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Recommendation Engine

Recommendation Engine: Kaitlyn’s Baby

Plus Virtually Parkinson, Kirsty Young and Khloé Kardashian

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:

Spotify New & 🔥

Miranda Sawyer in the Observer

  • Virtually Parkinson (Night Train Digital) - “Proper interviews, as the real-life Parkinson showed, are about connection, conversation, understanding or lack of it; an in-the-moment spark between two personalities. A familiar voice and a set of statements with question marks do not an interview make.”
  • Kaitlyn’s Baby (BBC/CBC) - “It concerns a Canadian woman, Kaitlyn Braun, who pretends to be pregnant with a child, over and over (she never is), and hires doulas to help her give birth. There seems to be a sexual element, and it’s all definitely a con, but to what end?”
  • The Pitcairn Trials (Audio Always) - “This is not a lip-smacking series – Jones is excellent throughout – but it’s a tough one, despite the piratical desert island setting.”

Plus Miranda interviews Helen Zaltzmann and Ollie Mann from the soon-to-be-resurrected Answer Me This!

Fiona Sturges in the FT

  • Kaitlyn’s Baby (BBC/CBC) - “What we hear in the first episode is some of the most stressful and harrowing audio I’ve encountered as, over 10 days, Kaitlyn endures one catastrophe after another: haemorrhaging, surgery, a terminal diagnosis, another sexual assault. But then comes the twist: she’s making it all up.”

James Marriott in the Times

  • Khloé in Wonder Land (OpenMind) - “Over the course of one of the longest hours of my life, Kardashian and [Scott] Disick contrive to make Meghan Markle sound like Oscar Wilde.”

Patricia Nicol in the Sunday Times

  • Young Again (BBC Radio 4) - “So far in 2025 we’ve had the release of two beautifully clear-eyed Young Again interviews. On an episode released on New Year’s Eve, the singer Pete Doherty spoke movingly of the recalibration of his sense of self, in sobriety, after years of nihilistic drug use. Last week the comedian Sara Pascoe was funnily frank about putting it all out there for laughs, how longed-for late motherhood had eviscerated her self-image and the financial precariousness of her twenties and thirties.”
  • The Louis Theroux Podcast (Spotify) - “Listen to Theroux and he sounds chipper, but watch him in his drab studio and he looks a bit glum, as if thinking of the budget the BBC might have given him for a proper telly show.”

Clair Woodward in the Sunday Times

Highlights from the Radio Times

Heat’s Top of the Pods

Scott Bryan in Great British Podcasts

  • UnReality (Transmission Roundhouse) - “Explores the relationship between fact and fiction and the blurriness in between, and taps into situations you may have experienced, but not actively thought that much about at the time.”
  • Toni Told Me with Toni Tone (Audio Always) - “She’s built more than a million followers and one of the reasons why is because her advice is pragmatic and straightforward.”
  • Scotcast (BBC Radio Scotland) - “It’s a bit like its sister Newscast, in that it brings a selection of journalists and experts to discuss stories without throwing in opinion, but it is flexible to cover the latest breaking news.”
  • Over the Top Under the Radar (Unedited Stories) - “As well as being an informative listen, Younge and Afoko have a great, warm chemistry in each episode.”

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