If Books Could Kill
If Books Could Kill is a podcast hosted by Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri, in which they critique bestselling nonfiction books of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Books featured on the podcast have included Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and The [End of History and the Last Man] by Francis Fukuyama. First airing on November 2, 2022, the podcast has received largely positive reviews from critics.
Summary
If Books Could Kill is hosted by Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri. Hobbes is a journalist known for hosting You're Wrong About with Sarah Marshall and Maintenance Phase with Aubrey Gordon. Shamshiri is known for his hosting of the podcast 5-4, along with Rhiannon Hamam and Michael Liroff.The show targets "airport books", popular nonfiction books often marketed as pop science or smart thinking that might be found in airport bookshops, which Hobbes describes as "the superspreader events of American stupidity". Each episode is dedicated to the discussion of a single book, along with the book's wider cultural influence. The hosts focus on flawed arguments, poor uses of data, factual errors, and the drawing of unsound conclusions or overgeneralizations. They often take a comic tone and will poke fun at the books and their authors.