Birdwatching with Sean Bean: This week’s best podcasts | TV and radio

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Get birds with Sean Penn

On the face of it, the RSPB’s choice of Ned Stark as host for the new series of their podcast seems odd. But it turns out he’s been a birder since childhood, and used to keep busy birdwatching between acting gigs. He’s friendly and honest in his first podcast, chatting with fellow ornithologist Guy Garvey about spotting different species while working outdoors, learning about bird songs and the meditative joy of watching feathered creatures. Alexey Duggins
Widely available, bi-weekly episodes

Karma: Six Seconds That Changed the World

This one-of-a-kind podcast about Vine — the short-form video site from the 2000s — examines how its previous episodes could have revived the platform. We meet Evan Henshaw Plath, one of Twitter’s first employees, who is setting up diVine, an anti-AI version of Vine, which he hopes will fix the flaws in modern social media – and which was inspired by this demo. advertisement
Widely available, now

Love + Radio: Blood Memory

This offbeat interview show from Nick van der Kolk (pictured above) offers an unexpected true crime spin through this sprawling series. Its subject is Michael Thompson, a former member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang who testified against the group in court. But is he who he claims to be? Hannah J. Davis
Widely available, weekly episodes

Valley of Shadows

Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries is behind this exciting investigation, which presents a tantalizing mystery from the start. In June 1998, John O’Jay of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department disappeared in the Mojave Desert. But why was the employer so quick to call off the search – could they have something to hide? HCD
Widely available, weekly episodes

Atonement: The Story of John Polk

John Polk and his then-wife Anne were among the leading figures in the “ex-gay” movement in the United States in the 1990s, proponents of Christian conversion therapy who believed they had been “cured” of their sexuality. Polk is now one of the movement’s most vocal critics, directing iHeart and Goldhawk’s frank and excellent oral history podcasts. HJD
Widely available, weekly episodes