Following the recommendation of Elin in comments, I checked out the podcast, If Books Could Kill. It seemed like the kinda thing I might like: 2 guys going back and forth taking apart Gladwell, Freakonomics, David Brooks, Nudge, and other subjects of this blog. It would be really hilarious if they were to take on the copy-paste jobs of chess sages Ray Keene and Chrissy Hesse, but I guess that would be too niche for them . . .
I have mixed feelings about If Books Could Kill. My take is mostly positive—I listen to podcasts while biking so what I’m looking for is a kind of background music, a continuing flow of interesting things that flow smoothly. I’m impressed that they can talk so engagingly, unrehearsed (I assume) for an hour straight. No ums or uhs, they stay on topic . . . they’re pros. Not every podcast I’ve listened to goes so well. Sometimes they go too slow and I get bored.
There’s one thing that they’re missing, though, and that’s opposition. The most recent episode I’ve been listening to provides a good example. They discussed Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, a book from a few years back that of course I’d heard of, but I’d never read, actually never even opened. I’m not saying that out of pride, it’s just not something that ever crossed my desk.
The podcast went as usual: they lead off with a summary of the book’s theme, then talk about how the book has some reasonable ideas and they want to give it a fair shake, then they get into the problematic passages and get into some questionable aspects of the author’s career.
This all works, but then at some point I kind of resist. It’s not that I think they’re being unfair to the book, exactly. It’s more like . . . they need some opposition. It goes like this. the book says X, they point out problems with X and get to mocking, which is fine—but then I want to push back. I don’t buy everything they’re saying. I think the podcast would be better if they could add a third person, someone who’s also good at the podcast thing and who generally agrees with them, but can push back against their stronger statements. I’m not asking for a debate every week, just someone who can, every once in awhile, say, “Whoa, you’re going too far this time. Yes, you have good points, but the book you’re discussing is not so horrible as you say, at least not right here.”
And yes, the hosts of the podcast—Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri—do point out positive features of the books they’re criticizing; they really do try to do their best to give the authors a fair shake. It’s just that in every episode they’ll get into this rhythm of reinforcing each other to the extent that they’ll miss the point. They need someone to keep them honest, keep them closer to their best selves.
The comment thread does some of that job on this blog.
And, as we’ve discussed over the years, I do find lots of positive things in Gladwell, Freakonomics, David Brooks, Nudge, etc. I think I’d appreciate Men are from Mars etc., but I guess at this point I won’t ever get around to reading it. As to the podcast: I think I’ll continue to be listening to it, because it’s entertaining. But it could be better.
P.S. More here on the value of opposition.
P.P.S. It appears that Hobbes has a track record of making hasty judgments and not considering alternative perspectives. That’s too bad cos otherwise I really enjoy this podcast.
It is always like this, or just this one episode? Sometimes a book just gets two thumbs down (or up). You don’t always have to trawl for someone with a different opinion. There can just be a consensus.
(Meta: Opposition to the value of opposition!)
Adede:
It’s like this in all the episodes, but sometimes it doesn’t bother me. When they went all-in negative on Nudge for two straight episodes, I was cool with that. The only thing I would’ve liked to see from them was more discussion of the sources of the continued popularity of the “nudge” idea, the role of the NPR/Ted complex, the appeal of nudging to liberals. They alluded to the idea of nudging being a conservative or libertarian replacement for liberal government programs, but they didn’t really get into the point that Nudge and its authors have a center-left perspective, and that they’re hated by many on the right. They also didn’t explore how it is that people such as Sunstein and Thaler ended up as celebrities and heroes in much of academia. Once or twice the If Books Could Kill podcasters got into the idea that the Nudge authors must not be complete idiots in real life, even though they say such stupid things in the Nudge book, but, again, I didn’t think they (Michael and Peter) pushed on this enough, as it was too easy for them to keep agreeing on the parts that were easy for them to agree on.
> This all works, but then at some point I kind of resist. It’s not that I think they’re being unfair to the book, exactly. It’s more like . . . they need some opposition.
I consume a lot of podcasts (while hiking, falling asleep).
I find that they are mostly all as you describe. Very few interrogate the naysayer, imo.
It’s because the model is to market an ideological frame to like-minded consumers. Most claim to be objective or un-aligned and/or scientific (e.g.
Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, etc.) but very few actually are. Robert Wright is an exception who actually has people on he disagrees strongly with and interrogates their arguments – although when he has people on he agrees with, I feel he mostly fails to bring in obvious “naysayer” perspectives. Believe it or not, “The Comedy Cellar: Live From the Table” also does that but likewise fails to really interrogate friendly perspectives.
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I really don’t understand why so many people are so intellectually lazy. I mean I get the business model. But isn’t there a market for people who take interrogating ideas more seriously? I think many academics do and I do sometimes listen to more academic podcasts that take intellectual interrogation more seriously but why aren’t there more non-academics who do the same?
Joshua:
I’m not sure. But I will say this. Sometimes I’ve been interviewed on podcasts. And the interviews are always 100% positive, which is what I expect. Sometimes they push me a little, but softly, enough to get a discussion, but they’re not out-and-out fighting with me. Indeed, if a podcaster were to do this sort of thing, I’d perceive it as an “ambushing” and get really annoyed!
So it’s tricky. It would be good to get multiple perspectives, but you’re not gonna get that by inviting someone on to your show and then arguing with him.
Andrew –
I agree that there’s an art to interrogating someone’s views without making it feel hostile. It’s not easy, although it’s easy for me to say it should be done more. And some guests would simply not be interested in having their ideas interrogated.
People tend to really want to hear what they want to hear – and I know I’m kind of a freak in wanting to have my beliefs questioned in good faith. But I’m also convinced that often there’s a kind of intellectual laziness involved, and I find it annoying.
Joshua:
Interviewers don’t press their subjects because if they go around putting heat on people they won’t have anyone to interview. This is the first fundamental bias of “journalism.” Want people to feed you stories? Then you better be friendly to their take on issues, or you won’t have sources.
“Journalism” is just propaganda for one side or the other, modulated to whatever extent by the journalists’ perception of what s/h(e)/it/they can get away with (from both the perspective of their readers and their sources) in terms of imposing their own (unrigorous, often unfactual) take or stretching the credulity of the readers.
Given all that, it’s not quite totally worthless if you have some knowledge of the issues and the given journalists’ perspective.
chipmunk
How do you explain the practice of some journalists to provoke their subjects, often interrupting them to ask them questions they don’t want to answer? I’m not defending the practice as I find it just as disturbing as the friendly (softball) interviews, but I think the evidence does not support your assertion. Indeed, some people (I believe Trump did this a number of times) refuse to agree to interviews with journalists they perceive to be unfriendly. It is hard to find good journalists these days, but I don’t think the problem is that they are overly friendly to their subjects – it is that they possess too little expertise of their own, and their incentive is often to get sound bites rather than detailed understanding.
Chipmunk –
I’m not talking about journalists here. I’m talking about podcasters. And unlike you, I see journalism to a significant degree as an antidote to the problem. Journalists aren’t perfect of course, and I don’t doubt that your much focused-on bias in journalism is a real problem. But once again my view is less binary than yours. I often see journalism that I think is a cut above.
As a good example. I’ve seen recently stuff on Twitter from Tucker Carlson, and then Glenn Loury and John Mcwhorter and Coleman Hughes, on the subject of George Floyd’s death and a documentary on that topic that has gotten a lot of attention from RWers who run with the documentary to make the argument that effectively, Chauvin was framed for murder by the FBI (I kid you not) and libruls in Minnesota in the department of justice and police department, and on juries and Black Lives Matter protestors and, well, blah, blah, blah.
The podcasts from Loury and Mcwhorter, and Hughes’ output on the topic were particularly interesting to me. Smart, right-leaning black people pushing against the deliterious reverse descrimination effects of out of control wokesters, that as Chris Rufo says, “conquered everything” (see the subtitle of his new book).
Listening to their podcasts, I think they have a point. But I’m also struck by their credulity and the surprising lack of naysayer pushback against their preferred narratives. I’m surprised by their lack of commitment to interrogating their own viewpoints. Especially with Loury and Mcwhorter, who are accomplished academics. I’ve hear them both engage in sophisticated interrogation of viewpoints they don’t agree with. Why don’t they do the same, with consistency, of their own viewpoints? Sometimes they do have guests on with opposing views to do that, but that’s not always needed to be earnest in examining one’s own views.
So anyway, back to the George Floyd murder podcasts. Here’s a perfect example of how journalism is an antidote to the anodyne crap they put out on that topic. It focuses on Hughes’ output, but it could just as easily apply to that of Loury and Mcwhorter (who actually produce a much higher quality podcast than most – much better than the stuff from people like like Sam Harris and Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying or Jordan Peterson or obviously Joe Rogan):
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd
Dale said:
“How do you explain the practice of some journalists to provoke their subjects, often interrupting them to ask them questions they don’t want to answer?”
I’m thinking of the old CNN show “crossfire”, or the occasional “Giraldo” type that gets their own show for a few seasons. Is that the kind of thing you’re referring to? AFAIK that’s a rare practice in the broad scope of journalism media. A show has to be pretty high profile to attract guests under those conditions. Although I don’t consume local papers or broadcast media much these days the last I recall it was almost unheard of locally.
Joshua:
You seem to be saying that podcasters or some particular podcasters aren’t “journalists” but AFAIK they’re generating media and content regarding news and issues, so by default they are journalists, whether they have that degree or title or whatever.
I don’t doubt that journalists can generate valid views. I say that they do that only when necessary to cover their flanks in response to an attack by the opposition. When the pressure is on and the opposition generates some more-or-less valid point that the fear may sway people against their position, they put on the “lets look honest” hat, sound conciliatory, withdraw a step or two, only to take it back when the pressure eases.
BTW, when I say “they” meaning “journalists” or any group of people, I’m referring to common mean behavior as I percieve it, and I’m aware that there are people who are much better, and people who are much worse, than the mean.
I am also a bike rider and take issue with Andrew’s attempt at double tasking:
“I listen to podcasts while biking so what I’m looking for is a kind of background music, a continuing flow of interesting things that flow smoothly.”
Given the potholes and the ice this time of the year in Minnesota, there is already enough conflict and background music between bikes and cars. Driving or biking takes concentration*. As to the podcast mentioned, I quickly gave up due to the immediate snarky invocation of an obscenity followed by the ever-present “like.”
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*To illustrate the point that being on the road takes full concentration, what is the color of the line which separates oncoming traffic in the U.S.? Canada? Norway? Sweden?
+1 I too worry about Andrew biking while listening. It’s both a distraction and a way to shut out warning noises he ought to be able to hear.
Ethan:
It doesn’t shut out warning noises. I’m using a speaker, not headphones! I hear outside noises much more clearly on a bike with the speaker on than I would in a car, radio on or off.
I’m a bike commuter as well and I also wouldn’t bike with headphones. Sometimes I put my phone in a shirt pocket and crank up the volume to hear audiobooks, but rarely — only for audiobooks for which I don’t care if I miss pieces and am just slogging through, since it’s only barely audible if there aren’t cars around. I’ve thought about having speakers, like we do in cars, but the loudness wouldn’t be good for the park I ride through. And my wife, who rides with me in the mornings, would think me too tacky to ride with. Unlike Andrew, I’m not biking through Manhattan.
Try bone conducting headphones, they let you listen while maintaining situational awareness. The only issue I had is sometimes there is too much environmental noise to hear the audio, but I always get the cheaper ones.
Raghu:
Yes, when biking through the city I don’t feel bad about having sound blasting out of my speakers, because I’m still much quieter than the cars, buses, and trucks that produce most of the street noise. When I’m in the park, I turn the sound down.
This is the first I’ve heard of these podcasts. I sampled (n=1) their discussion of The World is Flat (Thomas Friedman) – ok, I sampled about 15 minutes of their rambling one hour + discussion – and have a few reactions. First, I wholeheartedly echo your concern about lack of opposition. It was quite annoying to hear them cheer each other one with virtually no counterarguments. It was especially annoying since their primary objection to the book seemed to be lack of evidence, over-simplification, and repeated repetition (I think that is a grammatical mistake on my part) – and their discussion seemed to suffer from exactly the same problems.
On a more fundamental level, they seemed to underestimate the importance of some of Friedman’s argument as well as the serious shortcomings in that argument. There have been many more insightful critiques of Friedman’s book – notably Ghemawat’s Redefining Global Strategy – a somewhat tedious read but on point regarding the myriad ways in which location still matters despite the forces of globalization. What the podcast does, in my opinion, is eschew any meaningful discussion of the issues raised in the book, in favor of a superficial criticism of Friedman’s style. This is doubly disturbing given that the podcast is from 2023, so it comes after many more careful analysis prompted by Friedman’s book.
I may well be misled by my sample of 1. But I found the podcast quite annoying. Perhaps it works if you are on your exercise bike and like their constant chatter, but I’d prefer some quiet music for that purpose. I did not find it entertaining. Instead it failed to recognize the importance of the subject matter, and worse, failed to recognize the serious shortcomings in Friedman’s book. A little opposition might have made it a more productive discussion (might have made it a discussion to begin with).
Dale:
I agree with your assessment (except that I’m on a bike, not an exercise bike). The one place we differ, I guess, is that I found the hosts’ patter to be enjoyable enough that I remained entertained.
Also, this problem of only one perspective is common with podcasts. Indeed, this came up in my discussion of the New Yorker fiction podcast, where with very few exceptions they say only very positive things about the story under discussion, and also various literary podcasts I listen to from BBC, where, again, it’s almost always different forms of praise. I enjoy these podcasts, but I think I’d enjoy them a lot more if there were more conflict—not conflict between people, but conflict of ideas, not just 30 minutes of positivity (or, in the case of If Books Could Kill, 60 minutes of negativity).
Podcast recommendation: “In Our Time” / Melvyn Bragg / BBC. Amazing.
A good thing about “In Our Time” is that they have experts on to talk about their expertise and be enthusiastic. I find that the universe throws plenty of bad ideas in my direction, and I don’t need someone else to tell me about even more of those ideas and why to be angry about them.
One of my favorite episodes of In Our Time is “Echolocation,” in which they’d planned to cover bats, whales, and dolphins, but the panelists got so excited about bats that they only made it through bats.
Peter, Sean, Kyle,
Following your recommendation, I downloaded a bunch of episodes of In Our Time. I was all excited to listen, but the host and panelists all spoke so softly that I couldn’t make out their words amid the traffic noise. Other podcasts, including those on BBC, are nice and loud and I can hear them while biking on the street. It’s too bad that In Our Time was conducted in a whisper. I’ll either need to get a louder speaker or else listen indoors. Bummer.
I totally get what you mean about wanting opposition, though still in a conversational vein. I think this is a particularly distinctive part of good academic discussions that I really value and is basically always missing on social media. You do get some good discussions going in the comments here; people disagree but are also willing to listen.
The combination of haste and a large, ill-defined audience poison conversation. Twitter conversations involving anyone prominent are like talking to your favourite actor or artist at an event, not like having drinks with them at the event bar or cafe. Or maybe calling talk radio.
Michael Hobbes has several podcasts that all suffer from this problem you’ve identified here. It’s more noticeable on his other podcast Maintenance Phase, where they “debunk the junk science behind health and wellness fads”, but clearly don’t have the requisite statistical knowledge to do so in the way they try on their podcast, despite jokingly calling themselves “methodology queens”. This substack has a couple articles critiquing specific episodes of their podcast, and is written by someone who was open to liking the podcast and clearly agrees with their larger goal of destigmatizing obesity. They frequently make both basic factual errors and errors of statistical interpretation that go unchallenged since, for all Hobbes podcasts, the hosts (and for the most part, their audience as well) are basically in agreement about what is Right and Wrong, so they never really challenge or question the evidence behind their “takedowns”.
https://spurioussemicolon.substack.com/p/maintenance-phase-reality-check-zombie
An excerpt from the blog:
> This paper comes out, gets a ton of media coverage. Less than a year later, Katherine Flegal puts out her paper and in her paper, instead of showing that obesity causes 365,000 deaths a year, her paper shows that obesity causes 112,000 deaths, but it also reduces deaths by 86,000 because slightly overweight people are actually less likely to die. [Podcast transcript
> This is a great example of the self-proclaimed “methodology queens” revealing a lack of understanding of epidemiology (and perhaps the scientific process, in general). It is not uncommon for studies using different databases to get different results – that is why responsible scientists don’t say that a single study has definitively “proven” anything. You can see in the Mokdad et al. (and in Allison et al.) that the estimated number of deaths attributable to overweight differs for each of the six data sources. While Michael and Aubrey are implying that the Mokdad et al. paper was totally wrong and fat-phobic, the reality is that Mokdad and Flegal used very different data sources and statistical methods. It’s not surprising for different statistical models to get pretty different results, think about all the wildly different projections of COVID deaths. It is harmful to trust in scientific institutions when we fail to acknowledge that science is a continual process of iteration. This is why we do multiple studies looking at the same research question and why we try to answer questions in different ways. Flegal even addresses this in her recent account of this whole incident and has a very nice table showing the differences between the papers. As I mentioned above, she even published a whole separate paper on why the estimates are different! Michael and Aubrey did not acknowledge this at all. Anyway, now we can delve into each of the two studies, for an actual look at the methods. [Substack critique]
Add variables like calories burned per day, dietary practices, and whatever genetics. With the right model, you can get better predictions but conclude that obesity is *saving* hundreds of thousands of lives per year. It is just an arbitrary coefficient of an arbitrary model.
That is the real reason why they get such divergent results.
Hp:
That’s too bad. I guess there’s no reason that the ability to make entertaining conversation for a podcast should be related to ability or willingness to consider subtlety in argument. Very frustrating in this case.
+1 although I would have used different words. Encouraging to see that some other people see the danger of multitasking in traffic. If you disagree, I suggest you stand outside your favorite supermarket and watch people, who can hardly walk, exit the building and painfully make their way to the waiting powerful automobile. And, to show how unobservant most people are when driving, once again I pose the question: In the USA, what is the COLOR of the line separating oncoming traffic. Teenagers have no difficulty answering this question correctly because it is usually a written test question when applying for a license. In my experience, even after I show an older person a given street, that person will still insist that it is not true in general. This is a blog devoted to statistics so I suggest replication to see if my assertion holds up.
As I wrote in my above comment, I’m not wearing headphones, I’m using a speaker, nor am I having a magical experience. I’m just going from point A to point B, just like all the millions of people in their cars listening to their radios.
Do you ever get people running alongside you trying to listen in?
I listened to N=1 of these podcasts and found it incredibly irritating. Lots of use of f-bombs for no reason other than (as far as I can tell) the hosts trying to sound cool. And part of the shtick seemed to be that one of the hosts hadn’t read any of the book. And, as Andrew pointed out, cocky take downs of the book’s arguments without ever considering potential weaknesses of the host’s positions.
Someone else mentioned the BBC show “In Our Time”, which is amazing.
Anon:
I don’t think they’re cursing to sound cool; I think that’s just how they talk, and it doesn’t bother me.
Regarding the cocky takedowns, I dunno. I just listened to their episode on The World is Flat, and their cocky takedown seemed mostly fine to me. Not completely—at one point they seemed to be clearly misinterpreting one of the author’s points—but mostly. I think the reasons that the episode seemed basically OK (as well as being entertaining) were:
1. The author of this book, Thomas Friedman, gets huge amounts of exposure. Yes, some people criticize and even mock him, but there’s a lot more straight-up Friedman out there than there is Friedman criticism. He goes on TV, his pronouncements get taken with respect, and, as the podcasters point out, he is used as a mouthpiece by various powerful people in business and government. So it seems like a contribution to take apart some of his more asinine takes.
2. There’s no science in Friedman’s book, so there’s not so much that the podcasters can get wrong here. That’s true of just about all the books they talk about—even with the books such as Nudge or Freakonomics that have scientists as coauthors, the actual science content of the books are very low. It sounds like the real problems with Hobbes have come when he is criticizing actual science as with the weight-loss stuff described by one of the above commenters.
In that sense, If Books Could Kill is in the sweet spot: the podcasters are discussing books that have had big culture impact and where, even when they’ve been criticized, the criticism hasn’t always hit the key issues. For example, when The Rules came out, it prompted lots of debate, but I think the discussion on If Books Could Kill picked up on a lot of important points that hadn’t made it into earlier public discourse.
When I saw the reference to “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus,” my mental red alert went off. I am familiar with the podcast series “If Books Could Kill,” but I have not listened to this episode yet due to being miffed that my offer on Twitter of a study by a former student, in response to a Hobbes query, was ignored. (The references listed are OK, however.)
My student did a nice analysis and test of Gray’s “hypotheses” with college students (and also she had some “real people” data in a related presentation), suggesting that taking away the gendered labels Gray used throughout greatly reduced or eliminated gender differences in responses. Strip away the gendered context and you have thoughtful actions that many partners would appreciate. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-0023-4
isn’t this confirmation bias (I may not have the right term).
“which is fine—but then I want to push back. I don’t buy everything they’re saying.”
If you totally agree with what they are saying, it’s all good.
if you dont agree with all of it, you will want opposition.
Isn’t this why we have polarization in modern media? we can just frequent the commentary/opinion that most aligns with our views, so we dont have to keep thinking “these guys need opposition”.
Gabbyd:
I don’t agree with everything they’re saying, so I want them to push back. But even if I agreed with all of it, other readers will disagree with some things. The audience for the podcast is not just me, and I feel like the podcast would be better if the hosts recognize that listeners will have different perspectives and will be interested in different perspectives, not just an hour of the two guys agreeing with each other. I’m not saying they need to cater to people who completely disagree with them, just that it would be more interesting if they were to push back a bit on some of their easy takes.
Hi Andrew – it looks like your RSS feed may be broken? At least for me, nothing after this post has shown up in my feed.
I dunno, it seems to work on this end. Try refreshing your browser, clearing your cache, whatever, and then if the problem persists please send me some screenshots and I can ask the sysadmin.
Sorry – it seems to be a weird glitch in my feed reader. the original subscription is still broken, but everything showed up when I re-added a new one.