Pick of the week
Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise
Who would have thought, back in 2008, that Barack Obama (pictured above) would become one of podcasting’s biggest movers and shakers? The former president is front and centre of this series on the post-slavery period in the US, a collaboration with Malcolm Gladwell for Audible and the History Channel. It’s slick and excellently researched, but it’s the calibre of conversation and careful dot-joining that make it so compelling. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly
Tocqueville Road Trip
John Prideaux, the Economist’s US editor, embarks on a road trip to assess America’s democracy on its 250th anniversary. He’s following the 1831 tour of French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, whose book is “the single most insightful thing ever written about the United States”. It’s a colourful way to wrestle with anxieties over whether it can survive Trump. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly
Swingers
Journalist Catrin Nye tells the tale of a woman who joined a swinging website to please her husband – and says she had non-consensual sex with more than 100 men. It’s graphic, troubling and spares no detail, as Nye looks into swinging, including interviews with the men who do it. What she uncovers is not easy listening. Alexi Duggins
BBC Sounds, all episodes available now
Here for the History
According to legend, a leaf drifted into Chinese emperor Shen Nung’s drink of boiling water in 2737BC and the cuppa was born. Tea is just one British tradition that historian Alice Loxton and the BBC’s Ben Henderson explore in this podcast – though the conversation soon turns to the violence and smuggling it provoked. HJD
BBC Sounds, episodes weekly
Bone Valley
Rolling Stone writer Paul Solotaroff hosts the fifth season of the acclaimed true-crime strand, on the murder of a 12-year-old girl in New York State in 1995. While the circumstances of Josette Wright’s death are nightmarish, this is a careful, powerful investigation: says Solotaroff, this is a story that has “pierced the skin, and will not give me peace”. HJD
Widely available, episodes weekly