Pick of the week
Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise<\/p>\n
Who would have thought, back in 2008, that Barack Obama (pictured above) would become one of podcasting\u2019s 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\u2019s slick and excellently researched, but it\u2019s the calibre of conversation and careful dot-joining that make it so compelling. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly<\/p>\n
Tocqueville Road Trip<\/p>\n
John Prideaux, the Economist\u2019s US editor, embarks on a road trip to assess America\u2019s democracy on its 250th anniversary. He\u2019s following the 1831 tour of French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, whose book is \u201cthe single most insightful thing ever written about the United States\u201d. It\u2019s a colourful way to wrestle with anxieties over whether it can survive Trump. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly<\/p>\n
Swingers<\/p>\n
Journalist Catrin Nye tells the tale of a woman who joined a swinging website to please her husband \u2013 and says she had non-consensual sex with more than 100 men. It\u2019s 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<\/p>\n
Here for the HistoryDon\u2019t be chai \u2026 Alice Loxton talks tea and other British traditions in Here for the History. Photograph: Jonathan Brady\/PA<\/p>\n
According to legend, a leaf drifted into Chinese emperor Shen Nung\u2019s drink of boiling water in 2737BC and the cuppa was born. Tea is just one British tradition that historian Alice Loxton and the BBC\u2019s Ben Henderson explore in this podcast \u2013 though the conversation soon turns to the violence and smuggling it provoked. HJD
BBC Sounds, episodes weekly<\/p>\n
Bone Valley<\/p>\n
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\u2019s death are nightmarish, this is a careful, powerful investigation: says Solotaroff, this is a story that has \u201cpierced the skin, and will not give me peace\u201d. HJD
Widely available, episodes weekly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pick of the weekReconstruction: The Unfinished Promise Who would have thought, back in 2008, that Barack Obama (pictured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-651987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}