Personal Update not playing the news since 18.6 install

I'm seeing the same behavior on my iPhone 14 Pro (iOS 18.6).

Siri Personal update including Top News (I use the original default of NPR because, you know, ef Fox News) works fine on HomePods. But on the phone, Siri reports the weather and upcoming appointments, and then fails to play the latest news with the message "And now..." "I couldn't find that in your Apple Podcasts library."

If I say "Siri, play the latest top news" to the phone, the phone immediately plays the same NPR Top News podcast episode that the HomePod plays correctly at the end of the personal update.

This definitely looks like a bug. I know it is possible to change the default Top news source but I haven't been able to discover how to see if this affects only NPR Top News.

I'd personally be OK with less AI nonsense and instead work on just not breaking the stuff Siri could already do.

Related: My quest continues to change the trigger phrase for personal update to "Siri, what fresh h*ll is this?"

Edit: Apparently you can't mention The Hot Place here even when quoting Dorothy Parker.

Same here. I think it’s an iOS/iPadOS bug because it’s happening on both my iPhone 16 Pro and iPad Pro. I’m also wondering if it’s particular to NPR News since apparently all three of us have similarly good taste in our selection of news source. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling both the Podcasts app and News app (just in case), and it’s still happening.