Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary
The longest-running independent healthcare podcast, Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary has supplied 17 years of unfiltered truth about American healthcare. A 30-year brain cancer survivor, Matthew built the young adult cancer movement from scratch. Now he channels patient rage into political power, featuring on the air battle-scarred survivors, exhausted caregivers, and the rare insider brave enough to name what's killing us. It’s real stories from real people who refuse to accept that healthcare has to hurt this much. New listeners come for the truth. They stay because finally someone's saying what they've been screaming.
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Callus on Your Soul: Jenny Opalinski
<p>Jenny Opalinski has spent more than a decade inside hospitals where people lose the ability to speak, breathe, swallow, and sometimes survive. A medical speech language pathologist by training, she worked in ICU, neuro rehab, and long term acute care settings, including a Level 1 trauma center, where she watched clinicians absorb 10 to 15 traumatic events in a single shift and then get told to move the crash cart faster next time.</p><p>That lived reality pushed her to co found The Wellness Shift, an advocacy and education platform focused on healthcare worker burnout, suicide, and assault. In this conversation...
Reclaiming the Vowels: Sarah Gromko
<p>Sarah Gromko and Matthew Zachary go back to SUNY Binghamton in the early 1990s, when they were barely 19 and living inside rehearsal rooms. She starred in campus musical theater productions. He served as pianist and music director for many of those shows and played rehearsal piano for the THEA101 repertory company. This episode reunites two former theater nerds who grew up and took very different paths through art, illness, and work that still circles the same truth.</p><p>Gromko trained as a singer and composer, studied film scoring at Berklee College of Music, worked in New York and...
Artificially Intelligent and Naturally Irreverent
<p>Matt Hampton and Dr Tom Ingegno came into my world the way the best guests always do. They found me first. They pulled me onto their Irreverent Health Podcast, a show that blends medicine, curiosity, and unapologetic nonsense the same way Gen X kids blended Saturday morning cartoons with nuclear-war anxiety. We recorded together, we went off the rails together, and by the end I told them the rule. If you ever come to New York, you sit in my studio. No exceptions.</p><p>They showed up. They took the hot seat. They told Alexa to shut up...
Good Morning, Cancer
<p>Bill Thach has had 9 lines of treatment, over 1,000 doses of chemo, and more scans than an airport. He runs ultramarathons for fun. He jokes about being his own Porta Potty. He became a father, then got cancer while his daughter was 5 months old. Today she is 8. He hides the worst of it so she can believe he stands strong, even when he knows that hiding has a cost.</p><p>We talk about the illusion of strength, what it means to look fine when your body is falling apart, and how a random postcard in an MD Anderson waiting...
Lead (Poisoning), Laugh, Love with Shannon Burkett
<p>Shannon Burkett has lived about six lives. Broadway actor. SNL alum. Nurse. Filmmaker. Advocate. Cancer survivor. And the kind of person who makes you question what you’ve done with your day. She wrote and produced My Vagina—the stop-motion musical kind, not the cry-for-help kind—and built a global movement after her son was poisoned by lead dust in their New York apartment. </p><p>Out of that came LEAD: How This Story Ends Is Up to Us, a documentary born from rage, science, and maternal defiance. We talked about everything from The Goonies to Patrick Stewart to the qui...
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[WALK IT OFF EP3] CHRONIC ZEN
<p>Michael Kramer was 19 when cancer ambushed his life. He went from surfing Florida beaches to chemo, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant that left him alive but carrying a chronic disease. He had necrosis in his knees and elbows, lost his ability to surf for years, and found himself stuck in hospitals instead of the ocean. Yet he adapted. Michael picked up a guitar, built Lego sets, led support groups, and started sharing his story on Instagram and TikTok.</p><p>We talk about masculinity, identity, and what happens when the thing that defines you gets stripped away. He...
![[WALK IT OFF EP2] ROCKS NEED ROCKS](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.production.cdn.art19.com%2Fimages%2Fef%2Fbf%2F44%2Fae%2Fefbf44ae-fa9c-443b-ac31-8311e11f4d95%2F1cd725bceedb72b94c8a017909f94a170a88b53847bde0e96c2055a414e791939c40c5911c1eb5c689ebd6b13865d77c8e30379789047975dbb6e3749b6c650f.jpeg&w=256&q=75)
[WALK IT OFF EP2] ROCKS NEED ROCKS
<p>Daniel Garza had momentum. Acting roles, directing gigs, national tours lined up. Then anal cancer stopped everything. Radiation wrecked his body, stripped him of control, and left him in diapers, staring down despair. His partner, Christian Ramirez, carried him through the darkest nights, changed his wounds, fought hospitals, and paid the price with his own health. Christian still lives with permanent damage from caregiving, but he stayed anyway.</p><p>Together they talk with me about masculinity, sex, shame, friendship, and survival. They describe the friendships that vanished, the laughter that kept them alive, and the brutal reality of...
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[WALK IT OFF EP1] MAN UP
<p>Trevor Maxwell lived the archetype of masculinity in rural Maine. Big, strong, splitting wood, raising kids, and carrying the load. Then cancer ripped that script apart. In 2018 he was bedridden, emasculated, ashamed, and convinced his family would be better off without him. His wife refused to let him disappear. That moment forced Trevor to face his depression, get help, and rebuild himself. Out of that came Man Up To Cancer, now the largest community for men with cancer, a place where men stop pretending they are bulletproof and start being honest with each other.</p><p><br></p><p>E...
Koby & Hannah's 2025 Holiday Podcast Spectacular
<p>The most anticipated annual tradition on Out of Patients returns with the 2025 Holiday Podcast Spectacular starring Matthew's twins Koby and Hannah. Now 15 and a half and deep into sophomore year, the twins deliver another unfiltered year end recap that longtime listeners wait for every December. What began as a novelty in 2018 has become a time capsule of adolescence, parenting, and how fast childhood burns off.</p><p>This year’s recap covers real moments from 2025 A subway ride home with a bloodied face after running full speed into that tree that grows in Brooklyn. Broadway obsessions fueled by James Ma...
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Jason Gilley
<p>Jason Gilley walked into adulthood with a fastball, a college roster spot, and a head of curls that deserved its own agent. Cancer crashed that party and took him on a tour of chemo chairs, pediatric wards, metal taste, numb legs, PTSD, and the kind of late night panic that rewires a kid before he even knows who he is.</p><p>I sat with him in the studio and heard a story I know in my bones. He grew up fast. He learned how to stare down mortality at nineteen. He found anchors in baseball, therapy, and the...
