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Sarah Marshall isn’t looking to break new ground with her popular podcast You’re Wrong About. A scan of the episodes of the show that have been released so far this year brings up many familiar names and subjects: eugenics, Martha Stewart, Go Ask Alice, the Donner Party. But as its title spells out, this podcast isn’t about big revelations and cracking open cold cases.
Instead, Marshall and her rotating cast of guests look to take a walk down a well-worn path “talking about what was going on then and, based on both information that’s come to light and the perspective that time gives you, how maybe we had gotten the story wrong initially,” she tells WW.
That approach has been key to Marshall’s work as a Portland journalist and media critic. She’s written extensive, well-researched articles that ask readers to look at oft-pilloried celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith and Portland’s own Tonya Harding from fresh, sympathetic angles.
Bringing that approach to a podcast feels logical enough, but it’s something that Marshall hadn’t considered until she was approached by fellow writer Michael Hobbes. Inspired by “Remote Control,” the rather touching defense of Harding that Marshall had written in 2014 for The Believer, Hobbes wanted to start a podcast called I Misremember the ‘90s. Marshall was immediately on board, but with one key change.
“My only request was that we keep all possible history open,” she says, fighting to be heard over the sound of a garbage truck outside her apartment, “because I wanted to do something on Leopold and Loeb.”
Their team-up You’re Wrong About debuted in 2018. From their premiere episode on the Satanic panic (the moral freakout that had conservatives in the U.S. convinced that satanists were secretly abusing children and holding rituals in the woods outside every major suburb), the pair’s exhaustive research and buoyant repartee were locked in.
The podcast built a small, dedicated fan base over its first two years, including a nod as one of the 10 best podcasts of 2019 by Time magazine. But its popularity exploded during the pandemic.
“Early on, the scuttlebutt at the time was that it was going to be a bad time for podcasts because people weren’t commuting,” Marshall says. “I was like, ‘No, that’s not true. People are going to need something to do that makes them feel like they have a boundary between themselves and their spouses and children and roommates.’”
Her hunch was dead on. The buzz about You’re Wrong About got loud enough to generate glowing write-ups in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, while also attracting over 22,260 subscribers to the podcast’s Patreon.
The show’s popularity has also allowed Marshall to introduce You’re Wrong About Live, a four-date West Coast tour that stops at the Mission Theater on Sept. 16 and features special guests and musical performances by Carolyn Kendrick.
If there’s any small bump in the road to You’re Wrong About’s success, it was last October’s announcement that Hobbes would be stepping away from the show to focus on other projects. The news was big enough in the podcast community to warrant a worried write-up on Vulture.
While it’s a little disappointing not to be able to hear Hobbes and Marshall’s banter, the shake-up has given fresh energy to the podcast as Marshall brings in a cast of new collaborators and guests to go deep on subjects they are passionate about. Recent episodes have featured comedian Josh Gondelman unpacking the deeper messages in Harold Ramis and Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, a fascinating look at the Westboro Baptist Church with American Hysteria host Chelsey Weber-Smith, and writer Dana Schwartz asking the important question, “Does Ben Affleck belong in Shakespeare In Love?”
“The nice thing about it for me is that if a guest is explaining something to me, my responsibility is to know as little as possible,” Marshall says. “The audience can hear me learning about it. The thing I want to model is that it’s hard to admit that you’re just learning something that you don’t know. I think listening to somebody ask the ignorant questions or hear the confusion or misapprehensions that they have, that’s good for people.”
SEE IT: You’re Wrong About Live comes to the Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 503-223-4527, mcmenamins.com. 8 pm Friday, Sept. 16. $30-$35. All ages.
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