The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

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   Number 1: Is Minneapolis a turning point in Trump's presidency?

   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.

   January 30, 2026·36min
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   Number 2: Goodbye from "Post Reports"

   Just over seven years ago, we launched this daily news podcast from The Washington Post. Our goal was to bring you inside our newsroom, sharing our reporting with listeners to help make sense of what was happening in the world. We’ve published hundreds of episodes. We’ve covered elections, wars, a pandemic, tech revolutions, pop culture phenomena, scientific discoveries and more. As of this week, The Post has decided to suspend "Post Reports." It was a privilege to know that we got to spend time in your ears, as part of your day. To everybody who’s listened to this podcast and made it a part of your lives: We want to extend our deepest gratitude for the trust you’ve put in us.

   February 06, 2026·9min
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   Number 3: The quest to ‘destructively scan’ all the world’s books

   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.

   January 29, 2026·28min
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   Number 4: How to be a ‘super ager’

   Today, we revisit one of our favorite episodes from this past year, about super agers: people who continue to thrive into their 80s and 90s. One of them lives just down my block. Ednajane Truax, who is known to friends and neighbors as “E.J.,” can often be found on her hands and knees in the dirt, working in the garden at the Sherwood Recreation Center in Northeast Washington. She also has an impressive garden of her own and helps out with other neighbors’ gardens. She works out several times a week, sometimes while wearing a shirt that says, “You don’t stop lifting when you get old — you get old when you stop lifting.” She can bench press 55 pounds and leg press 250. Truax has never married — “just lucky, I guess,” she jokes when I ask her about that — but she has remained social her entire life. She volunteers, goes to the gym, throws parties, knows her neighbors and their children by name. Truax says her secret to thriving as she ages is simple: Be active. It turns out that research backs her up. If you’re looking for more surprising, delightful stories about the best of humanity, check out The Optimist from The Washington Post. We also have a newsletter: Subscribe to get stories from The Optimist in your inbox every Sunday morning. Today’s show was produced by Maggie Penman with help from Ted Muldoon, who also mixed the show. The Optimist’s editor is Allison Klein. If you liked hearing this story on “Post Reports,” send us an email at [email protected]. You can email Maggie directly at [email protected]. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

   January 02, 2026·13min
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   Number 5: How much do dogs reduce our stress?

   On this weekend’s edition of The Optimist, reporter and self-proclaimed cynic Kyle Melnick goes on a journey with a dog. We’ll talk about what he learns, and the science of how dogs make us calmer, happier – and maybe even more trusting. If you want more optimistic content on the weekends, let us know at [email protected] and [email protected] – and check out our newsletter. Today’s show was produced and hosted by Maggie Penman and reported by Kyle Melnick. It was edited by Allison Klein and mixed by Ted Muldoon. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

   November 01, 2025·15min
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