Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Amanda Knox On: Finding Meaning in Tragedy, Not Needing an Apology, and Refusing to Own What Other People Think

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

The famed exoneree on making life worth living every day, flipping the narrative on the bad things, and the ancient Japanese practice of kintsugi. Amanda Knox is an exoneree, journalist, comedian, and bestselling author of Waiting to Be Heard and FREE: My Search for Meaning. She hosts the podcast Hard Knox and advocates for criminal justice reform and media ethics. In this episode we talk about: The one question Amanda Knox asks herself whenever something bad happens Why understanding someone who wronged you can matter more than forgiving them What a centuries-old Japanese art form taught Amanda about coming back from being broken The mindset shift that got her through years in prison, one day at a time Why accepting your life exactly as it is might be the first step to changing it The hidden trap inside feeling like a victim Why other people's version of you was never actually yours to carry   Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel Additional Resources:  Amanda's Resilience series on Waking Up (plus her affiliate link). Dan's affiliate link for Waking Up. This episode is sponsored by: Planet Visionaries: In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, listen to or watch Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts. Function Health: Join at functionhealth.com/HAPPIER and use code HAPPIER25 for a $25 credit. To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Hello everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host Dan Harris. If you're watching, you'll see that the backdrop is a little different today. I'm in what I'm semi-phacetiously calling 10% Happier East, which is my wife's family's beach house in Montauk on the easternmost tip of Long Island. Anyway, let's get to the actual episode. I don't know about you, and I think this is just unavoidable. We all go through shit in our lives. And the question is, how are you going to deal with it? As my longtime friend and meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein likes to say, don't waste your suffering. But here's the thing. Speaking personally, I often waste my suffering. I just kind of revert to rumination or regrets or resignation. So I'm really interested to talk to somebody who's had no

small amount of involuntary suffering in her life, by which I mean suffering imposed on her. She is Amanda Knox. I'm sure many of you are familiar with her. I'll let her tell her story, but just in brief, she was accused of a murder. She did not commit in a country in which she was not a citizen. And she has emerged with a number of deeply useful advice, pieces of advice and nuggets of wisdom for living a better life, a more resilient life. And she's got a newish book called Free in which she lays a lot of this out. Amanda Knox, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. In brief, for the, I imagine, very few people who are unfamiliar with your story, can you just kind of lay out the basics of it? Yeah, sure. And I don't blame anyone who isn't a true crime person. I certainly was not a true crime person until I became the center of a true crime scandal. So back in 2007, I was a 20-year-old study abroad student in Perugia, Italy. I was living with three other young women. and one day a burglar broke into our home and raped and murdered one of my roommates. And very quickly, the detectives and the prosecution turned their attention on me.

I was arrested within five days. They were pronouncing to the world, case closed. Here's this sex murder orgy that was orchestrated between two young women. And it really took over the public's imagination. it became international headlines, you know, within days. And it was a very prolonged trial. I was in prison for four years and on trial for eight years before I was definitively exonerated and cleared of everything. But it took over my life.

And I went from being an anonymous, you know, young college student to the most vilified and hated woman on the planet. it there for a second. I was, yeah, vilified and sexualized and all matter of insane narratives were put out there about me. And I had to grapple with having my identity, not just my freedom stolen from me, but my very identity and my place in the world. I'm sorry you went through that. That is just awful. And it's a little sort of trippy to be talking to you because I covered many of the beats of your story as a journalist. In fact, as I was watching, you've got a newish documentary up on Hulu. There's a little clip of me announcing one of, you know, one of the twists and turns in your story. It was kind of trippy. I didn't know that that was coming. Let's just kind of go through

the story in a little bit more detail, because in free and in your work elsewhere, including on my friend Sam Harris's Waking Up app where you have a resilience series, You kind of talk about what you learned along the way that you're still using in your life now as a mom and as an artist and a writer. In prison, and as you mentioned, you spent many years there, I believe you got interested in Victor Frankel's work. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So prior to all of this happening to me, I didn't have a spiritual practice. I didn't have a meditation practice.

And the only sort of advice or guidance that I had was actually from soccer. Like I played soccer as a kid. And so I knew what it meant to push through pain. So like I entered into this experience thinking, okay, this is really bad and really overwhelming and I don't have control over of this. But there are adults who are going to figure it out. And I just have to hang in there like that little kitten clinging to the branch to like like get to the end of whatever this is. It always felt like it was like a really bad dream that I was just

trying to wake up from. And it, there was a complete shift that happened after the verdict. I was found guilty. I was sentenced to 26 years, which was longer than I'd been alive at that point. And very, very quickly, I had a full and utter existential crisis. where everything that I thought that I could count on and believe in was gone. I very quickly had this shift in thinking of, I'm not going to wait to get my life back. I have to say that it wasn't a glamorous shift because the first part of that shift, realizing that all the adults in the room are just a bunch of kids who are also just trying to figure things out and don't have truth and justice and all of that necessarily at the core of their ability to process things.

And so that was a deeply disconcerting reality to find myself faced with. And I, you know, trigger warning, I experienced suicidal ideation. I think my brain sort of kicked into this disassociative state where I became very rational in the sense. that I kept asking myself, is this life worth living? Like, I don't get to live the life that I should be living. Is this life that I am living worth living? And the minute that I decided that it was, then became my responsibility to make it worth living. So I broke it down into segments, and I made myself responsible only for a single day. And every single day was a, like, was a new sort of rebirth, re-asking myself of this question, is my life worth living? And what can I do

to make it worth living? And I was really surprised to find that when you break it down to a day-to-day or even moment-by-moment basis, it's really easy to make your life worth living. It's shockingly, like, it's shockingly simple to have some humble goal that can get you through to the next day or the next moment. And that was my plan. Like that, that was it, like, was just not worrying about the next day. It was focusing on the right now, which ultimately is what we all have. Can you do that now? Can you, can you apply that wisdom to the daily vexations out here on the, outside the prison walls? You know, yes, in the sense that, like, once you've stared into that abyss, you don't forget what that abyss looks like. I think one of the things that is a silver lining,

to what I went through was it was so extreme that that abyss was just like right there. In prison, like you are suffering. That is just period. Like you are losing the most important thing that you could have, which is time. And it is your human potential. And you are trapped in a box away from everyone you love. Like there is, there's no confusion about your suffering. I think outside in the free world, we feel like we should be feeling better than we do. And it's hard. to identify why something doesn't feel right. And so I get that. And I feel those feelings arise in me and falling back on a practice of like, just wait,

just pause. Stay curious, stay open. And it's there. But like, of course, real life is constantly demanding things from you. Like, I have, especially I have young kids. And so, like, I'm constantly being asked to be. present for them and sometimes you lose track of being present for yourself. And then all of the little slings and arrows of your daily misfortunes can suddenly sting you again. But then you just

have to fall back to that that knowledge, that deep knowledge that you're okay. It's so easy to forget. You know, I mentioned before I'm at 10% happier East here. I met a that my wife's family's beach house with ostensibly on vacation, although I'm recording a few podcasts. And yeah, this morning I was in a bad mood. And then I was, you know, inserting what the Buddhist called the second arrow, you know, like the first arrow was the bad mood. The second arrow was why you're such a schmuck. You're you shouldn't be in a bad mood. You're on vacation with everybody you love.

And for those of us who have a meditation practice, but even if you don't, it's like this, the tides, the ebbing and flowing of remembering of. what you know can rescue you from suffering, forgetting, and then waking back up. Yeah. And I think the temptation of the life that you feel like you should have versus the life that you actually have. I constantly find myself, even though that that is something I deeply know is true, that like one of the biggest mistakes that I can ever make is acting like, like really conducting myself as if I have a different life than the one that I have. And it's the one where my, you know, all of my relationships are perfect and all of my opportunities are exactly what they should be. And I'm always, like, all of my talents and my achievements are acknowledged

exactly the way that they should be. Like, there, that world is a great temptation. And it is closely linked to things like hope, which is why I have complex feelings about the feeling of hope. I think a lot of people are afraid of accepting the life that they have because I think that they think that means that they're tolerating things that they shouldn't have to tolerate. And the way that I push back against that idea is I say, no, like as soon as you accept your life, like, for what it is, that puts you in a position to be an effective agent in your own life. And that's where that comes in. Yes, this comes up all the time on this show.

People misunderstand acceptance as resignation, but acceptance is just seen clearly so that you're not at war with reality. So then you can take sane, effective action to make whatever change is you're capable of making. Exactly. People ask me all the time, how do I boot up a meditation habit? or if you already have a meditation habit, but it's an inconsistent. Another question that I get from people is, how do I maintain a consistent habit? Really, it's about having access to great teachers and having access to community. These are both of the most prominent features on my newish meditation app,

which is called 10% with Dan Harris. As part of this app, we've got some of the greatest teachers in the world who do guided meditations and also courses on various aspects of Buddhism. But the community features are really some of the most powerful aspects of the app. You can connect to other people who also take this weird little mental training program seriously. And we do weekly and sometimes more frequently than that, but at the very least, weekly live video meditation and Q&A session. So you can meditate with me and our teachers and with all of our subscribers.

It is a great way to feel supported as you embark on the often difficult, process of habit formation. So go to Dan Harris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy. 10% with Dan Harris. That's the name of the app. Again, Danharris.com is the place

to get all the information. Oh, and I should tell you that if you sign up, you'll also get ad-free versions of this podcast. We'll be right back after this. I did mention Victor Frankel and his workman search for meaning. I don't want to lose the thread on that. Can you answer your question?

Yeah. So Victor Frankel, I mean, one, what a thing to put my own life into perspective, first of all. I do think that there is absolutely something to that stoic idea of negative visualization where it's like, okay, you think your life is bad. Just imagine one thing worse and be greatly like feel, like genuinely feel that sense of gratitude that you're not also in a concentration camp. You know, like there's, so there's that level of appreciation for Victor Frankl, but also like his, his approach to that existential crisis question and of how he was able to observe suffering from so many different angles, not just the prisoner's suffering, but also the jailer's suffering was so interesting to me. And so if there was any kind of how to survive prison pamphlet, that was the closest thing that I had ever encountered. And because it sort of gave me insight into the experience of helplessness that was imposed upon by an oppressive force and how you can even then find your purpose in that kind of. of punishing environment was very inspiring and reassuring to me.

And I was also in a place where I could appreciate that. Like people sent me, I think one of the biggest challenges of spiritual growth is you need to be in the right place at the right time in your life in order to receive the wisdom, like, and for it to make sense to you. I was sent, you know, the Vipasana textbooks when I was in prison. And I didn't have the context or the background or even the person to talk to to help me philosophically and personally grapple with these ideas that were being introduced to me. So they went right over my head, whereas, like, today those I can great, like, I can appreciate it. I can appreciate those things and apply them to my own practice.

But like at the time, Victor Frankel was something that was a little closer to what I understood about my life. You know, and I was aware of World War II. And I was now very, very heightenedly aware of imprisonment. And so that was something that was an end. Those details led it to be an entry point in, to these broader philosophical ideas. And the basic philosophical idea, it's been a minute since I read his book, and just for those who

Me too, by the way. But the basic idea is that we can find meaning in the worst of circumstances. And I think you were able to do that, even though you were super young and didn't have, you know, although you did actually have a bit of a spiritual mentor on the inside of this priest, who you can talk about if you want, but you didn't share his spiritual beliefs, so there was a bit of a rub there. But the basic message that, as I understand it,

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

what opportunities it was offering me. And I noticed very quickly that, for example, I was one of the only literate people that was in, that was one of the prisoners. Most of the people that I was imprisoned with were either completely uneducated or very low education and, or they just didn't speak the language. And in the course of two years, I had become fluent. And so I became the unofficial, official, like, scribe and translator for the prison, I would go to people's doctor appointments and help them translate what their ailments were. I would write there. I was very much, my job was to my prison hustle, as I like to call it, was to write people's letters for them. And that, it was funny because I had gone to Italy because I had wanted to train to become a translator. That was

my ultimate goal, career-wise. And oddly, the universe had answered my, had, you know, had responded to what I apparently was putting out there and put me in this position where I was a very useful and necessary part of this very stricken community. And I had a purpose and I had, I had meaning that was very gratifying, even if I was still grieving the loss of the, life that I had wanted. And again, the extremity of the experience was such that it became very apparent, like how my meaning sat in that company and in that space that was very deprived and very limited. It was when I got back out into the free world that I was challenged all over again to understand my suffering and to find meaning in it because it wasn't as obvious and excusable. Like, it's very obvious that if you say, if you're in prison and you're like, I'm suffering,

people don't go, oh, really? Like, it's not a surprise, you know? But if you're finally free after years in prison and you get your life back, people sort of might have this expectation that like, oh my gosh, you must be so happy. And it was weird to find myself still grieving and still searching for that sense of purpose and meaning and place, especially that place in humanity where, you know, the the scarlet letter of being the girl accused of murder did not go away with my with my release from prison, with my exoneration, that's something that I live with to this day. And grappling with the question of how do you sort of feel confident and assertive about your purpose when your legacy is something that had nothing to do with you, you know? How have you answered that question for yourself? So, well, so there are a number of ways that I've gone about that. One was recognizing that though my experience is very uncommon and extreme,

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

And, you know, it is true that, like, I lost out on a lot of human experiences, but I also gained a lot of human. experiences. My friend in the prison, Don Salo, the priest, he said that I aged 40 years in 40. And he wasn't saying that because I looked like hell. He said it because I had like, I had matured 40 years in four. And that led me to have a deep sense of empathy for people who were at their extremity and also a deep sense of curiosity. Like I had been given a glimpse into the worst humanity has to offer in terms of our behavior and our psychology. And instead of finding myself embittered and resentful and fearful of that,

I became very curious about it. I wanted to understand it. And that specifically led me to going down this rabbit hole, which I talk about in my book, of reaching out to my prosecutor and trying to understand him. Yeah, I was hoping to talk about that because, as I mentioned, I was watching you and your husband made a documentary about it. It's on Hulu. Remind me of the name? It's called Mouth of the Wolf. And I have to give my husband all of the credit for it because it was not. my idea to make a documentary. My idea was to just go back to Italy to confront my prosecutor,

and he was like, okay, I'm just going to whip out my phone and just in case. It ultimately became a kind of diary and love letter from him to me, because he was observing me from a very intimate angle, grappling with some really difficult problems, like how do you deal with grief, how do you deal with rage, how do you deal with uncertainty, and having unresolved, things unresolved between you and a person who has harmed you? And so he was just watching me do this from a very intimate place. And I didn't really have any models for how to go about doing this. I just understood what not to do based upon what I had seen happen. to me in a courtroom where the courtroom modeled for me what an adversarial conversation is

like, where two people take opposing positions and dig in their heels and refuse to concede any common ground. And a lot of people discouraged me from going about this journey. They thought it was a waste of time. They thought that I was putting myself emotionally in the hands of my prosecutor again, and they were fearful for my mental health. They were afraid that if I was depending on him realizing that he was wrong and saying that he was sorry, that like I was going down a dark path from a mental health standpoint, that I was setting myself up for the second and third and fourth arrows that I was going to be inflicting upon myself of like deep disappointment in the fragility and imperfectness of human. But the thing that was pushing back against that was that deep, deep curiosity in myself to discover what would happen if I did the exact opposite of what the world had taught me to do. And the exact opposite was being open to who this person was and who he really, who he really was.

And a lot of people think that I did this journey because I was like forgiveness was a really important, you know, value of mine that like when some people read my book and think, oh, you're a forgiveness person. Like you're a person who's really about forgiveness. And it's like, no, that's, that was not my intention at all. I was not, I was not thinking about forgiving my prosecutor. I was thinking about understanding him. And I'm wanting to know if he saw me for. who I really was as opposed to this idea of a person that he had conjured for the courtroom, if that would shatter the foundations of certainty that he had, that he had created for himself, that he had forged for himself. Let me fill in some of the details on him, just because people may not know. His name is Manini. He, he, this is like case study and wrongful prosecution from, from IPOv. They had the guy, Randy Gide, who actually did the murder, his DNA and other evidence was all over the place.

They knew they had the guy. But they then invented Menini himself, invents this whole FACTA theory about how you and your boyfriend at the time, Rafaeli, Celestito, I think I'm pronouncing that. Slechito, yeah. Soletchito were part of the killing, even though there was no evidence to support that. And he just like doubles and triples down even as, you know, in the face of just mountains and mountains of evidence. Yeah. So some back, yeah, some background on him is important. Please. Yeah. So my wrongful conviction is actually pretty unusual in the sense that we know who committed the crime.

And we knew from quite early on who actually committed the crime. In most cases of wrongful convictions, what you'll hear is that they, the police focused on the wrong person. And as a result, the actual murderer got away with it and like went on to commit other crimes while the other person was sitting in jail in their stead. And mine is different because like you said, very early on, they were able to identify through copious DNA and footprint, all of that evidence that was out the crime scene pointing to this known local burglar who then was confessed to a friend that he had been present at the crime and then was, you know, he had fled the country. Like there was, there's, there's all of this copious evidence pointing to this person. The problem was that my prosecutor had already decided before the DNA had been processed from the crime scene that I was involved. And not only was I involved, but I was an orchestrator of the crime. And so he had anchored, his anchoring bias set in where he was determined to, to, to, to,

prove that I had orchestrated a murder orgy, and the question was with whom? And that's, and so, but that's classic, like, prosecutorial tunnel vision. My prosecutor also was known for having, this was not the first time that he had been, he had had some abuse of office, some prosecutorial misconduct. He had been actually charged with the crime of prosecutorial misconduct in a previous case that he had done and he was on trial for that while he was trying me for this crime. It was, it was a, it's a wild situation. The detectives and the prosecutor convinced themselves that they were right and they they, they let their gut instinct about what the case was guide their processing of the evidence. When we have convinced ourselves of a certain idea and we have a gut,

feeling. It's really like so much, it's so evident to me that our thoughts are really guided by our feelings and that our convictions are often just based upon how we feel about a thing as opposed to how rational we are about a thing. Like human beings are so incredibly rational, but ultimately our logical minds find, are founded upon these feelings that that help us determine what we consider important information or not important information. And for my prosecutor, it wasn't important information that there was zero evidence of me at the crime scene. The important information is that I was the one who called the police. I was the one who alerted everyone to there being a crime in the first place. And I didn't look right to him. And that was more meaningful to him

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

Yes. Jonathan Haidt, the psychologist often talks about the elephant and the rider. The rider is our logical brain and the elephant, which is much larger than us, as the writer, is just our, you know, gumbo of feelings, which are really often like steering, even though we are unaware of it. So you go into this meaning with Manini wanting to understand him, how did it go? So I think one thing that's really important is that I originally thought that I would, you know, get in contact with him and try to get into a room with him as soon as humanly possible. But what happened was COVID happened. And so going to Italy and sitting face to face with my prosecutor was not an option, but I had already reached out to him. And so what ended up happening was I corresponded for two years with my prosecutor over letters and email. before I actually sat down and confronted him. And that was, again, a weird silver lining to a very dramatic thing that took over lots of people's lives.

But like slowing down and putting myself in a position of just hearing about his day. Like we didn't correspond about the case in a big way. We talked a lot about our lives and our interests. He would talk to me about his family, about his dogs, and his cats. And he would, I mean, and this was also wild because I was in the process of starting a family of my own. He was always encouraging me to become a mom. Like, it was a very, I think what was so interesting for me in that process was how talking around the thing that connected us, allowed me to get a glimpse of the way that he thought.

So, like, he would complain about a local political thing that was going on or a local news story. And it gave me insight into things that triggered him or what his interests were or the way that his mind automatically processed things. And that helped me to then map that on to my own experience of him and recognize parallels. And then, of course, we, like, flirted with the actual conflict between us, but we would talk indirectly about it. Like, he asked me to watch this movie, this old movie about a detective named Detective Mike Gray. And the movie he asked me to watch was Una Vita in Joko, which means a life on the line. And he said, watch this to understand my feelings as a life. a prosecutor of your case.

Well, Una Vita in Joko is about a detective who realizes that there is a person that he put on death row is actually innocent. And he orchestrates the release of this person and then follows him around so he can figure out who the real murderer is. It was just like, what? Like, are you, is this you conceding that you recognize that I'm innocent and that you are wrong? But is this like a way for you to say a thing that you?

you don't want to say directly. And then, of course, I responded to him with a Star Trek episode, which are you a Star Trek fan? No. Okay. Well, then I won't be specific, but like I sent him a Star Trek episode about people who struggled to communicate with each other. And there were, again, there were these like glimpses over the course of our correspondence where I was like, I feel like he is open to the idea that I'm actually innocent, even if I'm not directly confronting him about it. And then the pandemic was over. I booked a ticket. By this time, I'm married.

I have a one-year-old daughter. I tell my mom that I'm going to do this. And she's pissed because she is not at all remotely curious about my prosecutor and thinks that this is all. I have Stockholm syndrome that I'm, that it's too dangerous for me to go back to Italy that maybe my prosecutor is luring me there so that he can falsely accuse me of something else and just throw me in prison. And she's terrified for me. But to her credit, she doesn't tell me, no, you're not going. She says you're not going without me. And so she books a ticket as well,

and we all go together to Perugia, Italy. My dear friend from prison, Don Salos, Gadabatoli, the priest, he orchestrated a very private place for us to meet. And he moderated our conversation, which was incredibly helpful because it was very emotional for me. And it meant a lot for me to have someone there to have my back. And the way that the conversation went down was, it was that, like, me finally directly confronting him about the very difficult hard truths that I was struggling with from our relationship, which was, I'm an innocent person that he threw in prison. despite overwhelming evidence of my innocence. And that was harmful not just to me, but to my family, to my boyfriend and his family, to the actual, like my murdered friends family, who still were confused about who actually committed the crime or not.

But I had also realized that in the course of getting ready for this conversation, that if I was going there to get something from him, some kind of acknowledgement or admission, I was going to fail. Like I was setting myself up for failure. And my success condition had to be what was I bringing to the table. And so what I brought to the table was an acknowledgement of his humanity, that I didn't think that his decision to put through, you know, to put me through this experience meant that he was a bad person. And in fact, I recognized that he had noble intentions even if he had strayed down the wrong path and had had.

hurt innocent people along the way. Like, I didn't look at that and assume that he was a bad person who had bad intent. And he was very moved. He, you know, had never had an experience like this before where someone that he had prosecuted had ever reached out to him. In fact, he wasn't even sure if it was legal for him to talk to me. Like, he had to go check. And he didn't want to meet with me until after he had retired. So that would, those were like, conditions for him. But he said that like the experience for him, well, one, he didn't, he didn't say he was sorry and he didn't say he was wrong. But he said that he realized that I was not the person that he thought he was prosecuting and that if he had the opportunity to prosecute the case again today,

he would not. And that me reaching out to him was an experience of grace. He understood, his spiritual practice is Catholicism. And so what he felt like he was experiencing between me and him was, was grace. Was that, like, it had that gravity, that gravitas for him. It was a life-changing event for him. And he told me that he, you know, he cared deeply for me. He cared deeply for my family And we wished each other well And you know he kissed my cheeks He held my hand

And we parted ways And I walked away from that experience Feeling just So powerful Like I had never Like I had been so helpless My entire adult life And I had been so afraid

of this person my entire adult life. And everything shifted as a matter of how I had approached that situation. I no longer felt like my well-being depended upon him. And in a weird way, it had sort of flipped. Like, suddenly I felt like I was holding him and his emotions and his vulnerability and his fragility in my hands. I had to be careful. So being able to experience both sides of him was very grounding. And it put things in perspective for me that helped, in a weird backwards way, helped me forgive him in the sense that like, again, I wasn't tolerating or saying that what he did was okay. It was merely like

being able to see him as a person and care about him as a person that helped me to make it feel like my own pain wasn't at the forefront of our relationship. Well, one thing I'm interested in is you said you went in with the intention to understand. And I'm just wondering whether understanding basically just is the precondition for forgiveness, which inexorably results from it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what other people. experiences of forgiveness are and if it's important to them to understand the person. I know some

people go in to forgiveness, like without having done the homework of really getting into the mind and the psychology of the person who hurt them. I don't know if that is a precondition, but it was for me. Like, for me to truly see this man as a person and not as a nightmare figure, like I really had, to see, I had to put myself in a position to see him in all of his, like, fragile, vulnerable humanity. And to put myself in a position also to be the recipient of his affection and of his goodwill. And that then led to this feeling of opening towards a person. Like, I wonder if forgiveness is a reopening of yourself to people and to situations. that you have closed yourself off to because they have been harmful.

Like, I don't know if that's, like, I'm trying to feel, like, figure out if what I was experiencing was forgiveness or not. I just know that, like, I wasn't holding his crimes against me against him. That sounds like you dropped a hot coal you were holding in your hand. Yeah, yeah. And again, which isn't to say that, like, I was saying that it was okay. and which isn't to say that it's not still impacting me because that's like a real like I'm still greatly impacted by the decisions that he made that have that still harm me to this day but like the resentment towards him and was maybe the thing that dropped was like the acknowledgement

that like he is a human being and he has hopes and dreams and has made mistakes and he's embarrassed and he's scared. Like, realizing how scared he is really helped me have compassion for him because I know what it's like to be scared. And like, you know, I have, I have toddlers who, when things don't go their way, they throw a huge tantrum. And, like, if anything, becoming a mom has also helped me to appreciate how a lot of society's ills are because people are afraid and, because people are afraid and, because they haven't accepted that things aren't going their way. And so they're just lashing out and trying to like being able to hold that energy and also remain firm in like not just like taking it. Like I'm not just taking the whips, but like being able to hold firm to be firm and gentle.

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

But it's really about the mind that. is is taking the action. That's that's what matters. Yeah. And like you're not inflicting pain on another person to for to inflict pain. Like there are boundaries and that you can set for yourself. And those might be painful for other people. Like the boundary might be I'm not going to let you take my stuff. And if you try to take my stuff, I'll whack you with an umbrella. Like that's not going to be something that he wants to get. But you don't have to hate that. person as you're doing it, you know. I really appreciate you being so open with your story. At this point, I would love to just step back for a second and think about some of the really,

I mean, you've covered a lot of, you've covered a lot of really crucial points here about how we can learn from your story. We've talked about forgiveness or the dropping of resentment. We've talked about finding meaning in the worst possible things that can happen to you. In your book, I believe one of your other practical pieces of advice, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong here, is that there's a little thing you can say to yourself when something bad happens to you, which is how could this be a good thing? Yes. Can you just say a little bit more about that? Yeah. So, oh, my God, this has been so helpful to me.

And again, it kind of goes back to that like Victor Frankel realization of like, okay, even the most bad things can be. changed into meaning of like can be made meaningful for you but like I think one of the things that can potentially happen in life is when things don't go away or when something bad happens what it feels like is an arresting of movement like you're like you're going about your life and then suddenly you are stopped in your tracks and you are pinned down by this like hard difficult thing that you didn't want and it can it can feel like a stagnation and one of the things that I that I have found really helpful is when something bad happens and again like bad sort of gets opened up to interpretation like you know the great Zen masters will say

every day is a good day because it's absurd to sort of say if a day is bad or good like every day is a day. It just is what it is. And there are lots of great parables that sort of suggest that when something happens to you, you don't actually know in the immediate moment if it is good or bad. But let's just say, let's just say that, like, there are bad things that happen. Like, your friend gets raped and murdered. Like, that's a bad thing that happened. And or, like, you get convicted of a crime. You didn't commit. This is a bad thing. You do not want this thing to happen. And anyone in the world would look on that and go, that is a bad thing that happened to you. Okay, fine.

It's bad. But does it mean that my momentum has been arrested? Does that mean that, like, my purpose is thwarted? Or is there a way that this bad thing can give me momentum? Is there somehow that this bad thing can actually be in service to me somehow? How do I take the energy of this bad thing and divert it into something that pushes me forward or that carries me forward or that challenges me in a way that makes me a bigger person? And that's something that I feel like goes way back to my old soccer days where I would go running and running until I puked and it sucks. and nobody likes to puke when they run,

but like you're a better runner and you're a tougher person as a result of it. And so I think being deeply grounded in the idea that a bad thing has a lot of potential energy to it that you can harness for yourself. And like so when something bad happens, like, you know, this came up in the documentary, Mouth of the Wolf, where one of the reasons,

I went back to Italy three years, times. And one of the reasons I went back to Italy was because I was attempting to overturn my remaining wrongful conviction for a lesser crime in Italy. And I was found guilty again. And I was not expecting it. I was fully prepared to have my name totally cleared, and it wasn't. And I was, I had the very, you know, appropriate human response of being very upset. But ultimately, Ultimately, I was like, how is this a good thing? How, like, really genuinely asking myself, how is this thing that feels like it is thwarting my life

and insulting my experience and gaslighting me? How is this giving me momentum? How is this empowering me? And that has been a really useful framework so that I don't feel that sense of of dread at my own life that we can feel when things don't go our way.

It is such a useful and counterintuitive reframe of quote unquote bad things that happened to you. For me, there has to be a little bit of a period of self-pity before I can wake up and get to the, okay, what's good in this? I need to go through the anger and all that other stuff. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I don't think being.

in denial and that's something that's really important to me. And it's something that's really important for, especially as I raise my kids, because I do think that something that made me really vulnerable very early on in the investigation was me not knowing how to process, like, complex feelings of pain and grief as a, like, you know, coming home into a crime scene and somebody you know being horrifically murdered, like that was not something that I was emotionally prepared for. And I think that that led to some of the people's early feelings of like not really knowing what to make of me because like I was all over the place emotionally. Sometimes I was crying. Sometimes I was like laughing because I was just so overwhelmed with like, oh my God, I'm alive. like, oh my God, I'm, like, I could have been killed.

Like, oh, my God. Like, there are so many emotions that I was processing, and I wasn't really given much guidance in how to process emotions and how to understand what those emotions meant. Like, I felt anger, and I would be angry, and I would rant at the police about how angry I was about this thing that happened. And it was, I think that all emotions are information and all emotions are useful.

and but like that we don't have to be a slave to our emotions. I think like we're the ones who experience our emotions and we should definitely experience them because otherwise we're just repressing them. But then like as soon as we like allow ourselves to experiencing them, then it's not even, it doesn't even feel like you're letting them go. It's just they let themselves out the door kind of thing. Is that your experience too? I don't know. I feel like as soon as I like really let myself have the feeling, then it's like, then it goes away on its own.

You're metabolizing it. Yeah. It's the resistance or the compulsive re-upping of the emotion. Our mutual friend Sam Harris often talks about the half-life of an emotion like anger is a minute or two if you just sit with it. But we can extend it for a day, a week, a light, lifetime through mindless, you know, stewing and resentment and rumination. Retriguring. Just like reactivating the thing, yeah. So let me ask you another question about what we can learn practically from your experience. You were, through no fault of your own, turned into this negative caricature, Foxy-Noxy. You know, they're making hay out of you in the tabloids. And I'm curious, like, what have you learned as a of that experience about something that we all deal with, which is other people thinking and talking about us in ways that we feel are deeply unfair and inaccurate. Yeah, this is something that I talk

about a lot in the Resilience series on the Waking Up app is that is this issue of identity and the self, which is a deeper layer to that. So when it comes to identity and the problem of identity. Like we are social animals that are codependent and deeply embedded with each other. And when our identities are distorted and stolen from us and we feel like we have no say in how we belong to the rest of humanity, that is an incredibly distressing experience. It's a distressing experience. And it is a debilitating experience. But something that I have discovered is that there are aspects of our identity, of our sense of self that belong to us. And then there are aspects of our identity and our sense of self that don't belong to us. Like the part of me that exists in another person's

mind doesn't actually belong to me, nor am I really responsible for it, which is great because I think that one trap that we find ourselves in is feeling like we need to take responsibility for how other people think of us. And that's a trap because we don't. We don't have responsibility for that and we can't we can't have any say in that. But I think the more deeper issue is what does it mean to me that my who I am, like the story of who I am is a certain way in certain people's minds. like in a very practical way as we exist as individuals who interact with each other and have jobs and have relationships and have families. Like it matters a great deal in the sense that like it impacts my my opportunities in life. That doesn't mean though that you don't have a say or that can't give you momentum.

Like I've learned to there is sort of like potential energy that's in the story of who you are that's out there in the world. and if you can learn to harness that potential energy, you can, you can, you can have an impact. You can have, it has an impact on you and you can have an impact on it. So I'm, you know, I am actively in conversation with that story that is a, that is out there about me. And I acknowledge, like, I don't pretend that it doesn't exist as I move about my life. Like, I, I am the girl who was accused of murder. I am not in denial about that. I'm also someone who has learned a great deal from it,

which is why I can have a lovely conversation with you about it. I am not just limited to that story that exists in other people's minds. I can build off of it. But then from a deeper, deeper level, what even is this thing that is Amanda Knox? Like it's an idea of me, but like when I ultimately sit down, there's a stillness.

And it doesn't really matter what that story is because when it all comes down to it, all we have is the stillness that is here right now. Like there's like this deep sense of like peace and relief that I feel when I meditate and I recognize that like I don't have to be purpose. perpetually swept up in the story of who I am as it appears to me on a day-to-day basis. And being able to just like step away from it, even for just, you know, 20 minutes a day, to like rest in the thing that is always true and always there, which is just like an awareness

of everything and a stillness. Like there's a deep sense of peace that like the story of who I am is like just the tip of the iceberg, you know? Yeah, when you sit down, the way I think about it is you sit down in meditation in the right kind of meditation or in certain styles of meditation. You can get a glimpse of what the Buddhists call emptiness or the insubstantiality of reality. We, to us, it looks like a solid movie. But as anybody who's a film buff knows, you look at a movie being projected on a screen. It's actually 24 individual pictures per second. So what happens and you look at your mind in meditation is you see, oh my God, things are moving so quickly from thought to itching my knee to back pain, back to more thinking.

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

And also like you matter and I matter and we all matter and we also don't matter. Like it's okay. It's just okay. Like we're okay. It's this probably the central paradox of the spiritual life that we we things matter immensely and they don't matter at all. And my understanding of a skillful spiritual navigation through life or contemplative navigation through life, if you don't like the word spiritual, which I don't love either, is just moving between these two perspectives and letting them airate one another. So you go too far and caring about everything that's happening. There's a lot of misery there.

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

I think it's a, the way that I think about it is heaviness and lightness and how like you're able to like, hold like if you're able to hold heaviness from this like place of lightness and then also you're like as a heavy person, you're able to hold like lightness gently. Like that for me feels like the right approach. And there's always that tension and there's that balance between heaviness and lightness. Let me sneak in one last question here about a practical thing that you've learned the hard way that could benefit us. All of us, or at least most of us, have the propensity to fall into victim narratives. You, more than almost anybody have ever met, deserve the right to do that. And yet, victimhood, you're welcome.

And yet victimhood really doesn't ultimately serve us that well. And you have found one way to kind of reframe victimhood through this. this ancient Japanese art of, I hope I'm going to pronounce this correctly, Kinsugi. What is that all about? Well, I'll explain Kinsugi. So Kinsugi, and I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with it, but it's this practice of taking broken things, particularly bowls or cups, porcelain objects, and sometimes even purposefully breaking them so that you can repair them and highlight the broken, you know,

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

energy that we can harness and that gives us momentum and that can be in the service of us. as we as we build ourselves as human beings who are on this journey. Like, I see the value in taking those bad experiences and taking or retaking a sense of ownership and agency over them and not feeling like they're just things that are inflicted upon you from other people. But you have the, you have a responsibility in processing how those slings and arrows impact you and change you. because it's not ultimately the thing that someone does you that changes you. It's how you process that. And taking responsibility for that is a pushing back against that victim narrative. That like you, because something bad happens to you, you're necessarily a lesser or worse person as a result of it.

Another terrible negative mindset that is self-inflicting a wound is when you feel like because you've been victimized that you deserve a life that is better than other people's or that is easier than other people's. because you've already had it hard. And that's just, that's, again, that's putting that second arrow in yourself that, like, you're disappointed that your life isn't what you think it should be. So those are all, like, those are, there are a lot of traps to victimhood because it makes you feel like, again, things should be a certain way now that you've been harmed. And instead, I think the, there is, like, it's, I don't think that people should just deny that they've been victimized.

like I very firmly assert like I have been harmed I shouldn't have harmed but like how that has impacted me as a person is my responsibility not anyone else's well said Amanda Knox you have taken this horrific miscarriage of justice and instead of becoming like bitter and broken you've turned it into something really helpful for the rest of us so yeah thanks for your time thanks for doing that Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm 10% happier. I'll take it. I do want to remind people of the name of your book. And if you're watching, you can see it right over her left shoulder. It's called Free and All Caps. And she also has this documentary, mouth of the wolf, which is an Italian expression. And you can understand the derivation of it and the execution of it. If you watch it, it's on Hulu. And she has a resilience series on my friend Sam Harris's excellent meditation app, which is called Waking Up.

I should say, I'm a little bit partial to my own meditation app. Having said that, I love Sam. And it's possible to have subscriptions to both. It's true. And if you want to subscribe, you can go to wakingup.com slash 10%, which may be the actual URL. Yeah, thank you again, Amanda. So nice to meet you. And thanks for doing this.

I really appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Yeah, thank you so much. Just a quick note before I let you go. If you're a listener to the show and you're looking for other ways to engage with my content, let me give you some options. Your first stop is Dan Harris.com. That's my new website and it has information and links to my meditation app. It's where you can sign up for my free newsletter.

It's where you will find all the latest information on upcoming live events that I'm doing. We've also got 10% Happier Plus, which is an ad-free subscription right inside Apple Podcast. So that's another option. And if you would rather watch than listen, we film every episode now. Video versions are up on YouTube and Spotify, so please like and follow whether you're watching or listening. Also, I'm on social media. I try to inject a little sanity into your feed into the darker corners of the internet. So just search for my name, Dan Harris, and you'll find me wherever you have a scrolling habit.

All right, that was a mouthful. Thank you for being here. Deuses. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Kashmir, David Hart, and Hayden Broome. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. And Nick Thorburn of the indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Thanks for listening. Peace.