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I'm Amanda Knox, and you're listening to Hard Knocks.

I'm Amanda Knox, and you're listening to Hard Knox.

All right. Today on Hard Knocks, I interview John Jay Lennon, a journalist and convicted murderer.

His articles have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Esquire, and the Marshall Project.

His 2025 book, The Tragedy of True Crime, tells the story of four convicted murderers, including himself,

and critiques how the true crime industry dehumanizes, distorts, and monetizes the pain of both victims and perpetrators. I just realized now that I am literally wearing the sweatshirt that I wore in prison,

unintentionally, maybe subconsciously in anticipation of this conversation,

which was super interesting and stimulating.

This book was really challenging for me to read for reasons that I

bring up over the course of the conversation. But above all, because it's really interested in this

idea of how true crime sort of solidifies or like keeps people crystallized in the worst moment of their life. And,

you know, John J. Lennon here is arguing that actually what happens afterwards and the way that

human beings are capable of change, even if they don't necessarily change, is more interesting

than the true crime narratives that we see that are so simplified and black and

white, all of which is like I'm on board with, as you all know. However, I read a lot of, or I read a lot of

this book and confronted John J. Lennon about the fact that so much of what he was talking about

reminded me of Rudy Gide and how he has failed.

He has made excuses and not made amends for what he has done.

And how do I wrap my mind around that as someone who is wanting to hold everyone's moral complexity in mind?

And really it's just had me confronting my limitations as, as someone who, you know,

...