Introducing: What Happened in Nashville

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.3 • 10.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2025

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What Happened in Nashville is a deeply reported investigation into the sudden collapse of a Tennessee fertility clinic, and the patients caught in the fallout. When the Center for Reproductive Health shut down without warning, people lost access to their embryos, their treatments were abruptly cut off, and many were left scrambling to recover money, medical records, and time they couldn’t afford to lose. Through intimate conversations with the patients who lived through it, host Melissa Jeltsen reveals the emotional and physical toll of the clinic’s abrupt closure. But the story reaches far beyond a single clinic. The series exposes the cracks in a fertility industry built on hope, high price tags and minimal oversight. What Happened in Nashville isn’t just the story of one tragedy — it’s a warning about a system where families have everything at stake and far too little protection.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It doesn't matter how much I fight, doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this, it doesn't
0:07.4	matter how much justice we get, none of it's going to get me pregnant.
0:13.1	Imagine pouring years of hope, trust, and your last dollar into a fertility clinic just
0:19.6	to have your dream of a child halted in the middle of
0:22.4	treatment. No warning, no explanation, no refunds.
0:27.5	We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's Attorney General is suing a Nashville
0:31.3	doctor. In April 2024, women arrived at the Center for Reproductive Health for scheduled IVF appointments.
0:40.0	Instead, the clinic was gone, shut down overnight, and trapped behind locked doors, were more than a thousand frozen embryos.
0:49.2	For many patients, their only chance at a family.
0:54.3	They were just going to ignore us. They were just going to ignore us.
0:56.1	They weren't going to answer us.
0:57.2	They had truly close their clinic.
0:59.9	I was terrified.
1:01.4	Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever.
1:05.7	This is the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse,
1:10.1	and the patients left behind.
1:12.6	But it's also about an industry where profit often trumps protection and vulnerable families
1:18.5	carry all the risk.
1:20.6	IVF today is far less regulated than virtually any comparable part of medical practice in the United States.
1:33.4	I'm Melissa Jeltson, and this is what happened in Nashville, an investigative podcast from
1:39.2	IHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. Like my earlier true crime podcasts, what happened to Sandy Beal, what happened to
1:46.5	Libby Caswell, and what happened to Talina Zar, it's about women failed by the people
	...

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