Prognosis: Misconception
by Bloomberg
Reality TV stars are freezing their eggs on camera. Lawmakers in DC are debating federal protection for IVF. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in slick startups that market fertility treatments for all. But this rapid growth has revealed cracks in the system. Misconception, a new series from Bloomberg’s Prognosis, follows reporter Kristen V. Brown on her own intimate journey as she uncovers the business of fertility. Along the way, she finds a fractured industry — a profit-driven field of medicine that thrives on dueling messages of hope and fear as people gamble everything for a chance at a baby.
Episodes
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Introducing: Levittown
When dozens of young women discover manipulated photos of themselves have been posted on a porn site, they fight back – joining up with a global band of investigators and hackers to battle the AI-fueled rise of deepfakes. Listen to episodes starting March 21.
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Listen Now: Beak Capitalism from Odd Lots
In this limited series, Odd Lots explains some of the thorniest issues facing the US economy through the medium of … chicken. Chicken occupies a unique position in the US diet, but issues facing the poultry industry illustrate wider points about the development of the US economy and the decisions...
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Misconception: Great Expectations
At long last, it's the day of Kristen’s retrieval. As she waits to find out her results, she investigates why so many people are freezing their eggs now — and whether there is any science on the horizon that could make things easier for future generations.
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Misconception: Big Baby
Kristen is trying to figure out where to freeze. While trying to pick a clinic, she uncovers how an influx of private equity and other funding hasn’t actually made things better for fertility patients. She learns about fertility mishaps, mistakes and how labs and clinics are really run.
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Misconception: Money Money Money
As Kristen stresses about how to pay for fertility treatment, she meets people who had to go extreme lengths to afford the services in a system where insurance coverage is spotty. And she travels to Oklahoma to check out one company that’s trying to make the treatment accessible for all.
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Misconception: The Baby Boom
Reporter Kristen V. Brown visits a fertility clinic to find out whether she can still have kids. And she explores the moment the fertility industry really exploded: when doctors realized they could sell egg freezing as a preventative service, not just as a medical treatment.
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Introducing: Misconception
Reality TV stars are freezing their eggs on camera. Lawmakers in DC are debating federal protection for IVF. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in slick startups that market fertility treatments for all. But this rapid growth has revealed cracks in the system. Misconception, a new...
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Introducing: Bloomberg News Now
Bloomberg News Now is a comprehensive audio report on today's top stories. Listen for the latest news, whenever you want it, covering global business stories around the world. on Apple: trib.al/Mx9TCh1 on Spotify: trib.al/T4BG8s4 Anywhere: trib.al/O4EX6BA
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Introducing: Elon, Inc.
At Bloomberg, we’re always talking about the biggest business stories, and no one is bigger than Elon Musk. In this new chat weekly show, host David Papadopoulos and a panel of guests including Businessweek’s Max Chafkin, Tesla reporter Dana Hull, Big Tech editor Sarah Frier, and more, will break...
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Covid Cures and Conspiracies Introducing: The Deadly Cure
Smoke Screen: Deadly Cure is a podcast about a family on the fringe who convinced tens of thousands of people across the globe to buy a miracle liquid made of poison, the international conspiracy they ignited, and the people who fought to take them down. Smoke Screen: Deadly Cure is a Neon Hum...
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Introducing: Crash Course
Hosted by Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor Tim O'Brien, Crash Course will bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic business and social upheavals occur. Every week, Crash Course will explore the lessons to be learned when creativity and ambition collide with competition and…
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Targeting the Toughest Diseases (Sponsored Content)
The battle against humanity’s most challenging diseases is happening at the intersection of business and medicine. A new six-episode podcast called Targeting the Toughest Diseases explores how Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a Boston-based biotech company, is using innovative tools, methods, and a unique...
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Losing It: Gut Instinct
If you’re like many people, there’s a good chance that your weight and calorie considerations play a big role in food decisions. Intuitive eating, an Internet-famous movement all about healing people’s relationships with food, says it shouldn’t be that way. The final episode of “Losing It”…
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Losing It: The Truth About Health and Weight
What if the dangers of being heavy have been overstated, or misrepresented? This new episode of the podcast series “Losing It” explores the relationship between health and weight, and the argument that we focus on the scale too much and not enough on healthy behaviors.
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Losing It: Just Don’t Call it A Diet
Companies like WW, formerly Weight Watchers, and Noom, which makes a popular weight-loss app, have a new pitch for would-be members: that they can lose weight with a holistic lifestyle approach instead of dieting. This new episode of podcast series “Losing It” explores why the backlash against...
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Losing It: A Weight-Loss Mecca’s Secrets
We all think we know the basics of weight loss. It is all about consuming fewer calories than you burn. Eat less, move more. Calories in, calories out. But there’s much more to it than these simple equations, as a trip to the enormous Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge…
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Losing It: How to Launch a Diet Empire
The South Beach Diet became an incredible success in the early 2000s, blowing past booksellers’ expectations, dominating the cultural moment and becoming a huge business. In the third episode of Losing It, we fly down to glamorous Miami to tell the story of the South Beach Diet and break down the...
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Losing It: Once Upon a Diet
When it comes to dieting, what’s old is new again. In the second episode of Losing we take a trip back in time through diet history — and explore why we keep falling for these absurd-sounding regimens decade after decade.
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Losing It: When a Calorie Isn’t A Calorie
Calorie counts are everywhere from food packages to weight-loss apps. But calories aren’t all that they appear to be. In the series premiere of Losing it, we dive into how we got the calorie so wrong – and pretty much everything else about weight.
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Introducing: Losing It
For much of human history, we’ve turned to diets to lose weight and improve our health. But it’s mostly been in vain. Because no matter how much the number on the scale drops, chances are the weight will come back. That’s just what the science says. But when it comes to our weight, the facts…
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We've Been Nominated for a Webby!
That's right! We're honored to be nominated for a Webby, in the Science & Education category. Please take a minute to vote for us here: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2022/podcasts/general-series/science-education
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Breakthrough: The Next Pandemic
Virus hunters around the globe are already bracing for the next contagion which they fear could prove even more destructive than Covid. These scientists and doctors, drawing from hard-learned lessons from the past, are determined to stop future pandemics even as the current one continues to rage.
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Breakthrough: The Future of mRNA
Covid-19 is just the beginning for messenger RNA vaccines. Researchers are testing shots across a range of diseases, from cancer to malaria, HIV or even multiple sclerosis. There’s no guarantee the technology will work beyond infectious diseases, but if it does, it could transform medicine.
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Breakthrough: The Vaccine Race
Two biotech companies, Germany’s BioNTech and the U.S.’s Moderna, decided in January 2020 to wager their futures on developing a messenger RNA shot to fight Covid-19. What ensued was a head-spinning race to bring a vaccine to market quicker than ever before.
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Breakthrough: Unlikely Heroes
The messenger RNA vaccines against Covid-19 seem to have emerged out of nowhere. But they’re based on decades of painstaking work, done in relative obscurity, by researchers who believed in the promise of the technology even if few others did.
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Breakthrough: The Covid Fortress
On the outside, city hospitals look just as they always have: big glass and steel buildings, an ER entrance with ambulances coming and going. But on the inside, Covid has completely transformed the hospital experience for patients, their families -- and for doctors and hospital staff. Once held…
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Breakthrough: Covid’s Long, Scary Tail
The loss of the sense of smell affects almost one in every two people who get Covid-19. Usually it resolves within a week or two. But for some, like Dr. Alex McCutchan, smell and taste distortions persist for a year, leaving an invisible illness that disrupts daily life. Scientists like Leah...
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Breakthrough: Rehab for Long Haulers
Neuroscientist David Putrino doesn’t profess to understand why some Covid-19 survivors suffer persistent symptoms or how to cure them, but he’s finding ways to help “long haulers” take control of their symptoms. In this episode, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale takes a virtual tour of Putrino’s Manhattan...
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Breakthrough: How the Dead Are Helping the Living
In a secure air-locked chamber in the world’s largest research hospital, Dan Chertow and a half-dozen other scientists in astronaut-inspired protective gear are carrying out a microscopic search inside Covid-19 victims to try to unlock one of the pandemic’s biggest and most disturbing mysteries.…
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Breakthrough: Long Covid’s Early Origins
With a loss of smell and a high fever, New Yorker Fiona Lowenstein had a classic case of Covid-19 before she knew what a classic Covid case was. But there was more she didn't know: she was also about to join a burgeoning group we now know as “long haulers.” On the first episode of “Breakthrough,”…
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Introducing: Breakthrough
On Breakthrough, a new series from the Prognosis podcast, we explore how the pandemic is changing our understanding of healthcare and medicine. We start with an examination of long Covid, a mysterious new illness that has stumped doctors attempting to treat symptoms that last for months and...
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Doubt, Bonus: A Surprising Southern Success
Demographics alone would suggest Bradley County, Arkansas, should be struggling fiercely with local resistance against vaccines, just as many other counties are all across the southern U.S. Yet in July, Governor Asa Hutchinson announced that Bradley was the first county in Arkansas to inoculate…
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Doubt: Hope
In our final episode of the season, we look at where vaccine hesitancy stands in America today. More Americans are getting vaccinated every day, but the numbers of skeptics are still high enough to seriously threaten efforts to achieve widespread immunity and end the pandemic. The answer to…
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Doubt: Getting Out of the Boat
We meet Dr. Timothy Sloan, a pastor of a black church in Texas, who is torn over how to talk to his congregants about the Covid-19 vaccines. He is skeptical about getting one, and knows the rest of his church is, too. But, the vaccines could also be a lifeline. Black Americans have died at about...
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Doubt: 'Let's Go to War'
In October 2020, anti-vaccine elite gathered for a conference to discuss, among other things, how to use the pandemic to grow their movement. In this episode, we travel inside the world of anti-vaccine extremists to show how they weaponize uncertainty and mistrust to spread rumors about vaccines…
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Doubt: The Happiest Place on Earth
The 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak was a pivotal moment in explaining the vaccine hesitation we see today. The outbreak made clear that number of people opting out of vaccination was significant. But it also changed the people protesting vaccines. Before that, activists speaking out about...
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Doubt: The Man Behind The Myth
Meet the man behind all the myths: Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield’s retracted 1998 study linking autism to vaccines helped kickstart the modern vaccine hesitancy movement. We’ll explore the forces that helped propel Wakefield into the spotlight and show how groundwork Wakefield laid decades ago…
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Doubt: Rumor Has It
In the series premiere of "Doubt," we meet Jon, a New York City paramedic struggling to decide whether he should get vaccinated. Bloomberg health reporter Kristen V. Brown shows how the pandemic has led many people like him to question vaccines for the first time — and how this distrust threatens...
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What Closing Schools Has Done to Kids
This month marks the one-year anniversary in the U.S. of nationwide school closures. The public health measure was designed to help stem the spread of Covid-19. But in doing so, it’s had a profound effect on children. That’s in contrast to the disease itself, which rarely makes young people...
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The Science of Beating Variants
Fast-moving variants of the coronavirus seen in England, South Africa and Brazil have sparked concern around the world. Researchers worry some may diminish the potency of existing vaccines and complicate efforts to escape the pandemic. As COVID-19 cases started to climb in early 2020, British...
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Introducing: Doubt
A few decades ago, nobody really questioned vaccines. They were viewed as a standard part of staying healthy and safe. Today, the number of people questioning vaccines risks prolonging a pandemic that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. How we got to this moment didn’t start…
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One Year
It’s been one year since Coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. And in that time, our lives have changed dramatically. The virus has imposed disease, death and loss on the U.S. and the world. It forced sweeping changes to daily life almost overnight. For this special episode of Prognosis,...
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What Israel Can Teach Us
Israel has had one of the world’s most successful vaccination efforts yet. Now a new study from the country shows the Pfizer vaccine was overwhelmingly effective against the virus. Public-health experts say the Israeli study shows that immunizations could end the pandemic. Naomi Kresge reports on...
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Coming Soon: The Pay Check Season 3
More than 150 years after the end of slavery in the U.S., the net worth of a typical white family is nearly six times greater than that of the average Black family. Season 3 of The Pay Check digs into into how we got to where we are today and what can be done to narrow the yawning racial wealth…
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Is Pfizer's Vaccine Plan Fair?
Vaccine distribution still has the feel of a zero-sum game. Five days after Israel received 700,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, Pfizer told other non-U.S. customers that it would cut supplies while it briefly closed a facility in Belgium. The disparity in vaccine allocation is the…
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Nursing Home Deaths Become a Political Football
In recent months, GOP lawmakers have heaped criticism on Democratic governors for how they handled outbreaks at nursing homes early in the pandemic. Michigan Republicans, who have been hostile to Governor Gretchen Whitmer throughout the crisis, are now asking the state’s attorney general to...
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Johnson & Johnson's CEO on the Newest Vaccine
Now that Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine has been cleared by regulators, the company needs to ramp up doses fast. J and J is looking for manufacturing partnerships to increase supply. Riley Griffin spoke to the company’s chief executive officer, Alex Gorsky about his plan to immunize 20...
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Can the Arts Recover?
New York City’s museums, sports arenas and entertainment venues are slowly coming back to life. But the sector has contracted dramatically under the pressure of the global pandemic. Jobs in arts, entertainment and recreation fell the most of all the city’s economic sectors, erasing a decade of...
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The Second Shot Squeeze
Almost a month after U.S. vaccination campaigns ramped up to give Covid-19 shots to more than a million people a day, their second doses are coming due. That’s putting a strain on state rollouts, and leaving some people without complete immunizations. John Tozzi reports that as President Joe…
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How the Vaccines Will Change Our Lives
Nine vaccines have proved effective at protecting people from developing symptoms of Covid-19. But we don’t know yet how good they are at preventing asymptomatic infections, and keeping vaccinated people from passing the virus on to others. The good news is that preliminary signs suggest they do…
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About this show
Reality TV stars are freezing their eggs on camera. Lawmakers in DC are debating federal protection for IVF. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in slick startups that market fertility treatments for all. But this rapid growth has revealed cracks in the system. Misconception, a new series from Bloomberg’s Prognosis, follows reporter Kristen V. Brown on her own intimate journey as she uncovers the business of fertility. Along the way, she finds a fractured industry — a profit-driven field of medicine that thrives on dueling messages of hope and fear as people gamble everything for a chance at a baby.
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