''You're Wrong About'' is an American history and pop culture

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

created by journalist Michael Hobbes and writer Sarah Marshall. It has been hosted by Marshall since its inception; Hobbes also hosted until 2021. Launched in May 2018, the show explores misunderstood media events by interrogating why and how the public got things wrong. Show topics have included events like the

Challenger Disaster On January 28, 1986, the broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The spacecraft disintegrated above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39a.m. EST (16:39 UTC). It was ...

O. J. Simpson Trial O is the fifteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. O may also refer to: Letters * Օ օ, (Unicode: U+0555, U+0585) a letter in the Armenian alphabet * Ο ο, Omicron, (Greek), a letter in the Greek alphabet * O (Cyrillic), a letter of the ...

, and the

Murder of Kitty Genovese In the early hours of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender, was raped and stabbed outside the apartment building where she lived in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens in New York City, New York, United States. Two weeks ...

and covered people such as

Anna Nicole Smith Anna Nicole Smith (born Vickie Lynn Hogan; November 28, 1967 – February 8, 2007) was an American model, actress, and television personality. Smith started her career as a ''Playboy'' magazine centerfold in May 1992 and won the title of 1993 ...

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

Tonya Harding Tonya Maxene Price (née Harding; born November 12, 1970) is an American former figure skater, retired boxer and a reality television personality. Born in Portland, Oregon, Harding was raised primarily by her mother, who enrolled her in ice ska ...

, and Lorena Bobbitt. It was named one of the ten best podcasts by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' in 2019.

About

Michael Hobbes is an American journalist and a former reporter for ''

HuffPost ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

''. He is also the co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase with Aubrey Gordon. Sarah Marshall is an American writer whose work has appeared in

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ken ...

, '' The Believer'', and

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...

. She is known for an interest in the mischaracterization of women by the mainstream media best demonstrated in her 2014 long-form profile of

. The show began after Hobbes reached out to Marshall and proposed that they try to recreate their deep-dive research processes in audio format. The pair only met in person after recording the show remotely for the first five months. During each episode, Hobbes and Marshall trade off on researching the show's topic, with one host taking on the research and analysis of a topic and the other coming to the discussion with little-to-no knowledge about the relevant details. Each episode begins with the less informed host sharing what they remember about the person or event in question. Together they then explore the topic in a generally chronological manner, discussing relevant public responses and dominant societal trends from the era, before debunking that response and the subsequent media coverage. Witty observations and pop-culture references are woven in throughout the discussion. The discussions include references to primary resources used during the research process along with and direct quotes from media coverage interviews with relevant players. In March 2020, the podcast began a quarantine book club in response to

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

lockdowns. The related episodes differ from the regular format as they focus on a single book with one host having read it and the other learning about it over the course of multiple episodes. Books covered include the

satanic ritual abuse The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the United States in th ...

book ''

Michelle Remembers ''Michelle Remembers'' is a discredited 1980 book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient (and eventual wife) Michelle Smith. A best-seller, ''Michelle Remembers'' relied on the discredited practice of rec ...

'',

Jessica Simpson Jessica Ann Simpson (born July 10, 1980) is an American singer, actress, entrepreneur and philanthropist. After performing in church choirs as a child, Simpson signed with Columbia Records in 1997, aged seventeen. Her debut studio album, '' Swe ...

's autobiography ''Open Book'', and ''Objection!'' by American lawyer and television personality

Nancy Grace Nancy Ann Grace (born October 23, 1959) is an American legal commentator and television journalist. She hosted ''Nancy Grace'', a nightly celebrity news and current affairs show on HLN, from 2005 to 2016, and Court TV's ''Closing Arguments' ...

. The podcast is a part-time effort for both hosts and relies on crowd-funding. The independent nature of the show is rooted in moral concerns about critiquing the media and potential constraints inherent to sponsorship. In October 2021, it was announced that Hobbes was leaving the podcast and the show would continue with Marshall and guests.

Reception

In 2019, ''You're Wrong About'' was named one of the ten best podcasts by ''

''. Writing for the ''

Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

'', Sarah Griffin praised the show's conversational tone noting how Hobbes and Marshall "handle incredibly dark subjects with a levity that never feels disrespectful." Rachel Syme compared Hobbes and Marshall as a modern-day

Statler and Waldorf Statler and Waldorf are a pair of Muppet characters best known for their cantankerous opinions and shared penchant for heckling. The two elderly men first appeared in ''The Muppet Show'' in 1975, where they consistently jeered the entirety of ...

, claiming their show is a history podcast that "assumes the audience is capable of complex thought."

Episode list

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

References

External links

* {{podcast platform links 2018 podcast debuts American podcasts Audio podcasts Feminist podcasts History podcasts Patreon creators