Serial Productions & The New York Times
14 episodes listed below
Medical harm, patiently investigated.
The Retrievals follows patients whose bodies became evidence after procedures that were supposed to be controlled and routine. Its reporting moves from egg retrievals and C-sections to the systems that minimized pain, blurred accountability, and left patients carrying the consequences.
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The Retrievals is a grave, carefully reported investigation into pain inside reproductive medicine. It begins close to the body. A patient calls a clinic. A procedure is over, but the pain is not. A chart contains one version of events, while a patient carries another. From there, the series widens its frame. Season 1 follows fertility patients who endured egg retrievals in circumstances later tied to a nurse taking fentanyl, then traces the aftermath through criminal accountability, addiction, pregnancy, trauma, and the question of what justice can mean when harm has already entered a person’s body and future. Season 2 turns to severe pain during C-sections. It follows patients, anesthesia providers, medical conferences, surveys, professional guidelines, and the difficult admission that pain during cesarean has too often been treated as an uncomfortable secret rather than a subject for direct repair. The show is not sensational. It is exact. It explains epidurals, spinals, consent, cold spray tests, surgical rooms, and professional standards with enough clarity for a general audience and enough seriousness to respect the medicine. Then it returns to the person on the table. Its central question is not only whether pain happened, but why so many signals failed to matter when patients tried to say it did. Susan Burton’s narration, as heard in the episodes, gives the series a composed investigative shape, while interviews supply the emotional force. Heather’s professional discomfort, Clara’s surgical experience, Susanna’s surveys and guidelines work, Leah’s searching account of aftermath, and Katie’s perspective on addiction all help the show resist a simple villain story. It keeps asking what responsibility looks like at every level. The series suits listeners drawn to medical ethics, reproductive health, institutional accountability, and long-form journalism that lets testimony, records, and silence build their own pressure.
Made for: For listeners who want rigorous narrative journalism about reproductive medicine, patient testimony, medical ethics, and institutional accountability. It suits people comfortable with emotionally difficult material handled in a measured, serious way.
What sets it apart: The series turns clinical detail into narrative evidence without losing sight of the patient’s lived experience. Its strongest move is the shift from one person’s pain to the professional culture that made that pain easier to miss.
C-sections are the most frequently performed major surgeries in the world. So why do so many patients feel severe pain during them? Season 2 of the award-winning podcast “The Retrievals” is an investigation into this underreported problem — and the new effort to solve it. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. To find out about new shows from Serial Productions, and get a look...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Patient testimony becomes a rigorous examination of how medicine recognizes pain, records harm and changes practice.
The Retrievals follows patients whose severe pain was dismissed or poorly documented, then traces how those failures move through fertility care and C-sections.
A patient's pain meets institutional disbelief, and you learn how dangerously tidy a medical chart can look.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A conference talk becomes a direct look at how pain during C-sections is often left unspoken.
At a medical conference, Heather starts with technical advice about pain during C-sections, then turns sharper after Clara's surgery. The room is the strongest part: careful professional language, people circling the issue, and a topic that has long been treated as something to…
A cold, careful account of pain, procedure, and the uneasy aftermath of an epidural.
The Retrievals opens on a winter dawn sweep and settles quickly into the body-level reality of an epidural that does not go cleanly. The pacing is measured and purposeful, moving from procedure to testimony to the overnight handoff without leaning on extra drama.
A careful account of how patient pain became formal guidance around cesarean delivery.
The episode follows how a stack of patient surveys and Susanna's persistence turned into formal guidance on pain during cesarean delivery. It works because it stays close to the human side of the reporting: pain, memory, and the frustration of being too easily brushed aside.
A restrained look at how pregnancy can still leave the real question unresolved.
This episode asks a blunt question: if fertility treatment leads to pregnancy, birth, or both, what does success actually mean? It follows patients through embryo transfer, a twin birth after a single embryo splits, and the awkward moment when someone is told pregnancy should…
An investigative story about harm, testimony, and institutional response.
The Retrievals follows a nurse whose fentanyl use starts at work and then spreads into the private life she is trying to hold together in a Connecticut town where she is raising three children.
A clinic's careful language gives way to a more troubling reality.
The episode follows women who seek fertility treatment at Yale for different reasons, then keeps returning to what happens after egg retrieval: pain, confusion, repeated calls to the clinic, and answers that never quite settle anything. Its strongest move is accumulation.
Susanna returns to the surveys she had left in a drawer and finally turns them into action.
Heather arrives at a major medical conference with a speech that was first supposed to focus on practical tips for pain during C-sections.
The Retrievals S02 Episode 4, 'The Solutions,' follows Susan Burton at UIC as Heather, Corey DeBergrave, Clara, and Mindy try to change how cesarean pain is recognized and treated.
The story opens on a shoreline city in dawn light and a woman leaving her brick bungalow before sunrise.
The final episode of The Retrievals examines the long-term outcomes for patients affected by nurse Donna Monticone's fentanyl theft at the Yale fertility clinic — including destroyed medical trust, babies born after years of treatment, and a patient who spent the night of her newborn son's birth questioning whether the clinic had given her the wrong embryo.
Donna's fentanyl use starts at work.
The Retrievals opens at Yale fertility clinics, where women arrive for egg retrievals after miscarriages, cancer treatment, infertility, and years of waiting, then describe severe pain during procedures they expected to tolerate.