The Retrievals news
Spring 2024
The Retrievals won a Peabody!
The Retrievals is a Dart Award finalist.
The Retrievals has won the Association of Health Care Journalists award.
Winter 2023
The Retrievals was named the #1 podcast of 2023 by Vulture and Time and included on many year-end best of lists including those from The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Economist, The Financial Times, the CBC, Fresh Air, Vogue, and the podcast industry’s own round-up of favorites.
About Susan Burton
Susan Burton is the host, writer, reporter, and co-producer of The Retrievals, a podcast series from Serial Productions and the New York Times. She is the author of the memoir Empty, which was published by Random House in 2020 and tells the story of the eating disorders she kept secret for decades. For years she worked at This American Life, where the episodes she produced include Secrets, Ten Sessions, Five Women, The Thing I’m Getting Over, and Tell Me I’m Fat. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine,Slate,The New Yorker, and others, and she is a former editor of Harper's. Her radio documentaries have won numerous awards, including an Overseas Press Club citation, and she received a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to do stories about teenagers. The film Unaccompanied Minors, which was directed by Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig, is based on one of her personal essays. Susan graduated from Yale in 1995. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two sons (one of whom she wrote about in Labor Day: True Birth Stories by America’s Best Women Writers).
Selected Retrievals press
“The Retrievals Is a Nightmare,” by Nicholas Quah in Vulture, August 17, 2023
“The Retrievals is simply incredible. . . . I can’t stop thinking about it. . . . [F]ormalistically 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.”
“The Explosive Story of Abuse at a Renowned Fertility Clinic,” interview with Amber Tamblyn in Listening in the Dark @ Substack, August 17, 2023
“No story in recent memory has floored me more than the podcast The Retrievals. . . . [G]roundbreaking.”
The Retrievals discussed on Slate’s Culture Gabfest, August 16, 2023
“There are many, many extraordinary things about this podcast. . . . It feels like it’s been a minute since a narrative podcast story has grabbed people by the lapels and caused everyone to listen to something similar at once. . . . Its powers of empathy are extraordinary. . . . It’s just masterful.”
“The Retrievals Is Vital Listening,” by Deborah Copaken in Ladyparts @ Substack, August 14, 2023
“After more than two dozen people, both readers and friends, kept sending me the same link to The Retrievals, I finally put on my headphones. And felt my jaw drop. . . . I hope every woman (and man!) listens to this podcast. . . . it takes a story of individual pain—or in this case, many individuals’ pain—and transforms it into a universal parable to which we can all relate.”
“What The Retrievals Understood About Women’s Pain,” by Lizzie O’Leary in Slate, August 7, 2023
“Burton manages to succeed where many other seasons of Serial have failed. . . . There is actually a conclusion offered: Women’s pain is not treated equally because women are not treated equally.”
“What happens when women’s pain is dismissed,” by Anna Leszkiewicz in The New Statesman, July 19, 2023
“Reported and told by Susan Burton, it is a forensic and gripping story.”
“The Retrievals, a tale of agony and addiction, makes listeners squirm,” in The Economist, July 18, 2023
“The podcast . . . is spellbinding.”
“The Retrievals podcast—the true story of an outrageous medical cover-up,” by Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times, July 16, 2023
“Burton’s skillfully presented series is a beautifully produced, thought-provoking listen.”
The Retrievals by Molly Mirhashem in Outside, July 11, 2023
“A gripping and disturbing story, thoughtfully tackling complex topics like women’s pain, addiction, and how we construct our own narratives.”
Review by Miranda Sawyer in The Guardian, July 8, 2023
“Burton does an excellent job. . . . an immensely rewarding listen.”
“The Reverberations of Pain and Its Dismissal,” by Emmett Lindner in the New York Times, June 29, 2023
“The pain the women felt is central to The Retrievals, but looming nearly as large is the way that pain was interpreted by authority figures. The podcast examines how society receives, tolerates or minimizes the accounts of women.”
Empty news
“The Way I Ate”: excerpt on The New Yorker website, June 13, 2020
New York Timesreview by Claire Dederer, June 23, 2020
Terry Gross Fresh Airinterview, June 23, 2020
Zibby Owens Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Bookspodcast interview, June 24, 2020
Launch event: Wednesday, June 24, 2020, 7PM: Books Are Magic, with Ira Glass, via Zoom
All of It with Alison Stewart WNYC interview, June 25, 2020
Psychology Today, “Satisfied: Learning to Confront Anorexia and Binge-Eating Disorder,” July 2020 issue
WLIW interview with Gianna Volpe on Heart of the East End, July 22, 2020
Reading with Robin interview on Instagram Live, July 30, 2020
Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast interview, August 5, 2020
Everything Is Fine with Kim France and Tally Abecassis podcast interview, August 11, 2020
UCLA Open Mind lecture series. In conversation with Dr. Danielle Keenan-Miller about eating disorders and recovery. August 20, 2020
Colorado Public Radio Colorado Mattersinterview, September 3, 2020
Bookable podcast interview with Amanda Stern, September 15, 2020
How To Academy talk, Sunday, September 20, 2020
Peace Meal podcast interview with Jillian Lampert of The Emily Program, October 5, 2020
Everything Happens podcast interview with Kate Bowler, October 6, 2020
Empty Inside podcast interview with Jennette McCurdy, October 14, 2020
Family Secrets podcast interview with Dani Shapiro, October 29, 2020
Just Jenny Sirius XM interview with Jennifer Hutt, November 16, 2020
Book It with CAmemoir roundtable, January 13, 2021
This American Life episode about Secrets, February 19, 2021
A League of Their Own radio show interview, WRHU, May 17, 2021
The Leading Voices in Food podcast interview with Kelly Brownell, May 18, 2021
Brave Journeys podcast interview with Tammi Faraday, July 7, 2021
The Lifestyles Show with Selina MacKenzie on TRE Talk Radio Europe, July 19, 2021
This American Life story about eating disorder recovery, July 23, 2021
This Food Thing podcast interview with Jemma Richards, August 13, 2021
Before You Kill Yourself podcast interview with Leo Flowers, November 15, 2021
Buy the book:
Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble.
Praise:
“The author’s anger gives the book its considerable power, its substantial grace and even, in the end, its meaning — which goes against every received idea of what good memoir is, and how it ought it to function. . . . Burton’s memoir is valuable because she goes beyond simply confessing her shame; she rakes herself over the coals, and in doing so she models how anger can be used to clarify a story. . . . Her fury . . . is like a flashing light in a cave, or a portal. The force of it makes us not just appreciate but actually feel the force that drove her to commit her actions in the first place. The result is a book that wields a fearsome intimacy.” —Claire Dederer, New York Times
“A breathtakingly related depiction of growing up and the intimacies of family, friendship, and romantic love. All memoir-lovers will be taken by Burton’s elegant prose, rare self-insight, and layered, superconfessional storytelling.”—Booklist
“Burton convincingly conveys the desperation and darkness of eating disorders.”—Publishers Weekly
“Susan Burton’s Empty is a smart, brave gift to the world. She pulls back the curtain on an ailment all too many suffer with and often die from. Bravo!”—Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir and Lit
“Residing inside all of us is a secret so fraught that it becomes unspeakable, and for Susan Burton, that secret was food: How it controlled her and how she tried to control it. How it haunted and comforted, becoming at turns her fiercest adversary and comforting companion. Empty is a tour de force of both vulnerability and strength, a memoir so unflinching and brave that it forces us to peer into our own dark places with newfound honesty and compassion. By giving voice to her shame, Burton teaches herself—and the rest of us—how to find power and freedom in the telling.”—Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Susan Burton’s Empty is by turns touching, frightening, fiercely candid, and beautifully written. In this story of a teenager’s furtive eating disorders, Burton has sidestepped the clichés, and captured the enigma of attempting to sate, by gluttony and starvation, our human vulnerabilities.”—Jill Ciment, author of The Body in Question
“Susan Burton’s brave and candid book reveals the inner landscape of an adolescent girl, and the way the mind can be hypnotized by the idea of the body. Beautifully written, touching and intimate, Empty speaks to a secret shared by many American women.”—Roxana Robinson, author of Dawson’s Fall and Cost
Newsweek’s 20 Must-Read Books of the Summer
The Millions Most Anticipated, June 2020
Real Simple’s 5 Books to Read Right Now, June 2020
PureWow 8 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in June
BooklistTop 10 Memoirs 2020
Marie ClaireBest Memoirs of 2020
PeopleNonfiction pick, June 29, 2020
More:
Random House’s Empty book club kit (includes a new personal essay)
New York Times piece about eating disorders during the pandemic (May 12, 2020)
Cover:
The cover image is a painting by Lee Price, from her Women & Food series. Here’s a video about the cover.
author photo by Willy Somma