Game Plan

The killers of Berta Caceres had every reason to believe they’d get away with murder. More than 100 other environmental activists in Honduras had been killed in the previous five years, yet almost no one had been punished for the crimes. Bloomberg’s Blood River follows a four-year quest to find her killers – a twisting trail that leads into the country’s circles of power. Blood River premieres on July 27.

Americans are paying more and getting less for their health care than ever before. On the new season of Prognosis, reporter John Tozzi explores what went wrong. 

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.

On this new show from Bloomberg, hosts Mike Regan and Sarah Ponczek speak with expert guests each week about the main themes influencing global markets. They explore everything from stocks to bonds to currencies and commodities, and how each asset class affects trading in the others. Whether you’re a financial professional or just a curious retirement saver, What Goes Up keeps you apprised of the latest buzz on Wall Street and what the wildest movements in markets will mean for your investments. 

For the last eight weeks, Rebecca and Francesca have tested out workplace hacks to see if any of them do what they claim to do: Make people happier, more creative and more productive. On the finale of Works for Me, the hosts talk about which methods worked, which ones didn’t and if the self-improvement industry is just a bunch of snake oil.

This week, Francesca takes on the bane of every corporate worker’s existence: email. Drowning in email and regularly missing important messages, she attempts to attain inbox zero through rigorous discipline. 

Francesca and Becca try their first joint experiment: They set out to learn how to be a better team. To help them in their quest, they find a management coach who specializes in pairs. After undergoing the workplace equivalent of couples therapy, the two attempt to use their newfound self-awareness to solve a podcast production conflict.

Ah the elusive mentor. We’re all supposed to have one to succeed in our careers, but how do you actually get one? This week, Becca goes on a journey to find a career guide. 

Meetings are easy to hate: they clutter our calendars, eat up our time, and often accomplish very little besides getting more meetings scheduled. Francesca consults with a raft of meeting experts in an attempt to reform one of her more aimless meetings: a weekly team check-in. 

Like many people, Becca has trouble concentrating on one task at a time, with emails, chats, and social media distracting her from her work. But, she's determined to get focused. For a week, she commits to a regimented focus routine recommended by concentration aficionado Cal Newport to see if she can train her brain to stay on track. 

Francesca tries to fix the most important part of the day: Her mornings. To get more out of the precious hours before work, she tests out a scientifically proven method called R.I.S.E.U.P. But, will her rigorous new morning routine be the key to a better day?

Francesca and Rebecca are back with their new podcast "Works For Me." In each episode, one of the two becomes a human guinea pig as she tries to solve a specific work-related problem. We've dropped the first episode here for you to enjoy! If you like it, you can subscribe to "Works For Me" on Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts or wherever you get your podcasts.

On this new show from Bloomberg, hosts Francesca Levy and Rebecca Greenfield navigate the productivity industry by way of their own experiences. In each episode, one of the two becomes a human guinea pig as she tries to solve a specific work-related problem. Using the advice of so-called productivity experts, the duo tackles obstacles like ineffective to-do lists, overflowing inboxes and unruly meetings. Follow along with their attempts, insights and missteps, and maybe find a solution that will work for you. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. Visit us at https://www.bloomberg.com/the-paycheck

In the first episode of The Pay Check, we go deep on pay discrimination. Host Rebecca Greenfield tells us about an equal pay fight in her own family. We take you inside a gender discrimination case against Goldman Sachs that’s been unfolding for over a decade. And we look at how companies magically make their pay gaps disappear—without actually paying women more.

In our last episode of Game Plan before a hiatus, we cleared our backlog of Half-Baked Takes; the weekly segment in which we give voice to some of our most passionate ideas before thinking them all the way through. Come for the take-down of guessing your co-worker’s age, stay for definitive rulings on the value of sheep and movies.

We'd like to think that what we wear to work doesn't matter, but tons of research has found that it does. Yes, people judge you based on your outfit choices. The right work wear can also make us feel good and enhance our performance. One study found that participants dressed in suits negotiated for more money; another found that formal wear facilitates creative thinking.    This week on Game Plan, Rebecca and Francesca learn how to dress well for work. Chris Rovzar, the editorial director of Bloomberg Pursuits, our luxury and lifestyle vertical, joins the show to answer all their work fashion questions. 

Employers are increasingly putting prospective workers through personality tests. The idea is that certain characteristics lend themselves to certain types of work, and that a straightforward job interview can’t identify them. Rebecca and Francesca talk about how much personality matters at work, and the pitfalls of testing workers. Guest Melissa Dahl discusses her book “Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness,” and whether awkward types can get a leg up in the workplace.

The initial allegations against Harvey Weinstein have opened the floodgates for what seems to be an unrelenting stream of sexual harassment claims against the powerful. But this isn’t the first time the country has had to reckon with inappropriate behavior in the workplace. In 1991, Anita Hill testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the alleged harassment of Clarence Thomas, who was ultimately confirmed to the Supreme Court. This week, Francesca and Rebecca look back at the decades since her testimony and talk about what has and hasn’t changed. We hear from Hill, who Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait interviewed at Bloomberg’s “Year Ahead” conference, about how we can take the current moment and create safer workplaces.

Career coaches claim to help navigate everything from nailing a tough interview to figuring out what you want to do with your life. Rebecca and Francesca sat down with prominent career coach Vicki Salemi to talk through their own career transitions and find out what really goes on in these sessions.

Most of us are really bad at thinking about and planning for our retirement. Only a third of Americans contribute to employer-provided 401(k) accounts. And around half have no retirement savings at all. There are lots of forces working against us when it comes to saving up for the future. But never fear, the behavioral economists can save us. See, it’s not our fault that we’re bad at saving: We’re wired to make bad retirement decisions. At least that’s what Steve Wendel, a behavioral scientist, us. Steve teaches us how to take advantage of our shortcomings as humans, and trick ourselves into becoming super savers.

After dozens of women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and harassment over decades, some singled out the Hollywood power structure for criticism. But in recent years, harassment scandals, inequities and patterns of abuse and mistreatment have been uncovered in nearly every field. There are common themes across disciplines, but they each require unique solutions. Becca and Francesca talk to Beth Alpert Nakhai, an archeologist and professor who is working to make digs safer for women.

By some measures, at the end of last year LGBTQ workers in the U.S. had more protections than ever before. The Trump administration, however, has proven to be hostile to the LGBTQ community. All of these big picture policy changes trickle down into people’s every day lives. Francesca and Rebecca dig into what it’s like to be an LGBTQ worker in 2017. The hosts of Nancy, a WNYC Studios podcast about queer life, join them to talk about the decision to come out, how to navigate discrimination, and other unique challenges of being gay in the office at this moment in time.

Work meetings at hotel bars, making small talk with total strangers, and waiting in line to use the restroom: It's that time-tested corporate ritual, the conference. This week, Rebecca and Francesca went to a conference to report on the $14 billion conference industry. Attendees shared their thoughts on conferences, panels, and compulsory networking.

All the pings and buzzes of the office make it difficult to get anything done—let alone our best, most creative work. But the solution is not a digital detox. There are ways to overcome creativity blocks at work that don't involve an off-the-grid hermit lifestyle. Francesca and Rebecca discuss how to do their best, most creative work in a world that makes it hard to take the time to do deep thinking. Instead of a detox, their guest Manoush Zomorodi, author of the book "Bored and Brilliant," offers moderate and realistic solutions to get the creative juices flowing.

Francesca and Rebecca examine the increasingly tenuous relationship between workers and companies. Lots of people in the gig economy, contract workers, and even salaried employees enter a system that promises freedom from corporate America but doesn’t offer much in the way of comfort and advancement. Guest Rick Wartzman, author of “The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America” explains about how we got to this point.

One of the unfortunate realities of office life is having to work with people you don’t like. How do you deal with having to do your job alongside a bona-fide work jerk? Rebecca and Francesca talk to Robert Sutton, author of the No Asshole Rule and the Asshole Survival Guide about the best coping strategies for working with the worst of the workplace.

Silicon Valley types like to say the quality of your work is all that matters, and good ideas rise to the top, no matter whom they come from. But why do the people who rise to the top in a meritocracy tend to be the ones with all the advantages? Francesca and Rebecca talk to Ryan Carson, the chief executive officer of Treehouse Island Inc., a coding school, about why he once believed in meritocracy and then—suddenly—didn’t.

We live in politically polarized times, and those tensions are seeping into the workplace in all sorts of ways. In liberal enclaves like Silicon Valley, conservatives feel isolated and judged at the office. People on the other end of the spectrum feel attacked by the administration's policies—and have no problem telling their bosses their views. For some, the increased political chatter in the office has led to increased hostility and stress. And it can have even more extreme consequences: The wrong political view could even get you canned.     When do political beliefs become too extreme for the workplace? Can what you believe ever get you fired? Rebecca and Francesca talk to Art Leonard, a labor law and first amendment expert, about what can and can't get workers in trouble. Does the First Amendment protect us all or does at-will employment mean anyone is at risk of termination at any time for anything they do? The short answer is: It's complicated.

People just starting out in their careers get one piece of big advice: Find a mentor. And that’s true—research has found the many benefits of having a career guru. But finding the right person often feels stressful and forced. Instead of getting anxious about finding that special someone, it’s time rethink the idea of mentors. Francesca and Rebecca talk to Phyllis Korkki, the executive editor of the story-telling app Hooked, about how to seek out unconventional mentors.

In 2015, Millennials became the biggest generation in the American workforce. Last year, they overtook Boomers as the biggest generation overall in the U.S. These changing demographics have led to some tension at work for people both old and young. Rebecca and Francesca speak with Karen Wickre, a 66-year-old Silicon Valley veteran, about what it’s like to work among the youngs. We can all learn to get along!

Maybe you're dying to change careers—or being forced to because your job is going to a robot—but it just seems impossible to start over in a new field. There might be a better way. Francesca and Rebecca look at the skills-based approach to job switching; a way to assess what unrelated jobs may be unexpectedly similar to yours. We talk to Claire Cain Miller, a New York Times reporter who embarked on a major data study to cross-reference thousands of skills and jobs.

Workplaces can be the perfect breeding ground for crushes, but there are major downsides to getting romantic with colleagues. Francesca and guest host Jenny Kaplan talk to author and advice columnist Cheryl Strayed about the advice she gives lovelorn workers—and how to handle yourself when friendships at work grow into something more.

Rebecca and Francesca head to an office that lets everyone control their own desk temperature using a phone app. We'll see if it's possible to resolve the annual office air conditioning wars, or whether someone's always doomed to be uncomfortable.

Is there anything more annoying than coworkers who interrupt you? Research has shown that women get interrupted more than men. Author and Professor Chris Karpowitz talks to Francesca and Rebecca about how that affects the kinds of conversations and decisions that happen at companies, and what can be done about it.

A big part of our work lives takes place not in the office, but instead stuck in traffic or on a crowded train en route to and from our jobs. The average American spends 25 minutes getting to work, up from 21.7 minutes in 1980—and people living in major metropolitan areas have it much worse. We are spending a lot of time shuttling between work and home. These increasingly long rides to work are stressful, frustrating and bad for our health and the economy. Is there a way to make commuting tolerable again? Rebecca and Francesca talk to Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist and author of The New Urban Crisis about how traveling to our jobs got this bad and the piecemeal initiatives that are attempting to make our commutes to work a teeny bit better.

Among a certain set of companies competing for talent, there’s been a perks arms race. Health benefits and vacation days aren’t enough to sweeten a good salary anymore. Companies now offer to pay off student debt, subsidize egg-freezing services and provide cash stipends for employees to go on vacation. Francesca and Rebecca talk about the state of cushy workplaces and whether anything can compensate for a job you just don’t like. Jason Fried, chief executive officer and co-founder of Chicago-based software company Basecamp joins us to discuss all the things he’s done to keep employees happy (and keep them from departing for the coasts) and what is—and isn’t—working.

Each week on Game Plan, Francesca and Rebecca share their half-baked takes, a segment where they talk about their not super well thought out ideas and opinions on work and work related activities.  In the spirit of the summer slack off, this week Francesca and Rebecca outsourced that task to their colleagues to present the very first half-baked take marathon. In it, they talk about important office topics like office footwear, the case for coffee in the afternoon, and an innovative idea to make open offices more habitable.

Venture capitalist Keith Rabois set off a Silicon Valley firestorm earlier this month about what it takes to succeed. When another tech investor wrote on Twitter that working on the weekends and burning out isn’t cool—and doesn’t work—Rabois fired back. “Totally false,” he said, suggesting that dogged dedication (usually measured by long hours) was the only way to reach the top. Lots of people objected to his assessment. Francesca and Rebecca speak with one of Keith's critics, startup founder and engineer Sara Mauskopf, about why she thinks flexible hours and a healthy work-life balance can actually make your product better. Then we check in with Keith to see whether he has revised his opinion.

So, you want to move to Canada? Or New Zealand, or Australia or another English-speaking, culturally adjacent country to the U.S. that doesn’t have our current president. After every election, Americans threaten to get out of dodge—and 2016 was no different. Rebecca and Francesca talk about the realities of starting over in another country and what it takes to actually pick up and move your life to a new place. They talk to author Suketu Mehta, who grew up in India and came to America when his family immigrated to New York in the 1970s. In a recent piece for the New York Times, Mehta urged more Americans to consider the expat life, arguing that it’s not just a fantasy of the elite.

Letting employees occasionally work from home makes them happy, can save companies money and there's research to suggest it could help close the gender pay gap. But some companies, like IBM, say remote work encourages habits that hurt collaboration, innovation and productivity. Last month the company told hundreds of thousands of employees they had to report to headquarters. So what's the future of work? Guest Christopher Mims, a technology columnist and a 10-year veteran of working from home, explains why he believes companies can't curb the trend of working from a distance.

Fake it 'til you make it! That's the career advice many of us get upon first entering the workforce. Since you're a newbie, and won't understand lots of parts of your job, just pretend — and one day, all of a sudden, you'll be a bona fide expert. It's not bad advice, and research has even found that it works. But what happens when you still feel as if you're faking it, long after you've actually made it? Francesca and Rebecca discuss the phenomenon known as imposter syndrome. Many competent (often female) professionals go through their entire careers with the sneaking suspicion that they'll be revealed as frauds — even when they're more than qualified. Is there a way to combat this haunting feeling? Dr. Suzanne Koven, a primary care physician at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, explains how she recently got over her own imposter syndrome and helps Francesca and Rebecca deal with their own inner work demons.

Student debt doesn't only affect students and recent grads. It’s a burden that can follow people through their working life and influence every financial and career decision they make. It’s easy to feel panicked by doom-and-gloom news, so to separate worries from reality, Francesca and Becca talk with Bloomberg's Shahien Nasiripour, who covers student debt and education policy.

Workers used to leave their opinions and feelings at home. No talking at work about politics, religion or other personal stuff was the rule. Not anymore! Companies ask us to bring our whole selves to the office. But for those of us averse to sharing with our coworkers, the current political climate and social media have made it impossible to resist. These days, many of us talk to coworkers about Trump, our personal lives or something we just spotted on Facebook. But is putting it all out there necessarily a good thing? This week on Game Plan, Rebecca and Francesca discuss whether we need to revisit what's acceptable to say at work and how to say it. If we're going to talk about sensitive, divisive and uncomfortable topics at work, we need better rules and etiquette. To help us, we turn to Ijeoma Oluo, the author of “So You Want to Talk About Race." She provides practical tips for having productive conversations at work about a topic both political and personal: race.

Francesca and Rebecca talk about when listening to music out loud, and with your co-workers—becomes a job requirement. They report from various scenes of communal workplace listening, including retail chains, where employees have to listen to whatever somebody at headquarters decided fits a store's vibe, and a public relations firm that's experimenting with a cooperative DJ-ing environment. Even in operating rooms, many surgeons use music to focus on their high-stakes work, but one—Becca's dad—bans tunes except during the holidays. They look at the effect of music on our productivity and happiness at work, and ask whether forced-music regimes can make people's jobs better, or if jamming should remain a solo pursuit.