KJ Steinberg (7:10)

Thank you for having me.

Mike Pesca (7:11)

So Amanda was here and guests would have heard her yesterday. And so that is good because we got to most of the factual details, the exposition, if you will, of the story. So what I'd like to ask you about are storytelling choices and sort of the purpose of stories and cementing in our imagination how things actually happened. If that would be okay with you.

KJ Steinberg (7:32)

Sure.

Mike Pesca (7:33)

Were there portions of the series where you thought the imperative or it was decided that the imperative was to portray things from Amanda's perspective, not as opposed to, quote, how things actually happened, but just that, that what we're trying to do is get across Amanda's perspective first and foremost?

KJ Steinberg (7:55)

Yes, absolutely. I mean, you can't, you can't tell a story from every character's point of view. It would be a very disorganized piece of work. And I, and I think that, you know, for so long we consumed stories about Amanda from completely outside her point of view. She was written about, she was spoken about, debates were had diagnoses of her. You know, personality were made all from armchairs and dining room tables and from behind tabloids and, you know, gawking and gaping from stuff that we picked up in the supermarket aisles. Right. And even political figures and newscasters who I really, really admired had a. Had a point of view, a really strong point of view, when they were supposed to have journalistic integrity and distance and, you know, at least attempt to have an unbiased approach to telling the story of what was happening over there. And so I thought it was. Obviously, when I came onto the project, it was. Amanda's book was given to me. Amanda was an executive producer, so embracing her point of view was obviously an imperative. But it became really clear to me that that was the best way to tell the story anyway. And the most distillation of so much confusing and conflicting information. Right. And so, plus, she's an extraordinarily. She had a really interesting worldview. And she was often, you know, criticized for. Not for sort of having discord with the way with her. With her. People had a microscope on her behavior, which I didn't want to ignore in the storytelling, but I wanted to interrogate that behavior, examine it, understand it from her point of view. Like, what was her experience of those behaviors as she was living them.

Mike Pesca (10:25)

So one of the main things that indicted her, literally and figuratively, was she acted oddly, as one would not expect, either someone accused of murder or even before that, someone who. Whose roommate was murdered. She act oddly during all stages of the investigation. And part of that was, and Amanda even writes about that she wasn't always aware. I mean, she was a young person and she is, you know, a free spirit, something like this, but shouldn't always know how she was coming across. Okay, this is a little bit of a challenge for you because you are holding the camera at Amanda, who literally admits that she doesn't always know how she's coming across. So how do you then construct how she might be coming across to others, but also be true to Amanda's perspective of how she might have thought she was coming across?

KJ Steinberg (11:24)

Because I try to represent her experience. I represent my own experience, having listened to her tell the stories about how things went down and how she moved through the circumstances? I read tomes of court documents and witness testimonies and police statements reflecting how people experienced her. So, you know, contrary to my answer to the opening there, you know, the certain scenes had to be. Had to be told from multiple points of view. I think that the series as a whole is driven by her point of view and her voiceover and it's her story. And I tried to dimensionalize the experiences, the humanity, the biases and the goodwill of every character who populated the story tried to do that. And there are two episodes that are even told from different points of view. Episode three is told from Manini's point of view. Episode five is told from Rafaele's point of view. But in order not to do a hagiography of Amanda, I wasn't interested in whitewashing the. The people's. Whitewashing the memory or the experience people had in this story. I was interested in examining it, right? And in doing so, I. It was. It was extraordinarily important that we show the moments that the Italian police or the British, Meredith Kircher's British friends interpreted as either cold, cut off, odd, eccentric, or uncomfortable. For them, it's. But the story's really not about. The story's not really about those moments. The stories is about what those moments meant to those people. What stories?

Mike Pesca (13:31)

So I was thinking about those moments.

KJ Steinberg (13:35)

They germinated, right? They germinated. Those experience of Amanda were then interpreted and a narrative was attached to those experiences of her, right?

Mike Pesca (13:50)

So Amanda is for the first time in watching this movie because other bad movies have been made about this. So she's watching a presentation of what she experienced and what other people thought of her during this time. And she talked a lot about just going back to that apartment and walking around alone in it and the power of that. But then there are also the moments where she sees your interpretation of what other people see of her actions. And she's also the executive producer, right? So you have to work with her and say something like, all right, do you think it's a triply refracted mirror? Do you think this is a good reputation of what other people may have seen, do you think? No, there's no way I came across that way. Do you think, oh, maybe she even says, I never realized that that was perhaps a way I came across. There's so many considerations there, I think, that are probably unique to a work like this.

KJ Steinberg (14:53)

Yes, it was an extraordinarily challenging responsibility. And telling. Telling the story of real people is, you know, it's a. It's a privilege and it's. It's a burden, and it should be because you need to take it seriously. But to her credit, she was really open and flexible, and the interpretations of her behavior and negative experiences of behavior, that premise is not a new one for her. She's been living. She's been wearing that and living that for a very, very long time. And I think that again, to her credit, she understands that she rubbed folks the wrong way. She understands that the grace that I give her and that she gives herself for how she comported herself through unbelievable trauma as a 20 year old child, basically in a foreign country, away from family, in a language she didn't understand, without any guidance or legal counsel or familial support. She gives herself grace for all of that, and that grace gives her the ability to allow those moments to be depicted. She understands what's hers and she understands what she can't control, which is people's perception of her.

Mike Pesca (16:30)

So to make it tangible for my audience, I'm going to talk about a bigger scene in a second. But as investigators were in the apartment where her friend's body was found, she kisses her boyfriend. And so there are choices there about how that plays, how that looks to others. And then you also mentioned that you did all this reading and you saw the actual notes that the Italian prosecutors made. So ask a question, couple part questions, because I don't know if it's going to be a yes to either of them. Were there any moments where your depiction was eye opening for her or there were debates where she said, I don't think they would have seen that. That's one strand of it you can answer. Or were there any depictions or descriptions in the actual investigation that sparked something that you put on the screen that was eye opening for her?

KJ Steinberg (17:21)

Can I take the latter first?

Mike Pesca (17:23)

Yes, you may.

KJ Steinberg (17:24)

Amanda didn't realize until I told her how quickly into the investigation they saw her as a suspect by virtue of the fact that they were listening in on her phone conversations and bugging the waiting room and everywhere she spoke in the Kastura. I listened to recordings of her and Rafaele for hours, trying to understand what they were saying to one another, recordings she didn't know existed. And I read transcripts of phone calls and listened to recordings of whatever I could get my hands and ears on starting as soon as November 3rd. So poor Meredith's body was found on November 2nd, and Amanda was being. She was a person of interest, let's say immediately. And that was something that, that knocked her back when I told her she, she really. So when they claim that during her coerced confession and her naming of Patrick Lumumba that she was just a witness and they need not have recorded her legally, I don't buy it because they were recording her and they were recording Rafaele and bugging them. And so to me, was The Italian legal system.

Mike Pesca (19:10)

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

KJ Steinberg (19:11)

No, no. I'm just. I'm just saying to. To me, I don't know from my American sensibilities. Right. What I understand about our justice system, which is, you know, unbelievably imperfect. I felt that she. They. They had. I felt they had a target on her pretty early.

Mike Pesca (19:36)

Was the Italian legal system, justice system easy to work with? Were they holding this back because they were embarrassed? Sometimes. Sometimes American. American, depending on the jurisdiction, would not want this to get out.

KJ Steinberg (19:51)

I don't. My experience, first of all, you know, we had a lot of legal hurdles on this show. There was so much scrutiny. So there are so many things that I wanted to say that I couldn't say, and perhaps the constraints made for more subtle storytelling. I always, you know, sort of like to believe that the challenges presented sometimes, you know, can end up with more nuance and more suggestion rather than the bludgeon, you know, approach. But I will say things were left. Things were left on the cutting room floor. The cutting room floor of my brain because we had to be so very careful. The. The. The threshold for defamation in Italy is really low. It's very sensitive. And I don't believe that. I don't. I don't see this. This project as holding up a mirror to the Italian legal system and having some kumbaya apology, you know, gushing forth from them. I just don't. My experience of it has been. My experience of it has been a prolonged entrenchment from a lot of people, regardless of the evidence that we present in the show and regardless of the dimensionality that. That we illuminate. I think, though, that. I think that. I think that the needle has moved, though, on Amanda in a. In a really, you know, in a favorable way. But I still do find with her that people are really attached to. Really attached to their views of the case and of her as a human being and. And their immovability is what terrifies me.

Mike Pesca (21:57)

Yeah. Or even if they have strong views, I'm sure that most people. And she writes about this in her book. Going to a comedy club and some comic makes jokes because they can. And to Amanda's great credit, I know she stands for this. She makes really clear. Should never get in the way of comedy or the comic process or. I mean, this is someone who's defamed and sitting right there in a come club as the guy is saying inaccurate things. And so to her credit, she takes the time to point out that she's all for free expression. But this is how it hurt me. The. My point in bringing this up is I would assume that it must be unbelievably difficult to go through life with a name that if it triggers any sentiment in the listener, it's probably, oh, isn't she that girl who killed those people? Or maybe, best case scenario, oh, isn't she that girl who they say didn't kill those people?

KJ Steinberg (22:51)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (22:51)

And so, you know, that's a burden for a documentary, a burden you can't undo. But it must have been something that you've thought about a lot.

KJ Steinberg (22:59)

Yeah, I sort of, that's the whole sort of reason for doing it. The fact that she was such a spectacular fascination and such a polarizing, such a polarizing Sensation as a 20 year old girl who was falsely accused and then falsely convicted and falsely imprisoned of something. It was, it was that her name carried so much, so much power that really intrigued me. And the fact that I didn't have a strong association when I came onto the project. I didn't have a strong opinion about her, but I knew others had. And so when I think about the temperature of our political discourse and how we're trafficking in such misinformation now, it seemed like her story was unbelievably relevant. And the fact that her name carries with it so much, you know, so much, so much reactivity felt sort of emblematic of a lot of things we're experiencing right now. And so largely a reason why I felt so sorry. I'm having trouble finding the words I felt for her so deeply. And every time this project was hard, I just kept thinking about what it is like to walk the world with someone exactly as you stated, with someone whose name just elicits certainty from people. A very, very dangerous certainty. Right.

Mike Pesca (24:45)

Yeah. And then could you turn to fellow executive producer Monica Lewinsky and ask her for her insight as to that exact question?

KJ Steinberg (24:53)

100%. She, she reminds me, reminded me often that the echoes of trauma are loud and they are long. And it was, it was a priority for her and it became mine as well to tell the story of the reintegration into life at home. Right. Like a normal, you sort of ordinary true crime would oftentimes ends at a verdict or the release from prison. And Amanda's. It was really important to us to have episode seven and eight to take her back home and to explore what a re entry back into an identity looked like. And that the reclamation of one's life that has been stolen from them, the reclamation of a narrative that has been perverted is not an easy journey. It is not an easy task. And I think that Monica was. She's such an empathetic person and such a self reflective person and she's a really wise woman. Both Amanda and Monica have taken into their womanhood this hard, this, this hard learned lesson that you can't just return to life and pick up where you left off before the, the trauma and the drama happened. Right. There's a, there's an integration of that painful experience into self that needs to happen and a synthesis of all of the bad into this new identity. Right. We all, I think a trauma response is so relatable of just wanting to like lock it all away and start again or try to replay the tape from before the horrible things happened. And it's just not the way. And so episode seven and eight were really vital to Monica to telling the story of the aftermath. Not only of the difficulty, Amanda going back to a life that had been redefined and the struggle and then, and the triumph of overcoming ultimately, but the effect on the family and the concentric circles of damage to Amanda's family. Also Raffaele and Raffaele's family. The, you know, the, the concentric circles of damage go out and out and out for Patrick Lumumba and his life and his family's pain and Meredith and Meredith's family's pain. I mean, it's just the injustice that was done. The blast radius was really, really quite vast when you think about the human lives that were damaged.

Mike Pesca (28:07)

I wanted to ask you about Meredith. I didn't ask Amanda this. I considered it and then I didn't for a couple reasons. Whenever a project, one of Amanda's projects comes out, people ask for comment from the Kirchner family. And recently they've had a lawyer essentially raising the point of why are they. Maybe she says it a little more gently, but there is a critique that there is a deflection or detraction from Meredith's life. Why are we telling this story? And I knew if I asked Amanda anything about that, she'd have to say part of what I'm sure you're going to say, that this in no way takes away from the horror of everything that that family had to deal with and that Meredith had to deal with. But I guess my reaction is. It just seems so obvious to me, though Amanda can't say it. How much of my story, if I were Amanda, I would think, how much of my story should I not tell of being falsely imprisoned, of going through this hell? How much Should I keep this to myself out of this lawyer's critique that I'm detracting attention? I don't know how to communicate that I'm not detracting attention. It never seems to work because the family always has this statement. But I don't know what to do with it. You know, this was. This is just me imagining what she might be thinking. Was this what you were thinking? I don't even know the answer to that question except to sigh and say, I'm truly sorry they think that way. But I don't know what else to do.

KJ Steinberg (29:44)

I can't imagine how. How devastating it is to be inside of their experience. I've tried unimaginable loss and violence and media circus. And in, in my point of view, they were also victims of the injustice because I don't. I believe that they had an extraordinarily vulnerable. One of the most vulnerable time that anybody could ever experience. And I. They were told things that they truly believed and that they hold on to those beliefs is understandable. I have. I don't have judgment. I don't. I never at any point have stood in judgment of their experience of loss and devastation and desperation for justice to be done and belief in a story that authorities and communities told them and supported with their own versions of evidence and narrative and point of view. I do believe that Amanda is also entitled to tell her story. And unfortunately those two young girls narratives are yoked. They just are. It just is. And there's no way to tell, you know, to, to reflect Amanda's humanity and experience of this time without, without talking about Meredith, without depicting Meredith. Sure, we had choices as to. And we, and we. And I made choices. Amanda and I talked early on about how tender and delicate this was and wanting to handle the depiction of Meredith and her family with the utmost sensitivity, knowing we were never going to win in that we could never satisfy everybody's sensibilities. We had to handle it in a way that felt deeply respectful and, and so. So we decided we were going to do it. When I speak of Meredith through Amanda's experience of Meredith only and scenes that I could find in video or that were documented but that I wasn't going to imagine, make up fictitious family scenes inside of the Kercher, the family's experience, because that felt intrusive, invasive and wrong. And I'm sure that they. And I'm sorry that they. I'm sure they find this intrusive, invasive and wrong.

Mike Pesca (33:01)

K.J. steinberg is the writer and creator of the Hulu series the Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. It has been airing regularly and the series finale is October 1st. Thank you so much, KJ. Good to talk to you.

KJ Steinberg (33:15)

Thank you so much, Mike. It was a pleasure.

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KJ Steinberg (33:54)

Experian.

Mike Pesca (34:00)

And now the spiel points 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the 20 point Gaza Peace plan are all about the hostages. Now, this war is a multigenerational, enormously costly humanitarian disaster. And a full quarter of the plan to end it is about 20 people and the bodies of some others. Why? Because Israel really cares about their hostages. All Israelis know their names. All Israelis know their stories. All Israelis weep and grieve for them and prioritize them among their war aims. But wait, every country cares about their hostages. Do they? Did you, as an American, know about this?

KJ Steinberg (34:45)

Afghanistan's released a US Citizen who'd been detained since December, Amir Ameri, was released through Qatari mediation and arrived in the capital, Doha, Sunday night.

Mike Pesca (34:55)

It happened two days ago. I know there's a lot going on in the world, but chances are you didn't hear of that. I found two news clips of that release online. One Fox and this one, which was Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, yes. Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera, was the go between, as is the case with all Taliban negotiations. Adam Bowler, the US Special envoy for hostage response, has actually been doing quite an amazing job, even if you don't know about it. Not that it's a secret. The Biden administration also did their part.

KJ Steinberg (35:26)

It was a homecoming celebration this afternoon for Ryan Corbett, the Dansville man who was held hostage by the Taliban for nearly 900 days.

Mike Pesca (35:34)

Corbett's release was on January 21, 2025, to embarrass Joe Biden. There's a bit of hostage release history there. The Iranians did not release the hostages until after Ronald Reagan was sworn in to embarrass Jimmy Carter. But it was the State Department of the Bidens that did handle that negotiation. Did they trumpet it? Did we hear about it? Israel knows and cares about its people. America doesn't about ours. Oh, if we hear that a hostage was released, we'll say generally, oh, that's good. But we just learned about the detention in the first place in the sentence setting up the fact of their release. Okay, well, you might say Israel is a country of 10 million. Easier to know and care about your citizens when you're 1/30 the size of the United States. Well, Atlanta is a city of six and a half million people in the metro area. Did many Atlantans know this name for roughly two years and four months wrongfully detained by the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan? And now, as Atlanta resident George Glesman is home, There's a different dynamic in a small, tight knit country with a common creed. Israel was founded specifically to protect Jews, but they do take seriously their commitments to protect all their citizens. Last August, a Bedouin, one of five Arab Israeli citizens abducted on October 7, was rescued by the Israel Defense Forces. Of course, at their great peril. Here is the IDF spokesman afterward talking about the operation and then he gives us the count.

IDF Spokesman (37:11)

At the time, we cannot go into many details of this special operation, but I can share that Israeli commandos rescued Qaed Farhan Al Qadi from an underground tunnel following accurate intelligence. His medical condition is stable and he will undergo examination in hospital. His family had been waiting 326 days to receive the news they did today. But there are still 108 hostages whose families are still waiting to hear news that their loved ones are home. And they should know that we will not rest. We will not rest until we fulfill our mission to bring all our hostages back home.

Mike Pesca (38:04)

And now the number of live souls is down to 20. Israel and Netanyahu's critics paint their prioritization, the 20 as dishonest or manipulative or a pretext to keep fighting and killing Gazans. But no matter Netanyahu's always present political calculations, this is a genuine part of Israeli society. Their concern for their hostages, by extension, their concern for each other. And it is clearly sincere and it's often to their detriment that they care so much. It was a forcibly lopsided past negotiation that led to the release of Yahasse Sinwar to free a single Israeli soldier. And one could argue, as many of Israel's critics do, that they care about their own to affair the well, endangering others in order to protect and rescue Jews. I would say almost all Israelis would quibble with the first clause of that statement, but none would argue with the second. They want to protect and rescue Jews and each other and their citizens, they know and care and put in the forefront of their concerns the safety of their people. America quite clearly does not. We might think we do. But let me ask you to place these names. Wilbert Castaneda. Jorge Marcelo Vargas. Lucas Hunter. Renzo Castillo. Now, you might guess they're hostages somewhere and maybe you could even guess the name of the country going by most of the last names I read there, it's Venezuela. The Foley foundation, named after James Foley himself a hostage, a journalist who was killed, and it's now run by his mother. Diane Foley, who's been a guest of the gist, keeps a list 54Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage in 17 countries around the world. There was one time, I would say in the last 10 years, when even 10% of Americans knew one name of one hostage and that was the already famous basketball player, Brittney Griner. And by the way, her freedom was fracturing radio rather than unifying to our country. Whether it's a symptom of size heterogeneity or the deluge of other news, Americans do not have a shared sense of commitment to each other that other countries and especially this one other country definitely has. In a way, a very cold blooded way. It's an advantage. We can't be manipulated by hostage taking. We can't be hurt. That is, I suppose, an upside of not feeling foreign. That's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the Gist and Ashley Kahn is our production coordinator. Astra Green is still helping out with some of the socials, but you know what, Jeff Craig, he's riding hard on all things social. Kathleen Sykes, she writes the gist list with me. To subscribe to the Just List for a 25% discount, text Mike at 33777. Now every Wednesday on the Just List I have a long piece and tomorrow I will talk to a past guest of the gist. That's Brendan Nyhan. We'll talk about the idea that America is ready to tear each other apart or shoot each other to death. And also the Dartmouth professor's ongoing study of what he calls the bright line. Watch how close to autocracy we're veering. Also, let me say, Michelle Pesca is CEO of Peach Fish Productions. Improve g Peru de Peru. And thanks for listening.