Podcast: Prognosis

All Episodes

Losing It, Part 6: Have the Dangers of Extra Pounds Been Exaggerated?

By Emma Court

A new episode of our podcast “Losing It” explores the complex relationship between health and weight.

Losing It, Part 5: The Hot New Trend in Weight Loss Is Anything But a Diet

By Emma Court

In the latest episode of “Losing It,” we dive into the backlash against dieting.

Losing It, Part 4: The Science of Weight Loss Is Surprisingly Messy

By Emma Court

In our latest episode, we dig into what the science of weight loss really says.

Losing It, Part 3: The Formula Behind One Doctor’s Diet Empire

By Emma Court

Our latest podcast episode explores how the South Beach Diet became a hit.

Losing It, Part 2: From the Greeks to Byron, Silly Diets Have Always Plagued Us

By Emma Court

We keep recycling the same tired weight-loss regimens.

Losing It, Part 1: Everything You Know About Calories Just Might Be Wrong

By Emma Court

In the premiere episode of the Bloomberg podcast ‘Losing It,’ we explain how not all calories are created equal—and why.

Israeli Residents Receive Third Pfizer Shot

Breakthrough, Part 7: Inside the 10-Month Sprint to Develop a Covid Vaccine

By Naomi Kresge

The pandemic brought mRNA shots to patients faster than would have seemed possible

University Of Louisville Administers First Shipment Of Pfizer Covid Vaccine

Breakthrough, Part 6: Covid Vaccines Owe Their Spectacular Success to Some Unlikely Heroes

By Naomi Kresge

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.

A Texas Hospital's ICU Department As Cases Near 10 Million In U.S.

Breakthrough, Part 5: Covid Has Made Hospitals Into Fortresses

By John Lauerman

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.

Breakthrough, Part 4: A Frontline Doctor Contemplates Covid’s Lifelong Consequences

By Jason Gale

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.

Missouri COVID Cases And Hospitalizations Rise

Breakthrough, Part 3: Step Inside a Manhattan Rehab Clinic for Long Covid Sufferers

By Jason Gale

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.

Breakthrough, Part 2: U.S. Scientists Study the Pandemic’s Dead to Crack ‘Long Covid’

By Jason Gale

To understand how to prevent the disease from lingering among the living, experts hunt for clues among those it claimed.

Online Doctor Babylon Weighs Listing at $4 Billion Value

Breakthrough, Part 1: How a Millennial With Long Covid Made The World's Doctors Listen

By Jason Gale

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.”

In One Arkansas County, A Road Map For Getting The U.S. Vaccinated

Doubt, Part 7: How a Rural Arkansas County Became a Vaccine Success Story

By Kristen V Brown

Demographics alone would suggest Bradley County should be struggling fiercely with local resistance against vaccines. But that’s not what happened.

California Offers Vaccinations To Everyone 50 Years And Over

Doubt, Part 6: Talking Vaccine Doubters Off The Fence Can Beat Anti-Vax Sentiment

By Kristen V Brown

The only way to end the pandemic is to respectfully listen to the concerns of those wary of vaccines

A Nursing Home Distributes Covid-19 Vaccine To Residents

Doubt, Part 5: Understanding Vaccine Hesitancy Among Black Americans

By Kristen V Brown

Black skepticism of vaccines goes far deeper than the Tuskegee experiment

Coronavirus Skeptics And Right-Wing Extremists Protest In Berlin

Doubt, Part 4: A Look Inside the Anti-Vaxx Playbook

By Kristen V Brown

How the anti-vaccine establishment is waging war against Covid-19 vaccines.

Disney To Cut 28,000 Jobs In One Of Biggest Layoffs Of Covid Era

Doubt, Part 3: The Happiest Place on Earth

By Kristen V Brown

The 2015 measles outbreak at Disneyland helped vaccine hesitancy into a movement.

Doubt, Part 2: The Man Behind The Myth

By Kristen V Brown

Andrew Wakefield helped sow doubt in vaccines, and that laid groundwork for vaccine skepticism today.

Modern syringe with liquid drug. The most anticipated procedure of the year

Doubt, Part 1: Rumor Has it

By Kristen V Brown

Even as much of the U.S. gets in line for a shot, many people’s reluctance has been decades in the making.

Episode 26: How It All Started

By Jason Gale

A look at how the novel coronavirus lived before it entered humans and who it lived in. Bats.

Episode 25: Understanding Pandemics

By Jason Gale

How can we make sense of the scary reality we are all now living in? Where do pandemics come from?

Episode 24: How to Buy a Better Birth

By John Tozzi

The average cost of having a baby in the United States is $11,000 for people on private health insurance. But the price tag can vary by tens of thousands of dollars, depending on what hospital you go to and what doctor you see.

Why Silicon Valley Injected $300 Million Into a N.J. Health Care Business

Episode 23: Fixing Health Care for the People It Often Fails

By John Tozzi

The medical community is increasingly examining the role that poverty and difficult social circumstances play in illness. Some people are asking whether the health care system could do more to address the things that influence people’s health beyond their medical care.

Inside Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham As Health Care Tops Voters Concerns

Episode 22: The Doctor, the Patient, and Everything in Between

By John Tozzi

What happens when one doctors’ group bucks the trend toward more concentrated health-care markets, and what might it mean for the future of the U.S. health-care system?

Inside The Oscar Center As Insurance Startup Partners With Mount Sinai

Episode 21: Yes, the U.S. Health-Care System Is Broken, But It Doesn’t Have to Be

By John Tozzi

In 2020, Americans will spend almost $4 trillion on health care. Yet for all that spending, Americans overall tend to be less healthy and die younger than citizens of other wealthy nations.

The Startups Waging War Against Superbugs

Episode 20: Turning Back the Superbug Scourge Is Still Possible

By Jason Gale

Pills we’ve relied on for decades to treat common infections simply no longer work. It’s a silent yet full-blown crisis. Yet it’s not too late. With enough will and money, the world can still turn back the rising tide of these killers among us.

Episode 19: Solving the Mystery of What Makes Hospitals So Sick

By Jason Gale

It's no secret that dangerous superbugs are showing up more and more in hospitals around the world. But where do they come from?

AUSTRALIA-HEALTH-HOSPITAL-DISEASE-SUPERBUG

Episode 18: A Natural Predator to Superbugs Offers Hope in Bacterial War

By Jason Gale

A little-known treatment called phage therapy is helping save lives in the fight against superbugs. The viruses are the natural predator of bacteria.

A 3D model of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae.

Episode 17: Superbugs Deadlier Than Cancer Put Chemotherapy Into Question

By Jason Gale

In India, patients and their families face a heart-wrenching choice: forgo lifesaving treatment or run the risk of a killer infection.

Episode 16: China’s Craze to DNA Test Babies Outweighs Privacy Concerns

By K Oanh Ha, Daniela Wei and April Ma

Chinese consumers, just like Westerners, are lining up for DNA tests. But unlike their American and European counterparts, the Chinese appear to have far fewer qualms about privacy and sharing their data.

Episode 15: Pregnant and Sleepless, I Hoped an App Would Make Me Healthier

By Naomi Kresge

Do exercise-tracking apps and gadgets like Fitbit make us healthier? Or do they just create a high-tech, data-centric illusion of control over our weight, sleep and general well-being?

Starboard Nominates Five Directors to Bristol-Myers Board (3)

Episode 14: It's Getting Harder to Keep Your Health Data Private. Here's What You Can Do About It

By John Tozzi

Some of the health information we generate from apps, DNA kits and fitness trackers can be sold to brokers who trade it like a commodity. How worried should we be?

Bitfarms Blockchain Farm As Bitcoin Stages July Recovery

Episode 13: How I Got Cash, Gift Cards and Cryptocurrency for My DNA Data

By Kristen V Brown

On our latest episode of Prognosis, reporter Kristen V. Brown sets out to peddle her own DNA to the highest bidder.

Episode 12: Finding Out You Have a Genetic Mutation May Not Be as Bad as You Think

By Michelle Cortez

Scientists are learning they greatly overestimated chances of developing deadly cancers in patients with no family history of disease.

General City Views Including The Mormon Temple

Episode 11: The Mormon Church's Quest to Save Souls Helped Fuel the DNA-Testing Boom

By Kristen V Brown

A century-old quest for family records to unite relatives in heaven has transformed the church into a global leader in genealogy technology.

Episode 10: These Coders Tried to Build a Better Period App

By Naomi Kresge

In the wake of privacy concerns, a group of Berlin-based feminist coders announced they were doing something different with their app.

DNA Company 23andMe Gets FDA Approval for Consumer Cancer Test

Episode 9: She Took a DNA Test and Found a Sister, Then Another and Another

By Kristen V Brown

In the genealogy business, finding out your dad isn’t your dad has a technical term: It’s called an non-paternity event, or an NPE.

Episode 8: How to Buy a Cure

By Rebecca Spalding and Michelle Cortez

Some patients can't wait for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs. They're pushing the drug industry to make the cures they and their loved ones need. But what's good for patients is also good for pharma's profits, creating a web of murky incentives that makes the issue of high drug costs all the more difficult to parse. In episode 8 of the Prognosis podcast, Bloomberg's Rebecca Spalding talks to these professional patients about their relationships to the big companies whose therapies they need.

Episode 7: Dying, Desperate Patients Get the Right to Try Unproven Cures

By Michelle Cortez

Should a patient dying of a disease with no proven cure have the right to try whatever experimental drug they want? A controversial new law signed by President Trump this year says that they should, bypassing the FDA. In episode seven, Bloomberg's Michelle Fay Cortez explores what the new Right To Try law means for desperate patients who want access to experimental treatments. It isn't as simple as it sounds.

Episode 6: One Drug's $2.5 Billion Journey from Lab to Market

By Rebecca Spalding and Michelle Cortez

Bloomberg's Rebecca Spalding tells the surprising journey of one life-saving drug, from discovery to market. It's a story about a Nobel Prize winner, cutting edge genetic research, billions of pharmaceutical dollars, and of all things, a worm. What does it tell us about health care in America?

Episode 5: The Quest for a Weight-Loss Drug That Actually Works

By James Paton and Michelle Cortez

Researchers and pharmaceutical companies have poured time and money into developing an effective drug to combat obesity. But time and again, the drugs have failed to deliver.

Episode 4: How DNA Technology Became Cheap, Fast and Easily Accessible

By Robert Langreth and Michelle Cortez

Episode 3: Searching For a Cure to PTSD at Burning Man

By Kristen V Brown and Sarah McBride

In episode three of Prognosis, Kristen V. Brown and Sarah McBride take a trip to Burning Man.

Episode 2: Biohacking a Ripped Frog

By Kristen V Brown and Michelle Cortez

Today we'll take you on a tour of a biohacker's DNA experiment to change how frogs—and possibly people—grow muscles. It's an experiment which he insists anyone can try at home. He'll even sell you a kit—frogs included—to do it

Episode 1: The $250 Biohack That’s Revolutionizing Life With Diabetes

By Naomi Kresge and Michelle Cortez

DIYers used a security flaw to bypass the $8.3 billion insulin delivery business with a cobbled-together artificial pancreas

Listen to the Latest Episode

Subscribe

All Episodes