Post Reports

As loneliness rates spike, more people are getting romantically and emotionally attached to artificial intelligence bots. Today, we report on what it’s like to fall in love with software (and what happens when it breaks your heart). Read more: T.J. Arriaga lost so many family members around the time when he downloaded Replika. The artificial intelligence company allows people to customize AI bots that they can chat with. In Arriaga’s case, he fell in love with his chat bot Phaedra. The...

“America’s Pastime” is struggling to keep Americans interested. Today ahead of Opening Day, we talk about Major League Baseball’s introduction of a pitch clock to try to speed things up and appeal to younger audiences. Read more: This season, baseball is trying something new to speed up the game: a pitch clock. The goal is to make baseball more exciting by requiring pitchers and batters to move more quickly (but will it actually bring in new fans?). Reporter Chelsea Janes joins Post...

At a school in Nashville on Monday, a shooter used two AR-style weapons and a handgun to kill three children and three adults. Today on “Post Reports,” we look at the history of the AR-15 and how it became America’s gun. Read more: The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller. The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a military rifle in the late 1950s. “An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality,” an internal Pentagon report raved. It soon became standard issue for U.S....

Nationwide strikes and protests erupted in Israel as outrage grew over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the country’s courts. Many saw the move as a threat to Israel’s democracy. And on Monday, Netanyahu announced he would put the plan on pause. Read more: For months, Israelis have rallied against the country’s right-wing government as it tries to force a drastic overhaul of the Supreme Court. But protests intensified when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his...

Today, what a landmark poll of U.S. transgender adults reveals about what life is like for trans people in America. Read more: In this atmosphere of intense polarization around transgender rights, The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation set out to hear what transgender Americans had to say on topics ranging from their experiences as children in school to navigating the workplace, the doctor’s office and family relationships as adults. The resulting Washington Post-KFF Trans...

TikTok is on Capitol Hill today. Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of the popular social media app, testified in front of Congress about the company’s data security practices and its relationship with the Chinese government, as more lawmakers advocate for banning the app in the United States. Read more: Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, testified in front of the House Energy Committee for five hours on Thursday. He was grilled by lawmakers on issues ranging from data privacy to national security. For...

Today, what Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state visit could mean for the balance of global power. Read more: This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for the first time since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. Reporter Mary Ilyushina says, while the two leaders have met many times before, this meeting showed the two countries' commitment to creating a new world order, one where the U.S. is no longer the...

A conservative Catholic group spent millions of dollars on app data that identified gay priests. A Washington Post investigation dives into how this secretive group got data from Grindr and other apps, and what this story can tell us about data privacy in the U.S. Read more: In the summer of 2021, a prominent priest, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, was mysteriously outed for being a regular on Grindr, the gay dating and hookup app. The scandal sent shock waves through the Catholic...

Are we in the middle of a financial crisis? Today’s show breaks down the latest bank crises — from Credit Suisse to First Republic. Read more: Another week, another banking calamity. On Sunday, Swiss banking giant UBS came to the rescue of its rival, Credit Suisse. It was the first near-collapse of a European bank on the heels of three regional bank implosions in the United States. Economics reporter Abha Bhattarai helps us decipher all the bank failures over the past couple of weeks....

As the U.S. continues to grow racially and ethnically diverse, that shift is reflected in how our names are changing. Still, culture wars persist. And that can mean Americans are forced to consider what makes us American, and what makes a name American. Read more: Two years ago this week, a 21-year-old gunman in Atlanta massacred eight people in three spas. Six of those victims were women of Asian descent. It prompted a wave of reporting about racist attacks and violence, and for Marian...

Today on Post Reports, we take you to an abortion hearing in Amarillo, Tex., that the judge didn’t want you to know was coming. Read more: In a four-hour hearing on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk heard arguments in a lawsuit that could restrict access nationwide to the abortion medication mifepristone. The lawsuit alleges that the medication is unsafe, despite being approved and highly regulated by the FDA for decades. However, many antiabortion activists are hopeful that...

The AI behind ChatGPT just got an upgrade. But it might not have all of the bells and whistles that some were expecting. Read more: GPT-4 might sound like gibberish, but it could change what you expect from your apps (not to mention what happens when you try out ChatGPT). If you need a recipe and are low on groceries, you could soon take a picture of your open fridge for the system to “look” at, identify your ingredients, and whip up a recipe for the night. That being said, there are...

Teachers across the nation are changing how they teach in response to state laws, administrative decrees and parental pressure. Today on “Post Reports,” we explore three examples of things teachers are cutting from their lesson plans. Read more: School districts and teachers are grappling with how to teach race, racism, U.S. history, sexual orientation and gender. These fights are happening in school board meetings, local town halls and on the campaign trail. A growing parental rights...

Silicon Valley Bank is dead. The institution that was a major financier for venture capitalists, tech start-ups and other Silicon Valley outfits has collapsed. Enter: the federal government. Read more: When depositors who belonged to Silicon Valley Bank started quickly withdrawing their money recently, it caused a “bank run.” This led to the ruin of the tech-focused bank, the largest bank failure since the Great Recession. Now the federal government is stepping in to ensure customers are...

It’s not just on movie sets like the infamous “Rust.” Beyond Hollywood’s glitz and glamor, and the spectacle of the upcoming 95th Academy Awards, there are hidden dangers on many of the sets for the tv shows and movies we love. Read more: Back in October 2021, two major events happened in Hollywood. First, 60,000 union members overwhelmingly voted to go on strike because of rough working conditions on television and movie sets. The strike was narrowly averted, but it left union members...

Today on Post Reports, as we near the three-year mark of the pandemic, health reporter Lena Sun digs into the science of grief and what she learned through her own loss. Her mother was one of more than 1 million Americans who died of covid. Read more: This week, we’re marking three years since the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 was a pandemic. Since March of 2020, more than a million people have died in the United States alone and we’ve lost more than 6 million...

Today, what we know about the four Americans who were kidnapped in Mexico, and what this incident can tell us about medical tourism, the security situation at the U.S. southern border, and how U.S. policy has contributed to the problems. Read more: Last week, four American friends from South Carolina were kidnapped in the Mexican border city Matamoros. By the time Mexican security forces located them on the outskirts of the city Tuesday, two of the Americans were dead and another was...

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, enables low-income families to put basic food on the table. This month, SNAP experienced dramatic cuts that have left many families and seniors struggling to figure out how to survive on less than $6 per meal. That can mean cheaper, less-healthy options like canned and processed foods, which are high in sugar and are major drivers of obesity, reporter Laura Reiley tells “Post Reports.” “It's a hunger that looks different than it...

Today on the show, the $500 million alleged Ponzi scheme that preyed on Mormons. Read more: Las Vegas investigative reporter Jeff German was killed outside his home in September; a Clark County official he had investigated is charged in his death. To continue German’s work, The Washington Post teamed up with his newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, to complete one of the stories he’d planned to pursue before he was killed. A folder on German’s desk contained court documents he’d...

If you’re gearing up to clean out your closet this spring, you might be wondering: Where can I donate all these clothes? And: What actually happens to these clothes when I do donate? The Washington Post’s climate solutions team has some answers. Read more: From Goodwill to disaster-relief efforts to those big metal donation boxes on street corners, there are a lot of options for where to give those clothes you just don’t wear anymore. But whether those old t-shirts ever find new, good...