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.
Platforms
Apple Podcasts: New Shows
Spotify: New & 🔥
Stay on Track (The Athletic/The Race)
Amazon Music: Best Podcasts of the Week
The Romesh Ranganathan Show (Listen/RangaBee)
So, Hear Me Out (Southbank Centre)
Pocket Casts: Featured
A Question of Science (The Francis Crick Institute)
History’s Heroes (BBC Radio 4)
Reviews
Miranda Sawyer in the Observer
- Adrift (Apple TV+) - “Adrift makes the story sound fresh and features immersive sound design (creaking sails, crashing water), though you sense the actual shipwreck would have been much noisier than some gentle background sloshing.”
- Allison after NXIVM (CBC) - “Host Natalie Robehmed is constantly describing the beauty of every female interviewee; how gorgeous their houses are; how immaculate their faces. This plays queasily into the same obsession with perfection that made so many of these women insecure and vulnerable in the first place. Chilling.”
Fiona Sturges in the FT
- Adrift (Apple TV+) - “This is a gift of a story, but Milligan and her team marshal all the elements — the complex family dynamic, Dougal’s maritime history, the shipwreck — with verve and skill. The scenes from the group’s 38 days on the dinghy, which leaked from the off and required round-the-clock bailing out, are grimly evocative.”
Gerard O’Donovan in the Daily Telegraph
- Jane Austen’s Paper Trail (The Conversation) - “Using one of her books as the starting point for each episode – the first was a brilliant exploration of Austen’s use of gossip in Sense and Sensibility – each of her six published novels gets an intensive analysis in the search for the ‘real’ Austen.”
- Toast (BBC Radio 4) - “That failure can be just as interesting as success is something proved again and again in this series exploring the decline and fall of once mighty businesses and products. This week, it’s the turn of the BlackBerry mobile phone.”
Listings
Clair Woodward in the Sunday Times
- This Much Is True Crime (ind.)
- Where It’s At (AnOther)
- Hunting the Bogeyman (Sony Music Entertainment)
- All About the Music (Somersault)
- Life Changing (BBC Radio 4)
- The Peter Purves Podcast (ind.)
- Toast (BBC Radio 4)
- Witness History (BBC World Service)
- Jane Austen’s Paper Trail (The Conversation)
The Guardian’s Best Podcasts of the Week
- Allison after NXIVM (CBC) - Pick of the Week
- The Coldest Shift (Hat Trick)
- Adrift (Apple TV+)
- The Mary Houlihan Show (ind.)
- Jane Austen’s Paper Trail (The Conversation)
The Guardian Weekly magazine’s Podcast of the Week
In the Saturday Guardian magazine
And in the Guardian’s Guide newsletter
In the Radio Times
- For the Love of Rugby (Crowd Network) - Pick of the Week
- The Coldest Shift (Hat Trick)
- The Peter Purves Podcast (ind.)
- In The Dark: Blood Relatives (The New Yorker)
- The Duets Special Podcast (Warner Music Entertainment)
- All About the Music (Somersault)
- The Old Front Line (ind.)
- The Europeans: Who Does It Best? (ind.)
- Hell in Heaven: A Mysterious Death in Paradise (iHeart)
In i Weekend
Heat’s Top of the Pods
Woman Magazine’s Listen Up section
Scott Bryan in Great British Podcasts
