DEE: Hello, everyone.
DEE: Before we begin with today’s episode, we wanted to ask you, have you given us a rating on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you’re listening right now?
DEE: If not, please do.
JEFF: If you already did give us a rating, please tell your friends about our podcast.
JEFF: We really appreciate it, and thank you for listening.
JEFF: Vulture named it the number one podcast of 2023 and said, The Retrievals is a nightmare, simply incredible.
DEE: I can’t stop thinking about it.
DEE: Formalistically intriguing, the dismissal of women’s pain takes the center stage in this story, but also present at its edges is what feels like thornier subject matter, the sometimes destructive tension between bodily autonomy and motherhood itself.
JEFF: Let’s preview The Retrievals on this episode of So Much Crime, So Little Time.
JEFF: Welcome to So Much Crime, So Little Time.
JEFF: I’m Jeff.
DEE: And I’m Dee.
DEE: In this episode, we’ll introduce you to The Retrievals, a podcast from Serial Productions and The New York Times.
DEE: If you haven’t listened to The Retrievals, that’s great.
DEE: This is one of our preview episodes.
DEE: We’re only going to introduce you to the podcast and cover parts of the very first episode.
DEE: There will be no spoilers for what’s to come.
JEFF: In our next episode, we’ll discuss the whole series, but right now, we just want to decide if this is a crime that’s worth your time.
JEFF: So what is The Retrievals podcast?
JEFF: This is a five-part series put out by Serial Productions and The New York Times.
JEFF: Came out in 2023.
JEFF: There are five episodes and they range from about 30 minutes to an hour in length.
DEE: As for the story, this is the story of dozens of women who wanted to become mothers.
DEE: They all use a fertility clinic at Yale University.
JEFF: And actually, before we talk more about it, side note, Dee, what is your awareness of Yale and its reputation?
DEE: I feel like Yale is like, in my head, do you want to know what comes to my head immediately, is like blazers and like a weird crest and maybe like posh people learning about law.
JEFF: I think that’s a good, yeah, that’s a good association.
JEFF: Okay, great.
JEFF: Okay, so we’ll talk more about Yale as we get into it.
JEFF: The story focuses on a specific part of the IVF process called Egg Retrieval, that’s the name of the podcast.
JEFF: And each of the women in this story experienced excruciating unexpected pain.
DEE: But when they spoke up, they weren’t taken seriously.
DEE: So the show is about what happened to them, why it went so wrong and the fallout from the crime.
DEE: Okay, let’s get into our preview of The Retrievals.
DEE: Jeff, whoa, initial thoughts.
JEFF: I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this.
JEFF: This is quite the podcast, quite the story.
JEFF: It’s a pretty heavy topic.
JEFF: And it’s also, I feel like this is a differently structured podcast than other things that we’ve listened to.
JEFF: I think sort of from the construction of it to the story, there’s so many things that are unusual from what I’ve heard.
JEFF: What do you think?
DEE: Yeah, my first word, the word that keeps coming to my head is just harrowing.
DEE: Like it, it hurt to listen to it, which just even, it was just, it was so different to any of the subject matter that we’ve discussed previously.
DEE: But yeah, it was different in terms of like the pace.
DEE: Like you jump straight in, like the intro jumps straight in to what these women went through.
DEE: From a like a hooking someone in point of view.
DEE: Wow, it did that.
DEE: And I think it’s important.
DEE: I mean, look, for every true crime that we are previewing or recapping or discussing, we always want to make sure that we are being respectful to the victims and to everyone involved.
DEE: But for this one in particular, I think we really have to split up for our purposes, like how they’ve structured and how they’ve told the story from the story itself.
DEE: If we want to just take a look, first of all, and kind of quick enough looking at how they’ve structured and how they’re telling the story and the hosts and kind of that side of things, and then maybe jump into the story and the content itself.
DEE: If that’s all right with you.
DEE: So in terms of the hosts, this is something I feel like we often speak about with our preview episodes because it’s hard to get used to a new voice and a new way of telling a story.
DEE: For me, it wasn’t with this one.
DEE: I felt like the host, Susan Burton, just has done such a good job in this first episode.
DEE: I think her balance between storytelling and garnering more information in the interviews she’s having with the women, the victims in this case, is really well done.
DEE: She maintains a really clear respect for the victims, but she also manages to get a little bit more information from them.
DEE: So it aids the storytelling, but it’s very, very clear that she is empathetic and compassionate and really just is feeling for the women.
DEE: I think that comes across and I think with Annie’s story, that’s really important, but particularly for the topic in question here, when the trust has been broached by so many of these women, have felt so vulnerable and have felt, you know, so much pain and really disrespected and really not heard.
DEE: I felt like that that was, if there was one thing that had to be focused on when telling the story, that was it.
JEFF: Oh, that’s interesting.
JEFF: Yeah, it’s interesting because it really jumped out at me that she, of all the shows we’ve listened to, she’s the least present narrator, right?
JEFF: Like, I think she probably has the fewest words in this first episode, and maybe that’ll change as we go on, but she, it really, it’s just clips of the women, the victims speaking, and that’s how the story is told, which, yeah, that’s just, that’s an interesting sort of change from, and we’ve heard versions of that in other stories, but I don’t think it’s been this prominent where you’re really just getting this sort of like collage of voices.
JEFF: She’s not even introducing always who they are.
JEFF: Like, sometimes she does, but sometimes it just goes from like one woman to another to another, and there you’re getting this, this portrait of what happened without her interjecting, certainly no commentary, right?
JEFF: Like she isn’t offering any judgment.
JEFF: And you only, I think maybe once, here actually interact with the woman.
JEFF: Like there’s one point where she asks a question, but that’s rare.
DEE: Yeah, I’m intrigued to see if that will increase.
DEE: I’m sure it will as the story goes on, because this episode itself was called The Patients.
DEE: So obviously it’s solely focused on the patients themselves.
DEE: But I felt like even when she was interjecting, you could just tell the respect and, you know, just how compassionate she was being.
DEE: And I just felt like that that was, we discussed previously how hosts have been kind of blasé and kind of jokey, which I get in some cases, this isn’t the case.
DEE: It will never be the case for us.
JEFF: Yeah, and actually, and one other thing on that, I mean, so just in looking up who she was, I went to her website, and one of the first things it mentions is that she’s, I think it’s that she’s a Yale grad herself, which I think is fascinating that she-
DEE: That’s interesting.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah, she graduated from Yale in 1995, so I feel like if this was, you know, you compare this to something like the thing about Pam, where, you know, and it made sense for that story, but they interjected themselves and kind of their importance in the story right from the start.
JEFF: And she never mentions that.
JEFF: She doesn’t in the first episode.
JEFF: So, like, she doesn’t say anything really about herself.
JEFF: She doesn’t really say anything about her background, any type of connection she may have to the story.
JEFF: She may have no connection to the story.
JEFF: Like, just having gone to Yale isn’t, like, the strongest connection.
JEFF: But this is a story about Yale, the Yale Fertility Clinic.
JEFF: So that jumped out at me.
JEFF: It’s like that’s how sort of much she puts herself in the background and the women in the foreground, right?
DEE: Yeah, that’s an interesting point.
DEE: We should definitely continue to look out for her as it goes on if she continues to stay in the background.
DEE: Or if she doesn’t, does she maintain the respect?
DEE: Does she bring herself into the story a bit more?
DEE: Yeah, definitely think this has been the strongest start.
DEE: So I think other than Inside the Crime, where Frank Graney, the host of that one, didn’t, he didn’t put himself inside the story.
DEE: He was telling the story.
DEE: And it seems like she’s doing the same here.
DEE: Whereas I think our last two podcasts that we were listening to, The Thing About Pam and…
JEFF: Filthy Rituals.
DEE: Filthy Rituals.
DEE: They both really seemed, the hosts seemed to really put themselves into the story, which is just a different approach to it.
JEFF: Yeah, I think that’s true.
JEFF: I think actually for people who have listened to Inside the Crime, I think that is a good parallel.
JEFF: I think if you like that style, because that was, I remember, I think we talked about the time, how much access he had to the people who were very close to the crime and how much of them we got to hear.
JEFF: And I think the same thing is true here.
JEFF: One other element of this I want to get your opinion on is, so I checked the time on this.
JEFF: We were about 12 minutes into the first episode before the opening credits came.
JEFF: So there was a lot of sort of like setup and prologue.
JEFF: And really by that point, we know the crime.
JEFF: Like we know the whole premise of what happened.
JEFF: We even know what I think they’re going to dive more into in all the rest of the episodes about.
JEFF: Like we know that it was a nurse stealing the fentanyl.
JEFF: Like we know that before they say the name of the show, the sort of opening credits bit.
JEFF: And they even play those news clips about the punishment that’s coming.
JEFF: So it’s just such an interesting change of pace where it’s like the sort of the outcome, I guess.
DEE: It’s like the end is first.
JEFF: Yeah, they really do start with the end.
JEFF: But despite that, I feel like it was still really gripping going through like every minute.
JEFF: I mean, this first episode is about an hour long.
JEFF: It’s a long first episode, but it didn’t feel long.
JEFF: Like I felt like it went past like really, really quickly.
DEE: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
DEE: It definitely went past very quickly.
DEE: It was, yeah, it was just such a hard lesson at parts, which is a ridiculous thing to say.
DEE: Like it’s hard to listen to the hard, the struggles that these women went through.
DEE: It was really, really.
DEE: Yeah, I, sorry, going back to your point of the intro, I thought it was great.
DEE: I really, I think again, it goes back to keeping the women at the forefront.
DEE: It was heavy on women and telling their stories and telling you the ending.
DEE: This isn’t about, oh, what’s going to happen next?
DEE: Let’s all guess, put on our Jessica Fletcher hat on and like figure it out.
DEE: It’s not the purpose of this podcast.
DEE: The purpose of this podcast is to tell the stories of these women and the situation they were put in.
DEE: And the situation they were put in by, I’m going to air quote again, reputable, reputable, reputable.
JEFF: Yeah, reputable.
DEE: OK, so the fact that these women like were going through this and it wasn’t just like, it’s not the fault of the women.
DEE: And it doesn’t to me seem even like they’re teeing this up, like the fault of the nurse.
DEE: Like as much as obviously we have a lot to learn about what happened, it feels like there’s a focus, a big focus on Yale and not the nurse, but maybe the doctors, the entire medical team, and the protocols that were in place.
DEE: And I found that really interesting because it wasn’t a case of, let’s find the one person who did it.
DEE: Like how many times in the last like five or six episodes have we said lazy policing or like lazy protocols?
DEE: Like, and you know, people aren’t speaking about like those kind of things.
DEE: They’re not speaking about systematic errors.
DEE: They’re speaking about trying to get blame on a person.
DEE: But it really didn’t feel like this episode was trying to tee it up that like the nurse was to blame.
DEE: It feels like it’s really focusing in on the systematic errors that were in place that allowed this to happen.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: And I think in conjunction with that, there seems to be a sensitivity to the opioid crisis and fentanyl and that it’s, you know, it’s not so much of like one bad actor.
JEFF: It’s that this is, you know, an incredibly addictive drug.
JEFF: And like this is a, I mean, they don’t really get into this, but like, I mean, this is a huger, like a much larger problem than this one story.
JEFF: And this one story is just, I think, a compelling example of like the harm that that drug can do out in the world, right?
DEE: Absolutely.
DEE: I’m like, I’m not going to lie.
DEE: I’m not going to say that I’m not intrigued to hear the nurse’s story and like how someone who, you know, in a profession where you take an oath to like, you know, be focused on your patients and be trying to get, you know, any nurse that I know, they’re full of compassion and all they want for people is them to feel good and be able to help and support them through something.
DEE: And so how someone gets from there to being able to not only steal Fentanyl, but replace it with something that’s not going to dull any pain and be OK with that.
DEE: One thing we’re unsure of so far is if she was ever present when any of the women who were getting saline was.
DEE: We don’t know who it was, so we don’t know if she was actually present when any of these procedures happened.
DEE: We’re unsure of that just yet.
JEFF: Yeah, because most of what we get so far is just sort of an introduction to the women.
JEFF: We get a pretty detailed description of what this process is like, not just in terms of the issue with the Fentanyl being swapped out for saline, but also just what it’s like outside of that and just how I think…
DEE: Emotionally draining.
JEFF: Yeah, emotionally draining, physically draining, psychologically draining, just like the process of IVF is, which I think if all goes well, it’s still a really challenging, difficult process for people to go through.
JEFF: This is not an easy thing, also not a cheap thing.
JEFF: It’s incredibly expensive.
JEFF: We get a little bit of that.
JEFF: And what these women go through outside of this crime is pretty rough.
JEFF: It’s just the description of being on the hormones that they put you on before this process and just how that affects you, how that affects your interactions with the medical teams that you have to work with.
JEFF: I mean, there’s the bit about hysteria, right?
JEFF: And just how, I mean, there’s more of a history to that, right?
JEFF: That’s a longer story.
JEFF: But you couple the idea of just women in general not being listened to, right?
JEFF: Their pain being minimized with women in a particularly, I think, sensitive and vulnerable state.
JEFF: And then on top of that, going through this procedure, which just sounds just really hard.
JEFF: I mean, I don’t feel like I can…
DEE: I mean, look, I haven’t been through IVF.
DEE: I have friends who have, but I don’t know the ins and outs of it.
DEE: I have been in a vulnerable position when you’re in a gynecological office and you’ve got your legs up and you feel like you are completely vulnerable and you are trusting the doctor and the nurses and the medical team to look after you.
DEE: That is as vulnerable as you can get.
DEE: Like even going in to have a baby, like there’s so much vulnerability there.
DEE: And like, that’s why, as they were describing this, like I just like, I felt like crying so many times just listening to these women.
DEE: Like the emotional and physical stress without any of this extra stuff on top of it is so much for people who are, you know, the focus is, I just want a baby.
DEE: I just want a baby.
DEE: Or I want the ability to have a baby in future years, whatever it is.
DEE: It was just so hard.
DEE: In addition to that, can we talk about like the women themselves and the kind of difference of their stories?
DEE: Like when you heard of Laura, who was cancer and is under time pressure and she goes through this and she’s like comparing all of this pain that she had with, you know, having a double mastectomy and not being able to get painkillers after that and then eventually getting it and being like, well, this was worse.
DEE: And like that was one person who’s already going through so much.
DEE: And then you have Katie, who’s the addiction researcher who like has this premonition or is that what she calls it or is that what we’re going to call it where she’s like the nurse is stealing the fentanyl.
DEE: Like she said she knew it straight away and she messaged her other addiction researcher friends and was like the nurse is stealing the fentanyl.
DEE: Like this is it.
DEE: And what was interesting with her, I thought, was when she was like, I was actually excited to try fentanyl as an addiction researcher being like, other people are trying it.
DEE: And like, you know, this is kind of a little bit like, whoa, I wonder what this is going to be like.
DEE: But she came out being like, how are people, how do people like this?
DEE: How is this a thing?
JEFF: Yeah, I mean, I think they were all fascinating.
JEFF: So on Katie, the addiction expert, I think what was even I think on top of that interesting was, yeah, so she was the one who immediately said like, oh yeah, this is what’s happening.
JEFF: The nurse is stealing the fentanyl.
JEFF: And she pegged it right away.
JEFF: But then she still rationalized it.
DEE: She blamed herself.
JEFF: And she thought back to when she woke up when she was getting her wisdom teeth out.
JEFF: And for some reason, that was her fault.
JEFF: Which is, I think, one of the common threads of like, oh no, it’s your fault for burdening the medical staff.
DEE: Well, you see, what’s interesting, when she says she has this memory of waking up with her wisdom teeth, what I find interesting was she said, I remember or from her memory, the response of the nurse at that point, she was getting her wisdom teeth teeth out as a child was, oh, shit, shit, and had to get her under again.
DEE: But when she can feel pain as a woman, it wasn’t shit, shit.
DEE: It was, I think it was so painful because we got so many eggs.
JEFF: Right.
JEFF: Yeah.
DEE: Why is that?
DEE: Why do we have that comparison of the respect for the children?
DEE: Not saying children shouldn’t be listened to, they absolutely should, and their pain.
DEE: But why is it that time and time again, studies are showing that women’s pain are not listened to?
DEE: That’s what’s so horrible about listening to this episode is you and I both know that maybe not this exact scenario, but this story of women not being heard, and their pain not being respected and not being minimized, that is not just in this scenario.
DEE: That is so widespread.
DEE: And the pain women go through is just without any additional extra things, just the pain in life of being a woman.
DEE: If you go through a childbirth phase, but even throughout your menstruating life, and that is always minimized.
DEE: And why is that?
DEE: Why when a child wakes up and says, shit, the nurse says, shit, we better put them under again.
DEE: We don’t want a child in pain.
DEE: Of course, we don’t want a child in pain.
DEE: But when a woman is saying that, they’re like, ah, sure, here, we’ll put a wet, what did they say at one stage, a cold towel on your head?
JEFF: Yeah, a cold towel on your head.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Well, it was one of the women, Leia, who said women are unreliable narrators of their own symptoms, are anxious, are exaggerating.
JEFF: I wrote that down because I thought that, like that.
JEFF: She was the one who walked in to get her ultrasound.
JEFF: There was blood on the floor.
JEFF: And I mean, effectively was told to just calm down about it, right?
JEFF: Like, stop being hysterical.
JEFF: Like, it’s just blood.
JEFF: But, oh my gosh.
JEFF: Like, what do you do with that?
JEFF: Like, that’s, it’s horrifying, right?
JEFF: Like, that’s…
DEE: That’s really horrifying.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: And so she was, Leia was also the one who, I mean, this was the common story, but was made to feel like it was her fault.
JEFF: She couldn’t sit still, right?
JEFF: Like, that she was like squirming.
DEE: If you move, the knee, is this…
DEE: Yeah, if you move, or you have to sit still so that the needle basically doesn’t, like, hit anything else.
JEFF: Right, like, there are these risks, right?
JEFF: Because that’s what happened to, I forget which one of them, the one who went home and then basically collapsed.
DEE: Collapsed, yeah.
JEFF: Oh, that was Julia.
JEFF: Julia, yeah, she went home, passed out, and then called and they said go to the ER, but she couldn’t even bend, like, to get into a car.
JEFF: So she got an ambulance and then her doctor, who didn’t respond to her for days, when he finally did, said he was perplexed and surprised at her pain, which.
DEE: And do you know what is so frustrating, and I know she says this, but like, that she rode a town or whatever, what’s so frustrating about that is, he’s not fucking surprised and he’s not perplexed, because this isn’t just one woman.
DEE: And not that one woman’s pain should be diminished or ignored, but if this happened to one person, I can understand the medical team being like, let’s just make sure that she’s okay, let’s get through this procedure, if we’re in the middle of it, you know, the focus is for this woman, like, let’s focus on that.
DEE: But like, surely you’d pause after as a medical team and be like, we need, I don’t know how they do it, but like, we need a team meeting for like, what went wrong there?
DEE: Like, how can we address this in the future?
DEE: Like, is there any gaps in our system?
DEE: Like, how could the fentanyl not have worked?
DEE: But the thing is, we don’t know what number of patients she was.
DEE: We don’t know, was she patient zero, was she patient, like, we don’t know what patient she was if she was the first person that displayed this, and that’s why he was perplexed, to be fair, if we’re given any sort of benefit of the doubt.
DEE: But even if he was, you know, a couple of patients, one is not okay.
DEE: If you get to two, surely as a medical team, you have to pause and say something is wrong here.
JEFF: You do, and I think about this a lot, and I think about it, although I don’t remember where I heard it, about how if you are a doctor, you have to be okay with people being in pain, right?
JEFF: That’s a challenging part of being a doctor, is that you just have to be comfortable with people being in pain around you, which I think makes sense, right?
JEFF: Like, you can’t do your job effectively if you can’t sort of have some type of detachment or tolerance for that.
JEFF: But you also, I feel like, have an obligation to recognize when something’s wrong here, right?
JEFF: Like, something like, they, at some point we should talk about the letter that we get to at the end of the episode where from Yale basically saying like, hey, we learned of an event.
JEFF: That’s what they say at the beginning of it.
JEFF: We learned of an event.
JEFF: There’s no reason to believe this event had any negative effect on your health.
DEE: No harm done.
JEFF: Yeah, no harm done.
JEFF: But…
DEE: Do you want a blood test?
DEE: Because you might have been compromised.
DEE: It’s free of charge, by the way.
DEE: We won’t charge for it.
DEE: Do you know what really bugged me about the letter?
JEFF: Other than that it was a letter?
DEE: It was a normal letter.
DEE: Do you know what happens with a lot of normal letters?
DEE: They get thrown out.
JEFF: Yeah, that’s true.
DEE: And it was…
DEE: Even the fact that it was a normal, not urgent, not whatever, this is a normal letter.
DEE: It was even the letter itself is dismissive before you look at the words.
DEE: And then you hear the no harm done, blood tests free of charge.
DEE: It’s so disrespectful.
DEE: It’s again, minimizing the event.
DEE: Like absolutely minimizing.
DEE: And what it…
DEE: I don’t want to get into this too much, or maybe we will end up getting into it, but like what this shows, as well as everything before when the doctors are like, just stay calm, we’ll get through this, we’ll get through this, we get through this, comes back to the fact that the system here in America, the health system is about money.
DEE: And if you have a health system that is focused purely on money, what you’re going to be focused on is quantity over quality.
DEE: And in this case, that’s what it was.
DEE: It wasn’t the quality of care that was the focus.
DEE: It was get them in, get them out, get them in, get them out.
DEE: Even the fact that these women couldn’t get people on the phone when they’re saying like, I am doubled over.
DEE: At one point, someone said, I wish I shouldn’t have, or I think was actually the host said, women were saying, I wish I hadn’t booked my shift for the next day.
DEE: I wish I hadn’t done this.
DEE: And it’s like these women have obviously prepared.
DEE: They’ve talked to their doctors and their medical team about, okay, what can I do after?
DEE: What can I not do after?
JEFF: I’m not sure if this is the point where as the American on this podcast, I’m supposed to defend the American medical system.
JEFF: I’m not going to do that.
JEFF: It’s not coming.
DEE: Look, I’ll say, for certain people in society, the medical system here can at times work efficiently.
DEE: For certain people in society.
JEFF: For certain people.
DEE: But I mean, I mean, as how is a national system?
DEE: How can like certain people are like this tiny portion?
JEFF: I mean, the number of stories that I have of my wife, who is a person of color getting mistreated, not just because she’s a woman, but because she’s a brown woman and getting bad care of, I mean, not IVF, but similar.
JEFF: Like, I mean, going through childbirth and being told like, we’re going to put you on a on a pitocin drip for a whole day, and we’re going to come back to it tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the fourth day, and then the fifth day.
JEFF: And your just exhaustion, emotional and physical exhaustion, isn’t important to us.
JEFF: And I mean, that I have dozens of stories like that of things that she’s gone through where she just gets different treatment than I would get, right?
JEFF: Like it’s just, that happens time and again.
DEE: Yeah.
JEFF: There’s a line that I wrote down too that’s on this topic.
JEFF: I think this was the narrator talking, saying there’s a balance you have to strike as a woman patient.
JEFF: You have to complain just the right amount to be taken seriously, but not so much that you seem shrill.
JEFF: And then she said that if she is complaining, she feels the need to be obsequious later, like to sort of like compensate for her complaints, which I know to be true, still depressing, still dark.
DEE: I do think it’s funny when you look up at anything to do with…
DEE: It’s not funny, haha, but like in comparison, when you look up at anything to do with a man having to get a vasectomy, I probably shouldn’t say this on the podcast, should I?
DEE: I haven’t looked up on the podcast.
DEE: But you’re like the talk of like the downtime and the prep and the painkillers.
DEE: And I’m like, really?
DEE: Like I feel like the focus of me going in to give birth to my children wasn’t like the downtime for me after.
DEE: It was like how I’m going to care for my baby after.
DEE: It was nothing to do with that.
DEE: Whereas, you know, for man, it’s like, oh, yeah, like, how are you going to manage like afterwards?
DEE: It’s ridiculous.
JEFF: No, I mean, it’s like two totally different systems.
JEFF: It’s true.
JEFF: Yeah.
DEE: Anyway, what is next question for you?
DEE: How eager are you to keep listening?
JEFF: Yeah, I mean, I feel like we just keep talking about how kind of harrowing this is, but at the same time, it’s it’s so well constructed.
JEFF: It’s so compelling that and and and like I said before, like we know, I feel like we know the outcome.
JEFF: Maybe it’s going to have some twists and turns, but it’s not really about that.
JEFF: Like, I feel like this is just like compelling.
JEFF: No, it’s compelling journalism, right?
JEFF: Like, it’s it’s just well a well told story that yeah, I’m super eager to keep listening.
JEFF: Yeah, what about you?
DEE: Yeah, I think if you again at the start, I kind of started.
DEE: I was very clear that I think we should really compartmentalize the format of the podcast versus the story that’s being told, because I think that’s very important here.
DEE: The way it was ended with the letter that they all received, I thought it was just so clever.
DEE: The whole construction, we learned so much in the first episode, but at the very end, you just want to know more.
DEE: And I was angry.
DEE: I was angry at the end that I need to know more about this.
DEE: And to listen to something for 50 minutes and to come out feeling an anger, not at the thing you’re listening to.
DEE: There’s plenty of people you can listen to and you can be angry at them after.
DEE: I was angry for each and every woman that I heard speaking.
DEE: I was angry for the system.
DEE: I was angry for the women who aren’t being represented here.
DEE: It just made me furious.
DEE: And I think that’s a really, really good sign, a really clear indicator for an excellent podcast, an excellent story.
DEE: And yeah, I think it was just so well done.
JEFF: So I agree with that.
JEFF: A question I had for you that I was thinking about as I was preparing my notes for this was, so we’re talking about how compelling this is and how unusual this is from other things we’ve listened to.
JEFF: I mean, the crime itself is also not like anything we’ve heard before, right?
JEFF: Like this is a different kind of crime.
JEFF: I’m curious, like in the context of like your love of true crime, like how does this fit?
JEFF: Like do you, is this like anything else that you have heard?
JEFF: Or is it like, how do you, where do you compare it?
DEE: I would, it’s very unlike something I would usually listen to.
DEE: I think, I think I’m 100% listening to the end of it.
DEE: Like it’s not as if I’m saying I’m only listening to this because of this podcast.
DEE: 100% want to listen to the end of it because it’s evoked so many emotions in me.
DEE: I don’t know if there’s anything I could compare it to.
DEE: There’s a few podcasts I have teed up to listen to in the next little while that are along similar-ish lines where, you know, someone that you’re putting your trust in, like a medical professional, isn’t true to their ethics and the patients are the victims at the end of it.
DEE: Yeah, it’s not something I would usually listen to, but I still think it’s such a compelling story and it’s just the way it was done by the women, their voices being front and center.
DEE: This isn’t about the host.
DEE: It’s not about anything.
DEE: It’s about these women and making sure these women are heard because they were not heard.
DEE: And I just have so much respect for the way that was portrayed in the podcast.
DEE: That was the most important thing to do.
DEE: And that was the very first episode.
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: And like, it’s just how?
DEE: How does this happen?
DEE: How is there no response to the clear pattern of women in pain during one single procedure?
DEE: Like, this isn’t like a mystery.
DEE: Like, it’s very clear, you know?
JEFF: Yep, it is.
JEFF: Well, all right.
JEFF: So I think we’re going to go on.
JEFF: We’re going to do a full recap next time.
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: I would say the last, but the last caveat I would say is like, obviously recommendation for listeners.
DEE: I’m sure anyone who’s listening to this has looked at the description of the episode before jumping in.
DEE: Anyone who’s listening to…
DEE: Sorry, let me rephrase that.
DEE: I want to say like, anyone who’s going to obviously listen to The Retrievals, I presume they have like read the description on it before.
DEE: If I was to say to someone like, you know, recommend, do you want people to listen to this?
DEE: I would just put a word of caution out, you know, be aware of the content before listening.
DEE: And you got to figure out for yourself if this is for you.
DEE: I think it’s too personal to be like, oh, if it’s this type of crime, it’s like, it’s, you got to figure it out for yourself because it’s detailed, it’s gruesome.
DEE: And it’s a very sensitive subject.
JEFF: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point.
JEFF: And I don’t know that I can speak with authority on this, but I did feel like when I listened to this, I thought of my friends who have gone through IVF.
JEFF: And I thought like, I don’t know if I’d recommend this to them.
JEFF: I don’t know if like, particularly ones who have gone through it very recently, of like, this may be too hard to listen to if you’re really close to that, or if you’ve had some type of similar traumatic experience.
JEFF: I think this may not be the best one for you, but for anyone else, I think this is, I mean, this is just such a well constructed, well told story.
JEFF: I would recommend it for sure.
DEE: And it’s an important one.
JEFF: Yes, very important.
DEE: For everyone to listen.
DEE: Women, men, be aware of it.
DEE: Anyone at all.
DEE: Can’t say women and men there.
DEE: Better cut that out.
DEE: Just for everyone.
DEE: Let’s just say everyone.
DEE: People.
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: Every people’s.
DEE: In our next episode, we’ll discuss The Retrievals in full.
DEE: Were our initial thoughts correct?
DEE: What moments lingered?
DEE: How does it all end?
DEE: And of course, was this crime worth the time?
JEFF: You can listen to The Retrievals wherever you get your podcasts, and then join us for our full recap next time.
JEFF: So Much Crime, So Little Time is a production of MindGlobe Media.
JEFF: The executive producer is Paxton Calariso.
JEFF: Our associate producer is Blythe Tai.
JEFF: Our theme music was composed by Vicheslav Starostin.
JEFF: If you haven’t done it yet, please subscribe to this show on your podcast app.
JEFF: Don’t forget to give us a five-star rating and a review.
JEFF: Even better, tell your friends.
JEFF: To join the discussion, look for us on social media.
JEFF: Check out the show notes for all the links.
JEFF: Thanks for listening.
