Hard Knox with Amanda Knox

There's some wisdom you can only find when you're lost, which has led Kevin Kelly, senior Maverick and co-founder Wired magazine, to get lost intentionally through decades of travelling. Along the way, he's collected some gems of wisdom and invented many of his own. Kevin Kelly is the author of Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonu...

Musician and podcaster John Roderick's most unenviable accomplishment was becoming Twitter’s main character from January 3rd through January 5th of 2021. We’re cracking open that can of beans to get the real story, and to talk about surviving cancellation, losing friends, and what we can learn about broader cultural trends. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supportin...

Author, blogger, and cartoonist Tim Urban of WaitButWhy.com helps us dissect what's causing the political, social, and tribal dysfunction in our society with the help of golems, genies, the thought ladder, and the speech curve. Check out Tim's new book, What's Our Problem? Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.com/knoxrobinso...

Kristen and Ville Jokinen bought some bicycles and decided to go for a ride. They weren't experienced cyclists at all, so they thought, why not start in Alaska and bike all the way to the southernmost tip of Argentina? What could go wrong? Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.com/knoxrobinson www.knoxrobinson.com Twitter: @a...

After very publicly advocating for the innocence of a man named Jens Soering, who spent over 30 years in prison for a double murder he says he didn’t commit, we encountered new information that gave us serious reason to doubt his innocence, and we found ourselves in ethical dilemma. This led us to connect with journalist Andrew Hammel to give a fair heaing to the case for Jens Soering's guilt. Bef...

Todays guest is an actor from our home town of Seattle. You may know him from Community, The Soup, The White House Correspondent's dinner, or his newest show Animal Control! We dig into dyslexia, pediatric heart surgery, and the ethics of comedy.  Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.com/knoxrobinson www.knoxrobinson.com Twi...

Megan Phelps-Roper is the author of the book, Unfollow: a journey from hatred to hope, about her upbringing in and departure from the Westboro Baptist Church. Megan is also the host of the podcast series The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, produced by The Free Press, which dissects the backlash against Rowling from a perspective informed by Megan's own experience on both sides of vitriol, as sender...

Justin Brooks is the author of You Might Go To Prison, Even Though You're Innocent. He is also the director of the California Innocence Project, which has freed 36 wrongly convicted people from over 570 years of wrongful imprisonment. But what sort of toll does that work take on the people who do it? And what do you learn along the way?  Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and mor...

In part 5, the final installment of Blood money, we're looking to the future to ask: how can true crime be more ethical? What does true crime with a conscience look like? Many of our previous guests, and few new ones like Mark Olshaker and Jon Ronson offer some thoughts on where the genre is heading, and how we might all shape it for the better. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content,...

True crime has spawned a fandom like no other, with controversial merch, conventions, and online sleuths. Sarah Turney, Jen Tisdale, Paul Holes, and Katherine Laidlaw help us disect this fandom, and see the costs and consequences of true crime obsession. This is part 4 of Blood Money, a five-part miniseries. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on...

In part 3 of Blood Money, we're stepping inside the content machine. Filmmaker Brian McGinn and author Nicki Egan take us through the incentives and pitfalls facing any true crime content creator. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.com/knoxrobinson www.knoxrobinson.com Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge IG: @amamaknox...

In part 2 of Blood Money, we're stepping into the ground zero where all true crime stories originate: with the victims. Kris Pedretti, Christine Marie, and Sarah Turney help us explore what it means to be at the center of a true crime story, and how the media can be another source of trauma. Content warning: sexual assault and sex trafficking. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, a...

True crime has become a massive industry that takes real life suffering as grist for the content mill. Is it possible to tell such stories in an ethical way? How did we even get here? To answer these questions, we're diving into history to see where true crime came from, how it evolved, and where it is today. Along the way, we'll be talking with victims, podcasters, filmmakers, critics and other t...

We've got some updates for you, a preview of BLOOD MONEY, our upcoming miniseries about the history and ethics of true crime, and we answer your questions, about trauma gremlins, smiling through hell, and how to deal with bad faith arguments. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.com/knoxrobinson www.knoxrobinson.com Twitter:...

When Joe Berlinger packed up his things to go to West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993, he thought he was going to make a documentary about a satanic ritual murder. Instead, he found a witch hunt determined to condemn three innocent boys. Over the next two decades, Joe and his partner Bruce Sinofsky made three documentaries about the case. Those films played a critical role in the eventual release of the...

By the time he was sixteen, Jason Baldwin had already felt the sting of prejudice from his community in West Memphis, Arkansas. Kids at the trailer park where he lived had long been shunned by more well off residents of the town. Still, nothing could have prepared him for how vicious these prejudices would turn once the bodies of three eight year old boys were found murdered. Jason and two of his...

Anna Vasquez was just nineteen when she and three of her friends were accused of a horrific crime that they were completely innocent of. Their case was swept up in the mass hysteria about satanic cults that had seized the country in the 80s and 90s. It would take twenty four years for Anna and her friends to be fully exonerated, including over a decade in prison. But Anna's story didn't end with h...

Most people are pretty bad at having difficult conversations. We don't get much practice--the internet makes sure that we mostly see content from people we agree with. When we do see opposing viewpoints, it's usually in the form of hateful comments. But when Dylan Marron started receiving a deluge of online abuse in response to his viral video series, he did the opposite of what most people do. He...

Jennifer felt trapped--her two sons were addicted to drugs, in and out of jail and rehab, and living on the streets. What had she done wrong as a mother? How could she save them? Was trying to save them her own addiction?  Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.com/knoxrobinson www.knoxrobinson.com Twitter: @amandaknox | @manu...

When our guest today, Christian, was checked into a psych ward in the midst of a manic episode a few years ago, he had no prior history of mental illness. He'd certainly never had delusions of the kind that had come to consume him over the last few days. As it turned out, the culprit for the drastic change in Christian's mental state was not one people would normally think of. His manic episode wi...

Few people can say that they have remade themselves as completely as Lee Turnbull. He went from being a violent young man in London to being a happy, well-adjusted soccer coach in the States. Getting there required not just a change in his lifestyle, but a dramatic change in his values. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.c...

Before Adolf Hitler was a genocidal autocrat, he was a young art student who loved his mother. Before Vladimir Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary, he was the privileged son of loving parents, radicalized by his older brother. And before Joseph Stalin was a ruthless dictator, he was an abused child who was terrified of his father. Why should we know or care about these details? In the face of the cr...

You may have heard Molly Bloom's name from tabloid headlines about a "poker princess" or from the 2017 movie, Molly's Game. But Molly has a deeper story to tell. Though her life has taken an unusual number of twists and turns--from poker millionaire to convicted felon to bestselling author--Molly's reflections on it all are universal. They include her thoughts on material gratification, on being r...

Chris Ballew never expected or even particularly wanted mainstream success. But when his band, the Presidents of the United States of America, hit it big, he had to reckon with what success meant to him and figure out how to say no when everyone around him wanted him to say yes. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.com/knoxr...

Before Bobby Kumparak adopted Lucy, a French bulldog, he had never thought of a dog as a member of his family. But Lucy was different. The bond Bobby and his wife, Angela, shared with Lucy was more than owner and pet. So Bobby and Angela were utterly devastated when Lucy was stolen from their backyard one night. In the quest to find Lucy, they learned that the issue of pet theft is much bigger tha...