Serial - The Retrievals, Season 2 - Trailer

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

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.Listen wherever you get your podcasts.  Our newest podcast, “The Retrievals, Season 2” is out now. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts, or follow it here: lnk.to/retrievals2 To get full access to this and other Serial Productions and New York Times podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, subscribe at nytimes.com/podcasts.To find out about new shows from Serial Productions, and get a look behind the scenes, sign up for our newsletter at nytimes.com/serialnewsletter.Have a story pitch, a tip, or feedback on our shows? Email us at [e-mail] 

Hello, serial listeners. Sarah Koenig here. Today is a big day over here at Serial Productions because we're releasing the second season of The Retrievals, a series hosted by Susan Burton. The first season came out two years ago, and it was great. It was named Best Podcast of the Year by a bunch of outlets and won a Peabody Award. This new season is a brand new story, so not a continuation of the season one story, but I'd call it a thematic cousin. It follows a group of doctors and nurses in a Chicago hospital who are spurred into action after one of their own nurses undergoes an excruciating surgery.

The kind of thing that should never happen to anyone, but it turns out happens a lot. Writing this season, Susan was inspired by shows like The Pit and ER. So if you're like us and you love those shows, you are in for a lot. Writing this season, Susan was inspired by shows like The Pit and ER. So if you're like us and you love those shows, you are in for a treat. This new season of The Retrievals rolls out like a taut medical drama. If you want to take season two for a spin, you can listen to the trailer I'm about to play. Or if you're already a fan, then you already know how good the show is going to be. So why wait?

Just go ahead and search for the Retrievals podcast. You'll find the second season there, ready for you to start. It's four episodes, and we'll be releasing a new episode every Thursday for the next few weeks. And of course, if you're a New York Times subscriber, you can listen to the whole season right now.

Okay, here is a trailer for the show. And again, please search for the Retrievals in your podcast apps. Here's Susan. If you're listening to this, it might be because you heard a podcast series I made called The Retrievals. Sometimes when I meet people, they'll say,

"'Oh, the one where the nurse stole fentanyl.'" Others don't mention the plot. They go straight for the theme. They know the podcast as the one where doctors thought it was normal for the women to be in pain. It doesn't matter if you haven't heard the retrievals. The details of that podcast are less important than the common experience it described. Pain a doctor didn't listen to, pain a doctor didn't adequately treat. That resonated with many listeners, and hundreds of them,

mostly women, began writing to me with their own stories. One afternoon, I opened a note that was unlike any I'd received so far. The listener described something that was so shocking that I thought what she experienced must have been singular, an anomaly, a mistake. Then, within a day or two, I opened two more of these notes describing similar experiences.

Soon I understood that this was a subject that would come up again and again. I was rushed into the C-section. My husband was there, and I could feel them starting the operation. I could feel the incision. And the doctor asked me, do you feel pressure? And I said, no, I feel everything. And everybody kept telling me,

oh, you know, you're just feeling a lot of pressure. And I was like, no, I'm pretty sure this is just pain. And they said, well, that's not possible. You know, if you were feeling it, you would pass out from the pain. And I was like, I wish I could pass out from the pain because this is, I could feel them taking my organs out and moving them. I could feel them pulling the baby. I mean, it was, I'm shaking just talking about it. It was major abdominal surgery without full anesthesia.

Patients don't know this happens. Doctors and nurses do. So when I look back to residency, it's something that we all see and we all know. What I remember hearing is that c-sections are going to hurt. I mean I don't think anyone was like, hey it's okay for your patient to be in severe pain, but it was kind of like, well pressure's normal. Pressure's normal. Pressure's normal. And I'm like, how does he know that it's pressure, not pain? I feel like at first, before I saw it happen, when people would say, oh yeah, I felt everything and all this.

I'm like, that can't be true. Like, there's no way. There's no way. Who would let that happen? Like, who would do that? But, uh. From serial productions and The New York Times, I'm Susan Burton,

and this is The Retrievals, Season 2, The C-Sections. Coming July 10th. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.