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.
April 20, 2026

Not Today, Jesus: Janine Durso

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 how to walk, calculate simple change, and manage basic cognition. Doctors later placed a stent and continue monitoring a second unruptured aneurysm.


This episode traces the moment she told her husband something broke in my brain, the 14 days doctors called touch and go, and the slow mental rebuild that followed. It also examines insurance barriers that require 2 direct relatives with aneurysms before screening coverage, and why she now lobbies in Washington for change.


RELATED LINKS

Janine Durso

The Believist

Brain Aneurysm Foundation

White Plains Hospital

Dr. Jared Cooper


FEEDBACK

Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Related to this Episode

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 durin…