The article recommends five podcasts available this week, spanning Barack Obama’s conversations with guests to investigations of scandals, rumours and family histories. Obama’s new Audible series, made through Higher Ground, discusses books that have inspired him; its first episode features Tom Hanks talking about parenting and family through Marilynne Robinson’s *Gilead*.

The other picks include a weekly series examining scandals such as the Profumo affair and boyband Blue; a journalistic investigation into the Richard Gere gerbil rumour and its links to homophobic slurs; Sayre Quevedo’s personal search for his absent father; and a podcast about children’s-book creators Petra and Michael Mathers, whose double suicide shocked the world. Most are widely available, while Obama’s six-part series is on Audible.