentarian, almost.
I mean, that's a thing.
I just, I want, I want to give everyone the opportunity to be a human being and to grow and to be different than what my expectation is going to be.
I'm really open to that.
And I don't think that makes me gullible or silly because I can tell when I've definitely had encounters with people who were very dangerous and who hurt me.
And I've learned from those experiences from allowing myself to open up to people who were hurtful to me.
What makes you hopeful, I think, which is something that's very nice to have.
And someone has to be that.
Yeah, and I think that everyone is sort of motivated, not out of evil intentions, but out of a...
They misunderstand where their motivations are coming from and they misunderstand their effect on people.
Or I guess, I mean, there are some people who are just fucking like beating people up and raping people and killing people, and they know what they're doing.
But a lot of times they come from a place of feeling entitled or justified and like to unpack where they, how they feel, how they got to that place of feeling justified and entitled enough to enact a violence on another human being is where we could solve almost everything, it feels like.
Yeah.
It feels like, yeah, sometimes we're fighting the role.
Yeah, we're.
It's not enough for me to like point out, oh, you did this because you were feeling entitled, like you're an entitled asshole.
I want to let go and be like, but how did you get there?
Right.
How did you get there?
You entitled asshole.
Oh, yeah.
Right.
Right.
I want to find the entitled large customer.
Let's get back to you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Totally.
Oh, that's so interesting.
Yeah, it's funny.
It's like, yeah, the people aren't the, in the end of it all, yeah, people aren't the problem.
And it's whatever has caused us just to behave these ways is the problem, you know?
And yeah, sometimes you wonder if it's defeatable or not.
But the only thing that makes you feel good is to try and defy is to try and fight it.
Yeah, and I think to try to see it.
Right.
Because I think that a lot of people don't want to look that far down because they feel like it's justifying bad behavior.
But I don't think understanding bad behavior means you're justifying it.
Interesting.
I think that.
Yeah, because sometimes I've wondered while we've been speaking, like, okay, is she just trying to justify that people behave badly in these systems and stuff?
But I don't see what you're saying, but having an understanding of it.
Because then if you can help them understand it too.
Yeah.
Because, man, imagine what it feels like probably to have killed someone and not even have any clue why.
Yeah.
And then that's how you're just losing it.
Totally.
Yeah.
And like, I've talked to women.
I've talked to women who killed their kids because they were feeling postpartum depression and they then they didn't have a good support system around them and they just felt like they they were have they had a breakdown they had a mental breakdown of like i can't handle my own life and the only thing that i know to do right now in this like i'm trapped in my life is to put my baby in a garbage can i can't like i can't think of anything else to do and and
that i've talked to that person and she feels terrible for what she did and she can never escape it and she constantly feels like she's falling in black holes and like and can never get out of it but like you know i understand that she felt like how she felt when she did that bad thing and that's empowering people with understanding is is uh there's there is something empowering about that and empowering them to like get out of that place is also good like i
i think that right now there's a there's this kind of movement for sort of like defining people as one thing and then saying you are that thing and you will be that thing forever and like fuck you and that's not how human beings work but that's changing though i think like even did you see uh joe rogan interview bernie sanders did you happen to see oh no i didn't see that no and whatever thoughts you're on politics and i you know and i don't talk much about politics but um but it was just interesting to see a long-form conversation with a politician it just gave you
a different it gave you way different ideas of who that man was kind of as a person instead of sound bites yes instead of sound bites it was it was really fascinating i thought did you think nick yeah it was great yeah they need more of that he's done it with telsey gabbert too i if every single candidate could do it uh i think we'd be all be more informed yeah we would be better off for sure so i think yeah i think especially through podcast past podcasting and stuff that the the the hope that you're talking about i think it's growing you know i really believe that's
fair yeah no we talk about it a lot on here i really think it's growing i mean i especially think with rogan and talking to bernie sanders i think it's going to change the entire landscape of like how people accept other how they learn who a person is yeah um so i think uh and you yeah you seem like you're going to be like like like a coat like a co like a operative like a black ops professional on like you just so you're very great at communicating with people um
thanks yeah it's a great skill i'm sitting here the whole time wishing that i was you instead of me why um just because you're just better at talking and it's like it's more it's just more organized um what uh i have this question for you so you are you haven't you've been in you've been engaged now and you guys have a now how does that go you guys had such the wild engagement the meteor landed a meteor of love yes and uh which is really cool it kind of reminded me of like chivalry and like oh it's it reminded me when i was in junior
high dude i had acne bro i mean i had a lot oh my god i had the most acne remember how i never got laid in high school yeah i would smile and some of my acne would like bust oh god it was just like pain i just had like those deep ones like the deep a deep pain it was like it's like as deep as my shame like that's how deep my acne was so bad there's no top there's nothing that is dead No,
it's just a deep anger that's a rock in your face.
It's so bad.
But at that time, I walked across the basketball court and like, I got on my knee and like gave a rose to some girl, like, you know, and she had some real thighs on her, bro.
But she was really, she was really beautiful.
And so anyway.
The best of us have that.
Yeah, and I really do.
I've got a butt like a Down syndrome girl.
And no offense if anybody has Down syndrome either.
But anyway, it just kind of reminded me of that.
I was like, oh, here's some nice chivalry going on.
Well, the gesture, right?
Like the gesture.
That somebody took time that he thought in advance.
Yep.
What are some things that attracted you to your current fiancé?
Oh, that's a great question.
Thank you for asking.
Well, I know he cared enough to come with you.
I just think it's, you know, I think, yeah.
And I'm curious as to like how you were able to like, yeah, I guess how someone like you like looks, how they accept like, you know, other people's care or how they notice it, you know?
Well, one of the wonderful special things about Chris is when I first met him, he did not Google me.
He didn't really know much about the case.
And actually, maybe I should just give you our origin story.
Do you want our origin story?
Yeah, okay, cool.
Yeah, after the meteor, I needed an idea.
Yeah, you need like the superheroes began.
So our origin story is that I was doing local arts correspondence for a local newspaper under a pseudonym around like 2015.
And I was doing arts correspondence.
I was going to plays, writing reviews, doing all that kind of thing.
And I was given this debut novel by these two novelists.
And I read it and it was hilarious and heartbreaking.
And I laughed and I cried and it was so smart.
And so I wrote this rave review, submitted it to the paper, and that was going to be the end of it.
Except the very next day, I walked out of my apartment building and across the street in like the diner window was like a concert poster before a book reading for this book that I had just read.
And I was like, that's coinketink.
Like I never go out, but maybe I'll go to this book reading.
So I did.
And when I got there.
Well, so you fell susceptible to a poster for a book reading.
Yes, I did.
And a concert before.
Remember, I'm a nerd.
Yeah.
No, I wonder who falls susceptible to those posters.
And now two thumbs, this person.
And so I went, and what I witnessed was these two guys.
One of them is this like big, bald military guy with a lisp and his best friend who had like stripes carved into his beard and like Elton John t-shirt and like glasses.
And it was the most beautiful bromance I had ever seen.
And I asked them for an interview.
So they invited me over to Chris's house and we did an interview.
But that kind of devolved into drinking scotch and watching Star Trek and like meandering out into the like neighborhood throughout the evening and just kind of like shenanigans.
And at the end of that, Gavin, his best friend, this military guy, gave me this big bear hug.
And Chris reached out and was like to shake my hand and said, we should be friends.
And, you know, it's a throwaway kind of thing.
Except like this came a month after I was fully exonerated.
Oh, wow.
And it was the first time I thought, oh, I can make friends in the real world, like a real person.
And so they became like my first friends after I was fully exonerated.
And, you know, life went on.
Well, yeah, friendship will escalate.
Yeah, friendship will escalate.
And so nine months later, we started hooking up and dating.
And, you know, poor Chris, like he has to, you know, his relationship has been with me, but it's also kind of been with that like doppelganger version of me in the room.
Like my trauma is an ever-present part of my life.
Little anecdotes about like, oh, have you seen Wally?
And I was like, when did it come out?
Because I was probably in prison.
Like, that kind of thing comes up.
Yeah, you can't even play fuck Mary Kill at all without somebody being like, wow, that's a little.
Do people say that all the time?
Oh, all the time.
It's me, Casey Anthony, and who's the other one?
In Fuck Mary Kill, it's another person.
And Jodi Arius.
But do people say things to you all the time?
They're like, oh man, I didn't even realize that I can't say that.
Like, it must, does that happen sometimes or not really?
Oh, no.
I am super accommodating and have a sense of humor about the whole thing.
It seems like it.
I'm not like, ah, rump.
Right.
You know, but like, I understand when people are in a space where it's just like, I can't laugh about that.
I don't know.
I did have one comedian make a joke about me once and it came at just a really bad time.
Like it came on the heels of him meeting me in a very different environment.
He was actually interviewing Chris about his book and he didn't know it was me and I just kind of happened to be there.
I was like, I was doing some cross stitch in the corner.
And every story, you're like in the 1700s.
I know, but it was like, it was a Super Mario cross stitch.
So it was my shit.
So I was doing a Super Mario cross stitch in the corner.
And so like this guy doesn't really notice me.
And it's only after the interview, after we left, that he realized it was me.
And, you know, six months go by and my little sister for her birthday wants to go out to see this comedian.
And so we all go out, we all get dressed up, like all the girls doing the girly thing and going out to see this comedian that she likes.
And the opener for this comedian is this other guy who met me six months ago, but didn't realize who I was.
And he starts out his bit with, you know, you know how like you don't know when there's like a famous person in the room with you until after they've left?
And then he goes on on the shtick where he's like, man, you can't like leave me in a room with a man in a she'll kill me with her knitting needles.
And it was just not a good joke.
Right.
Like it was, it wasn't a good joke, but it was, it was also just, it hurt because, like, on the one hand, my little sister was like, it's my little sister's birthday, and suddenly my name gets dropped.
And, like, it's suddenly everyone's like, the focus is on me.
And there's like, Amanda, is she going to be okay?
Like, they're talking about her.
They're making jokes about her killing people with knitting needles.
And so on the one hand, it upset me because it took us out of like my sister's birthday.
And on the other hand, it upset me because it's like, this guy met me and I was like, you being you.
I was just being me.
I was doing Super Mario cross stitch in the corner.
And he felt like the joke to make about that situation was, she'll kill me with knitting needles.
And it's like, that is so easy and so mean.
I don't know.
It just, it did, it felt like, you know, like I expect it when people don't know me and haven't met me in person to like make jokes at my expense because they just don't think I'm a human being.
And I wasn't expecting like the person who, it would be like if you went out and did a comedy thing after like having this conversation and was like, oh, I, you know, I'm like, yeah, it hurt your feelings.
Or yeah.
Well, if you made a joke about like, you know, about me killing you in the room or something, like that's, it's not a good joke.
Like if you want to make a joke, like I'm fine with the people making jokes about me, but like be make them good jokes.
I don't know.
Keep her around.
You can get away with anything.
Yeah, yeah.
Everyone will think I'm guilty.
Like that's a good one, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And like the joke that I say around everyone is like, you're not allowed to die around me because I don't care what you did.
Like I'm like, if someone give that guy a high micro maneuver because I can't beat I'm over one.
Like I can't like deal with this.
Nobody's going to believe me.
No one's going to believe me.
Yeah, you only get one get out of jail in four years card.
I guess so.
So you and Chris, and so you guys have a wedding date set yet?
Yeah, February 29th, which is leap day.
I know.
And I know, but even better, and this is like the best.
So like we took, we took like the kind of crystal of that first thing and we were like.
And I was referencing a video.
You guys don't know.
I was referencing a video on YouTube that you can see of their proposal.
Yeah.
So Chris basically made a meteorite fall and crash land in my backyard.
And inside the meteorite wasn't just like a ring.
It was a broken data crystal from the future Encyclopedia Galactica that was like Wikipedia of our future together.
And he was like, wow, I guess we have a future together.
I guess that means, do I like ask you now?
I guess it's really happening now.
Will you marry me?
And like, that was like the game was like, oh, the future says that I propose to you right now.
So I guess I have to propose to you right now.
And so what we've done is we've built a story around that where the data crystal came rocketing back in time because us in the future went to the Encyclopedia Galactica and looked ourselves up and broke our time stream.
So our time stream has been broken and now we are only hypothetical Amanda and Chris getting married.
And unless everyone we love comes together into one bubble outside of space and time and knits our time stream together, then we don't exist anymore.
So still knitting then.
More knitting at the end of it.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's cool.
Yeah, it's really cute.
And it's just, yeah, it's still, yeah, it's like a lot of make-believe, you know?
It's cool, though.
We like to, I love to play.
Yeah.
Dancing is playing.
Getting dressed up in costumes is playing.
You've always been like that.
I've always loved to play.
And music is playful.
Like if you're singing and playing music together, that's play because you can, like, you never know what the next person is going to happen.
And you just kind of like bounce off of them.
I love play.
And I love kind of like getting people out of their shells to play with me.
And I think that if you give people an excuse to put on a costume, they'll do it.
But they need an excuse.
I don't need an excuse.
I'll put on a costume at any time.
But like a lot of the people I love need an excuse.
And so it's not going to be Halloween.
It's going to be February 29th.
It's going to be a wedding.
Yeah.
Wow.
It's beautiful.
Congratulations on so much going on in your life.
Thank you.
You know, I texted too, the guy, Payne Lindsay.
Do you know who he is?
Yeah, I love Payne Lindsay.
He's great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was going to try to connect you guys.
I don't know if maybe if you.
We have been connected.
We have.
Yes.
We ran into each other at a true crime convention.
Oh, cool.
Of course.
Yeah.
No, I was just thinking a few minutes ago, I was like, I wonder who, maybe if she was going to, you know, have a guest or he's actually invited me to be on one of his new podcasts.
But I think it's supposed to, I think everyone's supposed to be anonymous, so maybe I just ruined it.
Well, if you decide that that's true, we can take that apart out.
No, it's fine.
Congratulations.
Thanks so much for coming in.
Do we have any other questions, Nick?
Did some come in from the viewers or we cover it?
Oh, we have a couple, Patreon.
But I was wondering how familiar you are with some of the really big true crime stories like Serial and Making a Murder, and if you see any parallels with your case in them, or if you have specific, you think they did it or didn't do it in those instances.
People love those, didn't or didn't do it.
I'm aware of both those cases.
So Adnan Syed and Brendan Dassey.
So I am good friends with one of Brendan Dassey's attorneys who's an expert in false confessions.
I think that there's a flagrant abuse of his rights.
He was forced to falsely confess, and that is the only evidence that they used to convict him.
It's obscene that his conviction wasn't overturned.
It's obscene that he's in there.
It's obscene that he's in there.
And Stephen Avery, the question is a little more complicated.
And I don't know the facts of his case as well.
But I know also through my friend that Brendan Dassey, it's just ludicrous.
And he needs to get out of prison now.
And anything anyone can do to help matters.
And one of the things that I'm trying to do to help in my own way is just try to raise awareness of false Confessions and coercive interrogation techniques, and how police, once again, like in these environments, you know, people think that if you make a false confession or a false admission or a false accusation, like that it's coming from you, when in fact it's like the police are authoring a narrative and you have to just sign on.
And like they bully you and psychologically torture you until you can't take it anymore and you're willing to sign on to anything just to make it stop.
Oh, I can imagine.
So like four or five hours of torture and that's so it's it's yeah, no, like and Brandon Dassey was so young and he like he was he was a minor so impressionable.
They like put him through it for days and days and days.
It's just it's ridiculous what happened to him.
Adnan Syed, I think there is I signed alongside a number of my exonerie buddies.
We all signed a petition in order to get his case re-looked at.
So you know like now when you say that do you mean that he is that you believe that he's innocent or you just think that he should be re-looked at?
He deserves to have a new trial.
I don't think that the evidence that was used to convict him was sufficient to find guilt.
And, you know, I think that it's only fair that someone is actually put through a justice process based on evidence that makes sense.
And it's only then that we can all determine that.
I would love to sit on a jury one day, but no one's ever going to put me on a jury.
Like, no one's ever going to put me on a jury.
And I would love to be on that jury.
Gosh, maybe, what if you knit a nice disguise?
I bet you could go on.
I mean, because yeah, I think you'd be a good juror.
You know, I think you'd have probably a lot of, I'd be up a lot of questions probably, but I bet it would be good.
Oh, certainly.
And I mean, and, you know, I come from it from an experience, but that doesn't mean that I'm like biased towards innocence or guilt or anything.
Like, what I am biased about is like I know how fucked up the system can be.
Yeah, you're a commander to frame.
I just thought of that, actually.
Do we have anything else, Johnny?
All the Patreon, we pretty much answered, but I just had one question.
What was your day like when you found out that you were reconvicted?
Like you were in the U.S. Did you just roll over to a tax message?
You're like, oh, shit.
Just curious.
Oh, God.
The buildup to that was really hard.
It wasn't like, oh, yeah.
Oh, look at that.
Look at me.
There was, I think the thing, the more shocking moment for me was actually when the Supreme Court in Italy overturned my first acquittal.
I was not expecting that.
And so that was a phone call from my lawyer to say, to give me the bad news and to let me know that I had to go through yet another trial.
Because it wasn't just like, you know, an overturn of an acquittal.
It means they sent me back to be retried again.
And so I was retried again in absentia.
They found me guilty.
And from, and yeah, and so again, I have that phone call with my lawyer who tells me we're going to fight it.
But I didn't know what that meant.
Like I suddenly had to start thinking about what extradition looked like and how I was going to, if Italy decided to, you know, if the Supreme Court in Italy was going to confirm that conviction, how I was going to turn myself in to the local authorities and make a case for at the very least serving my time in the U.S. so that my family wasn't such a burden on my family.
I was living, yes, a lot of people like think, you know, four years in prison, but it was really eight years of waiting to know if I was allowed to live again.
Yeah.
So wow.
What a pur, I mean, just what a purgatory for like your growth and for your humanity.
Yeah, my 20s were this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm only 32 now.
So it's weird.
Like I'm, I'm weirdly very, very young in the real world, which means that I'm like stumbling around and trying to like figure out what being a real a real person is like.
There's not much left to being a real person.
So like, you know, but then in other ways, I think we might be on a horizon of realizing the value of humanity again in some ways.
And that's what I hope a lot of times.
Yeah.
Well, I love what you're doing because it sounds like you're coming from this like optimistic place of like, if I just sit with someone, we'll just be humans together.
And isn't that great?
Did everyone forget how cool that is?
And like, I love that.
That's a really, really useful thing to do.
Yeah.
I think we try our best.
You know, we've learned, we learn as we go in here, you know.
Yeah.
We definitely try our best.
Have you had any contact with Meredith's family?
This is another question that I get a lot of.
The answer to that question is, once again, it's complicated.
I've written and sent a letter to them many years back, but what I have heard from their lawyer and in general is that they are not in a place to want to talk to me.
Like in these situations, you have people who have gone through a terrible trauma and they have an experience of me that like just the very being of me is a trigger for that trauma.
Yeah, it might just remind them of it and there's nothing wrong with that or anything.
And so like when it comes to the Kircher family, I firmly believe that like they have like if I it's not my position to force myself on them to be understood by them.
If and when they want to have a relationship with me, I'm ready.
And I'm ready to answer every hard question that they might have.
I do think this is a whole thing about restorative justice, right?
It's like coming to see how like how a crime, Meredith's murder, has impacted so many people and like finding that common ground and finding a reconciliation and understanding.
But like you have to be ready and willing to like come to the table with that goal in mind.
And until that happens, like I can't force myself on them.
Yeah, it's funny.
A lot of times in my own like issues and stuff, if I'm not like I want to do something, but I'm not ready, I'll pray for like willingness.
You know, it's like I'll pray for like the step before the capability.
You know, it's like, just, you know, God make me willing to do this because I want to, I'm having trouble getting to the action.
Yeah, that's the biggest, like, I think that's the biggest challenge is like a lot of people, like, they could do it if only they could like bring themselves to do it.
You know, did you, did you have faith?
Did you struggle with faith?
Did that come into your sentence at any point?
Like when you were by yourself or when you were in prison?
So I am an atheist and boost.
No, it's okay.
Everybody has their own experience with.
I'm very hopeful that I'll try my best to have faith, you know.
Okay.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, and so is yours.
Yours is okay.
It's okay.
Well, I'm going to be like sad a little, though.
Sorry.
I'm a little sad, probably.
But it's probably just because of my own thoughts.
It's probably somehow I'm projecting my own stuff.
Yeah, I wonder like what atheists, like what that word means to you, because I clearly do a lot of, or clearly, I guess maybe not clearly, I do a lot of self-reflection reflection.
I do a lot of meditation.
I do a lot of thinking about my place in the world and my impact on people in the world.
And those are all things that really, that are really important to me.
And one thing that's also really important to me is like one thing that's very real to me is that I can't rely on the universe to like be good.
For me, there is no like the universe is good or bad.
It's not any of those things.
All it is, is existence.
Existence is what it is.
It's neutral.
And we happen to be conscious and we have concepts of like what makes something good or bad, like human suffering bad, bad for me, bad for you, bad for everyone.
We know that that's bad.
But it's not because it's inherently bad.
It's not because someone decided or decreed that it was bad or that the dogma decreed that it was bad.
It's just that's how we experience things.
Right.
We know it's bad.
We know it's bad and we don't want that to happen to someone.
We wouldn't want it.
We wouldn't wish it upon ourselves.
And like, so when I'm finding, when I'm trying to find, you know, guidance or when I'm looking for that willingness to do something, it's motivated with the understanding that like the only thing that can make,
the only thing I can do in my like smallness and aloneness is try to like make connections with human beings and try to bring, try to like make as less suffering as possible and as much like joy and growth as possible.
And I have to find that in myself.
And I know that like no one's riding me.
No one's like telling me to do that.
It's really just me, me in my head alone figuring that out for myself.
And that's a responsibility that I have to take.
I feel responsible because I'm aware of myself.
And being aware of myself is like the first thing that I have to do as a conscious being.
Yeah.
And it's still a fight for good.
It's like we're on this, it's this equal, there's no judgment from the universe against us, you're saying.
And it's, but we do know right from wrong.
We do know how it feels anyway.
Yeah.
And on our human scale, it's important.
It's important.
But in the big grand scheme of things, it's not.
But for us, it is.
And like, just because something in the big grand scheme of things is utterly meaningless doesn't mean that it isn't meaningful to us right now because this is the level that we live on.
We don't live on cosmic levels.
Right, right.
We don't live kind of, yeah, there's not this eternal, it's right now.
Yeah, right now.
Well, I think the one thing that's that, I mean, I certainly agree with it.
It's like, yeah, we, I think that good is infectious, you know?
Okay.
Yeah.
And so it's like, yeah, like that it's a battle.
Yeah, it is a battle.
It's like I can choose to battle for good or to or to not, you know, and I think that's.
The one thing that I would push back on that is I don't like the term battle because battle means that there's an enemy.
And like, I think that it's very, very easy to fall into this mindset when you have an enemy that you then find a target to be the like the object of your enemy.
Whereas for me, I look at it as you're building something.
You're creating something.
We're always creating something.
And what are you creating?
What energy are you putting into it?
It's going to exist in the world and you're creating it.
What is it going to do?
And I will say this, and I will, my last move will be that you would know that from personal experience a lot better than I would how that, you know, how when somebody, when there's a lot of, you know, energy that it can be targeted at someone.
So.
Yeah, it's kind of like that blame or forgiveness thing.
It's like, I'm not even, that's not even like what I'm thinking about.
I'm thinking about like, what am I putting out into the world and what is its impact?
It's a drop in an ocean.
Like, what does that ripple effect?
Yeah.
So I think we certainly agree on that.
My last question is, how much did it, did the whole, did it all cost?
I can't even imagine the costs of all the attorneys and everything.
I don't even, I could not even tell you how much it costs because it costs that much.
Like I, what my family paid, what I've had to pay, what I'm continuing to have to pay.
And for something that's not even your fault.
No.
Wow.
That's a lot of power.
It's a lot of power to stand up in the face of all those different things and to be someone who still wants to help others.
Or just wants, I don't know.
It's impressive.
It's very interesting.
It helps me.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't say that like me helping others doesn't help me because along the way, I'm finding meaning.
Yeah.
Like I'm having that connection.
And so, as much as that person is having that connection with me, I'm having that connection with that person.
Tell me, like, three things that you really love about Chris, and then we'll be done.
No.
Yeah.
Because you're like taking notes.
I want to finish.
And I think it's very sweet that he's just been patient and been here.
And so I want him to feel a part of it.
So three things that I love about Chris.
Yeah.
Chris is willing to confront what he's afraid of.
Chris is an excellent communicator.
They're going to say chef, sorry.
Well, he also is an excellent chef.
But he's an excellent.
Communication is really important to me.
And I think that like communication hasn't really been one of those things that the grander culture has instilled in boys.
It's not something that we hold up as something that's very important for young men is to have an emotional intelligence that they are able to communicate.
Young girls are from a very young age were taught to get up in each other's business and be like, oh, do you have a crush on this guy?
Well, why do you have a crush on that guy?
And that is like brute practicing emotional intelligence.
And it's less so something that young men are encouraged to do.
But like he is very, very emotionally intelligent and very good at communicating when like he understands that I experience the world.
Sometimes I experience the world and I experience emotions in a different way than he does.
But he doesn't hold that against me.
He understands that like I just experience the world as I do.
He experiences the world as he does.
And we both appreciate those differences.
Like for instance, a really good example.
Chris looks at boobs and he can't stop looking at boobs, you know?
Like he just like looks at mannequins.
He looks at like, he looks at anything that remotely resembles a boob and he just kind of can't help himself.
Like he just kind of gets distracted.
And it's, you know, it's like so real.
And like, it's something that I like, I don't have a comparison.
It's not like I look at like guys' shoulders and go, I'm so distracted right now.
Like I just don't experience that.
But I appreciate that he's able to communicate with me what that's like and I can communicate something on the other side.
Right, because otherwise guys are sneaking around the mall trying to hide behind a plane and look at it.
And like I kind of like now that I'm in on it, like we're kind of in on it together.
And I'm like, are you looking at those boots?
And he's like, yeah.
And I'm like, okay, I see you.
You're like, how are you ever going to get knitting a cloak?
I'm going to let you have your bed.
A couple of tips, guys.
Amanda, what's your middle name?
Marie.
Amanda Marie Knox.
Thanks for being here today.
And people can check out your podcast, The Truth About True Crime.
That's right.
Right.
And yeah, thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Of course.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.
I can feel it in my bones.
But it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking break and let myself unwind shine that light on me.
I'll sit and tell you my stories.
Shine on me.
And I will find a song out.
I'll be singing just for you.
And now I've been moving way too fast on a runaway train with a heavy load of my hand.
3. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.
The answer may shock you.
Sometimes I'll interview my friends.
Sometimes I won't.
And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head.
You have three new voice messages.
A lot of people are talking about Kite Club.
I've been talking about Kite Club for so long, longer than anybody else.
So great.
Hi, Sweetheart.
Easy to do.
Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker.
John.
Sorry, sir, but our ice cream machine is broken.
I think Tom Hanks just butt-dialed me.
Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club.
Second rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club.
Third rule, like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts or watch us on YouTube, yeah?
