Recommendation Engine: The Belgrano Diary

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:

• How Was it for You?
• The Curious History of Your Home
• The Belgrano Diary
• The Mushroom Cook
• Serial

Spotify New & 🔥

• COLD TAPES
• Lucy & Sam’s Perfect Brains
• FC Bullard
• The Curious History of Your Home
• Great Company

Tristram Fane Saunders in the Telegraph

• History’s Secret Heroes - “The opening episode is a corker, largely thanks to clips of a 1981 interview with Ida Cook, author of over 100 Mills & Boon novels, who (with her sister Louise) helped dozens of Jewish families to escape Nazi Germany in the 1930s. “I never had a husband,” she said, happily. ‘I never had a car, I never had a television set, I never even had a washing machine, but it’s been a marvellous life.’” 

James Marriott in the Times

• The Belgrano Diary - “An enthrallingly novelistic tour of British society in the early Eighties. We meet plummy-voiced establishment grandees, cantankerous publishers, Thatcher-hating activists, flag-waving British patriots and Argentinian servicemen.”

Fiona Sturges in the FT

• The Endless Honeymoon - “I had imagined the shift from daft spouse banter to IVF-related heartache would be jarring, but the hosts just about pull it off.”
• How Was It For You? - “While much of what they say is undoubtedly relatable — who hasn’t endured a train journey from hell? — it is also wincingly banal.”

Jude Rogers in the Observer

• Courtney Love’s Women - “A rough-and-ready, very charming memoir emerges, told through the voices and sounds of other women – singers, instrumentalists and writers – who Love sought while growing up in what she calls a male ‘gatekeeping mono-overculture’.”
• Kicking Back with the Cardiffians - “You wonder who will listen to this who isn’t a fan of Church, although it’s so refreshing to hear these working-class stories explored in depth.”
• The Belgrano Diary - “O’Hagan’s got a great podcast voice, all Glasgow fog and bite, bringing levity to the military material.”
• Word in Your Ear - “Digging into his gorgeously ordinary working years before fame, Neil Tennant recounts being the father of the chapel for his union during a dispute with Robert Maxwell.”

Clair Woodward in the Sunday Times

• 3 Body Podcast - “Not only do they do the usual PR thing of talking to stars and showrunners, they also speak to experts putting the series in context.”
• Monsters Inside Me - “Gross but entertaining US series that looks at true stories about mysterious illnesses caused by objects, animals and small creatures.”
• How Was it For You? - “If you aren’t coupled up it is a bit like being at a dinner party where people won’t stop talking about catchment areas.
• Putin’s Murders - “In the wake of the death of Alexei Navalny in February, Giles Whittell discovers why so many of Putin’s enemies have met an early end.”
• Who Killed the Video Star?: The Story Of MTV - “An essential cultural listen.”

The Guardian’s Hear Here column recommends

• How Was It for You? - “Each week they’ll find another life dilemma to ‘review.’”
• Lucy and Sam’s Perfect Brains - “Your very silly hosts are Taskmaster’s effortlessly charming pair Lucy Beaumont and Sam Campbell.”
• The Belgrano Diary - “A solid history of the war and this incident’s impact on it.”
• Split Screen: Kid Nation - “Dropping a group of kids aged between eight and 15 into a desolate New Mexico town and getting them to form a society was clearly on the braver side of reality TV commissioning.”
• Pretty Sure I Can Fly - “Jackass legend Johnny Knoxville and This American Life’s Elna Baker are spotlighting people who ‘grab life by the bunglesteen.’”

And in the Guardian’s Guide newsletter

• The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast - “This will be a decidedly loose affair.”

Highlights from the Radio Times’ Earth Day special

• Trees A Crowd - “Celebrates nature, but also explores the relationship each guest has with it.”
• Drilled - “Explores our complicated history with big oil and cleverly theorises our way out.”
• The Rewild Podcast - “The journey of a lifetime in his campervan visiting pioneering places across Europe.”
• Oceans: Life Under Water - “Dive below the waves in an engaging podcast produced by Greenpeace.”

Heat’s Top of the Pods

• Lucy & Sam’s Perfect Brains ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• The Mushroom Cook ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Scott Bryan in Great British Podcasts

• The Belgrano Diary - “From the conspiracies to the whistleblowers who helped expose the truth.”
• Eras: ABBA - “A lovely deep dive into the history of the band.”
• One Life for Another - “Throws you into the middle of a fascinating criminal case in Mexico.”
• Lessons in Dyslexic Thinking - “Highlighting what we know about this form of neurodiversity and how dyslexics are great for business, creativity and society.”