Introducing ‘The Preventionist,’ a New Podcast From Serial Productions

The New York Times and Serial Productions today announced "The Preventionist," a new limited podcast series hosted by Dyan Neary.

The three-part series chronicles Neary's investigation of a problematic doctor in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley following a tip she received in the summer of 2023. Parents were claiming that when they sought medical care for their children, this pediatrician falsely accused them of abuse, and their children were taken away from them. "The Preventionist" traces this doctor's decades-long career across multiple states and explores the rise of a new and powerful kind of specialist, the "child abuse pediatrician" - whose decisions can be incredibly difficult to challenge.

"Dyan Neary has reported on child welfare for years," says Julie Snyder, executive editor of Serial Productions. "In 'The Preventionist,' she gives us not only an architectural understanding of how misdiagnoses of child abuse can happen, but we also get a granular look inside one family who must grapple with the fallout from a separation. Dyan follows one mom trying to decide, in real time, what's best for her and her still-separated son. It's both heartbreaking and infuriating."

You can listen to the trailer now.

New York Times All Access and Audio subscribers will get exclusive early access to the entire show on Thursday, Oct. 16. Subscribers can find all three episodes today on Spotify and Apple Podcasts . All others will be able to listen to the full series on Thursday, Oct. 30, wherever podcasts are available .

Dyan Neary is an investigative reporter who writes feature stories and essays on a range of topics including child welfare, the criminal justice system, and health and medicine. She holds a Ph.D. in creative writing from Florida State University and is an associate professor of journalism at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in outlets like New York magazine, Elle and WUSF, an NPR affiliate.

Serial Productions, a New York Times company, creates narrative podcasts whose quality and innovation transformed the medium. Serial Productions is the maker of the award-winning blockbuster podcasts "Serial" and "S-Town," with more than 743 million total downloads. In previous seasons, "Serial" investigated a murder case, told the story of the court martial of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, spent a year inside Cleveland's criminal courts and went to the Guantánamo detention camp.

In July 2020, Serial Productions became part of The New York Times Company. Together they have launched several shows, including "Nice White Parents," a chart-topping series about the powerful forces shaping public schools; "The Improvement Association," a captivating true story about election fraud; "The Trojan Horse Affair," an investigative series about the mystery behind a scandal that rocked Britain; "We Were Three," an intimate look at how Covid affected one family; "The Coldest Case in Laramie," a limited series confronting conflicting stories behind a decades-old unsolved homicide case; "The Retrievals," a textured story about the treatment of women in medical settings and "The Retrievals, Season 2," an intimate, character-driven investigation on the widespread issue of severe pain felt during C-sections; "The Kids of Rutherford County," a narrative series produced in partnership with ProPublica and WPLN Nashville Public Radio that was a winner of a 2023 George Polk award for investigative reporting in podcasting; and "The Good Whale," a genre-bending tale about the most famous orca in history.