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
What’s That Got to Do with Marketing (Ind.)
Joe and James Fact Up (Audio Always)
Spotify: New & 🔥
Pottering with Tom Allen (Off the Kerb)
Heavyweight (Pushkin)
Amazon Music: Best Podcasts of the Week
The Rest is Classified (Goalhanger)
We Have Notes (The Observer)
Sliding Doors (Ind.)
How To Get Wet When You’re Dry (Rethink)
Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud (Ind.)
Pocket Casts: Featured
Office Hours with Arthur Brooks
Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes (Pave)
What Are We Even Doing? (Full Picture)
Reviews
Miranda Sawyer in the Observer
- We Have Notes (The Observer) - “It is a strange, poacher-turned-gamekeeper experience, being a podcast reviewer and making one. Though not quite as weird as if the paper’s film critic Wendy Ide took on a superhero role in a Marvel movie, or if music writer Kitty Empire sold out the Roundhouse touring a new album.”
- The Missing Sister (Free Turn/Wondery+) - “[Charlie] Brinkhurst-Cuff aims to do more than merely report the crime. She questions the motivations of everyone concerned: the media who first reported on [Joy] Morgan’s disappearance (rather desultorily at first, very probably because she was a young black woman); the church that seemed to cast her off and, worse, support her murderer in court; and the commissioning editors who pushed back when Brinkhurst-Cuff approached them with her investigative documentary idea. (One says to her that if Joy had been a young white woman, then he would have commissioned the doc.)”
Fiona Sturges in the FT
- Heavyweight (Pushkin) - “The series is about turning points and unfinished business, from thwarted love affairs and unsettled scores to regret over roads not taken.”
James Marriott in the Times
- Waldy and Bendy’s Adventures in Art (ZCZ) - “Waldy and Bendy promise they will do their best to fly the flag for art on their show. In that case, I predict an immediate revival in the market. Buy now!” ★★★★★
Gerard O’Donovan in the Daily Telegraph
- The Third Act - “Celebrates the pleasures and triumphs of later life, with some of the UK’s more interesting older voices from the arts, fashion, photography and design worlds reflecting on the secrets of a life well lived.”
- Lemonade Leaders - “If you feel the need for a good-mood, uplifting business story to get you through a tough day at work, Riannon Palmer’s podcast, in which she talks to ‘founders and leaders who have turned life’s lemons into lemonade’, might just fit the bill.”
- The Rest Is History US: Reagan (Goalhanger) - “A model of just how good podcasting has become in recent years.”
Listings
Clair Woodward in the Sunday Times
- Joe and James Fact Up (Audio Always)
- Close Readings (London Review of Books)
- Gone Medieval (History Hit)
- What Your Therapist Thinks (Podvision)
The Guardian’s Best Podcasts of the Week
- We Have Notes (The Observer) - Pick of the Week
- Wisecrack (Tenderfoot TV)
- The Romesh Ranganathan Show (Listen)
- Kawps (ind.)
- What Are We Even Doing? (Full Picture)
The Guardian Weekly’s Podcast of the Week
In the Saturday Guardian magazine
- States of Independence (Talkhouse/Cup & Nuzzle)
- World of Secrets: Death in Dubai (BBC Sounds)
And in the Guardian’s Guide newsletter
- See You in Court (CBC)
- Second Captains (ind.)
In the Radio Times
- The Good, The Bad and The Football (Folding Pocket) - Pick of the Week
- Through the Square Window (ind.)
- Heavyweight (Pushkin)
- Carry On Up the Podcast (ind.)
- More Than the Score (BBC Sport)
- A Question of Science (Francis Crick Institute/BBC Studios)
- The Chinatown Sting (Pushkin)
- Jane Austen Stories: Pride and Prejudice (Noiser)
- How To Be Anything (ind.)
In i Weekend
- Joe and James Fact Up (Audio Always) ★★★★★
- World of Secrets: Death in Dubai (BBC Sounds) ★★★★★
- Inkling’s Book Club (ind.) ★★★★☆
- Loose Women: Just Between Us (ITV) ★★★★★
Plus Lara Kilner talks to Nick Grimshaw about Dish (Cold Glass)
Heat’s Top of the Pods
- Joe and James Fact Up (Audio Always) ★★★★☆
- Grand Designs Deconstructed (Naked West) ★★★★☆
Woman Magazine’s Listen Up section
Scott Bryan in Great British Podcasts
- The Romesh Ranganathan Show (Ranga Bee)
- A Question of Science (BBC Studios)
- We Have Notes with Liv Little and Miranda Sawyer (Tortoise)
- Breast Cancer Uncovered (Bengo Media)
