If Books Could Kill

If Books Could Kill is a podcast hosted by Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri, in which they criticize bestselling nonfiction books of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Books featured on the podcast include 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 (until 2021) 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.

Episodes
The podcast also features a number of bonus episodes, available to Patreon subscribers.

Reception
If Books Could Kill was listed by Vulture as one of the best podcasts of 2023, described by the website as a "cutting and ambitious criticism of the nexus linking publishing, media, and elite power". Jessie Gaynor praised the podcast in a review on Literary Hub. Fiona McCann in The Irish Times described the podcast as "smart, intellectually engaged, left-leaning American men indulging in deliciously catty takedowns of popular and problematic 'big ideas' books" in a positive review, commenting that "your average left-leaner will have a field day, even as they face their own gullibility." In The Times, James Marriott gave the podcast a 4/5 star review, describing the show as satisfying but commenting that "after more than half an hour the hosts’ tone gets a bit smug". Hannah Giorgis in The Atlantic reviewed the podcast positively and praised the show for "resist[ing] the impulse to be satisfied with reaching into libraries past just to point and laugh", and instead exploring how such books have shaped public opinion and what they reveal about the historical moment in which they were published.