🎄 The Most Famous Kids In Cancer Advocacy Are Back 🎄
Every December since they could speak, my twins hijack the Out of Patients podcast feed. Koby and Hannah are now 15½ and High School sophomores who own their moniker as the “Truman Show of Cancer Advocacy.”
Rest assured, this isn't your typical year-end family podcast; it’s what happens when you raise GenZ kids in GenX fashion inside the machine that is American Healthcare. Funny. Smart. Opinionated. Fully formed humans borne of two trauma-informed 80s kids who don’t believe in participation trophies.
This year delivers everything longtime listeners wait for. A Brooklyn sidewalk sprint that ends with a face full of blood and a subway ride home that alarms strangers. Broadway deep cuts through Chess, & Juliet, and Patrick Page that would make any theater nerd proud. Disneyland chaos with Lightning McQueen, and when a life-size Millennium Falcon causes a full neurological shutdown. A Bugatti sighting at the New York Auto Show that still lives rent-free. Learner permit countdowns. AP class pressure. Donuts. Crumbl cookies. Sibling sniping.
What kills me every December is hearing them get older. Eight years of these recordings. Their voices changing. Their references evolving from Minecraft to Hazbin Hotel (LOTS of Hazbin Hotel).
But the core stays the same: Brooklyn kids who know only unfettered, unbridled, and uncompromising love from their parents and their family.
This is my legacy, just not the nonprofit kind with 990s, financial audits, and wondering where in the world is Kenny Kane. The real legacy where your kids understand why you fight but refuse to let it define them.
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.
17 years and 400+ episodes later, Out of Patients is still the most unfiltered healthcare show anywhere.
Matthew doesn't do softball interviews. Brain cancer at 21 taught him that time is finite and bullshit is expensive. He gets guests to say things they'd never tell Congress. CEOs admit what's broken. Patients name what actually hurts. Scientists explain what industry doesn't want you to know. The conversations other shows won't touch because of sponsor concerns or political correctness.
What makes him different: He's been on both sides of the mic. Featured in documentaries, testified before Congress, keynoted hundreds of conferences.
But he's also been the guy puking from radiation, fighting insurance denials, and watching friends die from paperwork.
That dual perspective creates interviews you won't hear anywhere else. He knows which questions make power squirm because he's 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 healthcare. After 17 years, Matthew's still the guy Mark Cuban reposts when he wants to understand what patients actually think. Read More
Out of Patients EP427: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Jason Gilley
