Avsnitt
-
The death penalty is often sold as justice. But what if it's just a very expensive decades-long process, doesn't deter crime, and gets it wrong often enough that 190 people have been exonerated from death row?
Amanda sits down with Laura Porter, executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty and former public defender of 12 years, for a conversation that refuses to stay on the surface. They get into the historical roots of America's cultural attachment to capital punishment, why the deterrence argument has been largely debunked, and what evidence-based violence prevention actually looks like in practice.
They also ask the harder question underneath all of it: if the goal is a safer society and genuine healing for victims, is the death penalty even aimed at the right target?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Amanda Knox is a multi-linguist and self-described word nerd. In this essay she explores the fascinating world of untranslatable words, the ones that exist in some languages but not others, and what they reveal about the cultures that invented them. And at the end of it all, Amanda makes one of her own.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
Greg Lukianoff is one of our nation's foremost defenders of free speech, co-author of "The Canceling of the American Mind," and president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. His journey to this place wasn’t easy, on a personal level, but the depressive spiral Greg eventually transcended gave him insight into the problems plaguing our public discourse.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
What happens when your creative partner is also your spouse? Amanda and Chris dive into the messy, rewarding world of creative collaboration,from co-writing a book of love poems to navigating the high-stakes pressure of building a one-woman comedy show headed to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
They get real about the tension between structure and spontaneity, brutal feedback vs. the compliment sandwich, and what it actually means to support someone's creative vision when you don't always agree on what's funny.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
What happens when a culture decides that visibility is power and then punishes women for being visible? Amanda sits down with Sophie Gilbert, staff writer at The Atlantic, and author of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, for a conversation that gets personal fast.
They trace the arc from riot grrrl to the Spice Girls to Britney's breakdown to the Manosphere and make the case that what looks like progress for women has, again and again, been repackaged exploitation. They talk about why objectification got rebranded as empowerment, why reality television taught women that other women are the enemy, and why men are now being sold the same trap women were handed in the early 2000s.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
In this monthly Hard Knox essay Amanda explores the "third way of being": not alone, not truly together, but that warm middle state where you want someone near without the obligation of actually meeting them. It's the feeling of knowing your mom is down the hall at 2am. It's reading on the couch while someone cooks in the other room.
What begins as a parenting anecdote unfolds into a sharp, philosophical meditation on technology, presence, and why the easiest forms of connection may be quietly eroding our capacity for both real closeness and true aloneness.
Best enjoyed with someone nearby who you don't have to talk to.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
We are now routinely faced with a dilemma: News breaks hat an artist beloved has done something horrible. How does that change our experience of their art? There’s no one better to help us explore this thorny territory than Claire Dederer, author of "Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma."
Get a copy of Claire's book at:
https://www.powells.com/book/monsters-9780525655114
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
What happens when confronting the person who hurt you doesn’t bring the closure you hoped for?
In this episode, Amanda responds to a listener wrestling with whether to confront an abusive family member and what to do when that conversation goes nowhere. Drawing from her own experience facing her former prosecutor, she unpacks the crucial difference between healing and accountability, and why tying your recovery to someone else’s response can set you up for deeper pain.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Elliot Ackerman is a decorated combat veteran, CIA paramilitary officer, and New York Times bestselling novelist. In this episode, he joins Amanda Knox to talk about what happens when the chapter closes and you have to figure out who you are without the tribe. They get into the Afghanistan withdrawal, institutional betrayal, what it actually means to raise boys well. And from his What a Man Should Know column on The Free Press, learn why men make friends shoulder to shoulder instead of face to face, and what gets lost when nobody talks to boys with intention.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
What do you do when the thing that gave your life shape is finally, imperfectly, done? In this solo episode, Amanda Knox reads an original essay about arriving at the other side of an eighteen-year fight for her own story. She writes about motherhood, the fear of being called a narcissist for mining her own trauma, Bo Burnham, and the stubborn suspicion that measuring yourself against the worst thing that ever happened to you might be exactly the wrong way to keep score.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Andrea Werhun is an author, filmmaker, and former sex worker whose memoir and documentary Modern Whore challenge how we think about sex, labor, and stigma. In this wide ranging and often funny conversation, Andrea and Amanda dig into the making of the film, including its stylized recreations, dark humor, and the moment Amanda found herself rethinking whether sex work is truly different from other forms of intimate labor like therapy, caregiving, or au pairing. Along the way, they unpack the role of criminalization in creating harm, the politics of shame, and why putting a price on access to your body can radically change how you understand boundaries, value, and freedom. Modern Whore is out May 1, 2026
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
What's the difference between bias and expertise? When a critic dismissed Amanda Knox's commentary on the Lucy Letby case as the grievance of a biased woman, the real question got buried: can lived experience be a form of expertise? And if so, what's the line between pattern recognition and confirmation bias? Amanda and Chris dig into the cognitive science, the structural failures of the justice system, and the countermeasures that might actually help us get it right.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
What is truth, and why does finding it actually matter? Amanda sits down with Dr. Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, longtime Scientific American columnist, and author of Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, for a conversation that starts with epistemology and ends in a full-throated debate about free will.
They talk about why our brains evolved more like lawyers than scientists — to win arguments, not find facts. They get into the hard problem of consciousness, what meditation might reveal that neuroscience can't yet measure, and whether the legal system could ever be redesigned around actual truth-seeking. And then Amanda makes the case for hard determinism and nearly talks Shermer into it.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
After a stranger on Twitter told Amanda “Jesus, put on some makeup,” she responded with a joke: an AI image of Jesus wearing makeup and a one-word reply, “Fine.” The tweet went viral, drawing both laughter and accusations of blasphemy. In this episode, Amanda reflects on what that reaction reveals about fragile beliefs, the psychology of offense, and why learning not to be “capturable” by other people’s outrage is essential for living freely.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
John J. Lennon is a journalist, author of The Tragedy of True Crime, and a convicted murderer who joined Amanda for this conversation from prison, where he is currently incarcerated. In this challenging and deeply reflective episode, Amanda confronts Lennon about the limits of compassion, the ethics of true crime storytelling, and the danger of narratives that lock people into their worst moments.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Amanda and Chris unpack the complicated idea of trauma bonds, from Amanda’s relationship with Raffaele during their wrongful imprisonment to the quieter survival mode of early parenthood. They explore how crisis can intensify connection, why Hollywood romanticizes trauma informed love, and what happens to relationships once the emergency ends. Along the way, they wrestle with whether trauma is objective or subjective, how identity shifts under pressure, and whether facing mortality together can create a bond that is destabilizing, transformative, or both.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Tim Egan is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, National Book Award–winning author, and longtime New York Times columnist who publicly challenged the media narrative around Amanda Knox’s case when few others would. In this episode, Amanda and Tim unpack how predatory journalism, cultural bias, and economic incentives fuel rushes to judgment, how misinformation erodes our ability to agree on basic facts, and why truth telling becomes harder and more necessary when narratives turn tribal. They also explore why history offers both warning signs and hope, and how ordinary individuals can still bend the arc toward justice.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Lauren Weedman is an Emmy-nominated writer, comedian, and actor known her roles in HBO’s Looking, Hung and Hacks. She is also a renowned solo performer whose work is built on fearless honesty and dark humor. In this episode, Lauren gives Amanda a candid masterclass in solo storytelling, from why audiences hesitate to laugh at trauma, to how musical numbers, silence, and even a well timed cartwheel can unlock tension onstage. Along the way, they trade unforgettable moments about prison mugshots, shame, loneliness, and how a mother can balance the intense energy of a theatrical run with the demands of family life.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Warren Littlefield is an award winning television producer and former NBC network president whose career spans landmark shows from Cheers to The Handmaid’s Tale and The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. In this candid and behind the scenes conversation, Warren and Amanda revisit the making of the series together, sharing stories about freezing fog in Vancouver, impossible production schedules, and the tiny details like suitcases and pastries that carry enormous emotional weight. Along the way, Warren reflects on firefighting in the entertainment industry, replacing Johnny Carson, embracing change, and why protecting creative vision, listening to your gut, and questioning official narratives matter far beyond television.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
In this Ask Amanda Anything episode, Amanda and Chris tackle big, tender questions about career pivots, privacy, creativity, and what it means to live openly without losing yourself. They share raw and funny stories about quitting “soul sucking” jobs, being the first person on the dance floor, and relearning joy after it was taken away. The conversation moves from Taoist ideas about following life’s current to the ethics of oversharing, offering a look at how curiosity, connection, and courage help us begin again.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices - Visa fler
