Episodes

Not Today, Jesus: Janine Durso
440
April 20, 2026

Not Today, Jesus: Janine Durso

Janine Durso spent 30 years inside pharmaceutical advertising shaping healthcare narratives before becoming a belief strategist and founder of The Believist. In November 2024, during a routine Zoom coaching session, she felt what she called a sharp, terrible pain in the right side of her head. Within hours she was in surgery for a ruptured brain aneurysm. She does not remember the ambulance, the ICU, or the first weeks that followed. She spent 5 weeks in intensive care, then 10 days relearning h...
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Mental Health, Wicked Problems and Dodgeball: Rebecca Benghiat JD
439
April 13, 2026

Mental Health, Wicked Problems and Dodgeball: Rebecca Benghiat JD

Rebecca Benghiat holds a JD, passed the bar, and skipped corporate law to build mental health systems instead. She now serves as Chief of Staff and Head of Impact at Inner Foundation, where she helps direct capital toward emerging adults ages 18 to 30 and asks a hard question every day: Is this actually working? In this conversation, she dismantles the myth of easy fixes. She explains why mental health measurement resists clean metrics, why a PHQ 9 score starts a conversation but never finish...
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Standard Deviation S2 E2: The Advocacy Tax
April 8, 2026

Standard Deviation S2 E2: The Advocacy Tax

At age 12, Dr. Chrystal Starbird stood by a pond after turning her mother in to the police. She watched tadpoles and fish move beneath the surface and found a strange kind of order. Science became her refuge long before it became her career. Years later, she built that refuge into a profession. She now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, studies structural biology tied to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and won Cell’s first Rising Black Scientist Award in 2020....
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AYA Family Affair: Jansher Naim
438
April 6, 2026

AYA Family Affair: Jansher Naim

At 19, Jansher Naim went from sharp stomach pain to a Stage 4 fibrolamellar diagnosis that few doctors see and even fewer young adults survive. He pushed through 41 rounds of chemotherapy, a Whipple surgery, and months of isolation while his friends kept moving through normal college life. In the studio, Jansher sits beside his mother Sadia Siddiqui, who refused early defeat and helped overhaul his care team when the first plan offered little optimism. Now a Computer Science student at Columbia,...
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First in (Wo)Man: Jessica J. Federer
437
March 30, 2026

First in (Wo)Man: Jessica J. Federer

Jessica Federer built her career inside the rooms where science, money, and power collide. As the first female Chief Digital Officer at Bayer, she helped steer a 120,000 person global company through the rise of digital medicine while confronting a harder truth: women were excluded from U.S. clinical trials until 1993. In this conversation, she explains how decades of “first in man” research shaped drug development, why women experience side effects at nearly 2x the rate of men, and how guida...
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"But You Look Great" with Monique Gore-Massey
436
March 23, 2026

"But You Look Great" with Monique Gore-Massey

Monique Gore Massey spent 2.5 years cycling through New York City emergency rooms while her body shut down. Fevers hit 105. Her weight dropped from 122 pounds to 72 in 3 months. Hair fell out in clumps. No one ran an ANA test. Doctors blamed stress, old sports injuries, migraines. When a physician finally named it lupus, she added that she hoped it was not. Months later, Monique heard the words “get your affairs in order.” In this episode, Monique details living with lupus nephritis, pericard...
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Not Today, Life: Teresa Baglietto
435
March 16, 2026

Not Today, Life: Teresa Baglietto

Teresa Baglietto has lived through the kind of compounded harm that exposes how thin the safety net really is. In this episode she walks through a life shaped by medical neglect, personal violence, and the exhausting labor of self advocacy. She nearly died after a C section when hospital staff failed to confirm she had urinated before discharge, spending 15 days hospitalized and separated from her newborn while facing the possibility of permanent damage. In 2013 she discovered an aggressive brea...
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Standard Deviation S2 EP1: Gatekeepers of the Ivory Tower
March 11, 2026

Standard Deviation S2 EP1: Gatekeepers of the Ivory Tower

Science likes to call itself a meritocracy. Angela Anderson and Brandi Mattson know better. Both served as editors at elite journals (Cell and Neuron), where a single decision could determine who gets tenure, funding, or obscurity. They watched brilliant data get filtered out because the authors did not know the unwritten rules controlled by 5 dominant publishing houses with profit margins higher than Google. In 2020, amid pandemic shutdowns and national reckoning over racial injustice, they co...
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Neuro Spicy on the Front Line: Dr Pamela Buchanan
434
March 9, 2026

Neuro Spicy on the Front Line: Dr Pamela Buchanan

Today’s episode of Out of Patients welcomes Dr Pamela Buchanan, an emergency room physician with over 20 years inside American medicine who refuses to sugarcoat what the job demands and what it destroys. She worked straight through COVID as protocols changed by the day and deaths arrived faster than anyone could process. She logged 80 to 100 hour weeks. She isolated from her family to avoid bringing the virus home. Over time, survival began to feel negotiable. Dr Buchanan speaks openly abo...
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[BONUS] Eczema, Exit, Repeat: Dr. Barbra Paldus
March 4, 2026

[BONUS] Eczema, Exit, Repeat: Dr. Barbra Paldus

Dr. Barbara Paldus is the Founder and CEO of CODEX Labs, the sponsor of this episode. She grew up around Nobel Prize winners, built biotech manufacturing equipment for vaccines and cancer therapeutics, and then sold her company after an 8 year old threatened suicide. Her son’s severe eczema pushed her into an unregulated $100,000,000,000 skincare market where parents are told to trust labels that nobody verifies. She explains how corticosteroid ladders leave patients with years long withdr...
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STEMM Cells and Broken Bones
433
March 2, 2026

STEMM Cells and Broken Bones

Dr Eugene Manley grew up in Detroit in the 1980s cycling through emergency rooms 20 to 30 times a year with asthma and anaphylaxis while hospital staff talked past his family and buried them in paperwork they could not decode. He responded by earning a BS in mechanical engineering an MS in biomedical engineering and a PhD in molecular biology cell biology and biochemistry. Along the way he tore his ACL training for a jiu jitsu black belt worked 86 straight days in a lab during his doctorate and ...
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Callus on Your Soul: Jenny Opalinski
432
Feb. 23, 2026

Callus on Your Soul: 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, ...
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Reclaiming the Vowels: Sarah Gromko
431
Feb. 16, 2026

Reclaiming the Vowels: Sarah Gromko

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. Gromko trained as a singe...
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Artificially Intelligent and Naturally Irreverent
430
Feb. 9, 2026

Artificially Intelligent and Naturally Irreverent

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. They showed up. They took the h...
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Good Morning, Cancer
429
Feb. 2, 2026

Good Morning, Cancer

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. 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...
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Lead (Poisoning), Laugh, Love with Shannon Burkett
428
Jan. 26, 2026

Lead (Poisoning), Laugh, Love with Shannon Burkett

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. Out of that came LEAD: How This Story Ends Is Up to Us, a documentary born from rage, science, and maternal defiance. We ...
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[WALK IT OFF EP3] CHRONIC ZEN
Jan. 19, 2026

[WALK IT OFF EP3] CHRONIC ZEN

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. We talk about masculinity, identity...
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[WALK IT OFF EP1] ROCKS NEED ROCKS
Jan. 12, 2026

[WALK IT OFF EP1] ROCKS NEED ROCKS

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. Together they talk with me about masculinity, s...
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[WALK IT OFF EP1] MAN UP
Jan. 5, 2026

[WALK IT OFF EP1] MAN UP

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...
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Koby & Hannah's 2025 Holiday Podcast Spectacular
Dec. 29, 2025

Koby & Hannah's 2025 Holiday Podcast Spectacular

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. This year’s recap covers real moments from 2025 A subway ride home with a bloodied...
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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Jason Gilley
427
Dec. 22, 2025

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Jason Gilley

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. 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...
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Plan B
Dec. 17, 2025

Plan B

Dr. Marissa Russo trained to become a cancer biologist. She spent four years studying one of the deadliest brain tumors in adults and built her entire research career around a simple, urgent goal: open her own lab and improve the odds for patients with almost no shot at survival. In 2024 she applied for an F31 diversity grant through the NIH. The reviewers liked her work. Her resubmission was strong. Then the grant system started glitching. Dates vanished. Study sections disappeared. Emails went...
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Otherwise Healthy with Scott Capozza
426
Dec. 15, 2025

Otherwise Healthy with Scott Capozza

Scott Capozza and I could have been cloned in a bad lab experiment. Both diagnosed with cancer in our early twenties. Both raised on dial-up and mixtapes. Both now boy-girl twin dads with speech-therapist wives and a lifelong grudge against insurance companies. Scott is the first and only full-time oncology physical therapist at Yale New Haven Health, which means if he catches a cold, cancer rehab in Connecticut flatlines. He’s part of a small, stubborn tribe of providers who believe movement be...
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Doctor No More: MaryAnn Wilbur
425
Dec. 8, 2025

Doctor No More: MaryAnn Wilbur

Dr. MaryAnn Wilbur trained her whole life to care for patients, then left medicine behind when it became a machine that punished empathy and rewarded throughput. She didn’t burn out. She got out. A gynecologic oncologist, public health researcher, and no-bullshit single mom, MaryAnn walked straight off the cliff her career breadcrumbed her to—and lived to write the book. In this episode, we talk about what happens when doctors are forced to choose between their ethics and their employment, why ...
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