Prognosis: Misconception

Bloomberg's Travel Genius podcast is back! After clocking another hundred-thousand miles in the sky, hosts Nikki Ekstein and Mark Ellwood have a whole new series of flight hacking, restaurant sleuthing, and hotel booking tips to inspire your own getaways—along with a who's who roster of itinerant pros ready to spill their own travel secrets. From a special episode on Disney to a master class on packing, we'll go high, low, east, west, and everywhere in between. The new season starts Nov. 6.

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Stephanie Flanders, head of Bloomberg Economics, returns to bring you another season of on-the-ground insight into the forces driving global growth and jobs today. From the cosmetics maker in California grappling with Donald Trump's tariff war, to the coffee vendor in Argentina burdened by the nation's never-ending crises, Bloomberg's 130-plus economic reporters and economists around the world head into the field to tell these stories. Stephanomics will also look hard at the solutions, in the lead-up to Bloomberg’s second New Economy Forum in Beijing, where a select group of business leaders, politicians and thinkers will gather to chart a better course on trade, global governance, climate and more. Stephanomics will help lead the way for those debates not just with Bloomberg journalists but also discussion and analysis from world-renowned experts into the forces that are moving markets and reshaping the world. The new season of Stephanomics launches Oct. 3.

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Many antibiotic pills we’ve relied on for decades to treat infections no longer work. It’s a global crisis. Hospitals are increasingly stumped. But where do resistant bugs come from?

 In our final episode of this season’s Prognosis, Bloomberg Senior Editor Jason Gale takes us to Copenhagen, Denmark, where one scientist searches for clues in airplane waste from all over the globe. He found killer superbugs thriving in healthy people from countries far and wide. Even in countries where antibiotic use has been strictly controlled, resistant bacteria have made their way to people via the food chain. Yet it’s not too late to turn back 

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It's no secret that dangerous superbugs are showing up more and more in hospitals around the world. But where do they come from? How do they get into hospitals in the first place? In this episode of Prognosis, Bloomberg's Jason Gale unravels the mystery, taking us on a detective's search for the world's most deadly superbugs as they stealthily sneak into hospitals. And how one hospital has come up with a simple yet virtually foolproof safeguard against spreading those bugs once inside the building. The implications are huge for how hospitals around the world fight back against the spread of killer germs.

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Joel Grimwood was almost certainly going to die. The pump that kept his failing heart going had become infected, and surgery after surgery had scraped away parts of his chest. Drugs didn’t work because the bacteria were in a slime, impenetrable to antibiotics. What saved his life was a little-known treatment called phage therapy. Popular in the former Soviet Union, they’ve fallen out of favor in the West. The viruses are the natural predator of bacteria, and a small number of scientists are trying to turn them against the threat.

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Among those most vulnerable to superbug infections are cancer chemotherapy patients. In India, many are dying from bacteria poisoning their blood that even the most potent antibiotics available can't stop. This calamitous scenario portends a global crisis as superbugs spread through international travel and trade.

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On this new season of Prognosis, we look at the spread of infections that are resistant to antimicrobial medicines. You're probably more likely to have heard of these as superbugs. Their rise has been described as a silent tsunami of catastrophic proportions. We travel to countries on the frontline of the crisis, and explore how hospitals and doctors around the world are fighting back. Prognosis’ new season launches Sept. 5.

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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. And what they’re expecting to glean from their genetic information goes far beyond family trees or hints of future disease. From assessing the talents of hours-old infants to making career and life decisions based on DNA tests, the Chinese have fully embraced the genetics boom. 

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Do exercise-tracking apps and gadgets like the Fitbit actually make us healthier? Or do they just create a high-tech, data-centric illusion of control over our weight, sleep and general well-being? Bloomberg's Naomi Kresge loaded up some popular apps to find the answer –- and to see if she could get a better night’s sleep than her husband.

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By now most of us understand the privacy consequences of all the data we handed over to social media and Internet companies. But what happens to the huge amount of health information we generate from health apps, DNA kits, doctors' visits, blood tests and fitness trackers? Some of it's carefully protected by law. Other data -- including intimate details about our lives -- can be sold to brokers who trade it like a commodity. How worried should we be?

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