Barack Obama’s engaging new show: This week’s best podcasts | TV and radio

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Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise

Who would have thought, in 2008, that Barack Obama (pictured above) would become one of podcasting’s biggest influencers? The former president is front and center in this series examining the post-slavery era in the United States, a collaboration with Malcolm Gladwell for Audible and the History Channel. It’s fascinating and excellently researched, but it’s the conversational level and careful connecting of the dots that makes it so compelling. Hannah J. Davis
Widely available, weekly episodes

Tocqueville’s road trip

John Prideaux, US editor of The Economist, sets out on a road trip to assess American democracy on its 250th anniversary. It follows the tour taken in 1831 by French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, whose book is “the most insightful book ever written about the United States.” It’s a colorful way to address concerns about whether she can survive Trump. Alexey Duggins
Widely available, weekly episodes

Swingers

Journalist Catherine Nye tells the story of a woman who joined a website to please her husband, and says she had non-consensual sex with more than 100 men. It is graphic, disturbing and spares no detail, as Nye examines swinging, including interviews with the men who do it. What you discover is not easy to hear. Alexey Duggins
BBC Sounds, all episodes available now

Here for history

According to legend, a leaf drifted into Chinese Emperor Shen Nung’s drink of boiling water in 2737 BC, and the cup of coffee was born. Tea is one of the British traditions that historian Alice Loxton and the BBC’s Ben Henderson explore in this podcast – although the conversation quickly turns to the violence and smuggling it provokes. HJD
BBC Voices, weekly episodes

Valley of Bones

Rolling Stone writer Paul Solotaroff hosts the fifth season of the acclaimed true crime series, about the murder of a 12-year-old girl in upstate New York in 1995. While the circumstances of Josette Wright’s death are horrific, this is a meticulous and powerful investigation: This is a story that “cuts through the skin, and won’t give me peace,” says Solotaroff. HJD
Widely available, weekly episodes