Hard Knox with Amanda Knox

Andrea Werhun is an author, filmmaker, and former sex worker whose memoir and documentary Modern Whore challenge how we think about sex, labor, and stigma. In this wide ranging and often funny conversation, Andrea and Amanda dig into the making of the film, including its stylized recreations, dark humor, and the moment Amanda found herself rethinking whether sex work is truly different from other forms of intimate labor like therapy, caregiving, or au pairing. Along the way, they unpack the role of criminalization in creating harm, the politics of shame, and why putting a price on access to your body can radically change how you understand boundaries, value, and freedom. Modern Whore is out May 1, 2026
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What's the difference between bias and expertise? When a critic dismissed Amanda Knox's commentary on the Lucy Letby case as the grievance of a biased woman, the real question got buried: can lived experience be a form of expertise? And if so, what's the line between pattern recognition and confirmation bias? Amanda and Chris dig into the cognitive science, the structural failures of the justice system, and the countermeasures that might actually help us get it right.
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What is truth, and why does finding it actually matter? Amanda sits down with Dr. Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, longtime Scientific American columnist, and author of Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, for a conversation that starts with epistemology and ends in a full-throated debate about free will.

They talk about why our brains evolved more like lawyers than scientists — to win arguments, not find facts. They get into the hard problem of consciousness, what meditation might reveal that neuroscience can't yet measure, and whether the legal system could ever be redesigned around actual truth-seeking. And then Amanda makes the case for hard determinism and nearly talks Shermer into it.
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After a stranger on Twitter told Amanda “Jesus, put on some makeup,” she responded with a joke: an AI image of Jesus wearing makeup and a one-word reply, “Fine.” The tweet went viral, drawing both laughter and accusations of blasphemy. In this episode, Amanda reflects on what that reaction reveals about fragile beliefs, the psychology of offense, and why learning not to be “capturable” by other people’s outrage is essential for living freely.
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John J. Lennon is a journalist, author of The Tragedy of True Crime, and a convicted murderer who joined Amanda for this conversation from prison, where he is currently incarcerated. In this challenging and deeply reflective episode, Amanda confronts Lennon about the limits of compassion, the ethics of true crime storytelling, and the danger of narratives that lock people into their worst moments.
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