🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨YOUR SUFFERING CANNOT BE CODED OR BILLED. THE SYSTEM MOVES ON.Emily Mendenhall is a medical anthropologist at Georgetown who studies what she calls coding the invisible. She examines what happens when people get sick in ways the s…
Dr. Sarah Matt heard a human cough at 4am in a dairy barn and thought she was about to die. It was a sheep. That moment killed her plan to become a vet and pushed her into medicine, then surgery, then straight into the machine that runs healthcare.&…
In 1996, Kathy Giusti sat on the floor of a Borders bookstore reading Harrison’s like her life depended on it. It did. She was 37, staring at a 3 year prognosis for multiple myeloma, with an 18 month old at home and a system that offered confu…
At 19, Shlomit woke up unable to speak. Half her body went numb. The ER sent her home and called it stress. Years later she stood at bedsides in top hospitals watching families nod through explanations they did not understand. That gap became her li…
Ben Unger grew up Orthodox in Brooklyn and trained in Israel to become a rabbi. At 19 he told his community he was attracted to men. Their prescription: ritual baths, marriage to a woman, and this gem from his therapist. "If there's friction, i…
Drew Flugstad Clarke played Division I soccer at Georgetown, survived 4 a.m. investment banking emails, and built a life around oil paint and portraiture. Then in June 2022 her father Jim received a glioblastoma diagnosis at 57. He died 1 day shy of…
Janine Durso and I met in 1996 in a pharmaceutical ad agency when pagers still felt advanced and we thought 3 hours of sleep counted as self care. She built a 30 year career shaping healthcare messaging. In November 2024 her own brain ruptured durin…
Rebecca Benghiat JD runs impact at Inner Foundation after leading JED and advising across the mental health ecosystem. She sits where money, policy, and care collide. I wanted her on because she understands how decisions get made and still has the n…
In February 2022, at 19, Jansher Naim went from random stomach pain to a Stage 4 fibrolamellar diagnosis most oncologists rarely see. By the time he landed in my studio in 2026, he had already lived through 41 rounds of chemo, a Whipple, and the kin…
Women were banned from U.S. clinical trials until 1993. Not because they didn't matter. Because the system decided protecting them meant ignoring them. For decades.Jessica Federer spent 10 years inside Bayer as the first female Chief Digital Offic…
I invited Monique on because she refuses to smile through harm. She spent 2.5 years in and out of NYC ERs while her body shut down. Her weight dropped from 122 to 72 in 3 months. Fevers hit 105. Her hair fell out in clumps. No one ran the right test…
Teresa Baglietto walked through colon cancer at 10, survived a postpartum crisis that almost killed her, fought lip cancer, then heard the words you have breast cancer while raising 3 boys and rebuilding after 2008 wiped out her income. She sells en…
Dr Pamela Buchanan came on Out of Patients because she tells the truth without flinching. She spent over 20 years in emergency rooms watching American medicine chew through its own people. During COVID in 2020 she logged 80 to 100 hours a week while…
Barbara Paldus built biotech for a living. Then a serious mental health scare involving her young son forced her to rethink everything. This moment pushed her from manufacturing cancer therapeutics into the $100,000,000,000 skin care industry after …
Jenny Opalinski earned her credibility the hard way. She worked ICU floors and neuro rehab units where grief screams, codes fail, and the debrief ends with moving equipment instead of naming trauma. She watched good clinicians stack 10 to 15 traumat…
Every December since they could speak, my twins hijack the Out of Patients podcast feed. Koby and Hannah are now 15½ and High School sophomores who own their moniker as the “Truman Show of Cancer Advocacy.”Rest assured, this isn…
Jason Gilley was 19. Stage 3 testicular cancer. Lymph nodes. Lungs. First question after diagnosis: "Will I lose my hair?"College pitcher. Threw heat. Got cut from middle school basketball. Then cancer cut him down at his peak. Now he's in my stud…
Scott Capozza belongs on this show because he lives on both sides of the exam table. He survived testicular cancer in 1998 at Strong Memorial in Rochester while trying to graduate on time. He now works at Yale New Haven Health as the only oncology p…
Dr. MaryAnn Wilbur didn’t burn out. She walked out. She left a career she trained her whole life for because the system told her to lie to patients, ignore her conscience, and run faster on a rigged treadmill that turns doctors into data entry…
Chelsea walked into my studio towering over me at six foot three. Former dancer. Working actor. Thyroid cancer survivor who got radioactive iodine at 19 while everyone told her she was lucky. "You got the good one." Bull. Shit. She didn't get therap…
Julia Stalder got diagnosed with the "best kind" of breast cancer. DCIS. Ductal carcinoma in situ. (Latin for "we don't know what the hell this is but we're cutting it off anyway.") She's a lawyer. A mediator. A mom. Her doctor dad…
When I invited Libby Amber Shayo onto *Out of Patients*, I knew exactly what I was getting: a walking, talking GenZ Jewish time capsule with a theater degree, a viral alter ego named Sheryl Cohen, and enough camp trauma to get a standalone diagnosis…
Tracy Weiss bled through her work clothes while her doctor called her dramatic. Then she built an army.That’s the kind of guest who reminds me why I’m proud to still be behind the mic after 17 years on the air.Tracy sat in that bathr…
Allison J. Applebaum, Ph.D., FAPOS grew up surrounded by symphonies, not stethoscopes. Her father, Stan Applebaum, arranged Stand By Me. (Yes. *That* Stand By Me) Her mother was a prodigy. She was supposed to live behind a piano. Instead, she became…
