Recommendation Engine: A Gold Fraud

Welcome to this week's Recommendation Engine from Podcast Rex, rounding up the week in podcast reviews. Get this in an email each week by signing up to be a supporter of Podcast Rex from £3.99.

Apple Podcasts New & Noteworthy:

• Elton John’s Rocket Hour
• Glad We Had This Chat
• Answers for Claudia
• Dead Man Running
• Apple Music 100 Best Albums

Spotify New & 🔥

• The Rest is Politics US
• Media Storm
• Exhibit A
• How Long Have You Got?
• Harry Hill’s Are We There Yet?

James Marriott in the Times

• Past Present Future - “The premise (and it is a good one) is to take bad ideas seriously. Each episode takes on one with the help of a guest: the historian Christopher Clark on antisemitism, the geneticist Adam Rutherford on eugenics, the economist Helen Thompson on the gold standard. It’s gripping. A shadow history of the modern mind.”

Fiona Sturges in the FT 

• Death of an Artist - “If the first series of Death of an Artist, about the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta and the shocking fall from a 34th-floor apartment that killed her, was essentially a whodunnit, this one tells a more reflective and evocative tale of 20th-century American art and how one woman quietly shaped it.”

Jude Rogers in the Observer 

• Over the Top Under the Radar - “Not every new podcast sets out to remind you of the weirdest public art idea of all time: a giant Queen Mother on the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square.”
• Home Sleuth - “Makes for an unsettling listen, and without a questioning voice in the mix feels exploitative at times.”
• The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam - “Some good old-fashioned fraud in a balmy Indonesian jungle with a cast of proper rogues.”

Patricia Nicol & Clair Woodward in the Sunday Times

• The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam - “The excellent Canadian presenter Suzanne Wilton first reported on the rise and fall of the mining firm Bre-X for the Calgary Herald. The Alberta firm’s claim to have discovered the world’s biggest gold deposit caused its shares to soar from cents to over $200. Ordinary Canadians invested. When Bre-X’s story unravelled, so did people’s futures. To this day, no one has been held responsible.”
• How I’d Fix - “Ed Vaizey, the Times Radio presenter and former arts minister, and the journalist Becca Hutson set out to solve the issues plaguing Britain with the help of a guest who outlines their three-point plan for how they’d fix Britain if they had all the power.”
• The Friendship File - “This is a brilliantly simple idea. Two friends answer 17 questions about each other, recorded on their own and without knowing what the other one has said — and each episode is a mixture of these sessions.”

The Guardian’s Hear Here column recommends

• Glad We Had This Chat - “You can get celebrities to spill serious tea by digging into their beauty bags.’”
• The Case of the Tiny Suit/Case - “After their smash-hit podcast Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding?, Helen McLaughlin, Karen Whitehouse and Lauren Kilby return with another important mystery.”
• The Queen’s Reading Room - “Kate Mosse, Curtis Sittenfeld and Ben Okri are all guests on the second series of Queen Camilla’s literary podcast, hosted by Vicki Perrin.”
• Lemme Say This - “Peyton Dix and Hunter Harris promise to only cover the things that matter on their new pop culture podcast.”
• The Paul Weller Fan Podcast - “After becoming a cult hit, season two sees Jennings get full access to Weller for a track-by-track deep dive into his new album, 66.”

And in the Guardian’s Guide newsletter

• Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs - “Telling the story of how California’s LGBTQ+ community fought a ballot proposal that would have banned gay people and lesbians from teaching in the state’s schools.”

Highlights from the Radio Times

• Blame it on the Fame: Milli Vanilli - “They weren’t the first pop act that didn’t sing on their records. They won’t be the last.”
• The Gas Man - “Certainly takes its sweet time in getting from Baltimore in the late 1980s to Germany in the present time.”
• Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - “What do these moments of intense public scrutiny do to a person’s psyche?”

Heat’s Top of the Pods

• The Official Doctor Who Podcast ⭐⭐⭐
• The Price of Paradise ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Scott Bryan in Great British Podcasts

• Uncanny USA - “He starts in New Orleans, investigating whether someone called Marcus is being communicated to via an ouija board from his late Aunt Jean.”
• Unearthed - “Kew Gardens’ podcast has returned for a new series looking at the latest scientific innovations helping to protect the natural world.”
• This is History: The Iron King - “Despite his name, Philip the Fair was anything but. He tortured his own people, he rinsed the country out of a lot of its own wealth and stopped at nothing to gain more land and power. Historian and author Danièle Cybulskie unpacks his life over six punchy immersive episodes.”
• The Tooney and Russo Show - “With broadcaster Vick Hope asking about their careers, their friendship and their lives competing and performing alongside each other professionally.”