10-07-2025
‘The Retrievals' Season 2 Is Out Now
By Susan Burton
Hi, I'm the host of 'The Retrievals.' Season 2 launches today! It's about C-sections. We begin at a Chicago hospital where staff members decide to take action after one of their nurses undergoes an excruciating C-section.
If you heard Season 1, you'll know that it identified a problem: Women's pain is often ignored. The second season asks: What are the solutions?
Season 2 grows directly out of listener responses to Season 1, so today I want to tell you about those responses and how they shaped my reporting.
Two years ago, after the first season of 'The Retrievals,' I received hundreds of messages from listeners. They wrote about many varieties of pain. Many varieties of not being listened to. Many varieties of birth trauma. They wrote about experiences that had happened one year ago, or nearly 50.
I wanted to keep track of these stories. So I started a spreadsheet, with names and dates and subjects. Maybe there would be a pattern that emerged. An observation that would lead to more reporting. Or maybe the spreadsheet wouldn't lead to an output or to an outcome. Maybe it was just a private way of honoring the respondents.
When you read just a handful of the cells together, they have a distilled emotional power. Here's a sample, all from a single week in August 2023:
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