Podcast
Hard Knox with Amanda Knox
Hosted by Knox Robinson Productions · EN
Amanda Knox has been many things—accused, convicted, exonerated, tabloid villain, true crime icon, best-selling author—and she's still figuring out what to make of it all. Hard Knox is warm without being soft, funny without being light, and intellectually serious without being academic. Amanda argues with her guests, changes her mind, and brings the kind of hard-won perspective that you can only get from someone who's a connoisseur of Italian prison food.
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35episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Why Fear Makes Bad Policy (Laura Porter)
1w ago01:02:50Tap to summarizeThe 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
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Fifty Words for Snow
2w ago00:15:39Tap to summarizeAmanda 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
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Old School: The Canceling of the American Mind (Greg Lukianoff)
3w ago00:53:11Tap to summarizeGreg 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
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Married to the Work
May 2601:09:26Tap to summarizeWhat 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
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How To Be A Woman in Public (Sophie Gilbert)
May 1901:00:53Tap to summarizeWhat 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
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Walkie Talkies
May 1200:15:03Tap to summarizeIn 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
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Old School: Monsters (Claire Dederer)
May 500:59:52Tap to summarizeWe 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
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The Myth of Confrontation
Apr 2800:44:23Tap to summarizeWhat 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
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Why Men Need a Tribe (Elliott Ackerman)
Apr 2101:06:40Tap to summarizeElliot 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
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A Wee Existential Crisis
Apr 1400:15:20Tap to summarizeWhat 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
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