Our August 2025 LMCC meeting took place on Wednesday, August 27 at 5:30pm in UNC’s HHIVE Lab (Greenlaw 524) and via Zoom.
We discussed The Retrievals, Season 2, a podcast from The New York Times by Susan Burton, Julie Snyder, and Ben Phelan (2025).
Specifically, we focused on the following:
- Episode 1: “The Case” (07-10-2025)
- Episode 2: “The Speech” (07-10-2025)
If you missed the meeting, you can still access the text on the Readings page of this site!
You can also access the recording of our meeting here.
This was our first meeting of the semester and of the academic year! All of our meetings this semester will take place at 5:30pm eastern time on the last Wednesday of each month in the HHIVE Lab (Greenlaw 524) with options for people to join via Zoom as well.
We’ll be posting information about our September meeting soon!
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Burton, Susan. “The Case.” The Retrievals, season 2, episode 1, Serial Productions, 10 July 2025, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/podcasts/the-retrievals-c-section-women-health.html.
Burton, Susan. “The Speech.” The Retrievals, season 2, episode 2, Serial Productions, 10 July 2025. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/podcasts/c-sections-pain-retrievals-women-health.html.
Meeting Notes (courtesy of LMCC Co-Director Mindy Buchanan-King):
- Mindy: The visceral reaction, and anecdote about an ENGL 105 student working out who listened to the first episode and had trouble continuing his workout because he was so disturbed by Clara’s description of her pain.
- Paul: The question of re-traumatization, of Clara having to re-enter the hospital space where she experienced intraoperative pain during a C-section.
- Camille: How the podcast genre is consumed, the use of language in the podcast, and thinking through the conversation around “pressure.” Related to the pain scale and how we characterize pain, all the words we use to describe pain.
- Paul: Pressure as a way to neutralize the experience of pain; the words that “it’s only a few more minutes” when intense pain is happening.
- Carmen: Clara’s description of her pain was difficult, as well as hearing Heather’s experience of going to a conference and asking how many patients had expressed experiences of pain during a C-section. The extent of the problem is pretty scary.
- Paul: The narrator, Susan Burton, says it’s 8% of women who experience intraoperative pain during a C-section; wonder if that number is underestimated, maybe due to women being perceived as “hysterical.” It was a very visceral experience, like the conference setting, and realizing Heather’s isn’t a typical presentation.
- Mindy: Questions the medical drama framing for the podcast.
- Paul: Didn’t particularly like that “medical drama” framing, but the overall framing like a “wide shot” felt unnecessary, like a filler; we didn’t really need it. The visual metaphor of the camera shots was unneeded.
- Camille: Didn’t really feel strongly about the framing; they alluded to the medical drama genre, but it contrasted with the everyday nature of a hospital setting. Things are happening in which experiences are flattened that are just as traumatic and as worthy of attention as other experiences. That juxtaposition maybe could have been brought about better.
- Paul: Clara is about to have the worst day of her life, but a C-section is still considered mundane, even one that involves intense pain.
- Carmen: Found the framing a little strange; didn’t mind it, maybe she was trying to legitimize it as a genre. Susan Burton spends a lot of time trying to establish it as a genre. Perhaps with the narrator’s way of building the narrative, she feels like she can get people to take it more seriously. Her descriptions of what’s going on make it compelling.
- Camille: Episode 3 or 4, an interesting moment when Clara talks about her experiences as a white woman. Susan Burton brings it up with the anesthesiologist, points out that it wasn’t a “race thing”—it was an interesting addition.
- Paul: Would they have found Clara more “difficult” if she was a Black patient?
- Carmen: The fact that they kept bringing up that Clara was a staff member bothered me; I understand the familiarity, but they made it seem like it was an issue because she was a staff member. With race, if this were a Black woman, would she have gotten less attention? You do have to wonder—you want to believe that if she was a Black staff member, that she would experience the same care as Clara. It sounds like people were aware of pain, but because they didn’t want to challenge the attending, they didn’t advocate for her.
- Camille: The division of labor is interesting; it’s fascinating because ultimately there is a drape separating the patient from the practitioners. It does raise questions about the anesthesiologist spearheading changes, and it does raise questions of who is in charge of pain.
- Paul: It’s almost like you need a patient advocate present; you may expect the husband to speak up, but maybe he has no perceived authority in that space.
- Carmen: She was explicitly told it was fine despite the pain, and her friend was instructed to tell her that as well.
- Camille: To be fair, there is only so much time in a podcast, but if I had my ideal experience, we know that 20% of Black women have more C-sections. The U.S. has a disproportionate rate of C-sections compared to other countries; they can be dangerous, but there’s no acknowledgement of that. Thinking about how evidence-based medicine is created; thinking about how knowledge is constructed through norm-making. The fact that giving general anesthesia was common in the 1950s, then there was a shift to making sure they [pregnant women] were awake for safety, but now there’s maybe a shift back to general anesthesia.
- Paul: It was interesting to hear how general anesthesia is maybe taboo; the ideology is that the patient may go through a lot, but there’s less risk. Also thrown by the repetition of “she’s a staff member”; what happens if you’re not part of the club? Later on, when Heather hears from Clara, she realizes the experience is real. The way Heather presents at a conference, the big twist is that Clara is also a nurse. It’s an interesting narrative, but we should already be appalled by this, even if she’s not a nurse or healthcare worker.
- Carmen: It seems like they were proud that they were advocating on behalf of a staff member, but the way they put it, it’s as if it mattered more because she was a staff member.
- Paul: The way knowledge is constructed, Heather had to break the norm at the conference and bring up the issue—going to change the norm to have a dialogue. There are certain rituals and modes we abide by in conference. Interesting how we construct knowledge and bring something to light; Heather had to break the norm.
- Camille: The woman from Britain, Susanna, is also a norm-breaker, a non-expert getting her name on published papers. But that involved her getting credibility; she had to partner with an expert—the layers of credibility she had to establish.
- Mindy: Question about the shift from calling a woman “hysterical” to now claiming that a woman is “anxious.”
- Camille: Women with chronic pain are for more likely to be prescribed for anxiety.
- Carmen: The other anesthesiologist kept saying that Clara was anxious. When Heather presented about this case, she mentioned the drugs and dosages given to Clara. It seemed if the drugs/dosages were problematic; what is the appropriate dosage of fentanyl? How inadequately was he addressing the pain?
- Camille: My understanding is that the epidural block wasn’t working appropriately; when you’re having abdominal surgery happening, there’s no safe amount of pain medication to control her pain. She should have been put under general anesthesia.
- Carmen: There was the refrain that they don’t put women in labor under general anesthesia because of the risk, but they were willing to give her inappropriate pain medication, which was also unsafe.
- Camille: It seems like there was a fear of norm-breaking, because the best practice is that you don’t put a woman in labor under general anesthesia.
- Paul: The “safest route” no matter what is going on seems to be their order of operations, regardless of the patient experience.
- Camille: “Safest” experience for who? Safest for the healthcare workers.
- Paul: It seemed like Susan Burton was saying not many women are told about the risks of a C-section; there are tons of people who don’t think going under general anesthesia is a risk. Thinking about medical consent, lack of informed consent—in a more general sense, not being aware that the epidural block could fail. How do we react to questions of pain scale, pressure, etc.?
- Camille: The test of the epidural block working would be a hand pinch or applying cold water—but those are different experiences of pain. Severe pain is going to activate different receptors. The big issue, maybe brought up in Episode 3, is that the response to a test is “I’m not sure,” which is not a good test. In Episode 4, they talk about some of the strategies they’ve taken is a built-in reminder to the anesthesiologist to check back in with the patient, and to prompt the patient to talk about how they’re doing. There are moments in an emergency situation when practitioners can’t stop; it’s hard to know when that margin is too wide.
- Paul: Trying to quantify and put these experiences into best practices. Also struck by the moment Clara seems to blame herself for what happened—we’ve seen this recurring in which patients, especially women, tend to blame themselves. “If I hadn’t been so hysterical, this wouldn’t have happened”—probably blames herself more because she felt like she should have been better prepared, especially as a nurse. Clara’s co-workers were very understanding when she returned at first, but then some wondered when she would go back to the OR, as if her trauma doesn’t really exist or should be overcome.
- Carmen: It seems like a goal of the podcast is to address pain mitigation, and think about pain as a health outcome in deciding if a procedure is a success. But also, the experience of the patient should be a health outcome.
- Paul: In the long run, Clara isn’t physically injured, but it’s like they’re saying the trauma doesn’t matter. Susan Burton made a good decision to decenter the babies, and to focus on Clara’s story. The question of desensitization in an environment where you see pain, and where you need to be working. But that’s difficult to navigate.
- Carmen: Appreciate that this podcast talks about childbearing from the woman’s perspective; there are some conversations where we can talk about the child, but it’s important to talk about the woman’s experience as well.
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Note: The featured image for this post is a digital photograph from The Retrievals, Season 2, Episode 3: “The Guidelines.” Photo credit: Erik Tanner, The New York Times.