Hard Knox with Amanda Knox

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How Soldiers Make Sense of an Unwinnable War (Phil Klay) Nov 11, 2025

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Phil Klay is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and National Book Award–winning author of Redeployment, Missionaries, and Uncertain Ground, whose work examines the moral and emotional toll of modern war. How do soldiers make sense of what they’ve done when the meaning of war keeps changing? Why does true patriotism demand not blind loyalty, but the courage to question—and to forgive? Released on Veterans Day, this conversation dives into the nature of service, moral injury, and the fight to keep faith—with one’s country, and with oneself.

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Who's Right? - Arranged Marriages Nov 06, 2025

Show notes

Who's Right is back by popular demand! Between our usual Hard Knox episodes, Amanda sits down with her husband, Chris to debate something serious or silly and ask you: “Who’s Right?”

In this Who’s Right? episode, Amanda and Chris debate whether marriage should be a spiritual bond or a practical alliance—and whether we might all be better off if an AI or “romance consultant” helped us choose our partners. How do love, logic, and cultural expectations collide when deciding who to marry, and why do we still trust hormones and happenstance more than wisdom and experience? How could rethinking the myth of “soulmates” actually make for healthier, longer-lasting relationships

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How We Evolved to Be Good (Nicholas Christakis) Nov 04, 2025

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Nicholas Christakis is a Yale sociologist and physician whose research explores how human connection, cooperation, and contagion shape societies. In this episode Amanda and Nicholas explore how our social networks influence everything from kindness to cruelty, and why the impulse to punish, forgive, or imitate spreads just like a virus. How does trust and empathy hold civilization together and why is building stronger relationships the most powerful medicine we have? Nicholas studies how cooperation, love, and trust are encoded in our biology and expressed through social networks that persist beyond any single person, arguing that the “real” structure of human life lies in the invisible web of connections between us.

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Old School: The Aha Moment (AJ Jacobs) Oct 31, 2025

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Amanda and Chris get lost in the wide world of puzzles with AJ Jacobs, author of the The Puzzler: One Man's quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever, from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life. And pay close attention, because this episode has a puzzle embedded within it!

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Who’s Right? - Accept Death or Defy It Oct 29, 2025

Show notes

Who's Right is back by popular demand! Between our usual Hard Knox episodes, Amanda sits down with her husband, Chris to debate something serious or silly and ask you: “Who’s Right?”

In this weeks pre-Halloween episode they debate the role of death in living a full life. How do we live fully when death feels both inevitable and avoidable? Why does facing mortality make life feel more vivid, even as science tempts us with the dream of living forever? Amanda and Chris wrestle with Zen philosophy, longevity science, and the question of whether accepting death, or fighting it, is the real key to living well.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the matter!

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The Satanic Panic – How Pop Culture Got Possessed (Sarah Marshall) Oct 28, 2025

Show notes

Sarah Marshall is a writer and podcaster, best known as the cohost of You're Wrong About and creator of The Devil You Know, a CBC podcast series exploring the Satanic Panic which explores how a wave of moral hysteria in the 1980s fused pop culture, politics, and fear into an era where heavy metal lyrics and daycare centers became symbols of evil. In today's episode she and Amanda discuss why this moment still echoes today in new forms of conspiracy thinking, and how looking back helps us understand the stories we tell to feel safe—and the ones that turn us against each other.

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Ask Amanda Anything - Young Love, Oversharing, Presence Oct 23, 2025

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In this week's episode Amanda relfects on how to tell your story while protecting a teenager’s privacy, why intentional oversharing can build connection, and how Zen, Nonviolent Communication, and even a near dog scam teach everyday resilience.

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How Hyperpersuasion Hijacks Free Will (Rebecca Lemov) Oct 21, 2025

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Rebecca Lemov is the author of The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyperpersuasion, whose work explores how people are persuaded, manipulated, and sometimes brainwashed. In this conversation, Amanda and Rebecca unpack why intelligence doesn’t protect us from influence, how moments of “ungrounding” make us vulnerable to brainwashing, and why shame keeps many survivors silent.

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Old School: Excellent Advice for Living (Kevin Kelly) Oct 17, 2025

Show notes

There's some wisdom you can only find when you're lost, which has led Kevin Kelly, senior Maverick and co-founder Wired magazine, to get lost intentionally through decades of travelling. Along the way, he's collected some gems of wisdom and invented many of his own. Kevin Kelly is the author of Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier.

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Ask Amanda Anything - Star Trek Uniforms, Gaslighting, Disengagement Oct 16, 2025

Show notes

In this episode of Ask Amanda Anything, Amanda unpacks the complexity of memory, truth, and the quiet work of setting boundaries with those we love, even when love feels conditional. How do we navigate the minefield of family relationships when our histories clash and our beliefs collide? Why do some people rewrite the past to protect themselves, and how do we hold on to our reality without losing compassion?

Reach out to us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.amandaknox.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠amandaknox.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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⁠⁠⁠⁠Free: My Search for Meaning⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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