00:12:44.900But it does mean that, you know, if I go and take a meeting with someone, I'm wondering,
00:12:50.280are they taking a meeting with me because they want to see how weird I am or they want
00:12:54.580to, you know, or are they actually seriously interested in my professional work?
00:12:58.780Do they even know about my professional work?
00:13:00.920Because, of course, the tabloids are really happy to tell stories about me going to parties,
00:13:05.860But they don't ever talk about the work that I do, because that doesn't go with their story. So I don't know, like, it's made me acutely aware of how powerful storytelling is. And it's made me think about like, well, who is allowed to tell stories?
00:13:25.700And what stories are they telling us? And how are we complicit in them, the choices they are making as storytellers in selling us a product?
00:17:16.720That is sure to leave plenty of viewers wondering, maybe the real-life Amanda was involved somehow.
00:17:22.140Yeah. I mean, that was one of the reasons I was so interested to talk to you today. Your tweets about the film Stillwater. You know, I had never really thought about the idea of profit. Right. So who not just who is telling someone else's story, but who is making money off of it?
00:17:39.080And it seems to me that so many different Hollywood executives and actors, et cetera, et cetera, are, it's okay for them to tell this like deeply fictionalized story that purports to be about your life and make money from it.
00:17:55.560And it's like everyone else, it seems like everyone else is allowed to, A, tell your story and then profit from it except for you.
00:18:03.920You know, what is that like to experience?
00:18:06.520experience well it's so surreal that most people just assume that i am profiting off it right like
00:18:13.120the number of people who reached out to me to be like oh congratulations on stillwater so great
00:18:18.080that you're getting another project and it's like nope nope no one uh no one talked to me about that
00:18:23.900like i have nothing to do with that and um no i i am in no way benefiting from it in fact i am just
00:18:30.580bearing the cost of whatever story they liked to tell about me this time so and you know thinking
00:18:38.660about the Netflix documentary this is something that I thought was so interesting where the
00:18:43.320filmmakers reached out to you and they said we are not into we only want to tell this story if
00:18:49.420you are part of that storytelling process I could imagine folks coming to you and saying listen we're
00:18:54.980going to tell this story whether you want me to tell it or not so you got to decide whether we're
00:18:59.840telling it for you or if you're going to be a participant, it almost kind of feels like a
00:19:03.960shakedown, you know, when it's like, oh, it totally is. How can we get to a place where like
00:19:08.600you're not being shaken down to be forced to participate against your will in a story that
00:19:16.060is meant to be about you? I mean, I just like I can't even imagine what that must be like to
00:19:20.600experience and how difficult that must be to navigate. Yeah. And again, it's not just a thing
00:19:26.040that happens to me like it happens to a lot of people a lot of like you know exonerees wrongfully
00:19:31.380convicted people come out of prison and they're told if you don't tell your story right now to us
00:19:37.780like you're never going to have another chance and no one's ever going to believe you and of course
00:19:41.380you're walking out of prison you know you've been exonerated but you're still carrying the stigma of
00:19:46.520the accusation you still are trying to like figure out how to get back on your feet and you like to
00:19:52.440be put on the spot and asked to process the worst experience of your life for someone else's
00:19:58.320entertainment product is and like the I guess like what I was hoping to do by writing that
00:20:05.200essay for the Atlantic and, you know, doing like the tweets about Stillwater in particular
00:20:09.340was because I wanted to point out that this is a way that we are treating real human beings
00:20:15.700without. And I don't know if the people who are doing it realize what the human cost is
00:20:20.120because they're in their own little like echo chamber.
00:20:48.780And it's like, well, did you did you pause to think how this was going to impact the human being who is your purported source or inspiration?
00:20:59.280Like, do you as a storyteller, as someone who is sharing information, oh, the person who is the source of that inspiration or your story, anything?
00:21:11.060And that's a question. Like I'm asking the question and I'm offering a new perspective, which is, well, maybe you didn't think about this before, but here's how it's impacted me. Here's how when you keep telling a story over and over and over again about a girl on girl sex crime, you are actually misrepresenting what happened to my roommate who was raped and murdered by a man and me who had no part in a girl on girl sex crime.
00:21:40.840So do you understand that when you keep telling that story over and over again, that is what ends up being the definitive story about me, whether you intended that or not? And do you understand that that's also what's happening to people who are even more disempowered than me?
00:22:00.120because I can't tell you the number of people
00:22:57.720being put in these situations where they can be I mean they're already so vulnerable they deserve
00:23:05.580they don't deserve this and I I have to I mean do you think it's possible to have a different kind
00:23:11.060of media landscape for exonerees where where they don't feel like they have to immediately
00:23:16.900continuously retell this traumatic thing that happened to them or else you know maybe the
00:23:23.160tabloids will make up their own story about what happened you know did you do you believe in a
00:23:27.060world where a different kind of landscape is possible for these folks? I mean, sure, I'm trying
00:23:33.140to invent it along the way. But I think that like the thing that I'm sort of experimenting with,
00:23:39.040with my own journalism and my own podcast, Labyrinths, is this sort of more like collaborative
00:23:45.140experience between the storyteller and their subject. Because I think that there's been this
00:23:51.580longstanding perspective that if you are at the center of your own story, you can't have
00:23:58.200a storyteller's perspective of that story. Like you, you, you can't have authorship over your
00:24:05.220own story because you're going to be biased or you're going to misrepresent things and I,
00:24:09.600and you can't be objective. But first of all, I want to point out that the storyteller is not
00:24:16.400by definition objective. Just because they aren't personally in the story doesn't mean that by
00:24:22.720telling the story, they aren't putting themselves in the story and they aren't approaching that
00:24:27.080story from a certain perspective. And it's also totally discrediting the idea that someone who's
00:24:33.500at the center of their own story might have a valuable perspective about it. Like they might,
00:24:39.840having had felt this human experience firsthand, have some interesting human things to say that
00:24:47.120is worth being a part of the story. So I'm just trying to like convey that. Yeah, not all of us
00:24:54.520are professional storytellers, but professional storytellers can help people tell their own
00:25:01.880stories. And of course, everyone should be held accountable to the truth. Like as long as we're
00:25:07.060not, like, making up crazy, you know, conspiracy theories to account for non-evidence. Like,
00:25:12.780you know, evidence still matters and the truth still matters. But it's okay for you to give,
00:25:19.320like, as a storyteller, to offer someone the opportunity to voice their own experience.
00:25:24.580And that's still a valuable story. Oh, absolutely. You know, we're all experts in our own experiences.
00:25:30.740And I hate this myth of objectivity that if you're close to a story or if it's happening to you or to your community, you couldn't possibly be objective.
00:25:40.700I feel like it's really, at least in journalism, I feel like it's really been used to create a really like sexist, racist, classist narrative that like, oh, it is straight white men who are objective.
00:26:18.740You know, so just take ownership, like be self-aware, like do enough like self-auditing to be aware that maybe I might be approaching this story or that story from a certain perspective and let that be like acknowledge that in your own storytelling process and as you are encountering the person because they might be coming from a whole completely new perspective that you don't have access to.
00:26:41.940And if you are automatically defining yourself as the objective party and them as the subjective party, you are automatically making like doing a hierarchy of whose prejudice and whose bias counts more than another's.
00:26:55.880I find it interesting that your story is not often framed as a story of someone who was wrongfully convicted and then exonerated. Right.
00:27:05.460I think there are probably so many people out there who, like, think they know the Amanda Knox story, you know, heavy scare quotes, but they probably, you know, don't know Meredith Kircher's name.
00:27:17.960They probably don't know the name of the Italian prosecutors who, like, bungled this case.
00:27:23.120They don't know the name of the actual guilty party.
00:27:26.200And it's just so interesting to me how what you went through obviously, like, was a huge part of your life.
00:27:34.740But the way that that story is told often, I don't know, it at the same time denies agency of the actual major players of what happened to your roommate.
00:27:45.540while also giving you this like outsized role in that story it's like like why aren't why aren't
00:27:53.640these other hugely like huge major parties of what happened why are they not household names
00:27:59.240why are they not the names that are like connected to what happened there why is it just you who like
00:28:03.720actually was kind of a like like side character and all of that yeah that's one of the things
00:28:10.460that i've always like pushed back against with people is like when you when you think amanda
00:28:15.460knox the first thing that you think of is murder because that's you know that's ultimately what it
00:28:21.500comes down to amanda knox murder and my still like i have never witnessed a murder i've never
00:28:28.840participated in murder i've never been you know the the closest i've been to murder is i maybe
00:28:35.280what could have been murdered that night if i hadn't met rafael a five days earlier and was
00:28:40.080spending the night at his house. That's my experience of murder. And the fact that that
00:28:47.880action, that horrific action that happened to, first of all, my friend Meredith, who is the
00:28:54.280victim and people don't remember her, the fact that that action is not actually prescribed to
00:28:59.640her murderer, and instead people think of me when they think of her murder, that just goes to show
00:29:06.220that it really does matter what you call a thing and when you call meredith kircher's murder the
00:29:10.560amanda nox saga you are doing a disservice to the truth because i played no role in that my the
00:29:17.040amanda nox saga for me is i'm on trial for something i didn't do and now i'm trying to
00:29:23.020like reclaim my life in a world that doesn't want me to reclaim my life you know like that's that's
00:29:28.240my experience um but like i it drives me crazy that it's it's so so often that the person who
00:29:38.360actually committed this crime is referred to as an afterthought like he's either not named at all
00:29:45.680he's called the other guy who was accused you know whatever like no one cares about that and it's
00:29:52.740and to me that conveys that like people don't actually really care about what happened to
00:29:56.900meredith they care about the scandal and they care about the the sexiness that they can you know
00:30:03.440you know project onto like the the sexy idea is what resonates with people more than the actual
00:30:11.540human experience yeah and i just i it's impossible to not see all the ways that you've become this
00:30:17.600character so either it's like she's weird or she's like a american loud mouth or like a temptress
00:30:27.440it's like you kind of become this thing that this character that anybody can project whatever they
00:30:32.660want onto and it doesn't like who you actually are as a human who went through something traumatic
00:30:37.720is just gone in the conversation yeah yeah and and then you know even when i'm you know it's
00:30:44.660found out that I'm innocent and I'm held fully innocent. The again, that like mystique of who
00:30:52.340is Amanda Knox, really? It's like, well, here's an idea. Like I have a podcast where I talk really
00:30:58.380openly about all my ideas and all my experiences. Have you considered listening to that? No, no,
00:31:03.980of course not, because then Amanda is actually authoring her own experience. We want to talk
00:31:07.940about her we don't actually want to talk to her and it's it's just like I mean you aren't obviously0.54
00:31:15.940you're talking to me and I greatly appreciate that because honestly like what a freaking gift
00:31:22.460in the world to just talk to another human being like a real person like I can't tell you enough
00:31:28.300how much it means to me that you reach out to me and say I actually care about what your experience
00:31:33.960is. I, you know, I don't want to just talk about you. I want to talk to you. Like, thank you for
00:31:39.960that. It means a lot. I mean, I deeply appreciate that. I really do. But again, like when the
00:31:45.780Stillwater conversation was happening, I think something that was so frustrating is it's not
00:31:50.260like you're not like you. Yeah, you have a great podcast that's critically acclaimed. You have a
00:31:55.260huge body of work. The fact that they wouldn't even reach out to you like I just randomly DM'd
00:32:01.240you on Twitter and you replied it's not like it was hard I'm one person who makes a podcast out
00:32:05.400of my kitchen right it's not like you're making it difficult to find yourself or and it's not
00:32:12.240it's not like you're not having these public conversations about who you are and your story
00:32:16.660and your experience and I think it is people just don't want to hear it it's it's more gratifying
00:32:22.860to talk about you than it is to give you space to talk about your experiences and I think that's
00:32:28.760So I don't think people I just think that people are just really wrapped up in the story they have in their head and retelling that over and over again.
00:32:36.660And I really appreciated that you pointed out that that film, they weren't just fictionalizing it.
00:32:42.460They were kind of parroting the the salacious, you know, girl on girl sex crime like lie that that was told to have you locked up for so many years.
00:32:55.880And that's not apolitical. That's not neutral.
00:32:58.760That's not fictionalizing something that was not like it's different to I guess I feel like the fact that they relied on what was the dominant narrative that led to you being falsely imprisoned is so hurtful, but also like deeply political and not neutral.
00:33:15.740Like that's a real choice. And to not even acknowledge or deal with that again is a real, you know, just a real choice. Like that's it. I guess I didn't like how in that interview, I think it was Matt Damon, he was like, oh, well, you know, we got to thinking like, what if it was like this? And it's like, no, you just you just parroted the incorrect lie that led to you being falsely imprisoned.
00:33:39.320Yeah, no, they it was just lazy storytelling on their part. Like they were like, oh, we're inventing things. And it's like, you didn't invent shit, my friend. Good job. You invented France as opposed to Italy. Like, good job.
00:33:52.120it's lazy it's lazy it's lazy yeah and it's too bad because like honestly again my position in
00:34:01.320all of this has been i'm really easy to talk to and i'm actually like i think we could have a
00:34:06.460really worthwhile conversation here i i feel like maybe i was overlooked but like here's an
00:34:11.640opportunity to not overlook me and that's okay like let's talk about that and nothing just
00:34:17.300crickets still today nothing oh yeah nothing nothing yeah it you know they're they've moved
00:34:23.500on to the next story and it doesn't matter that there are repercussions in my life so
00:34:29.040i mean it's just insane like how like how removed do you have like you're a storyteller your whole
00:34:36.060job is to be about like empathizing with the human experience enough to be able to tell a story that
00:34:41.860resonates with people. And yet, like, here's a real human being going like, hey, hey,
00:34:48.980I'm over here. Call me. And no, DMs are open. Like, I'm really nice.
00:35:02.260I don't know. It's it's it's a fascinating experience. And I feel like, again, it's it
00:35:09.900seems like it's this weird extreme thing because it's not every day that, you know, someone's life
00:35:15.600is turned into a Hollywood movie. But I feel like there are versions of this that happen all the
00:35:23.580time to people all the time. What story is being told about you and what circumstance by whom and
00:35:29.860how are they not allowing you to be a part of the conversation like that? That happens all the time
00:35:36.860to lots of people and it's something that i always have a little bit of a red flag for
00:35:41.340because it just seems like it's it's one it's it's gaslighting honestly it's when you're not allowed
00:35:48.860to have a voice in the story that defines who you are it you basically are being told by the rest
00:36:00.380the world that you don't you don't matter and your perspective doesn't matter. And we're going
00:36:06.940to tell you who you are and what you mean and why you matter. More after a quick break.
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00:38:13.140Who gets to have a say in their own story?
00:38:16.100In a media moment where we're looking back on the way that women from Pamela Anderson to Monica Lewinsky were unfairly maligned by society, it's a question worth asking.
00:38:24.660And I first reached out to Amanda because I saw her tweets about the New York Times documentary framing Britney Spears.
00:38:30.120Now, she wasn't condemning the film or the filmmakers, but rather posing a complex question.
00:39:12.440When filmmakers Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn
00:39:14.920reached out to Amanda about making a Netflix documentary,
00:39:17.880they said they would only go through with the film if she participated.
00:39:21.340And it's a big part of why she agreed to do it in the first place.
00:39:24.580They had the ethical sense to understand
00:39:26.520that I would be deeply impacted by that film
00:39:28.580and that my consent and participation mattered.
00:39:31.680They decided it was better to make no film than one without me, she tweeted.
00:39:36.560When I first reached out to you, I was in the process of researching an episode for
00:39:41.380the podcast about the Free Britney movement.
00:39:43.300And when I saw your tweets, it really, so I stopped my research because one of the points
00:39:49.460that you made was, you know, hey, this documentary was made without Britney Spears' consent.
00:39:55.200And I really had to have to really have a deep think about what that meant. Right. Like I was very happy that Britney Spears is conservatorship was overturned. I was happy to see the role that that documentary maybe played in some in some like public awareness of it.
00:40:10.720But I never even thought to ask, what does it mean that this content was just released without her say, without her voice, against her will?
00:40:23.300And I think we're in this moment where there are so many different pieces of media asking us to look back to how women were maligned, you know.
00:40:31.540and I guess I wonder like what does it mean that so many of those you know documentaries podcasts
00:40:39.100what have you are created about that about a woman without her side of the story without her
00:40:46.040voice and then sometimes against her will like like what do we do with that how do we find a
00:40:50.380balance to be like oh well maybe it's good that this documentary helped her overturn her0.86
00:40:56.080conservatorship but it's also fucked up that it happened against her will like isn't that just0.89
00:41:01.000another way of violating someone who's already been like so maligned and violated yeah yeah like0.96
00:41:06.200did did britney ultimately want her you know her like family drama to be so public um because like1.00
00:41:16.460she didn't get a choice in that right um did it make a difference in her trial is she grateful
00:41:21.400to all the people who supported her of course um but it is interesting to me and i and i think it
00:41:27.120is again one of those moments where it's worth pausing and asking like wait what is her perspective
00:41:34.140in all of this like since everything is going to be impacting her the most shouldn't she have0.87
00:41:43.140some kind of say and um and you know i'd be curious to know like how britney feels today0.98
00:41:50.380about the fact that there were documentaries made without her consent and yet they played a
00:41:58.340you know a supportive role towards her like that's an interesting you know mental space to be in in
00:42:05.700terms of like over the course of your own life again there's it's but again it's almost like
00:42:09.740a hint of that conservatorship right like we know what's good for you so we're gonna do it
00:42:15.440even if you don't want us to like oh it's just uh it hurts me it's a it's like a weird thing
00:42:24.640to have to unpack right and i guess i i'm i want to see more public like media makers wrestling
00:42:34.500with it because i feel like yes it's a complicated square to circle but i i want to i want to see
00:42:42.060that you're that you're aware of this, you know, aware of this dichotomy as a thing that exists
00:42:46.420and a thing that we should be asking questions about and pushing up against. Exactly. I think
00:42:50.800that if there were that again, it's that like self auditing, that introspection, that awareness
00:42:56.280that you could have that your actions could have unintended consequences and that you are thinking
00:43:03.060about the people who like, you know, you presumably if you're a documentary filmmaker who's making a
00:43:09.580documentary about britney you can presumably assume that whatever it is that you end up doing
00:43:14.880is going to impact her so like maybe think about how and why and and how you can mitigate potential
00:43:24.700harm because that's what you don't want to do as a as a storyteller you don't want to just
00:43:30.060harm other people for the sake of a story i mean at least i would hope so yeah
00:43:35.360And I mean, I think in this moment where we're really interested in like looking back at the way that the way that media, our media ecosystem harmed women unfairly.
00:43:50.420So I, full disclosure, live for a like, you're wrong about style podcast as like, oh, let's go back and like revisit.
00:43:57.880But part of me wonders if we are so busy looking back that we're not seeing the ways that's happening now.
00:44:04.580Like, OK, Britney Spears was unfairly maligned. You were unfairly maligned. Janet Jackson unfairly maligned. All these people. But are we are we like what's the point of that kind of content if it does not prime us to see it happening before our eyes in real time?
00:44:18.860Like, I don't want to have to wait five years down the line for the podcast that tells us not that the media shouldn't be profiting off of the pain and, you know, shittiness to like a vulnerable person.
00:44:30.920I don't want to have to wait for a look back retrospective on that.
00:44:34.180What's the point of this media if it doesn't allow us to do this now?
00:44:59.180there's the danger of it approximating that where it's like oh man we were terrible to women in the
00:45:04.82090s we can feel total we can pat ourselves on the back today there is nothing wrong with the way
00:45:09.880that we're treating women today because look at what we did in the 90s like it's important to
00:45:15.200to take stock of how things were how things have changed but also how things haven't changed and
00:45:24.400if we can see echoes of what happened in the past happening today and and try to be better.
00:45:33.000Definitely. I mean, this brings me to one of my last questions. You know, what kind of world,
00:45:37.920like just given what we know about how the media and the Internet can treat women,1.00
00:45:44.520what kind of world do you want for your daughter to grow up in? And like, what will you tell her
00:45:48.360about your life? And what will you tell her about the kinds of the kinds of experiences that she
00:45:52.880can expect from the world. Yeah. Well, what I'm hoping that we're heading towards is a world
00:46:00.360where everyone is more media literate and understands not just how the industry functions,
00:46:08.200like how does it even just how do you on a day to day basis put content out into the world?
00:46:15.060Like, well, there are, you know, there are incentive structures and there's a monetary
00:46:19.200aspect to it and like there's a whole business side of it that's important to know when you're
00:46:24.860consuming information there's a human psychological role to it like what stories quote resonate with
00:46:31.420people and with whom and why why do certain stories get uplifted and others get squashed
00:46:37.840why are some people's stories just you know discarded as if they aren't valuable and other
00:46:42.420people's are constantly in the headlines like these are all really important questions that i
00:46:48.040think as consumers we should be asking because we as consumers ultimately have the power to say
00:46:55.400you know what i'm not going to tune into your style of content anymore i'm going to tune into
00:47:00.620something else that i think is more uh responsible or ethical or truthful um and that that's worthwhile
00:47:08.760um so i hope that that's the world that we're we're gearing towards because as social media has
00:47:17.660democratized content creation, we all feel like we can have a hand, not just in consuming media,
00:47:24.080but also in producing it. That's my hope. I don't know if that's actually going to happen, but
00:47:29.880I'm hoping that I'm going to let my daughter sort of take the lead in how much she wants to know
00:47:41.040and how important my experience is going to be for her. Because one thing that I'm worried about
00:47:45.680is her feeling like, you know, as much as I feel very much in the shadow of the worst experience
00:47:51.660of my life, like I don't want her to feel like she's forced to live in the shadow of the worst
00:47:56.940experience of my life. She should be able to have her own life if she wants. And if and I
00:48:02.740I hope to raise her as a very curious, thoughtful person. And so I my guess is that she's going to
00:48:09.220be curious. And of course, if she's going to be coming to the Innocence Network conference with
00:48:13.500me every year meeting other wrongfully convicted people like she's going to start to notice
00:48:17.660that there's a there's an interesting pattern happening here like oh you were in jail you
00:48:22.900were in jail why has everyone been in jail you know she's going to notice and she's going to
00:48:27.780ask questions and I think I'm going to be honest with her 100% of the time always answer her
00:48:36.880questions. But of course, I'm not going to like give a six year old a tutorial on crime scene
00:48:44.100footage, you know, like, yeah, I'll wait till she's seven when we're all that's that's the
00:48:50.840appropriate age. So, yeah, I think that like I want her to feel like she it's not a taboo subject.
00:48:58.920It's absolutely like anything about me and my experiences on the table for her should she
00:49:04.940need it and want it um but that she doesn't need to feel like it needs to be an important part of
00:49:11.880her life because honestly like no one's trauma no one should feel like they are bound to their
00:49:17.940trauma as if it's the most important thing in their life either so i think that's another
00:49:23.460important thing yeah that's such a good point there are so many interesting pieces of who you
00:49:31.880are that like that's just one of a quilt of who you are and you know thinking about your daughter
00:49:39.300you've written so beautifully about sort of long prison sentences and for you how it was a kind of
00:49:44.880like forced infertility do you see criminal justice and reproductive justice as like linked in that
00:49:50.280way absolutely and i think that nobody's noticing that um i mean and it's and it's hard for like
00:49:57.860the it's hard for men to write like it sure men are no are not limited in that way like they don't
00:50:03.960have a very specific window when they're fertile but they do have very specific window when they're
00:50:09.440capable of forming the kinds of relationships that would turn into families even and so like
00:50:16.520for me i think that especially with the way that there are prison sentences in this country where
00:50:21.900they just are nonsensically long. Like no one should be sentenced to 300 years in prison. Like
00:50:28.560it just doesn't make any like just just be reasonable. Like let's let's consider what the
00:50:33.420sentence is going to mean for an actual human being's life and take that into consideration
00:50:38.900when we're thinking about sentencing. And I think that the ways that women have sort of been pushed1.00
00:50:45.880into a justice system that was built by and for men and their needs and and and physical realities
00:50:54.700aren't really taken into consideration in that process is an incredible disservice to and an
00:51:02.200incredible harm that we're committing as a society like it it matters that by sentencing someone to
00:51:10.540such a long amount of time, you are effectively limiting not just their freedom, but so much more
00:51:18.660about their life that is fundamental to being a human being. I never should have faced the
00:51:27.820prospect of never getting to have a family of my own because I was accused of a crime I didn't
00:51:33.880commit. And yet I did. Amanda, thank you for using this platform to speak up for other wrongfully
00:51:43.860convicted folks and even rightfully convicted folks, because like here the other reality is
00:51:50.320like a lot of the women that I met in prison, they did commit crimes. They were also victims0.88
00:51:54.720of crime before they ever committed crimes. And how is it that society had let them fall
00:52:00.720through the cracks and had refused them good opportunities to be productive people and just
00:52:07.320punished them in the process. Like the amount of like, you know, I was one of the most fortunate
00:52:13.800people in that circumstance. And I, and I say that as an innocent person who was wrongly accused and
00:52:20.220put in prison. So like, you know, it's, it matters. We're all sort of implicated in the way that
00:52:26.380society um limits the opportunities of people and we should be mindful of that oh absolutely
00:52:34.300i feel like every time you talk to women who are in prison it's it's like oh you were obviously
00:52:41.080coerced or like you are a survivor of domestic violence or trafficking like it is and just i
00:52:50.040mean i'm i'm this is such a long a longer conversation but i i'm right there with you
00:52:54.960I think like when you actually look at who we are locking up, sometimes for like just comically long amounts of time and the circumstances they came from, it's clear that we are not making our community safer.
00:53:07.080We are just spreading more harm. And I'm right there with you.
00:53:11.480Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's it's a difficult thing to look at because I think a lot of us would just like to think, oh, we'll just put the bad people in somewhere else.
00:53:19.600We'll just take bad people and put them away. And it's like, that's, that's not, it's not just good people and bad people. It's not just who gets put away versus who doesn't get put away is not, doesn't also fall neatly along those lines. Like, let's be real. It's way more complicated than that. And, and oftentimes it's actually just the most vulnerable people who end up get putting away.
00:53:43.460Amanda, where can folks keep up with Labyrinth and all the amazing work that you are doing?
00:53:49.600Well, thank you for asking. You can go to NoxRobinson.com to follow all of the work that me and my husband do. We have a Patreon, so Patreon.com slash NoxRobinson. You can follow me on Twitter at AmandaKnox and on Instagram at AmamaKnox.