If Books Could Kill - Podcast Rankings and reviews

Great podcast, funny and smart. If you enjoy Maintenance Phase, 5-4, or older You’re Wrong About I highly recommend. I am constantly thinking I’ve never heard of a book they’re reviewing only to realize a third of the way in the book is responsible for the background radiation of a decade of my life.

Only complaint is that episodes touching on feminist/gender issues (The Game) are clearly much less well informed than others. Would love it if the next time they talk about experiences that women have their could be someone more familiar with the material present.

Grateful my brother introduced me to this gem. It’s the only podcast I pay to subscribe to and the only podcast that makes me cackle aloud every episode. Highly recommend!

After you finish school, it can be hard to figure out how to dig into pop culture that doesn’t feel right, but is assumed to be right by so many. Peter and Mike not only do it for you, but give you a framework in which you might be able to look into this stuff yourself and and get fired from your job for constantly researching airport books. This podcast is a hug for my over active brain.

So I feel compelled to leave a review. Every episode has been super interesting. Impressed with the amount of research Michael puts in. Peter is incredibly funny. Love the podcast.

I loved this show when they focused on airport books. The silly sarcasm was fun and made sense for the genre, including the sometimes uncharitable comments and exaggerations. Once they get into politics and serious current events, they do the thing that they accuse the worst books of doing - make huge leaps and use throwaway funny comments to hide that they’re simply following their biases. Cute when you’re attaching “the five love languages,” very problematic when you’re discussing the Middle East. If these episodes were a book, they wouldn’t pass their own critique. Tried listening to the Sam Harris one but they lost me when they flippantly dropped “genocide” about Israel/Palestine mere minutes after discussing accuracy and fact checking regarding body counts. What makes it ok for them to not keep the same standards they accuse the books they discuss of not keeping? Ugh.

Intriguing concept of a podcast. And some very insightful comments. Sadly, those insights are few and far between, and found in a pile of conjecture and wildly biased views. Accusing authors of bias and unfounded comments would land so much better if they weren’t picking and choosing their targets.