Amanda Knox was released from prison in 2007 after serving 8 years in prison for a crime she didn't commit. She talks about her experience with the system, her relationship with the prosecutor, and how she came out the other side of it.
00:00:24.000Well, that whole question of what does it mean to be free?
00:00:28.000And what, you know, yes, there's the physical, like, oh, you're out of prison, but then also, is your life the thing that you expected it to be?
00:00:36.000And how do you make your own freedom when you feel hemmed in by all of the things that happen to you?
00:00:42.000Yeah, you're connected to that forever.
00:00:45.000That's always going to be a part of your life.
00:00:47.000It's not like anything else that didn't really happen, like you didn't do anything.
00:00:53.000You're connected to something that you didn't really do forever.
00:01:51.000So, you know, early 2000s when the Internet was released.
00:01:55.000I think that that played a huge role of people sort of going into their little echo chambers and fighting online.
00:02:07.000And so I think that there was, yeah, it was a case that for whatever reason, rose above the...
00:02:18.000Ultimately, this case was actually very simple, and it wouldn't have risen to the level of international infamy were it not for the series of mistakes that the prosecution and the detectives made at the very beginning by trying to pin a man's crime on me, a woman.
00:02:40.000I wrote a book called Waiting to Be Heard.
00:02:42.000And then more recently, I wrote this book, Free My Search for Meaning, which covers like, you know, you can read it and learn about the case, but it's mostly about how do you come out of an experience like that and make sense of it.
00:02:56.000And then one of the big stories in it is how I then developed a relationship with my prosecutor, which I think you'll...
00:03:03.000Probably be in the camp of people of thinking that I'm utterly insane for having done that.
00:06:50.000And I saw you in the media, and I've seen how the media represented you, but knowing from experience, I know how that can be very misrepresentative.
00:07:00.000So I said to him, I want to know who you really are, and I hope that you might be interested to know who I really am, because I don't think you know who I really am.
00:07:11.000I don't think that you would have prosecuted me if you knew who I really am.
00:07:14.000And that was the beginning of the dialogue.
00:07:17.000This, like, I went out of my way to acknowledge that he might have had noble motivations, even if he was wrong.
00:07:26.000And I think this is, like, a really important thing, is I wanted to give him radical benefit of the doubt.
00:07:43.000This horrible thing that happened to me could have been the result of understandable mistakes.
00:07:50.000And if anything, I think coming into contact with the Innocence Movement and criminal justice system stuff and reform, all the stuff that I've learned after having gone through this experience has made me realize that some of the most horrible things can happen.
00:08:05.000And can be enacted by people who have the best of intentions.
00:08:09.000And so I assumed that of him, and I gave him that benefit of the doubt.
00:08:13.000And as soon as I opened that door, like, hey, you hurt me, but maybe that wasn't your intention.
00:08:21.000Maybe your intention was something else.
00:08:24.000He filled that void with his story and his message and what he wanted me to understand about himself.
00:08:34.000I mean, one of the wildest things about this book is that I talk about, like, I do not sugarcoat what I went through, like, and especially what he did to me.
00:08:43.000Like, I very, like, clearly set out, like, here's the fucked up shit he said about me in court, completely without evidence, like, totally made up bullshit.
00:08:59.000And also, and also, here is a person who might have had, like, in doing so, might have been coming from a place of trying to rationalize things in his own mind, which is a thing that we all do.
00:09:15.000We're all just sort of interpreting our reality in the way that suits us.
00:09:20.000And so I wrote this book from my perspective.
00:09:27.000I translated the entire thing into Italian before it ever got published so that I could share it with him, so that he would know what I was saying about him in public, what was imminently going to come out.
00:09:39.000And his response was, I have never felt more seen.
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00:12:26.000And this is where the Buddhist in me comes out, where you can have extreme anger towards a person and at the same time hold them in your hand as this tender, fallible creature that is capable of violence against you but is also capable of being hurt.
00:12:52.000Just because someone hurt you doesn't mean that they're not capable of being hurt.
00:12:56.000And I certainly don't want to be in the position of hurting someone.
00:13:03.000And if anything, like, one thing that I've communicated to him is like, look, I don't know if you're ever going to really wrap your head around what you did to me.
00:14:31.000Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they are attracted to them or they find them to be beautiful or desirable and they know that that woman wants to have nothing to do with them.
00:17:23.000Yeah, but in terms of trying to take beautiful women down a peg, I think you're right.
00:17:29.000I also think that something that was going on in my case that I think you also tend to see in those situations where you're trying to take beautiful women down a peg is this idea of pitting women against each other.
00:17:42.000That was a huge thing in my case where they were suggesting that here I was, this free-spirited but also...
00:17:51.000Hoary, you know, American girl versus the uptight, judgmental British girl.
00:17:59.000And therefore they hated each other and with, you know, with a vengeance, with a lethal vengeance.
00:18:06.000And then this idea of like a murder orgy appeared where this pornographic fantasy of women like expressing...
00:18:19.000their own violent fantasies towards each other in real life and using men as pawns
00:18:27.000I think you see that a lot, you know, even in like a person I write about in this book who's become a dear friend of mine is Monica Lewinsky and how I feel like people really wanted to bring Her down a peg in part because they wanted to bring Hillary down a peg and the whole like...
00:18:55.000The person who actually committed the affair was sort of, I mean, he definitely got his part, but it was all like a political game of they're trying to take down the man, but they're also taking down the woman, and they're especially railroading this young woman who made a mistake, and it became known as the Monica Lewinsky scandal and not, you know, the Bill Clinton affair or whatever.
00:19:14.000Like, it matters what you name a thing, and it seemed like the legacy of that and the person who became defined entirely by that scandal.
00:19:24.000Happened to be Monica, the one who was the person with the least amount of power and agency in that equation.
00:21:22.000But also, like, when you look at Bill Clinton, this handsome president, and then you look at Linda Tripp, who is very unattractive, that also plays in, like, I want to take him down, too.
00:21:34.000And probably I want to take her down as well.
00:21:37.000Like, there's a lot of, like, fuck everybody else.
00:22:27.000Yeah, and then you have to spend the rest of your life with secret service following you around so you can't exist in the world as a normal human being.
00:24:05.000It's a strange social position that I don't think is manageable for anyone.
00:24:12.000I don't think the human mind is prepared.
00:24:16.000To be in that kind of a position of power and not have it completely distort what you are.
00:24:23.000And then there's the relationships that you have to have with all these various politicians and then special interest groups and lobbyists and then foreign leaders and then...
00:24:46.000Okay, so this story didn't actually make it in my book, but it is one that I wanted to tell you because it talks about how my weird relationship with other people who are in positions of power like police officers, right?
00:25:04.000I'm an advocate of criminal justice reform.
00:25:07.000I talk a lot about, like, I go and testify in front of my, you know, state Congress trying to get certain laws passed to protect, you know, innocent people.
00:25:15.000And one thing that I like to point out is that I'm not anti-law enforcement.
00:26:17.000But in the middle of the night, we hear someone yelling.
00:26:23.000Out in the street, we think there's some drunk guy out there, but it gets closer and closer and closer until finally there is a huge bang, and my husband gets up in his tighty-whities and says one thing to me, call the police before he marches downstairs.
00:26:45.000We were upstairs in the second story, and we hear a bang, we hear yelling.
00:26:52.000And I don't know if the last thing I'm ever going to hear from my husband at that point is call the police, which is an interesting final words to get from the love of your life when you're me.
00:27:04.000And my, you know, infant son is crying.
00:27:08.000You know, two-year-old daughter at the time is going, what's going on?
00:27:13.000And I'm trying to calm him while reassure her, while looking around the room thinking, how do I barricade a door?
00:27:22.000And can I jump out of a window with two small children?
00:28:05.000And they are very nice to my daughter.
00:28:07.000And they give her a nice little, you know, police badge.
00:28:10.000And I'm sitting here thinking, great, now I'm going to have to throw a police-themed birthday party for her because now she's going to be super into police.
00:28:16.000And I'm just like, what is happening to my life?
00:28:18.000And I'm scared that they're going to recognize me.
00:28:20.000And I'm scared that they're going to think maybe she faked a break in.
00:28:23.000Like, all of that is going on in my head.
00:29:58.000And thankfully not armed, but like my husband didn't know when he walked down the stairs in his underwear without any, like he grabbed a broom on his way down and that was, he was between putting himself and a broom between whoever this person was who had just kicked in the front door through the deadbolt and his family.
00:30:20.000And that might have been the last time I ever saw him, you know?
00:30:27.000I try to, like, joke about it now, where I actually did a stand-up bit about it a while back, about how I was, like, testing my butt to see if it was bouncy enough to, like, jump out of the window and bounce.
00:30:39.000But, like, when I think back on it, it's just, it's still scary, you know?
00:30:47.000And I don't like how I feel right now.
00:30:54.000When I'm scared, I'm supposed to call the police, but I'm also scared to call the police.
00:30:59.000And so, you know, when I go and do advocacy work for, you know, I'm now on the board of an organization called the Innocence Center, InnocenceCenter.org, which, by the way, just got a bunch of federal funding taken away.
00:31:39.000I mean, there's a federal funding that is designed for innocence organizations, and I think what I...
00:31:48.000is that there are certain words that sort of became taboo within the administration, that if you were using these words or these terminologies that they associate with like DEI, that then that sort of puts you on the list of being cut for federal funding.
00:32:08.000And one of those words was like the word fair.
00:32:11.000And in an organization that is interested in justice and For in getting innocent people out of prison, the word fair is going to come up quite a bit.
00:33:28.000But I know that like I have always thought that innocence and justice were bipartisan issues, and I thought that we had been making great strides in sort of welcoming in both liberal and conservative partners in this ongoing fight.
00:33:48.000But because these things disproportionately impact people of color, you're going to see...
00:33:56.000Language around that that acknowledges that fact.
00:33:59.000And I think that that has been sort of put in...
00:34:03.000Innocence organizations are now being put into DEI camps and we're being stripped of funding.
00:34:13.000I hope that that's an oversight issue and that they're going to recognize the mistake that they're making.
00:34:19.000But as it stands right now, innocence organizations, not just the one that I'm associated with, are scrambling to get the funding that they were promised to continue doing, you know.
00:34:30.000Doing the things that cost money, like filing all of their work and going through all of the casework and doing the DNA tests and doing investigations to see if you can reach the witnesses that maybe have changed their stories in all these years.
00:34:44.000It takes a lot of money and resources to prove a person's innocence.
00:34:48.000You have to reinvestigate a case, and we don't have the funding that we used to.
00:34:56.000This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.
00:34:58.000Speed dating is an interesting concept, isn't it?
00:35:01.000Setting an allotted amount of time to get to know as many people as you can.
00:35:05.000It increases your chances of finding a good match, and there's not a whole lot of room for bullshit.
00:35:09.000You have to cut to the chase to find what you're looking for.
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00:36:46.000What you would call almost like slush fund NGOs, where they're inappropriately moving funds around and doing stuff.
00:36:55.000And I don't know if you've ever seen any of Mike Benz's work, but he essentially says that USAID is really there to do things that are too dirty for the CIA.
00:37:05.000So the extraordinary amount of money that was being moved around, there's a certain percentage of it.
00:37:59.000And that's what I think we're brushing up against right now.
00:38:05.000And as someone who really is, like, just interested in keeping, especially this issue, like, this is a human, like, we all should be on the same side about this.
00:38:32.000I would, you know, and if you need to put me in contact, like, I would be happy to...
00:38:37.000You know, one of the things through working with Josh and, you know, just through this podcast, we've gotten a lot of people released that were wrongfully convicted.
00:38:47.000And, you know, when you go over the amount of corruption that's involved, and I think there's an issue...
00:38:57.000With human beings, whenever there's a binary position, a one or a zero, you win or you lose.
00:42:46.000And was it a story that spoke to them?
00:42:48.000And was it a story that lingered for them?
00:42:51.000And that's, you know, an ongoing thing that I write about is like, okay, here's this crazy story that is not true.
00:42:59.000That took over my life and that still has this huge role.
00:43:04.000Like, I'm still in conversation with that crazy story that was written about me.
00:43:09.000And the fact that, like, my entire identity is now wrapped up in the death of my friend that I had nothing to do with and I'll forever be defined by because it's such a captivating story.
00:43:22.000And because the prosecutor was dead set on winning.
00:43:29.000And wasn't necessarily interested in the truth.
00:43:33.000What he says, and it's very, again, it goes back to like, what are we telling ourselves?
00:44:23.000And he believes that he was doing the right thing because that's what he was trained and incentivized to do.
00:44:31.000In the same way that, like, you know, journalists, if you ask journalists back who covered the case back in the day, they'll be like, well, we were doing our job.
00:44:39.000Our job was to sell the best story that we could to our audience.
00:44:46.000And so that's when it gets, like, fucked up.
00:44:48.000Because, like, how have our institutions that we've relied on to be truth-seeking institutions been corrupted from the inside by...
00:44:58.000Ultimately, what is a question of money or power?
00:45:03.000When politics gets brought into the equation with criminal justice, suddenly your prosecutor is now wanting to win cases, not because they're the right cases to win, but because they want to be elected.
00:45:56.000But if you're in that little echo chamber of a system and that's what your reward structure is, of course that's what you're going to end up delivering if you're somebody who doesn't have the introspection to question, like, okay, wait, what am I doing and what is the point of all of this and do you have certain principles?
00:46:13.000But again, the people who rise to the top are maybe the ones who are willing to question those principles in order to achieve certain ends.
00:46:20.000Yeah, and then there's also the problem with you're working for a corporation if you're in the news.
00:46:25.000If you're not an independent journalist who has, like, rock-solid personal ethics, you're working for a corporation, and your job is...
00:46:33.000To make money for your shareholders, ultimately.
00:46:35.000And the way you do that is to get as many people to click on those links as possible.
00:46:38.000And maybe the person who's on the ground has a certain vision for what they want their on-the-ground reporting to do.
00:46:44.000But then once it gets in the hands of editors and other editors, it becomes completely warped from the thing that they were originally reporting on because the person who's over here is so divorced from the actual on-the-ground story and they know instead the story that's going to sell.
00:47:08.000It's the same sort of distortion when you were talking about prosecutors just trying to win.
00:47:15.000It's this thing where, and ultimately, it's...
00:47:22.000It's a severe distortion of what the best case scenario is.
00:47:28.000The best case scenario is prosecutors don't care about winning.
00:47:33.000They care about finding truly guilty people.
00:47:37.000And in cases where someone, whether they withhold evidence that could have exonerated an innocent person or whether they distort things or twist things around in order to win.
00:47:51.000They should be forever removed from that system.
00:47:55.000You should never be allowed to do that.
00:47:58.000But Kamala Harris did that and rose to be vice president and almost became president.
00:48:04.000And she is absolutely guilty of doing that.
00:49:27.000In conversations with my prosecutor, how has he convinced himself that he's the good guy?
00:49:36.000And how has that changed when I have approached him, not as an adversary, but as someone who is, I wouldn't say, like, tolerant, because I've never put myself in a position of sort of saying, oh, what you did was not a big deal.
00:49:55.000Like, when I approached him, I was like, what you did was a big deal, and you were wrong, and you hurt people.
00:50:00.000But, like, acknowledging his humanity and the complexity of him and acknowledging that, like, he's not an evil person.
00:50:30.000I mean, what he did, it's interesting.
00:50:33.000He wrote a whole book about the case and he talked about how when he first arrived at the scene, he immediately knew that it was a conspiracy because he looked at the broken window, how the person had actually broken into our home and said, there's no way, zero chance that a burglar would have broken into a house this way.
00:50:58.000He just was like 100% convinced that immediately that the break-in was staged.
00:51:05.000And if you take that, if you and your brain truly believe that, then what logically follows is a lot of what he then...
00:51:17.000Came up with, well, someone in the house is trying to cover up for a crime that they were involved in.
00:51:24.000Well, there are three other girls, one of whom was in Rome, one of whom is another Italian girl who was with her boyfriend and friends, and one of whom is the American girl who was with her boyfriend that night, but who also happened to be the one who called the police and brought attention to the house.
00:51:39.000So maybe because we found her at the scene of the crime, all of it sort of starts to make...
00:51:49.000How did he reconcile that in the book?
00:51:56.000So he goes, okay, well, then we discovered that, you know, all of this DNA of the person who actually committed the crime, right?
00:52:03.000Like, you know, they finally get the DNA back and it's all pointing to this guy who has a history of breaking and entering and aggression towards women.
00:52:10.000And he doesn't go, oh, no, we made a mistake.
00:52:12.000He goes, oh, how can now he be involved in this thing that I know Amanda's involved in because I know the break-in was staged.
00:52:21.000And, you know, like, so these the this is how a person with good with genuinely good intentions can can have false beliefs that then logic from which one can logically derive.
00:52:36.000An insane story that requires, like, him to now believe, like, one of the things that I pointed out to him that just, like, drives me nuts that he continues to, like, somehow hang on to is this idea that I was in a threesome with, like, I was in a three-way relationship with my actual boyfriend, Raffaele, and this burglar, Rudy Gaudet.
00:52:57.000And I was like, where are you coming up with that?
00:53:03.000Whenever I interviewed Rudy, like he talks about interviewing, you know, interrogating Rudy, Rudy always seemed to have affectionate things to say about.
00:53:29.000And he's like, well, if he was involved in the crime and you're involved in the crime and he's sort of talking about you in an affectionate way, then logically...
00:53:39.000It makes sense that you were in this three-way relationship with Raphael and Rudy.
00:55:07.000It's not me forgiving you and you having this hall pass just to be a piece of shit because you had this theory that you're still accusing me of.
00:55:52.000Like, what he did, it was not just a crime, but it was a conspiracy.
00:55:57.000Yeah, I would have to say that I agree that I always wondered where the adults were in the room.
00:56:09.000You know, the whole first two years of my imprisonment, I was like, this is all a huge mistake, and it's really obviously a huge mistake, and when are the mommies and daddies going to show up and say, okay, kids, stop your squabbling, let's straighten things out.
00:59:31.000And also, there's still fucked up shit in my life, and there's still fucked up shit in your life, and things could be better, and all of those things can be true at the same time.
00:59:41.000I'm still fighting to clear my name in Italy.
00:59:50.000So I've been cleared of like all the crazy, you know, horrible murder, orgy, all of that stuff cleared.
00:59:57.000The thing that remains, and this is just the bane of my fucking existence, is when they cleared me of having anything to do with the crime, they left open the possibility that I was present when the crime occurred.
01:00:15.000I believe the reason that they did this was because they wanted to find me guilty of something.
01:00:21.000And the thing that they found me guilty of was the way lesser crime on the list of all the crimes that were there, which was slander.
01:00:32.000They accused me of knowingly and willingly falsely accusing an innocent person of having committed this crime.
01:00:45.000Into implicating myself and my boss, Patrick Lumumba, of committing this crime.
01:00:54.000And I immediately retracted it, all of that, but that was one of the things that they were holding me accountable for.
01:01:02.000And they, to this day, I am still convicted in Italy of knowingly and willingly...
01:01:14.000I would have had to know that he was definitively innocent for this to be the case.
01:01:28.000And for that to be true, I would have to be physically present at the crime, even if I was not participating in it.
01:01:34.000So the legal standing right now to this day is that I was there.
01:01:40.000And that when I was interrogated, I knowingly and falsely accused an innocent person.
01:01:47.000I appealed this, by the way, to the European Court of Human Rights, and they ruled in my favor.
01:01:52.000They said that because I had been denied the right to have an attorney and an interpreter when I was being interrogated, that I should never have been convicted of that.
01:04:21.000And that's where this whole question of freedom comes in.
01:04:23.000Like, do I have to definitively, like...
01:04:29.000Do I need to definitively prove my innocence in the court of public opinion in order to feel free or to feel like I'm not—regardless of whether I definitively prove my innocence or not, am I ever going to be free of this?
01:04:46.000Is this ever going to be not touching me and impacting my life?
01:04:52.000And the answer that I've come to— Is, well, no.
01:04:56.000In the way that, like, any of our experiences have come to define us as human beings.
01:05:02.000And in a way, it's like another way of reframing this is, okay, these are my credentials now.
01:05:09.000Like, I went to the—I didn't go to four years of master's degree in poetry.
01:05:16.000I got a master's degree in— Whatever this is, I'm being fucked.
01:05:29.000I've learned things about the criminal justice system.
01:05:32.000I can see things that need to be fixed that are really common sense fixes to.
01:05:39.000There is no reason why we shouldn't be just recording.
01:05:45.000Any kind of communication, like any time that anyone is being questioned by anyone in law enforcement, there's no reason why we shouldn't be recording it.
01:05:54.000And I'm not talking about even just suspects because, like, there's been a whole, you know, world of advocacy around, like, recording interrogations, right?
01:06:03.000Like, custodial interrogations and especially...
01:06:08.000Making it so that police officers can't lie to you when you're being interrogated, because that was a huge thing that impacted me as a young, confused, overwhelmed human being, is police lying to me and telling me that they have proof that I was there when the crime occurred, and it made me feel like I was insane.
01:06:26.000And so the problem of police lying to you is not just that it's a bullying technique, but it warps your sense of reality and you start to question yourself.
01:06:35.000And so there's psychological research to show that...
01:06:38.000There are very negative consequences for police lying to you during interrogation.
01:06:42.000But at the very least, if you record it, you can sort of track how that is impacting a person who is a suspect.
01:06:49.000The Wild West of all of this is eyewitnesses or anyone else who is being questioned by police because there's no Miranda rights.
01:06:59.000As a person who is being questioned by police, you don't really have...
01:07:07.000Like you don't you don't have like one of the things that they say in my case is that I never had the right to an attorney because I wasn't a suspect.
01:07:54.000For me, I think that if you consider how many wrongful convictions happen because of misidentification by witnesses or the number of times that, like, witnesses say, well, I wasn't really sure that it was him, but the police sort of coaxed me or...
01:08:11.000Pressured me into saying it was him and sort of made it known to me that it was him.
01:08:15.000Like there are lots of things that are happening behind closed doors that we really don't have an excuse for not fixing when every single one of us has a recording device in our pocket at all times.
01:08:26.000And the amount of resistance to like getting just really common sense changes like that to happen from like law enforcement lobbies is just...
01:08:37.000So frustrating as someone who, like, shows up again and again and again to, like, try to make—because it seems like this adversarial thing.
01:08:47.000It's not, like, victims' rights versus defendants' rights.
01:08:50.000It's not law enforcement versus, you know, innocence.
01:08:53.000It's, like, we're all on the same page.
01:08:55.000Why can't we just acknowledge a true thing?
01:08:59.000That's been one of my biggest frustrations in this world is, like, feeling like— We should all be on the same side and we should be making common sense changes and That don't you know, that's the way the system is structured.
01:09:13.000You know, there's two sides trying to win and When you lose you don't like to lose right so people would cheat to win But like lose what are you losing?
01:10:30.000It's a real problem in the way the system is structured.
01:10:34.000And the feeling that you have to, in order to do the right thing, you just have to switch sides, that really bothers me.
01:10:40.000Also because one thing that I would love to see more of is more of a collaboration between victims' rights advocates and innocents' rights advocates.
01:10:53.000But, like, oftentimes you see us sort of pitted against each other as if, like, you know, I've always felt that the criminal justice system never did enough for victims.
01:11:09.000That, like, the only compensation that victims are really given is the idea that you're going to punish the perpetrator.
01:11:17.000And I've always wanted to know how is the system going to...
01:11:23.000Help the victim rebuild their life and take back and, like, reclaim what can be reclaimed of their experience and be uplifted.
01:11:33.000Well, that's supposedly where the civil suits come in.
01:11:36.000Supposedly, but, like, you're suing the person who committed the crime, and are you ever actually going to get any money from them?
01:11:43.000Well, sometimes money's awarded to families by the state.
01:12:49.000I used you as an example of things that don't break you, but that you would never want to wish on anyone else.
01:12:57.000But then the result of that is this person comes out extraordinary.
01:13:01.000Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of the obstacles.
01:13:04.000I mean, it's a lot of stuff that I write about in the book, actually.
01:13:07.000One of the things that my goal with this book was to try to Yes, what happened to me is like, oh, crazy story happened to a girl one time.
01:13:16.000But also there are universal lessons and truths that I've derived from my experience that make me – and when I communicate them, they make me feel less ostracized or less singled out as a human being.
01:13:30.000And one of those is there is opportunity in every tragedy.
01:13:41.000What my tragedy challenged me to do was to not be broken by it.
01:13:51.000And my definition of being broken by it was coming out of it a person who was angry and embittered and diminished by this experience.
01:14:09.000And the rebellious side of me was like, fuck that.
01:14:49.000I did not want this horrible experience to define me on its terms.
01:14:55.000I wanted to define me on my own terms.
01:14:57.000And I think the challenge that any one of us has is...
01:15:03.000Remembering what even our terms are when we're feeling sort of overwhelmed with the existential crisis of it all.
01:15:11.000And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they are stuck, they are fixated, they dwell on the life that they should have lived.
01:15:24.000Instead of acknowledging and accepting that this is the life that they are living.
01:15:32.000And when you are acting in the world as if...
01:15:36.000You are living the life that you should have lived.
01:15:38.000You are inevitably becoming ineffective.
01:15:41.000Like if I were to approach the world and be like, my prosecutor never should have done this to me and I never should have gone to prison and people never should have villainized me in the press, I would just find myself debilitated, utterly debilitated by the fact that reality is other than that.
01:15:58.000And I would just find myself angry and...
01:17:02.000I feel like I weirdly had a midlife crisis when I was 20 because my entire life fell apart.
01:17:08.000Or I was put on this track, this train that just like left the station and was going on its own and there was really nothing I could do to stop it.
01:18:14.000There's no checks and balances that are put in place to make sure a person's ego is not overwhelming them to the point where their initial idea of a conspiracy.
01:18:46.000And I think there's this weird resistance that people have to accepting the context around a person.
01:18:55.000Maybe because you realize that if you accept the context around the person, that feeling of self-righteousness that you're ultimately grasping onto.
01:19:06.000It dissipates because it does inevitably dissipate.
01:19:10.000But I think that's, again, that's a symptom of someone dwelling on the life that they should have lived instead of accepting the life that they have.
01:19:38.000I think that is a scary trap that victims can fall into is like how you then become self-destructive in your own mind as a result of someone having been destructive towards you.
01:19:54.000I think that is the deepest tragedy of hurt is how it can then become implosive.
01:21:30.000And if he doesn't admit that, he will go to his grave haunted.
01:21:36.000And I think what's a really interesting thing for me is discovering what can come from approaching someone recognizing that.
01:21:50.000When I approached him, I approached him in a really unconventional way, right?
01:21:54.000Like, I'm trying to find common ground with this person.
01:21:58.000I'm deeply, genuinely curious about this person.
01:22:01.000I am primed to feel compassion for this person because that is just the mental and intentional space that I put myself in, in approaching him.
01:22:12.000And the surprising dividends that arise from that.
01:22:28.000But that doesn't mean that I can't be a very compelling influence of all the people in the world who could be nice to him and have that have an impact on him.
01:23:30.000I walk away from that encounter realizing that his well-being depends on me much more so than my well-being depends on him.
01:23:45.000And I think because deep down, he understands that there is this dynamic that, you know, whatever stories he can tell himself about what happened.
01:23:58.000He was the one who was in power, and I was the one who went to prison.
01:24:03.000And for me to be kind to him, I didn't have to do that.
01:24:58.000But, like, it had such an impact on me that I felt like I had discovered something about trauma and about healing and about people and dynamics and in a world that is so conflicted and where the people are, you know, not building bridges, they're blowing them up.
01:25:24.000I was like, I wanted to remind people of what happens when you take a chance and you take a stand.
01:26:15.000Negativity always, no matter what, leaves you with this residue, this like icky, even if you're correct, just like slime that's on, this psychic slime that's on you, no matter what.
01:26:35.000And that's your power, that you could sit across this person and treat them with compassion.
01:26:48.000I've never had anything remotely like your situation.
01:26:53.000But you've had encounters with people.
01:26:58.000I don't think you have to have as devastating of a situation.
01:27:03.000To, like, be in a position to know that you're doing the right thing in a moment.
01:27:08.000Like, for instance, when my husband got up in his whitey-tidies and walked down the stairs to put himself between me and his family and this crazy guy, I feel like maybe he felt that in that moment.
01:29:30.000Confidence is an objective analysis of all the facts.
01:29:35.000Doing the right thing, having a rock-solid ethical and moral foundation, and knowing you're doing the right thing, and knowing you can do it, that's confidence.
01:30:26.000There's doctors that do surgeries that are completely unnecessary just because they want the money.
01:30:31.000We were talking the other day about this guy who is an oncologist who treated people with chemotherapy who did not have cancer because he wanted the money.
01:30:43.000It was like, I think it was some insane number of people took this horrible poison to try to kill the cancer inside of them and ruin their lives.
01:30:52.000And there was nothing wrong with them.
01:30:57.000And I think his justification was even more sick.
01:31:00.000His justification was that he was always taught that you eat what you kill.
01:31:04.000And in that business, in the business of being a surgeon, in the business of being a doctor, you have to perform this medicine in order to get money.
01:31:15.000And this is the incentive structure that's put in front of you.
01:31:18.000I don't know if you know that, but chemotherapy is one of the most profitable things that a doctor can prescribe.
01:31:24.000They actually get an enormous amount of money from each individual person that they...
01:31:31.000Yeah, there's all sorts of very twisted and bizarre financial incentives.
01:31:36.000Again, these institutions that get warped by these various...
01:33:00.000Gender-affirming care thing where you're taking young kids and convincing them they need to be chemically castrated or physically castrated.
01:33:07.000There's a lot of weirdness in the world.
01:33:15.000And the motivation to do these things can be very hidden and masked with all sorts of incentives and the structure in which this institution was sort of created.
01:33:41.000Money and power are two very, very weird things.
01:33:44.000And without some sort of a higher power that you call upon or some sort of a higher power that you are beholden to and that you have to answer to, it's very difficult for people to make Decisions if they know they're not going to get caught.
01:34:02.000If they know they're not going to get in trouble.
01:34:03.000If you're a prosecutor and you're beyond reproach and all you have to do is...
01:34:07.000And the system protects you and everyone's protecting you.
01:34:10.000And not only that, once the wheels are in motion, the train's on the track, we can't turn the train around.
01:34:46.000It's coming out at the end of the summer, late summer.
01:34:57.000But one of the responses that I've had to my book and to the news that I'm telling my story in this way or in another way, and I write about this in the book, is this question of, do I have the right to tell my story?
01:37:30.000So some people are very explicit and say, like, don't you think you shouldn't be doing this when the Kircher family's lawyer says that you shouldn't be doing this and that it's offensive?
01:37:44.000And then I have to sit there and, again, do, like...
01:37:50.000Experience the rage that washes over me and then go, how do I have an effective conversation with this human being?
01:37:58.000How do I convey that my life matters too?
01:38:03.000And that there's room in this world to acknowledge all of the truth of what happened, which included my own.
01:38:11.000Victimization and my own story and the things that I've learned from it that I've had the privilege to learn from it because I'm still alive.
01:39:10.000There's all sorts of personal justifications and mental illness and there's people who hate women and there's people that, you know, whatever.
01:39:33.000Anybody who says you shouldn't be talking about it, but of course you should be, because there's a lot to be learned.
01:39:38.000There's a lot to be learned from, first of all, the admirable positions that you've taken, the way you've formed your life and who you are as a human being because of your struggle, because of this insane experience that you had to go through at fucking 20 years old.
01:40:08.000We shouldn't be conflicted in any way, shape or form about that.
01:40:12.000And I think there's a great deal that we can learn from your experiences.
01:40:17.000First of all, again, learn from the way that you've handled it, where you can sit across from that prosecutor and...
01:40:26.000This feeling of like being kind to this person who did this thing to you how it made you empowered I really do think that's the universe telling you you're on the right track You just can't listen to the peanut gallery.
01:40:41.000You can't listen to all the noise There's just too much noise and you have to learn how to do that on a much lesser scale I see that with friends who are famous, who read comments about them, read articles, and get infuriated.
01:40:57.000It ruins vacations because they have to type up a response.
01:41:01.000Yeah, the impulse to respond is like, you don't have to.
01:41:05.000Not only should you not respond, you shouldn't read what they're saying in the first place.
01:41:13.000I wonder if the fear is, and maybe this is my fear because I'm always questioning myself, is like, is there, I always want to like at least hear it and like cycle the thought through my mind so that I can test the validity of it in my mind.
01:42:37.000I mean, there's times where I was forced into responding, like during the whole COVID situation when CNN was saying I was taking veterinary medicine.
01:42:45.000And you were like, I need to clarify reality or not.
01:42:49.000Also, I need to say, hey, fuck you, because the world should say fuck you.
01:42:52.000You're not supposed to be able to do that.
01:42:54.000You're not supposed to be able to be the news and lie and then hold yourself to this moral high ground and say, we have to stop misinformation.
01:43:07.000Like, I've had to respond in that way.
01:43:09.000But, I mean, if I responded to everything that everybody ever says about me, I'd have no time for my children, for my family, for my life, for my job.
01:44:34.000Now, if I half-ass something, It will haunt me.
01:44:37.000If I have a bad podcast interview, if I think I interrupted too much or if I didn't ask the right questions, that will fuck with me for the rest of the day.
01:44:46.000I don't need other people to fuck with me.
01:46:09.000And so I can't promise anyone that doing things my way, which is like really trying to like push back against those impulses, which I recognize as being dangerous impulses, is going to necessarily lead to good things.
01:46:29.000It's not your job to promise people that.
01:48:23.000I don't think there's anybody else that I could point to that's ever been through anything even remotely close to what you've been through and come out the way you have.
01:48:31.000The only examples that maybe I could point to are some of the people that I've dealt with through Josh.
01:48:37.000Where we brought people in that were wrongly accused, that went through these horrible incarcerations and came out on the other side.
01:48:44.000These incredibly well-read, brilliant, articulate people that are so thoughtful and so introspective and then made that time in prison empower them.
01:49:32.000And so on the one hand, yes, I'm only answerable ultimately to myself.
01:49:38.000But when I really sit down and sit with it, part of the reason why I was able to approach my prosecutor with the perspective that I had was realizing that there is a fluidity between us and all of us where we're all influencing each other
01:49:58.000And people in his life have now, like, the influences in his life, people I will never have met have had direct influences in my life because it's been, like, this fluid path, like, this connectedness between me and him, me and you.
01:50:15.000Any person we talk to, any person we encounter is going to then have this ripple effect.
01:50:20.000And so, on the one hand, yes, like, I'm a drop.
01:50:23.000But I'm also a drop in an ocean that has a ripple effect, and that ripple is going to interact with your ripple and all these other ripples.
01:50:31.000And so, yes, I am answerable to myself, but I also feel like I can't ignore the potential impact that my ripple might have on another person.
01:50:46.000And I've been really rewarded in the way that I have...
01:50:55.000I've had someone tell me that they didn't kill themselves because one day they heard me in an interview and that they were going to kill themselves and they didn't.
01:51:08.000I never in my wildest dreams thought that me just deciding to have a conversation with someone one day on a podcast would save a human being's life.
01:51:18.000But those are those The interconnected fluidness of all of us that I also can't discount.
01:52:01.000That is very beneficial to other people that are thinking privately because you get to hear people think publicly and especially a person like you that's very exemplary and that I would love if more people could follow that line of thinking and your example.
01:52:21.000It's a beautiful example of someone who did nothing wrong but had wrong done to them and came out a better person because of it.
01:54:32.000The flag of moral virtue that you're waving to show that you're better than other people.
01:54:36.000But in doing so, you're attacking that person, which is inherently evil.
01:54:40.000Like you're using this justification that you're correct to try to ruin someone's lives or ruin someone's reputation or ruin someone's feelings, to hurt them that day, to reach out to them and attack.
01:54:53.000And it's almost always based on a feeling of personal inadequacy, almost always based on your life is not what you want.
01:55:01.000You know, people leaving horrible comments on someone's Instagram page or Twitter page, there's no way you're living the life that you want to live.
01:55:14.000There's no way that you're in an ideal situation of love and harmony and success and, you know, you have great friends and life is amazing.
01:55:28.000If you're typing those things, there's no way.
01:55:31.000It's a human flaw and it's accentuated by this disconnect that comes with social media.
01:55:38.000This disconnect of being able to send a message to someone and have no consequences and no social cues not to see the person read it and get hurt by it.
01:55:49.000You're like sending little bombs over the fence.
01:55:53.000Yeah, we are primed to be psychopaths.
01:55:58.000Our algorithms have primed us to be psychopaths.
01:56:29.000Hurting someone that you don't even know, that doesn't help you.
01:56:32.000You should be—you have—I always try to—this is what I tell my friends when I talk about reading comments and reading things and engaging with social media because— I have friends where it will ruin their week, ruin their day.
01:56:46.000Like one comment will fuck them up and they'll come to me and talk to me about it.
01:56:50.000I'm like, listen, I want you to think about your mind and your attention like it's a number.
01:56:55.000Like you have energy and like a battery, right?
01:56:59.000Or bandwidth that's on a broadband cable.
01:57:04.000If you're spending 30 units of your precious time concentrating on someone who's saying something that's not even true, that's mean and horrible, and it's the worst possible, least charitable position on you.
01:57:18.000You're robbing yourself of these precious units of attention.
01:58:32.000And so how do we get back to communicating with each other, not from an adversarial place, which automatically instigates defensiveness and sort of refusal to acknowledge anything.
02:04:02.000And again, coming from that place of how dare you joke about going to prison for a crime you didn't commit when you're not the real victim and whatever.
02:04:16.000You're a person who has been—I associate you with a tragedy, therefore you have to stay in tragedy space, and moving into comedic space is not allowed.
02:04:24.000And so I'm just curious what your thoughts are about that.
02:04:54.000Even my own wife jokes around about it because when my kids were really little, there was one time where my wife wanted to go to Disneyland and I said, I can't.
02:05:51.000Also, as if everyone only lives in L.A. and you weren't...
02:05:55.000Like, the only people worth talking to are going to be in L.A. Also, I was like, I would rather be broke and not live under the thumb of retarded government than stay in L.A. and have a successful career.
02:11:02.000It's like part of the learning experience of human culture.
02:11:05.000Like, civilization has to have a bunch of fucking people talking about stuff, and a bunch of it's noise, and it's up to you to figure out what's noise.
02:11:14.000And, like, well, then you see someone who's not noise, and who's someone who's living an exemplary life, and go, okay.
02:11:29.000You know how people are going to listen to what you just said about that?
02:11:32.000And just like, when they're alone, like throughout the day, when they're driving their car, when they're sitting on the train, they're going to think about that.
02:11:39.000I mean, I'm still thinking about that.
02:11:41.000I'm still like trying to figure it out.
02:13:57.000And you have all these pieces in motion, and then you realize, like, oh my god, this is, like, kind of beyond my control, and I don't like where it's going, but everything's still moving.
02:14:08.000It takes a lot to pull that back, and you kind of have to slow it down in stages, you know?
02:14:15.000You have to, like, throw things off the side of the car.
02:14:17.000Like, what's going—got to get rid of this, got to get rid of that.
02:14:20.000You're going to have to cut people out of your life sometimes.
02:14:24.000Sometimes certain people, they're not going to learn.
02:14:26.000And I think, you know, the universe provides them as an example of how not to live, but also as a puzzle that you need to solve.
02:14:37.000If this person is continually bringing negative things into your life and continually tripping you up and sabotaging you, you have to, at a certain point in time, separate yourself.
02:19:21.000The idea being that when you sit down, you really notice that your mind is going all over the place and is just reacting like a monkey.
02:19:28.000But also, another thing that monkeys are famous for is just masturbating voraciously.
02:19:33.000And I feel like that's also what's happening in my mind.
02:19:36.000I sit down and notice how perverted my mind is when I'm actually just sitting there meditating in a nice group of people on a Sunday morning.
02:20:17.000There's something, again, one of those weird, unintended consequences of just trying to sit back and take stock is rediscovering parts of yourself that have been sort of diminished or made dormant because of the stress of existence.
02:21:23.000It's just I do it while I'm doing other things.
02:21:25.000I've always said that martial arts is a form of moving meditation because it's so singular in its focus that it requires all of your thoughts and it cleanses your mind.
02:25:08.000And you and this person are trying to solve each other's puzzle, and you're essentially trying to kill each other, but in a friendly way, like your friends, because you can tap out.
02:26:45.000Given that that is your meditative practice, Do you find that in the moment that you release the bow and that becoming one and that flow state that you have entered into in order to perfectly align yourself with the bow and the arrow, Does that moment of release ever result in some kind of unconscious processing coming into your consciousness?
02:27:14.000So like some kind of a new awareness of something that you've been trying to figure out?
02:27:19.000Do you ever find yourself, like, in the moment that you are, like, immediately exiting that flow state?
02:27:36.000Do you feel more clarity about your life or what you need to do?
02:27:40.000Or that thing that you weren't thinking about, like, your To-do list or your bills or that argument that you've had with somebody that you care about, like, does anything come into focus or do you find you walk away from an encounter in jiu-jitsu like knowing, not just feeling better emotionally, but like knowing what you need to do next?
02:28:38.000It's so singular in the focus that you don't really think about anything else.
02:28:44.000So there's no room for like, oh, now I know what I did wrong in my life.
02:28:48.000Yeah, I guess one of the benefits that I get from meditation is feeling like when I come out of meditation, I feel like I have a clarity of purpose that I might not have had because I was...
02:29:01.000I had monkey mind, and I was distracted, and I was using my bandwidth with so much, and so you just tune down what your bandwidth is paying attention to, and then you re-enter the world with a renewed sense of clarity, and you're not as distracted.
02:29:19.000You're not on that treadmill of thought.
02:29:21.000Yeah, I think that comes, to me at least, that comes much more through rigorous exercise.
02:33:09.000That I do think is a genuine thing and a genuine difference is it's easier for me to be nurturing in the sense that like no one would bat an eye if I saw a kid who was like, I couldn't figure out where their mom was, and I were to approach them and say, come here, honey, let me help you.
02:33:46.000Yeah, because, like, if you're just, like, a guy sitting on a bench and your kids are playing, like, how does anyone know that you aren't just a guy?
02:36:16.000You could find yourself motivated by the wrong things and doing things for the wrong reasons, like doing things just for money and just for this or just for that.
02:36:29.000but then you have to realize what you're doing and And stay focused on the prize, yeah.
02:36:34.000Take the steps to not wanna do that anymore.
02:36:37.000But it's like, There's people listening to this right now, like, oh, that's easy for you to say, because I have to do this and I have to do that.
02:37:11.000It's probably about five hours, which is crazy.
02:37:16.000That's five hours you could have been improving your life.
02:37:19.000That's five hours you could have been doing something different.
02:37:21.000That's five hours you could have went to the gym.
02:37:22.000That's five hours you could have eaten better.
02:37:24.000You could have taken steps to have better food in your house.
02:37:27.000You could have taken steps to pursue a career or move in the direction of pursuing something that's different than what you're doing that you would actually find satisfying and fulfilling.
02:37:39.000You just have to decide, what are you doing with your time?
02:37:42.000And, you know, this goes back to people commenting and bitching at people online.
02:38:35.000I'm just curious about, like, brain chemistry, because when I think about, you know, you've been very complimentary towards me in this conversation, but a part of me is wondering, am I just lucky that I have the kind of internal chemistry that I have that makes me value the things that I value?
02:38:53.000And, you know, I'm just doing what I feel compelled to do.
02:39:01.000I'm curious when people feel compelled to do otherwise, and I don't know where to place responsibility for that.
02:39:36.000I mean, you would have to be a fucking counselor that would have ultimate truth access to a person's thought processes to really find out why they're doing things differently and why they're not living in a way.
02:39:48.000The only thing you can do is live by example.
02:39:51.000You know, there's a term for a Taekwondo instructor.
02:40:41.000And now I'm wondering if, like, that's one of those weird silver linings to this whole experience is that my life became very, very public very early.
02:40:50.000And so I literally do have to walk around living my life as if there is potentially a documentary crew following me around.
02:41:10.000And if I didn't, like if I was just some fucking tyrant that no one knew, you know, and I just had all this wealth and power and no one knew me and I could just get away with being an asshole.
02:42:31.000You know, I've had a bunch of them on, a bunch of people on that were famous when they were young and they all are missing something.
02:42:37.000It's like when you're making cement and you don't add enough water.
02:42:40.000There's like something that happens when you have fame and adulation during your developmental stages as a child when you're supposed to be like figuring out how do I get people to like me?
02:43:05.000You want to put that brain chemistry coagulation in the right configuration, in the right set of circumstances, or else you're going to be having a complex for the rest of your life that you're going to be grappling with, because I don't know if you can undo.
02:43:20.000The stuff that gets ingrained in your brain chemistry when you're a kid.
02:43:27.000But it seems to me that especially developmentally, when your brain hasn't configured yet, that's when you get hardwired to have complexes the rest of your life that you're going to be dealing with.
02:45:07.000And then you have this parasitic relationship that your parents have to you, which is, I have friends that were famous as young people, and they have these very fucked up, complicated relationships with their parents.
02:45:19.000One of my friends found out their parents stole from them millions of dollars.
02:47:45.000And if they do break you, then it's a very difficult task of rebuilding.
02:47:49.000And people that have gone through horrible childhood trauma, particularly abuse and sexual abuse, that they have the most difficult hurdles to overcome.
02:48:14.000But I do know some people that have gone through childhood sexual trauma that are also incredibly fascinating people because they figured out a way to acquire strength through it all.
02:48:46.000So you have to figure out, well, who's actually bullshitting me, and who's just being nice, and who's being nice but kind of bullshitting, just slowly playing this game.
02:48:56.000You ever heard of the definition of a gentleman?
02:49:30.000Because this person has shown you the respect of not just trying to use their physical force and take it from you and not care about you as a person.
02:49:38.000They've chosen to acknowledge you as a person and like, this is what this person wants.
02:49:43.000They want to feel comfortable with me.
02:49:44.000But then you can't be a sociopath, too.
02:52:52.000Yeah, that's actually been a really sort of fun takeaway that I've had from having just an Instagram is, like, I'll post a silly video of me dancing for my kids.
02:53:01.000And a lot of the comments are just people being like, I'm so glad that someone like you...
02:56:21.000Yeah, well, the first, like my Krav Maga instructors, because they were instructing me on a specific, for a specific reason, wasn't just to work out.
02:56:30.000Their first thing that they taught me was how to scream.
02:56:33.000I was surprised, and they were telling me, people don't want to take up space and make noise.
02:56:45.000We're taught from a very young age, especially women, to not do that.
02:56:52.000The first lesson was make noise, take up space.
02:56:57.000And so we just practiced like screaming as loud and as hard and as long as we could.
02:57:03.000And then once we got through that, then we started doing the fighting moves.
02:57:07.000And the first thing I had to do before I did anything was scream first, then move, scream, move.
02:57:14.000And so that the screaming became part of the...
02:59:00.000Because you could defend yourself against someone who doesn't know how to fight as good as me, but the odds of someone like me attacking you are very, very, very, very, very small.
02:59:08.000But you're saying I should train to be able to, you know, to fight against trained killers, but...
03:02:17.000The right way to do it is to prepare for someone who knows what they're doing.
03:02:20.000Now, this is very different when we're talking about women's self-defense versus just a grown man who is of normal size defending himself against another grown man of normal size.
03:02:52.000Because they're going to recognize all of your movements in advance.
03:02:55.000You're going to go like this, and they're going to go, oh, his right arm is coming this way, so I'm just going to step this way, and I'm going to avoid that.
03:03:02.000And I see his left foot step backwards.
03:03:05.000Well, now his right leg is vulnerable, so I'm going to kick it.
03:03:10.000It's understanding the flow of body dynamics and movement.
03:03:14.000And it's happening so quickly that the only way that you can actually be effective is if you're fluent and you don't have to think about it.
03:03:42.000Your mind and your neural system is completely trained for these actions and these movements.
03:03:49.000Do you think that fighting your friends, not like actual fighting for your life, but fighting for your friends is a crucial part of brain development?
03:03:59.000Because I know that I've heard, or at least I've read, that roughhousing with small kids is a really important part of their brain development.
03:04:08.000And the people who become more well-adapted, well-adjusted emotionally, they seem to be more fit emotionally, were kids who had some roughhousing when they were young, especially with their parents.
03:04:23.000Is that like an elevated form of roughhousing part of a generation?
03:06:32.000And he has real rage problems, and he doesn't know how to fight at all.
03:06:36.000And he was yelling at someone in the parking lot of the comedy store once, and I pulled him aside and I go, "What are you doing, man?" He goes, "I don't know why I fucking see red." And I go, "You don't know how to defend yourself." I go, "One of these days you're gonna do that to someone who's like me, but they're mean." And they're gonna just say, "Oh, here's a nice opportunity to just fuck this guy up." And you're going to wind up in the hospital or worse.
03:09:24.000And knowing that I can't prepare for all of the ways that I am vulnerable to existence, instead I try to think, okay, I am vulnerable to existence, and I am going to get hurt.
03:10:02.000What do you mean by seek out pain, though?
03:10:05.000You were talking about like voluntary adversity, right?
03:10:11.000And like to an extent I agree with you because that's a very stoic thing to do, to seek out challenges so that you can test yourself and test your mettle and push yourself to become better for the inevitable things that might happen.
03:10:25.000But not even just for the inevitable things that happen, just for your own resolve.
03:10:30.000Just for you as a human to achieve balance.
03:10:56.000Because without it comes a lot of weird insecurities that are not comfortable.
03:11:02.000And they can trip you up in all sorts of aspects of your life.
03:11:05.000I think maybe this is another woman-man thing, maybe, where women have to accept vulnerability as an inescapable aspect of our lives, even just in our interpersonal relationships.
03:11:22.000I know that when I walk into the room, I'm...
03:11:26.000Not the one who's gonna win a fight, that's for sure.
03:13:53.000But it gets labeled as negative because there's a lot of things that get attached to it like jocks and bullies and assholes and aggressive men and shitty men.
03:14:03.000Who think themselves superior to people who are more vulnerable than them.
03:14:39.000Look, ideally, we should go through zero pain.
03:14:42.000Ideally, we should go through zero aggression, zero shitty, deceptive, conniving, psycho people that are trying to ruin everything in your life.
03:16:37.000Like, you know, the more that you now that I have the privilege of being a mom, I know that one day, you know, like if something were to happen to my kids, I would be all the more fucking dead, like all the more pain in my life.
03:16:50.000Like if I'd never had kids, I wouldn't have the opportunity to experience a potential pain that would be utterly devastating.
03:16:57.000And so like that's that's where that play goes in my head.
03:17:01.000And I just wonder if it's a trauma response where like I'm afraid.
03:17:05.000I'm sure a part of it has got to be a trauma response.
03:17:08.000I mean, I think a lot of people that self-sabotage, when things start going well in their life, it's because they're used to things going badly.
03:17:15.000And this idea of things going well, it just scares the shit out of them.
03:17:33.000So you want it to fall apart so that you can achieve some level of comfort in the understanding of this state that you've been in many times before, the state of failure.
03:19:04.000Even a guy like Goggins, you know, he told me, and he goes, sometimes I stare at my fucking shoes for like 30 minutes before I put those motherfuckers on.
03:19:10.000He goes, because he's like, I don't want to do this.
03:20:41.000Now, everyone, if there's anything I've learned from being a mom, it's that everyone, every human being, is a toddler.
03:20:48.000Every single person is a toddler who either hasn't gotten enough attention or hasn't had their nap, whatever the fuck, and they're just having a tantrum.
03:20:58.000And if you treat everyone like a toddler, it is actually a very successful way of interacting with people.