Out of Patients EP440:Not Today, Jesus: Janine Durso
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 during a Zoom coaching session. Five weeks in ICU. Two surgeries. Ten days relearning how to walk and count quarters. White Plains Hospital saved her life. Insurance rules still block her daughter from getting screened.
I wanted Janine here because she knows both sides of the curtain. She sold the language. Then she became the body on the table. I survived brain cancer at 21. We compare notes on fear you cannot see and systems that decide who gets scanned and who gets denied. She said Not today, Jesus while they wheeled her into surgery. That line alone earned the mic.
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Out of Patients is proudly the #1 independent healthcare podcast worldwide. New episodes every Tuesday. We’ve been turning medical trauma into momentum for 17 years. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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 EP4534: Your Benefits May Vary: Rebecca Bloom
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