The Pay Check

What’s the most sure-fire way to get a flight upgrade? How can you find the best, secret local restaurants by asking just one question? What's the first thing you should do when you get into a hotel room? On Bloomberg's new podcast Travel Genius, we'll give you those answers—and plenty more—as hosts Nikki Ekstein and Mark Ellwood quiz the world’s most experienced globetrotters for their tried-and-true travel hacks. Listen weekly, and even your work trips will go from a necessary evil to an expert art form. Plus, you'll be padding out your bucket list with dreams of amazing future vacations. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Where does a medical cure come from? 100 years ago, it wasn't uncommon for scientists to test medicines by taking a dose themselves. As medical technologies get cheaper and more accessible, patients and DIY tinkerers are trying something similar—and mainstream medicine is racing to catch up. Prognosis explores the leading edge of medical advances, and asks who gets—or should get—access to them. We look at how innovation happens, when it fails, and what it means to the people with a disease trying to feel better, live longer, or avoid death.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

In the third episode of the podcast’s conversation series, Michele Roberts, the first woman to head a major professional sports union in North America, talks to Emily Bazelon, a journalist and lawyer by training, about making it in the male-dominated world of law. They discuss how they learned of gender-based pay differences in the law field, what it’s like to be the only woman in the room, and the importance of finding deeper reasons to do the work you do, regardless of how much money you make.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

The Pay Check continues its conversations series. First, we hear from Annie Duke and Maria Konnikova about power dynamics and sexism in the ultra male dominated field of professional poker. Then, journalists Manoush Zomorodi and Rose Eveleth talk about sexism in media and the difficulties of finding a mentor.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

After The Pay Check ended, conversations about the pay gap didn’t—so we decided to listen in. We went out and found some of the smartest women we know and had them talk about what it's like to be a woman trying to succeed in her career. This week, Sallie Krawcheck, the former chief financial officer of Citigroup talks to Bianca Caban, a recent Columbia Business School graduate, about making it in the world of finance.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

So far, the pay gap has proved pretty impossible to solve. But most of us aren’t just going to sit here and accept that we’ll be paid less than men for our entire careers. In the last episode of The Pay Check, host Rebecca Greenfield talks to Gaby Dunn, who hosts her own podcast called Bad With Money, about what she's learned from the many people she's sought advice from on her series. Jordyn Holman also travels to Seattle for the Get Money, Get Paid conference, hosted by a group called Ladies Get Paid, and learns some important lessons about negotiation—and collaboration. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

The pay gap goes way deeper than just men's and women's salaries—that's why just paying women more doesn't solve the problem. In this episode, Claire Suddath talks to Salesforce.com Inc., the San Francisco software company that began doing pay equity audits in 2015 and has found a pay gap every single year. Host Rebecca Greenfield looks at another software company, Fog Creek Software, Inc., and how radical pay transparency is helping equalize salaries. And Ellen Huet reports on Adobe Systems Inc., which says it's closed its pay gap but is still trying to tackle inequities around parental leave that can hold some women back.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Can companies be shamed into closing the pay gap? A new law in the U.K. requires companies with more than 250 employees to publicly disclose their gender pay gaps. More than 10,000 companies reported by the April deadline, revealing differences in median pay of as much as 60 percent in some extreme cases. Now it’s up to companies to decide what, if anything, to do about that. This week, Suzi Ring talks to one company that reported a wide gap, and how that’s changing the way it hires and pays women. Then, Claire Suddath tells us about a different pay gap law in Iceland, how that came to be and if it’s working.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Skeptics say the gender pay gap is explained by choices women make about family and career. Rebecca Greenfield unpacks those arguments with the help of professors from Harvard and Georgetown. Then, Jordyn Holman goes inside a contract negotiation between Netflix and the comedian and actress Mo’Nique that went south.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

There was a brief moment 150 years ago when it looked like women might get equal pay for equal work. But they didn’t—and that set the standard for decades to come. On this episode of the Pay Check, Rebecca Greenfield revisits a Civil War-era sex scandal that set the stage for the pay gap debates we're having right now. She talks to Claire Suddath about how a century of rules and laws saying what women can and can’t do have made it easy for companies to pay women less. 

One big reason the gender pay gap still exists is because of a phenomenon called "occupational sorting"— the idea that some jobs are dominated by women, and those jobs often pay less. That didn't just happen. Claire and Rebecca sort through how history determined the market value for women. Then Claire talks with Lilly Ledbetter, whose fight for gender equality at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. seemed like an open and shut case—until a loophole in the law denied her justice.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com