app_store_button

google_play_button

DK - Details page - Device banner - 894x1036

Nyd den ubegrænsede adgang til tusindvis af spændende e- og lydbøger - helt gratis

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

The Washington Post

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.

Post Reports

Conflicting narratives of Renée Good’s killing in Minneapolis have quickly emerged – federal officials claim the ICE officer who shot her was acting in self-defense, while others believe her death was easily avoidable and that ICE’s tactics are overly aggressive. 

Host Martine Powers speaks with immigration reporter Maria Sacchetti about how law enforcement officials are scrutinizing the shooting and what accountability in this case could look like.

Are ICE officers doing what they’re trained to do?

The turmoil started in late December, when some Tehran merchants closed up shop to protest the free fall of Iran’s currency. 

That initial outcry sparked a wave of protests across the country. Demonstrators demanded not just economic reform, but a total overhaul of Iran’s government and an end to repression. Some called for the ouster of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Now the government has cracked down, and there are reports that hundreds of protesters have been killed. The country has been under a communications blackout since Thursday, making it nearly impossible to assess the extent of the bloodshed.

Elahe Izadi speaks with Iran correspondent Yeganeh Torbati about how things boiled over - and what might be happening inside the country.

Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff with help from Sabby Robinson. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sean Carter. 

You can learn more about Torbati's forthcoming book on Iran here. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

Will these Iran protests bring the government down?

Decades after a brazen art theft drove Merry White’s father to despair, federal agents closed in on the missing work. For White, the search is personal.

Read more:

Merry White is the daughter of a Harvard professor who was close friends with painter Jackson Pollock. White’s parents came to own several of the painter’s artworks, and one hung over White’s bed when she was a child. It was stolen in 1973, along with two other paintings by Pollock. The theft destroyed White’s father's peace of mind, and left White with complicated feelings.

On this weekend episode of “Post Reports,” art critic Sebastian Smee reconstructs the provenance and theft of these precious works of art. Audio production and original music by Bishop Sand, with help from Sean Carter.

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

The hunt for a stolen Jackson Pollock painting

This week, the shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis has drawn new scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement push, and reactions have become something of a political Rorschach test. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. Mark Kelly (Arizona) are facing new challenges as they navigate attacks from Republican leaders. And the Trump administration continues to project defiance in the aftermath of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s removal.

“This is just one expression of raw American power after another,” says White House reporter Michael Birnbaum on this week’s “Post Reports” politics roundtable.

Michael spoke with host Colby Itkowitz and Dan Merica, co-anchor of the Early Brief newsletter, to unpack a jam-packed week of political news. 

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

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

Minneapolis ICE shooting, Tim Walz and 'America First' after Venezuela

Go to sleep earlier. Read more books. Eat better. Exercise. 

Changing our behavior is hard, but what if some simple – and dare we say fun – tricks could help us keep our resolutions for the new year?

From temptation bundling to buddying up, Optimist reporter Maggie Penman shares the science on how to make your New Year’s resolutions, whatever they are, stick in 2026. Plus, on the eve of national “Quitters Day,” we explore why making resolutions can actually be beneficial – even if you don’t stick to them perfectly. 

Today’s show was produced by Elana Gordon. It was edited by Dennis Funk and mixed by Sam Bair. Thanks to Allison Klein and Theresa Tamkins.

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

The trick to making New Year’s resolutions stick

Just hours before U.S. aircraft surged into Caracas as part of an operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, an anonymous person placed a final online bet that the Venezuelan president would soon be ousted. 

The mystery gambler netted more than $400,000 on that long-shot bet – raising questions about whether they had inside knowledge of the operation. 

The payout has drawn attention to the growing world of prediction markets, online bets on real-world scenarios that some critics warn could have unintended negative effects. Today, Martine Powers talks with banking reporter Andrew Ackerman about the loosely regulated prediction market industry and what we know about the mystery gambler who won big on the Maduro ouster.

Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick with help from Dennis Funk and mixed by Sean Carter. 

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

How a mystery gambler scored big on Maduro’s ouster

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has held many titles during Donald Trump’s presidency. He may have just acquired his most challenging one yet: viceroy of Venezuela.

The national security adviser, acting archivist and administrator of the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development was central to masterminding the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday. And with no immediate successor to govern the country of roughly 29 million, Trump is leaning on Rubio to help “run” Venezuela, divvy up its oil assets and usher in a new government, a fraught and daunting task for someone with so many other responsibilities.

Today on “Post Reports,” State Department reporter John Hudson explains how Rubio has become so influential, and what that could mean for Venezuela’s future. 

﻿Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy, with help from Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sam Bair.

Marco Rubio, the Viceroy of Venezuela

After U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, President Donald Trump declared: “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”

The world is still digesting the consequences of the intervention, which the Trump administration has characterized as a law enforcement mission against Maduro rather than a military operation in a foreign country. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and machine gun possession.

White House reporter Michael Birnbaum joins host Martine Powers to explain the political ramifications of Maduro’s arrest, the next steps of the Trump administration and the reactions of Venezuelans. 

We also hear from Ana Vanessa Herrero, The Post’s reporter in Caracas. 

Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff, with help from Rennie Svirnovskiy and Reena Flores. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sean Carter. 

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

With Maduro gone, what's Venezuela's future?

Today we share one of our favorite episodes, from Optimist reporter Maggie Penman about the new science of aging, and a hopeful research finding that getting stronger and healthier in old age is possible for many of us – even after a health setback. 

If you want to hear more stories like this, please let us know. You can reach the whole team at podcasts@washpost.com or email Maggie at maggie.penman@washpost.com.

Today’s episode was reported and produced by Maggie Penman. It was edited by Allison Klein and Ted Muldoon who also mixed the show.

The Optimist has a newsletter! Subscribe here.

And, subscribe to The Washington Post here.

How to get stronger as you age

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 podcasts@washpost.com. You can email Maggie directly at maggie.penman@washpost.com.

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

How to be a ‘super ager’

Who is Mary Sara, the Sami woman whose brain was taken for the Smithsonian’s “racial brain collection”? Today, we find her descendants. And we find out how the Smithsonian is addressing the dark legacy of its “bone doctor,” Ales Hrdlicka. 

Read more: 

The brain of a Sami woman who died at a Seattle sanitarium in 1933. The cerebellum of an Indigenous Filipino who died at the 1904 World’s Fair. These are just two of the brains collected, seemingly without consent, by the Smithsonian’s first curator of its physical anthropology division, Ales Hrdlicka. They were part of the institution’s “racial brain collection.” 

Now, a hundred years after this brain collection began, The Washington Post has pieced together the most extensive look at this work to date. In this second episode, we conclude our search for the descendants of Mary, the Sami woman whose brain was taken in 1933, and we hear from the Smithsonian about how it’s grappling with Hrdlicka’s troubling legacy. 

If you haven’t listened to the first episode, make sure to listen to “Brain desirable,” Part 1.

'Brain desirable,' Part 2

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

Other podcasts you might like ...