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 & Noteworthy

Working Hard (ind.)

Gold Minds (High Performance)

Wednesdays (JamPot)

Tays and Ginge Off Stream (Upload)

Paula’s Marathon Run Club (Viral Tribe)

Spotify: New & 🔥

Punchin’ (Fellas)

What’s My Age Again (Bauer)

Tays & Ginge Off Stream (Upload)

The Room Where It Happened (High Performance)

Working Hard (ind.)

Amazon Music: Best Podcasts of the Week

RedHanded (Wondery)

The Girlfriends (Novel)

What’s My Age Again? (Bauer)

Limelight: Discretion (BBC Radio 4)

When Banksy Comes to Town (BBC Radio 4)

Pocket Casts: Featured

What We Spend (Audacy)

This Guy Sucked (Multitude)

It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton (ind.)

Close All Tabs (KQED)

No One Saw It Coming (ABC listen)

Reviews

Miranda Sawyer in the Observer

• Half-Life (BBC Radio 4) - “We’re on shaky ground, which could have made the show frustrating. But the excellent production (Eleanor McDowell for Falling Tree, always brilliant) and Dunthorne’s humour and self-deprecation lift this tale way above the ordinary. By episode four, when [host, Joe] Dunthorne and McDowell are trying to get into a weapons factory in Turkey, it’s clear that Half-Life is far more than your everyday history series.”
• The Arsonist Next Door (The Binge/Novel) - “Many true crime shows don’t have an answer to their whodunnit. This show does, and something nastier is revealed too.”

Fiona Sturges in the FT

• What’s My Age Again (Bauer) - “The world is already awash with podcasts in which celebrities have conversations with their famous pals, so new projects are rightly under pressure to stand out from the crowd. Ryan’s What’s My Age Again? certainly has a strong theme, but it is yet to meaningfully explore it.

James Marriott in the Times

• Triggernometry (ind.) - “It occurred to me that the conversation could be staged as a kind of Beckettian farce about the futility of human communication… I think I lost brain cells.” ★☆☆☆☆

Listings

Clair Woodward in the Sunday Times

• MissPercieved (ind.)
• Giles Coren Has No Idea (The Times)
• The World, The Universe and Us (The New Scientist)
• Christiane Amanpour Presents — The Ex Files With Jamie Rubin (Global)
• Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake (Sony Music Entertainment)

The Guardian’s Best Podcasts of the Week

• Half-Life (BBC Radio 4) - Pick of the Week
• The Louis Theroux Podcast (Spotify)
• Vine: Six Seconds That Changed the World (Global)
• Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah (Pushkin)
• Floating Space (Transmission Roundhouse)

In the Radio Times

• Good Bad Billionaire (BBC) - Pick of the Week
• The World in 360 Minutes (ind.)
• Pete Wicks: Man Made (Bauer)
• Uncovering Roots: The Baron Hotel (ind.)
• Death County, PA (Wondery)
• Mildly Informed (ind.)
• Targeted (ind.)
• The Neurotic Vaccine (ind.)

In i Weekend

• Lady Swindlers (BBC Radio 4)
• The World, The Universe and Us (The New Scientist)
• Solved (ind.)
• Couch to 5k (BBC Sport)

Plus Emily Cope speaks to Jessica Ennis-Hill about her new podcast Gold Minds (High Performance)

Heat’s Top of the Pods

• Vine: Six Seconds That Changed the World (Global) ★★★★☆
• The Rest is Football: Daly Brightness (Goalhanger) ★★★★☆

Woman Magazine’s Listen Up section

• After Hours Skin Clinic (Raconteur)
• Untapped (High Performance)

In Best Magazine

• Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio 4)

Scott Bryan in Great British Podcasts

• Christiane Amanpour Presents — The Ex Files With Jamie Rubin (Global)
• Page 94 (Private Eye/Rethink)
• The World, The Universe and Us (The New Scientist)
• Strange But True Crime (BBC)