This series asks a simple but unsettling question: what if the story of America doesn’t begin in 1776 at all? By placing slavery and its legacies at the center of the American story, 1619 reframes familiar moments in American history so radically that they start to look entirely different.

It made me re-think what I thought I knew about American history, but what really elevates this is how presenter Nikole Hannah-Jones weaves in her own family story.

There are dozens of history podcasts about WWII, but this podcast shines a light on one story that remained buried for decades.

It tells the story of the three million people who died of starvation in Bengal in 1943. As the brilliant presenter Kavita Puri puts it, “There’s no memorial to them. No plaque.” She weaves together powerful interviews of survivors (some of whom are remarkably still alive) and digs into the archives to expose how and why the British government censored the famine at the time.

Listening to Throughline feels like sitting in first class on a podcast flight: close your eyes and you’re immersed in archive, sound, music and beautifully crafted writing. Each episode asks how we got here — and answers that question with elegance and depth.

I loved the episode about chocolate (going right back to pre-Columbus Americas). And as a mum of two, I was also drawn to ‘The Labor Of Love’ episode, an exploration of the American ideal of motherhood.

Presented by the superb investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, this series revolves around a deliciously improbable question: was the 1990s power ballad ‘Wind of Change’ by Scorpions secretly written by the CIA?

You know from the start he won’t get a definitive answer, but that hardly matters. The journey takes us deep into the CIA’s cultural operations and its murky relationship with Hollywood. Above all, it’s the quality of the writing that makes this series unforgettable.

Ever notice how trauma (or its effects) play out in families through generations… until a brave and resourced soul breaks the pattern?

Just Like Nana explores that phenomenon through family stories and interviews with experts who can explain how and why trauma is passed down — including mental health professionals, holistic health practitioners, authors who write about family sagas, neurobiologists, genealogists, and more.