If Books Could Kill

Recently, mostly at random, I heard a recommendation for the If Books Could Kill podcast and it's excellent, and eye-opening.

The basic premise is that they review books that were hugely successful but had some sort of toxic or misinformed idea that they introduced into mainstream consciousness. I looked it over and was surprised to see many books in their list that I both read and enjoyed. I was intrigued.

The first episode I downloaded was one about Atomic Habits, which I thought was great. As they went though they systematically picked it apart, and revealed issues, gaps in logic, and just genuinely bad science throughout.

I'm probably three episodes in now and Atomic Habits isn't the only book that I've recommended to people that they took down. They don't do it in a mean way, by the way–at least not for the most part, or not for books like Atomic Habits, vs books they consider genuinely harmful. I'd say there's more a class of book, especially self-help books, that they go after–sort of lazy blending of pseudo-science and folk common-sense that's common in the genre that I have to agree with.

From what I've heard so far I can highly recommend this podcast. The hosts play off of each other well, and they have a really interesting format where one person is the main "reviewer" and they're explaining their analysis to the other person. They send quotes to the other host who will read the it and react in real time. The whole back-and-forth turns out to be very entertaining.