Hard Knox with Amanda Knox

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

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Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge

IG: @amamaknox | @emceecarbon

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Few people can say that they have remade themselves as completely as Lee Turnbull. He went from being a violent young man in London to being a happy, well-adjusted soccer coach in the States. Getting there required not just a change in his lifestyle, but a dramatic change in his values.

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Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge

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Before Adolf Hitler was a genocidal autocrat, he was a young art student who loved his mother. Before Vladimir Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary, he was the privileged son of loving parents, radicalized by his older brother. And before Joseph Stalin was a ruthless dictator, he was an abused child who was terrified of his father. Why should we know or care about these details? In the face of the crimes these men committed, their early lives seem irrelevant. But Brandon Gauthier argues that it is important to try to have empathy for even the most hateful historical figures. Only by understanding evil, he says, can we stop it from happening again. Brandon stopped by Labyrinths to tell us about his book, Before Evil, that explores the lives of these men before they became the murderous despots we remember them as today.

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Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge

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

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Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge

IG: @amamaknox | @emceecarbon

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Chris Ballew never expected or even particularly wanted mainstream success. But when his band, the Presidents of the United States of America, hit it big, he had to reckon with what success meant to him and figure out how to say no when everyone around him wanted him to say yes.

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Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge

IG: @amamaknox | @emceecarbon

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

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Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge

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Twenty years ago, Roz Savage was a management consultant living in London with her husband. From the outside, it looked like a good life, but Roz was miserable. Until she blew up that life and found a new one on the other side of the ocean. She'd just have to row for three and half months to get there. 

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Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge

IG: @amamaknox | @emceecarbon

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A few months ago, we sat down to do something we'd never done before: a live Labyrinths episode! And we knew there was no better place to do it than our home, Vashon Island. Most people haven't heard of our rural island near Seattle, but we know that it's a rich community of eccentrics with a lot of stories to offer. Today, we've brought you three stories of plane crashes, lost pets, and local journalism.

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Dr. Itiel Dror is used to facing resistance to his work. It comes with the territory when you're a neuroscientist studying cognitive bias in experts: no one wants to believe they have biases they're not aware of. But the pushback to a paper he published last year was extreme even by Dr. Dror's standards. After the paper came out, the ensuing backlash even threatened his job.Check out Dr. Dror's latest paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1556-4029.14697

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Journalist Andrew Gold explores the extreme in his podcast On the Edge, where he’s interviewed controversial people, including a former white supremacist, an ex-crime boss, and a self-professed psychopath. He joins Amanda and Chris to talk about the most taboo topic he's delved into yet: non-offending pedophiles. Forewarning: this episode grapples with the subject of child sex abuse. Listener discretion is advised. You can find Andrew Gold's podcast On the Edge here: https://podfollow.com/on-the-edge-with-andrew-gold

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