Out of Patients EP401: OCRA, Acronyms, and Audra: The Nonprofit Multiverse of Madness
🚨NEW EPISODE ALERT 🚨
Let’s talk about what it actually takes to run a national cancer nonprofit in 2025. Four mergers. A team of 22. A lifetime of therapy in the form of board meetings, grant deadlines, and telling scared patients, “You’re not alone.”
Audra Moran is the President and CEO of the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (OCRA), and she’s not your average acronym-hugging executive. She’s been quietly holding the line for 15 years, while the system keeps making the same mistakes. Late diagnoses. No screening. Shady access. A culture that still treats ovarian cancer like a footnote.
I wanted Audra on the show because she doesn’t fake it. She doesn’t use buzzwords. She doesn’t hide behind committee-approved statements. She tells the truth. About the brokenness. About what keeps her up at 2am. About what happens when a doctor says they’ve never met another patient with ovarian cancer.
You’ll hear about her Helen Keller origin story (yes, actual sign language). You’ll hear about her obsession with flipbook news apps and why Junior Mints might be the perfect nonprofit metaphor. You’ll hear us argue over whether Terminator 2 is better than the original and whether any movie has ever beat the book (Silence of the Lambs, fight me).
Audra reminded me what this show is about: bearing witness. To the frustration. The absurdity. The privilege. The grind. And the one person you did reach.
Out of Patients is streaming everywhere you get your podcasts. If you’re smelling what we're cooking, leave a rating or review—it helps others find the show. Subscribe today.
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 … Read More
Out of Patients EP456: Fitz Happens: The Marvelous Fitz Koehler
RSS Feed 
