Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary
Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary
Matthew Zachary is the healthcare policy love child of Jon Stewart, Howard Stern, Thomas Paine, Ralph Nader, and Jerry Seinfeld. He has 19 years of receipts to prove it. Editorially independent. Answerable to no one. What started as The Stupid Cancer Show in 2007 became Out of Patients. The first online health podcast in America, predating the medium itself. Zachary survived brain cancer at 21, built the young adult cancer movement from scratch, and spent two decades channeling patient rage into something the system never saw coming. Now he is marching into Washington. Out of Patients goes where the comfortable shows will not. Politics. Healthcare policy. Economics. Institutional accountability. Consumer protection. The forces shaping what 330 million Americans can access, afford, and survive. Battle-scarred patients. Exhausted caregivers. Rare insiders brave enough to name what is killing us. And the occasional elected official about to find out what an organized patient constituency actually looks like. This is the show that started the conversation America is still not ready to finish.

Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary

Recent Episodes

457
Sept. 28, 2026

[BEST OF OOP] Jenny Opalinski

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. That lived reality pushed her to co found The Wellness Shift, an
456
Sept. 21, 2026

Fitz Happens: The Marvelous Fitz Koehler

Fitz Koehler is a fitness expert, race announcer, author, and breast cancer survivor whose career spans decades of helping people move, train, and live healthier lives. After earning a master’s degree in exercise and sport sciences, she built the Fitzness brand, launched the Morning Mile school fitness program, and became one of the country’s most recognizable voices at endurance events before cancer abruptly shifted the conversation. She spent 15 months enduring chemotherapy, surgery, and
455
Sept. 7, 2026

SurgeON: Dr. Jeremy Heffner

Jeremy Heffner, MD, FACS is a board-certified trauma surgeon, former Chair of Surgery at Lima Memorial Health System, and cofounder of Surgery Unified, one of the largest physician-led communities in surgery. His perspective carries weight because he has spent decades inside operating rooms, hospital leadership, physician culture, and the growing collision between medicine and corporate healthcare. He grew up in a blue-collar Ohio family of firefighters, railroad workers, police officers, and tr

Recent Blog Posts

Sept. 22, 2026

Out of Patients EP456: Fitz Happens: The Marvelous Fitz Koehler

SHE WENT FROM CINNABON TO KICKBOXING TO CANCER. AND SHE'S STILL STANDING. Fitz Koehler spent decades teaching people how to get fit. Then cancer showed up to test every lesson she ever taught. Spoiler: she passed. This woman worked at Cinna…
Sept. 9, 2026

Out of Patients EP455: SurgeON: Dr. Jeremy Heffner

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SYSTEM YOU SERVED LEAVES YOU ON THE FLOORDr. Jeremy Heffner spent 20 years on the front lines of trauma surgery. He ran a hospital's COVID response. He saved hundreds of lives. Then the system broke him.When he needed residenti…
July 28, 2026

Out of Patients EP4534: Your Benefits May Vary: Rebecca Bloom

🚨NEW EPISODE 🚨 Rebecca Bloom spent years inside one of the least sexy but most consequential corners of American healthcare. Employee benefits law. Executive compensation. HR policy. The part of the machine where cancer quietly turns into paperwork…

About the Host

Matthew Zachary Profile Photo
Matthew Zachary

Producer

Matthew Zachary invented healthcare podcasting before podcasting was a thing. In 2007, fresh off building Stupid Cancer, he grabbed a mic, launched The Stupid Cancer Show, and started broadcasting patient stories on internet talk radio when everyone else was still writing blogs.

19 years and 2000+ episodes later, Out of Patients is still the most unfiltered healthcare show anywhere.

Matthew does not do softball interviews. Brain cancer at 21 taught him that time is finite and bullshit is expensive. He gets guests to say things they would never tell Congress. CEOs admit what is broken. Patients name what actually hurts. Scientists explain what industry does not want you to know. The conversations other shows will not touch because of sponsor concerns or political correctness.

What makes him different: he has been on both sides of the mic. Featured in documentaries. Keynoted hundreds of conferences. Published in The Hill. Now marching into Washington with a national patient constituency behind him.

But he has also been the guy puking from radiation, fighting insurance denials, and watching friends die from paperwork.

That dual perspective creates interviews you will not hear anywhere else. He knows which questions make power squirm because he has asked them from hospital beds and boardrooms both.

No pre-approved questions. No PR handlers. No seven-minute segments. Just real conversations with people brave enough to tell the truth about American healthcare.

Still the show where whistleblowers go first. Still the show Mark Cuban reposts when he wants to understand what patients actually think. Still asking the questions that make everyone uncomfortable.

Because comfortable conversations do not fix broken systems.

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