Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary

Dr. MaryAnn Wilbur trained her whole life to care for patients, then left medicine behind when it became a machine that punished empathy and rewarded throughput. She didn’t burn out. She got out. A gynecologic oncologist, public health researcher, and no-bullshit single mom, MaryAnn walked straight off the cliff her career breadcrumbed her to—and lived to write the book.In this episode, we talk about what happens when doctors are forced to choose between their ethics and their employment, why medicine now operates like a low-resource war zone, and how the system breaks the very people it claims to elevate. We cover moral injury, medical gaslighting, and why she refused to lie on surgical charts just to boost hospital revenue.Her escape plan? Tell the truth, organize the exodus, and build something that actually works. If you've ever wondered why your doctor disappeared, this is your answer. If you're a clinician hiding your own suffering, this is your permission slip.RELATED LINKSMaryAnn Wilbur on LinkedInMedicine ForwardClinician Burnout FoundationThe Doctor Is No Longer In (Book)Suck It Up, Buttercup (Documentary)FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode 5 of Standard Deviation with Oliver Bogler on the Out of Patients podcast feed pulls you straight into the story of Dr Ethan Moitra, a psychologist who fights for LGBTQ mental health while the system throws every obstacle it can find at him.Ethan built a study that tracked how COVID 19 tore through an already vulnerable community. He secured an NIH grant. He built a team. He reached 180 participants. Then he opened an email on a Saturday and learned that Washington had erased his work with one sentence about taxpayer priorities. The funding vanished. The timeline collapsed. His team scattered. Participants who trusted him sat in limbo.A federal court eventually forced the government to reinstate the grant, but the damage stayed baked into the process. Ethan had to push through months of paperwork while his university kept the original deadline as if the shutdown had not happened. The system handed him a win that felt like a warning.I brought Ethan on because his story shows how politics reaches into science and punishes the people who serve communities already carrying too much trauma. His honesty lands hard because he names the fear now spreading across academia and how young scientists question whether they can afford to care about the wrong population.You will hear what this ordeal did to him, what it cost his team, and why he refuses to walk away.RELATED LINKSFaculty PageNIH Grant DetailsScientific PresentationBoston Globe CoverageFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chelsea J. Smith walks into a studio and suddenly I feel like a smurf. She’s six-foot-three of sharp humor, dancer’s poise, and radioactive charm. A working actor and thyroid cancer survivor, Chelsea is the kind of guest who laughs while dropping truth bombs about what it means to be told you’re “lucky” to have the “good cancer.” We talk about turning trauma into art, how Shakespeare saved her sanity during the pandemic, and why bartending might be the best acting class money can’t buy. She drops the polite bullshit, dismantles survivor guilt with punchline precision, and reminds every listener that grace and rage can live in the same body. If you’ve ever been told to “walk it off” while your body betrayed you, this one hits close.RELATED LINKS• Chelsea J. Smith Website• Chelsea on Instagram• Chelsea on Backstage• Chelsea on YouTube• Cancer Hope Network• Artichokes and Grace – Book by Chelsea’s motherFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When Julia Stalder heard the words ductal carcinoma in situ, she was told she had the “best kind of breast cancer.” Which is like saying you got hit by the nicest bus. Julia’s a lawyer turned mediator who now runs DCIS Understood, a new nonprofit born out of her own diagnosis. Instead of panicking and letting the system chew her up, she asked questions the industry would rather avoid. Why do women lose breasts for conditions that may never become invasive? Why is prostate cancer allowed patience while breast cancer gets the knife? We talked about doctors’ fear of uncertainty, the epidemic of overtreatment, and what happens when you build a movement while still in the waiting room. Funny, fierce, unfiltered—this one sticks.RELATED LINKS• DCIS Understood• Stalder Mediation• Julia’s story in CURE Today• PreludeDx DCISionRT feature• Julia on LinkedInFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr. Rachel Gatlin entered neuroscience with curiosity and optimism. Then came chaos. She started her PhD at the University of Utah in March 2020—right as the world shut down. Her lab barely existed. Her advisor was on leave. Her project focused on isolation stress in mice, and then every human on earth became her control group. Rachel fought through supply shortages, grant freezes, and the brutal postdoc job market that treats scientists like disposable parts. When her first offer vanished under a hiring freeze, she doubled down, rewrote her plan, and won her own NIH training grant. Her story is about survival in the most literal sense—how to keep your brain intact when the system built to train you keeps collapsing.RELATED LINKS• Dr. Rachel Gatlin on LinkedIn• Dr. Gatlin’s Paper Preprint• Dr. Eric Nestler on Wikipedia• News Coverage: Class of 2025 – PhD Students Redefine PrioritiesFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

EPISODE DESCRIPTIONBefore she was raising millions to preserve fertility for cancer patients, Tracy Weiss was filming reenactments in her apartment for the Maury Povich Show using her grandmother’s china. Her origin story includes Jerry Springer, cervical cancer, and a full-body allergic reaction to bullshit. Now, she’s Executive Director of The Chick Mission, where she weaponizes sarcasm, spreadsheets, and the rage of every woman who’s ever been told “you’re fine” while actively bleeding out in a one-stall office bathroom.We get into all of it. The diagnosis. The misdiagnosis. The second opinion that saved her life. Why fertility preservation is still a luxury item. Why half of oncologists still don’t mention it. And what it takes to turn permission to be pissed into a platform that actually pays for women’s futures.This episode is blunt, hilarious, and very Jewish. There’s chopped liver, Carrie Bradshaw slander, and more than one “fuck you” to the status quo. You’ve been warned.RELATED LINKSThe Chick MissionTracy Weiss on LinkedInFertility Preservation Interview (Dr. Aimee Podcast)Tracy’s Story in Authority MagazineNBC DFW FeatureStork’d Podcast EpisodeNuDetroit ProfileChick Mission 2024 Gala RecapFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:Libby Amber Shayo didn’t just survive the pandemic—she branded it. Armed with a bun, a New York accent, and enough generational trauma to sell out a two-drink-minimum crowd, she turned her Jewish mom impressions into the viral sensation known as Sheryl Cohen. What started as one-off TikToks became a career in full technicolor: stand-up, sketch, podcasting, and Jewish community building.We covered everything. Jew camp lore. COVID courtship. Hannah Montana. Holocaust comedy. Dating app postmortems. And the raw, relentless grief that comes with being Jewish online in 2025. Libby’s alter ego lets her say the quiet parts out loud, but the real Libby? She’s got receipts, range, and a righteous sense of purpose.If you’re burnt out on algorithm-friendly “influencers,” meet a creator who actually stands for something. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t filter. And she damn well earned her platform.This is the most Jewish episode I’ve ever recorded. And yes, there will be guilt.RELATED LINKSLibby’s Website: https://libbyambershayo.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/libbyambershayoTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@libbyambershayoLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/libby-walkerSchmuckboys Podcast: https://jewishjournal.com/podcasts/schmuckboysForbes Feature: Modern Mrs. Maisel Vibes https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshweissMedium Profile: https://medium.com/@libbyambershayoFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform.For guest suggestions or sponsorship, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When the system kills a $2.4 million study on Black maternal health with one Friday afternoon email, the message is loud and clear: stop asking questions that make power uncomfortable. Dr. Jaime Slaughter-Acey, an epidemiologist at UNC, built a groundbreaking project called LIFE-2 to uncover how racism and stress shape the biology of pregnancy. It was science rooted in community, humanity, and truth. Then NIH pulled the plug, calling her work “DEI.” Jaime didn’t quit. She fought back, turning her grief into art and her outrage into action. This episode is about the cost of integrity, the politics of science, and what happens when researchers refuse to stay silent.RELATED LINKS• The Guardian article• NIH Grant• Jaime’s LinkedIn Post• Jaime’s Website• Faculty PageFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

EPISODE DESCRIPTIONAllison Applebaum was supposed to become a concert pianist. She chose ballet instead. Then 9/11 hit, and she ran straight into a psych ward—on purpose. What followed was one of the most quietly revolutionary acts in modern medicine: founding the country’s first mental health clinic for caregivers. Because the system had decided that if you love someone dying, you don’t get care. You get to wait in the hallway.She’s a clinical psychologist. A former dancer. A daughter who sat next to her dad—legendary arranger of Stand By Me—through every ER visit, hallway wait, and impossible choice. Now she’s training hospitals across the country to finally treat caregivers like patients. With names. With needs. With billing codes.We talked about music, grief, psycho-oncology, the real cost of invisible labor, and why no one gives a shit about the person driving you to chemo. This one’s for the ones in the waiting room.RELATED LINKSAllisonApplebaum.comStand By Me – The BookLinkedInInstagramThe Elbaum Family Center for Caregiving at Mount SinaiFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

EPISODE DESCRIPTIONRebecca V. Nellis never meant to run a nonprofit. She just never left. Twenty years later, she’s still helming Cancer and Careers after a Craigslist maternity-leave temp job turned into a lifelong mission.In this 60-minute doubleheader, we cover everything from theater nerdom and improv rules for surviving bureaucracy, to hanging up on Jon Bon Jovi, to navigating cancer while working—or working while surviving cancer. Same thing.Rebecca’s path is part Second City, part Prague hostel, part Upper East Side grant writer, and somehow all of that makes perfect sense. She breaks down how theater kids become nonprofit lifers, how “sample sale feminism” helped shape a cancer rights org, and how you know when the work is finally worth staying for.Also: Cleavon Little. Tap Dance Kid. 42 countries. And one extremely awkward moment involving a room full of women’s handbags and one very confused Matthew.If you’ve ever had to hide your diagnosis to keep a job—or wanted to burn the whole HR system down—this one's for you.RELATED LINKSCancer and CareersRebecca Nellis on LinkedIn2024 Cancer and Careers Research ReportWorking with Cancer Pledge (Publicis)CEW FoundationI'm Not Rappaport – Broadway InfoFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship opportunities, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sally Wolf is back in the studio and this time we left cancer at the door. She turned 50, brought a 1993 Newsday valedictorian article as a prop, and sat down with me for a half hour of pure Gen X therapy. We dug into VHS tracking, Red Dawn paranoia, Michael J. Fox, Bette Midler, and how growing up with no helmets and playgrounds built over concrete somehow didn’t kill us.We laughed about being Jewish kids in the suburbs, the crushes we had on thirty-year-olds playing teenagers, and what it means to hit 50 with your humor intact. This episode is part nostalgia trip, part roast of our own generation, and part meditation on the privilege of being alive long enough to look back at it all. If you ever watched Different Strokes “very special episodes” or had a Family Ties lunchbox, this one’s for you.RELATED LINKSSally Wolf Official WebsiteSally Wolf on LinkedInSally Wolf on InstagramCosmopolitan Essay: “What It’s Like to Have the ‘Good’ Cancer”Oprah Daily: “Five Things I Wish Everyone Understood About My Metastatic Breast Cancer Diagnosis”Allure Breast Cancer Photo ShootTom Wilson’s “Stop Asking Me the Question” SongFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr. Nikki Maphis didn’t just lose a grant. She lost a lifeline. An early-career Alzheimer’s researcher driven by her grandmother’s diagnosis, Nikki poured years into her work—only to watch it vanish when the NIH’s MOSAIC program got axed overnight. Her application wasn’t rejected. It was deleted. No feedback. No score. Just gone.In this episode, Oliver Bogler pulls back the curtain on what happens when politics and science collide and promising scientists get crushed in the crossfire. Nikki shares how she’s fighting to stay in the field, teaching the next generation, and rewriting her grant for a world where even the word “diversity” can get you blacklisted. The conversation is raw, human, and maddening—a reminder that the real “war on science” doesn’t happen in labs. It happens in inboxes.RELATED LINKS:• Dr. Nikki Maphis LinkedIn page• Dr. Nikki Maphis’ page at the University of New Mexico• Vanguard News Group coverage• Nature article• PNAS: Contribution of NIH funding to new drug approvals 2010–2016FEEDBACK:Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, visit outofpatients.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Carla Tardif has spent 17 years as the CEO of Family Reach, a nonprofit that shouldn’t have to exist but absolutely does—because in America, cancer comes with a price tag your insurance doesn’t cover.We talk about shame, fear, burnout, Wegmans, Syracuse, celebrity telethons, and the godforsaken reality of choosing between food and treatment. Carla’s a lifer in this fight, holding the line between humanity and bureaucracy, between data and decency. She’s also sharp as hell, deeply funny, and more purpose-driven than half of Congress on a good day.This episode is about the work no one wants to do, the stuff no one wants to say, and why staying angry might be the only way to stay sane.Come for the laughs. Stay for the rage. And find out why Family Reach is the only adult in the room.RELATED LINKSFamily ReachFinancial Resource CenterCarla on LinkedInMorgridge Foundation ProfileAuthority Magazine InterviewSyracuse University FeatureFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jennifer J. Brown is a scientist, a writer, and a mother who never got the luxury of separating those roles. Her memoir When the Baby Is Not OK: Hopes & Genes is a punch to the gut of polite society and a medical system that expects parents to smile through trauma. She wrote it because she had to. Because the people who gave her the diagnosis didn’t give her the truth. Because a Harvard-educated geneticist with two daughters born with PKU still couldn’t get a straight answer from the very system she trained in.We sat down in the studio to talk about the unbearable loneliness of rare disease parenting, the disconnect between medical knowledge and human connection, and what it means to weaponize science against silence. She talks about bias in the NICU, the failure of healthcare communication, and why “resilience” is a lazy word. Her daughters are grown now. One’s a playwright. One’s an artist. And Jennifer is still raising hell.This is a conversation about control, trauma, survival, and rewriting the script when the world hands you someone else’s lines.Bring tissues. Then bring receipts.RELATED LINKS• When the Baby Is Not OK (Book)• Jennifer’s Website• Jennifer on LinkedInFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, visit outofpatients.show.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode of Standard Deviation features Oliver Bogler in conversation with Dr Na Zhao, a cancer biologist caught in the crossfire of science, politics, and survival. Na’s life reads like a brutal lab experiment in persistence.She grew up in China, lost her mother and aunt to breast cancer before she turned twelve, then came to the United States to chase science as both an immigrant and a survivor’s daughter. She worked two decades to reach the brink of independence as a cancer researcher, only to watch offers and grants vanish in the political chaos of 2025.Oliver brings her story into sharp focus, tracing the impossible climb toward a tenure-track position and the human cost of a system that pulls the ladder up just as people like Na reach for it. This conversation pulls back the curtain on the NIH funding crisis, the toll on early-career scientists, and what happens when personal tragedy fuels professional ambition.Listeners will walk away with a raw sense of how fragile the future of cancer research really is, and why people like Na refuse to stop climbing.RELATED LINKSDr Zhao at Baylor College of MedicineDr Zhao on LinkedInDr Zhao's Science articleIndirect Costs explained by US CongressFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Katie Henry has seen some things. From nonprofit bootstraps to Big Pharma boardrooms, she’s been inside the machine—and still believes we can fix it. We go deep on her winding road from folding sweaters at J.Crew to launching a vibrator-based advocacy campaign that accidentally changed the sexual health narrative in breast cancer.Katie doesn’t pull punches. She’s a born problem solver with zero tolerance for pink fluff and performative empathy. We talk survivor semantics, band camp trauma, nonprofit burnout, and why “Didi” is the grandparent alter ego you never saw coming.She’s Murphy Brown with a marimba. Veronica Sawyer in pharma. Carla Tortelli with an oncology Rolodex. And she still calls herself a learner.This is one of the most honest, hilarious, and refreshingly real conversations I’ve had. Period.RELATED LINKS:Katie Henry on LinkedInKatie Henry on ResearchGateLiving Beyond Breast CancerNational Breast Cancer CoalitionFEEDBACK:Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when you hand a mic to the most extroverted, uncensored Gen Z career coach in New York? You get Olivia Battinelli—adjunct professor, student advisor, mentor, speaker, and unfiltered truth-teller on everything from invisible illness to resume crimes.We talked about growing up Jewish-Italian in Westchester, surviving the Big Four’s corporate Kool-Aid, and quitting a job after 7 months because the shower goals weren’t working out. She runs NYU Steinhardt’s internship program by day, roasts Takis and “rate my professor” trolls by night, and somehow makes room for maple syrup takes, career coaching, and a boyfriend named Dom who sounds like a supporting character from The Sopranos.She teaches kids how to talk to humans. She’s allergic to BS. And she might be the most Alexis Rose-meets-Maeve Wiley-mashup ever dropped into your feed. Welcome to her first podcast interview. It's pure gold.RELATED LINKS:Olivia Battinelli on LinkedInOlivia’s Liv It Up Coaching WebsiteOlivia on InstagramNYU Steinhardt Faculty PageFEEDBACK:Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sophie Sargent walked into the studio already owning the mic. A pandemic-era media rebel raised in New Hampshire, trained in Homeland Security (yep), and shaped by rejection, she’s built a career out of DM’ing her way into rooms and then owning them. At 25, she’s juggling chronic illness, chronic overachievement, and a generation that gets dismissed before it even speaks.We talk Lyme disease, Lyme denial, and the healthcare gaslighting that comes when you “look fine” but your body says otherwise. We dive into rejection as a career accelerant, mental health as content porn, and what it means to chase purpose without sacrificing identity. Sophie’s a former morning radio host, country music interviewer, and Boston-based creator with a real voice—and she uses it.No fake podcast voice. No daddy-daughter moment. Just two loudmouths from different planets figuring out what it means to be seen, believed, and taken seriously in a system designed to do the opposite.Spoiler: She’s smarter than I was at 25. And she’ll probably be your boss someday.RELATED LINKSSophie on InstagramSophie on YouTubeSophie on LinkedInMedium article: “Redefining Rejection”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Invivyd, Inc.Marc Elia is a biotech investor, the Chairman of the Board at Invivyd, and a Long COVID patient who decided to challenge the system while still stuck inside it. He’s not here for corporate platitudes, regulatory shoulder shrugs, or vaccine-era gaslighting. This is not a conversation about politics, but it's about power and choice and the right to receive care and treatment no matter your condition.In this episode, we cover everything from broken clinical pathways to meme coins and the eternal shame of being old enough to remember Eastern Airlines. Marc talks about what it means to build tools instead of just complaining, what Long COVID has done to his body and his patience, and why the illusion of “choice” in healthcare is a luxury most patients don’t have.This conversation doesn’t ask for empathy. It demands it.RELATED LINKSMarc Elia on LinkedInInvivyd Company SiteMarc’s Bio at InvivydFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

After years of carrying the weight of lead, Shannon and Cooper find a path out from under the darkness and into the sunlight.LEAD: how this story ends is up to us is an audio docudrama series that tells the true story of one child, his mysterious lead poisoning, and his mother's unwavering fight to keep him safe. A true story written by Shannon Burkett. Directed by Alan Taylor. Starring Merritt Wever, Alessandro Nivola, Cynthia Nixon, and Cooper Burkett.Lead was produced by Shannon Burkett. Co-produced by Jenny Maguire. Featuring Amy Acker, Tom Butler, Dennis T. Carnegie, James Carpinello, Geneva Carr, Dann Fink, Alice Kris, Adriane Lenox, Katie O’Sullivan, Greg Pirenti, Armando Riesco, Shirley Rumierk, Thom Sesma, and Lana Young. Music by Peter Salett. “Joy In Resistance” written by Abena Koomson-Davis and performed by Resistance Revival Chorus. Casting by Alaine Alldaffer and Lisa Donadio. Sound Design by Andy Kris. Recording Engineer Krissopher Chevannes.For corresponding visuals and more information on how to protect children from lead exposure please go to https://endleadpoisoning.org.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.