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Post Reports

Post Reports

By: The Washington Post
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Post Reports is the daily podcast from The Washington Post. Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post, for your ears. Martine Powers and Elahe Izadi are your hosts, asking the questions you didn’t know you wanted answered. Published weekdays around 5 p.m. Eastern time.© The Washington Post Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Is Minneapolis a turning point in Trump's presidency?
    Jan 30 2026

    Since the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minnesota, President Donald Trump and his administration are feeling the pressure — not only from Democrats, but also from members of their own party. Some congressional Republicans have been critical of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics and are worried about consequences for the midterms.

    “The more the image is out there that President Trump is pushing things very far … [and] is responsible for chaos,” senior national politics reporter Naftali Bendavid says, “the easier it is for Democrats to make the case that they are needed, if nothing else, to put some guardrails up.”

    Naftali spoke on this week’s episode of the “Post Reports” politics roundtable, alongside host Colby Itkowitz and Dan Merica, co-anchor of the politics newsletter The Early Brief. They discussed how Democrats are using the threat of a government shutdown as leverage to demand stronger reforms of the Department of Homeland Security.

    Colby, Naftali and Dan also reflected on the attack against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) at a recent town hall.

    “We've seen people lose their lives in political violence moments last year,” Merica says, ”and you have to worry that it could happen again this year.”

    Today’s show was produced by Thomas Lu and Josh Carroll. It was edited by Martine Powers and mixed by Sean Carter.

    Subscribe to The Washington Post here. And watch us on YouTube here.

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    36 mins
  • The quest to ‘destructively scan’ all the world’s books
    Jan 29 2026

    In early 2024, executives at artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic ramped up an ambitious project they sought to keep quiet. It was code-named Project Panama, and internal documents filed in court described it as an “effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.”

    According to the filings, the company had spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire and slice the spines off potentially millions of books, before scanning their pages to feed knowledge into the AI models behind products such as Claude, its popular chatbot. A judge ruled this fair use.

    Details of Project Panama emerged in more than 4,000 pages of documents in a copyright lawsuit brought by book authors against Anthropic. The company agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle the case in August – but a district judge’s decision last week to unseal a slew of documents in the case more fully revealed Anthropic’s zealous pursuit of books.

    Today on “Post Reports,” technology reporter Will Oremus explains the lengths to which AI firms such as Anthropic, Meta, Google and OpenAI went to obtain colossal troves of data with which to “train” their software – a frantic and sometimes clandestine race to acquire the collected works of humanity.

    He and host Martine Powers discuss how AI companies’ efforts sometimes might have crossed over into the illegal, and how authors and artists might fare in an AI-centered future.

    Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Dennis Funk and mixed by Sam Bair.

    Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

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    28 mins
  • Why smaller houses can make us happier
    Jan 28 2026

    Houses in the United States keep getting bigger, but the people in bigger houses aren’t necessarily happier. Bigger homes often come with higher costs and more maintenance and can pull people further away from the places and relationships that matter. For some, choosing a smaller home can actually make life feel easier, more connected and more satisfying.

    Elahe Izadi speaks with climate coach Michael Coren about the joys that come with living in a smaller house and what to prioritize when deciding where to live.

    Today’s show was produced by Sabby Robinson. It was edited by Dennis Funk with help from Ariel Plotnik and mixed by Sean Carter.

    Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

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    21 mins

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I miss the Washington Post daily digest. It was discontinued because apparently it was decided that podcasts had made it irrelevant. Podcasts are no substitute in any way shape or form. Its like comparing apples and libraries.

But when the digest was discontinued I was forced to compromise with the post digest.

I like the hosts and they do a good job.

I wish they weren’t posted the day after.

The main issue I have is that the sibilance are near torture. They are so painful especially when wearing headphones which I assume is how most people listen. De-essing is a thing. Please do it. The guests are particularly bad for this, I assume because they are not professionals speaking into professional mics with pop filters at an appropriate distance.

The Sibilance are near torture. Please de-es your vocals.

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I enjoy hearing in-depth reporting and hearing the story beyond the story reported in the paper.

Being a news-junkie, listening while preparing dinner is a real highlight to my day.

Great Insight

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very eye pushing. the podcast said that you would put the like to Jeff's story in the notes, but the link is not currently in the episode notes. can you add please.

very informative

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Martine Powers brings intelligence and a joyous attitude to the daily podcast. She asks interviewees the questions that I haven’t thought of yet and pursues the responses with energy and purpose. Go Martine!!!

Simply the best news program available!

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Every morning I knew I could catch up on what was going on in the country and the world AND get world class comments and opinions. Now… I get a short podcast on one subject. They are, in all honesty, well done. I just miss the news summary.

I miss the digest

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