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
Life Lessons from History (History Extra)
Spotify: New & 🔥
Museum of Pop Culture with Josh Widdicombe (Keep it Light Media)
The Brian Badonde Bodcast (Ind.)
How To Win The World Cup (talkSPORT)
Amazon Music: Best Podcasts of the Week
UK True Crime Podcast (Always True Crime)
The Luxury Dispatch with Tom Chamberlin (Listen)
Mad, Sad and Bad with Paloma Faith (Jampot Productions)
How to Fail with Elizabeth Day (Sony Music Entertainment)
On Tour with Sport 24 (IMG Audio)
Pocket Casts: Featured
Museum of Pop Culture with Josh Widdicombe (Keep it Light Media)
Pluribus: The Official Podcast (Apple TV)
The Brothers Ortiz (Campside Media, IHeartPodcasts)
Reviews
Patricia Nicol in the Sunday Times
- Reset Your Health with Jamie Oliver (Audible) - “Oliver is such an effective communicator, who comes at these topics from an unintimidating everyman’s stance, but with access to leading experts. The advice here feels clear, doable, affordable and, crucially, sensible.”
James Marriott in the Times
- Museum of Pop Culture with Josh Widdicombe (Keep it Light Media) - “There are some good gags here. But there are plenty of lame ones too… Never mind. It’s a fascinating portrait of the naffest and most disposal end of British popular culture.”
★★★☆☆
Gerard O’Donovan in the Daily Telegraph
- The Documentary Podcast: Stories from the New Silk Road (BBC World Service) - “The world of international relations is feeling really rather unstable these days … Bering Sea is set to become a major potential flashpoint. Anna Holligan reports on rising tensions in the region.”
- The Bomb: Kennedy and Khrushchev (BBC World Service) - “The World Service’s nail-bitingly atmospheric series reaches its seventh episode.”
Lucy White in the Irish Independent
- The Stigma Shift (St John of God University Hospital) - “Designed to open up conversations and dispense clear, actionable advice from the hospital’s clinical experts: psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers.”
- Just One Thing (BBC Radio 4) - “Setting achievable goals will always offer a better head start than over-ambitious resolutions.”
- 5 Minutes to Change Your Life (Ind.) - “It might inspire a positive new habit or interest. Mosley would surely approve.”
- Reset Your Health with Jamie Oliver (Audible) - “Jamie Oliver, for some reason, has Marmite appeal…And so, depending on which side of the fence you sit on, you may take or leave”
- The Walkers: The Real Salt Path (The Observer) - “Observer journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou reported that Winn…had greatly exaggerated their backstory…Now there’s The Walkers: The Real Salt Path, Hadjimatheou’s “definitive wrap up” of her investigation.”
- Pride & Prejudice (Audible) - “A sumptuous retelling of Austen’s best-loved romp. If only a casting director had nabbed Buckley 15 years or so ago: she’d have made a sublime Lizzie Bennet.”
- The Discovery Series: The Bog Bodies (Discoverireland) - “Discover Ireland’s first podcast might easily have played it safe and ticked off the island’s “hidden gems”. Wisely, it took the murder mystery approach”
Listings
Clair Woodward in the Sunday Times
- The Conversation (BBC World Service)
- Reset Your Health with Jamie Oliver (Audible)
- In the Studio (BBC World Service)
- Judge Bex (Fun Kids)
- I Rest My Case (Pixiu Podcasts)
- Dan Snow’s History Hit (History Hit)
- CrowdScience (BBC World Service)
- Amanda Wakeley — Style DNA (Hatch 108 Productions)
The Guardian’s Best Podcasts of the Week
- Codename Badger (Always True Crime) - Pick of the Week
- The Bing Crimes: The Crimes of Margo Freshwater (Sony Music Entertainment)
- A Moment With Murphy (Murphy’s Sketches)
- Happy to Be Here (Ind.)
- Autocracy in America (The Atlantic)
The Guardian Weekly magazine’s Podcast of the Week
And in the Guardian’s Guide newsletter
In the Radio Times
- The Mystery of Nazi’s on the Lough (BBC Radio Ulster) - Pick of the Week
- Two Nottingham Lads (The History Podcast)
- Second Helpings (Ind.)
- Judge Bex (Fun Kids)
- Living Planet (DW)
- Something About Soulmates (Ind.)
- The Birth Keepers (The Guardian)
- Great Escapes with Isy and Dan (Great Western Railway)
In i Weekend
- Happier with Gretchen Rubin (The Onward Project) ★★★★⯨
- Museum of Pop Culture with Josh Widdicombe (Keep it Light Media) ★★★★★
- I Rest My Case (Pixiu Podcasts) ★★★★★
- Reset Your Health with Jamie Oliver (Audible) ★★★★★
Plus Dr Alex George speaks about his new podcast Stompcast.
Heat’s Top of the Pods
Scott Bryan in Great British Podcasts






