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.

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Oct. 27, 2025

Sick Days Not Included: Rebecca V. Nellis

Show Notes

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Rebecca V. Nellis never meant to run a nonprofit. She just never left. Twenty years later, she’s still helming Cancer and Careers after a Craigslist maternity-leave temp job turned into a lifelong mission.

In this 60-minute doubleheader, we cover everything from theater nerdom and improv rules for surviving bureaucracy, to hanging up on Jon Bon Jovi, to navigating cancer while working—or working while surviving cancer. Same thing.

Rebecca’s path is part Second City, part Prague hostel, part Upper East Side grant writer, and somehow all of that makes perfect sense. She breaks down how theater kids become nonprofit lifers, how “sample sale feminism” helped shape a cancer rights org, and how you know when the work is finally worth staying for.

Also: Cleavon Little. Tap Dance Kid. 42 countries. And one extremely awkward moment involving a room full of women’s handbags and one very confused Matthew.

If you’ve ever had to hide your diagnosis to keep a job—or wanted to burn the whole HR system down—this one's for you.

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Out of Patients EP419: Sick Days Not Included: Rebecca V. Nellis

Rebecca V. Nellis, was never supposed to stay. She took a six-month temp gig at Cancer and Careers back in 2004 and never left. Twenty years later, she's still there. Still leading Cancer and Careers. Still fighting. Still wondering how the hell it’…

Sick Days Not Included: Rebecca V. Nellis

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