Barack Obama has launched a books podcast. Three years ago, this would have been an automatic cause for celebration in the book world. Now, however, the tide has turned. Publishers have started to realise that touting their authors on podcasts may actually do more harm than good; that having a writer discuss their new release for an hour may give the listener all they want and deter them from actually purchasing a copy.

The surest way the producer of a podcast can mitigate against the risk is to exclude books by living authors. Obama’s team mostly do just that. The former President has authors as guests, but the books they talk about are in most cases decades old.

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Obama’s guest for the first episode was Tom Hanks, and the ‘great book’ they selected was Gilead (2004) by Marilynne Robinson – the only living author featured in this series. And what we got was a highbrow, consciously intellectual and quietly intense fireside chat by two men of a certain age convinced that rereading books of........

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