Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary

Dr. Nikki Maphis didn’t just lose a grant. She lost a lifeline. An early-career Alzheimer’s researcher driven by her grandmother’s diagnosis, Nikki poured years into her work—only to watch it vanish when the NIH’s MOSAIC program got axed overnight. Her application wasn’t rejected. It was deleted. No feedback. No score. Just gone.

In this episode, Oliver Bogler pulls back the curtain on what happens when politics and science...

Carla Tardif has spent 17 years as the CEO of Family Reach, a nonprofit that shouldn’t have to exist but absolutely does—because in America, cancer comes with a price tag your insurance doesn’t cover.

We talk about shame, fear, burnout, Wegmans, Syracuse, celebrity telethons, and the godforsaken reality of choosing between food and treatment. Carla’s a lifer in this fight, holding the line between humanity and bureaucracy, ...

Jennifer J. Brown is a scientist, a writer, and a mother who never got the luxury of separating those roles. Her memoir When the Baby Is Not OK: Hopes & Genes is a punch to the gut of polite society and a medical system that expects parents to smile through trauma. She wrote it because she had to. Because the people who gave her the diagnosis didn’t give her the truth. Because a Harvard-educated geneticist with two dau...

This episode of Standard Deviation features Oliver Bogler in conversation with Dr Na Zhao, a cancer biologist caught in the crossfire of science, politics, and survival. Na’s life reads like a brutal lab experiment in persistence.

She grew up in China, lost her mother and aunt to breast cancer before she turned twelve, then came to the United States to chase science as both an immigrant and a survivor’s daughter. She worked...

Katie Henry has seen some things. From nonprofit bootstraps to Big Pharma boardrooms, she’s been inside the machine—and still believes we can fix it. We go deep on her winding road from folding sweaters at J.Crew to launching a vibrator-based advocacy campaign that accidentally changed the sexual health narrative in breast cancer.

Katie doesn’t pull punches. She’s a born problem solver with zero tolerance for pink fluff and...

What happens when you hand a mic to the most extroverted, uncensored Gen Z career coach in New York? You get Olivia Battinelli—adjunct professor, student advisor, mentor, speaker, and unfiltered truth-teller on everything from invisible illness to resume crimes.

We talked about growing up Jewish-Italian in Westchester, surviving the Big Four’s corporate Kool-Aid, and quitting a job after 7 months because the shower goals we...

Sophie Sargent walked into the studio already owning the mic. A pandemic-era media rebel raised in New Hampshire, trained in Homeland Security (yep), and shaped by rejection, she’s built a career out of DM’ing her way into rooms and then owning them. At 25, she’s juggling chronic illness, chronic overachievement, and a generation that gets dismissed before it even speaks.

We talk Lyme disease, Lyme denial, and the healthcar...

This episode is sponsored by Invivyd, Inc.

Marc Elia is a biotech investor, the Chairman of the Board at Invivyd, and a Long COVID patient who decided to challenge the system while still stuck inside it. He’s not here for corporate platitudes, regulatory shoulder shrugs, or vaccine-era gaslighting. This is not a conversation about politics, but it's about power and choice and the right to receive care and treatment no matte...

After years of carrying the weight of lead, Shannon and Cooper find a path out from under the darkness and into the sunlight.

LEAD: how this story ends is up to us is an audio docudrama series that tells the true story of one child, his mysterious lead poisoning, and his mother's unwavering fight to keep him safe. A true story written by Shannon Burkett. Directed by Alan Taylor. Starring Merritt Wever, Alessandro Nivola, Cy...

The deficits from the lead poisoning continue to intensify, Shannon channels her anger and grief into holding the people who hurt her son responsible.

LEAD how this story ends is up to us is a true story written and produced by Shannon Burkett. Co-produced by Jenny Maguire. Directed by Alan Taylor. Starring Merritt Wever, Alessandro Nivola, Cynthia Nixon, and Cooper Burkett.

EP4 features Eboni Booth, Sasha Eden, Kevin Kane, ...

The effects of the neurotoxin are taking their toll on Cooper as Shannon desperately tries to navigate the severity of their new reality.

LEAD how this story ends is up to us is a true story written and produced by Shannon Burkett. Co-produced by Jenny Maguire. Directed by Alan Taylor. Starring Merritt Wever, Alessandro Nivola, Cynthia Nixon, and Cooper Burkett.

E43 features Jenny Maguire, JD Mollison, Laith Nakli, Deirdre O...

As the lead wreaks havoc on Cooper's development, Shannon searches for answers. Desperate to get a handle on what was happening to her son, she grabs onto a lifeboat - nursing school. Andy tries to piece together the past to make sense of the present.

LEAD how this story ends is up to us is a true story written and produced by Shannon Burkett. Co-produced by Jenny Maguire. Directed by Alan Taylor. Starring Merritt Wever, Al...

A mysterious dust fills a young family’s apartment. The truth begins to unravel when the mother gets a call from the pediatrician - the monster deep within the walls has been unleashed. 

LEAD how this story ends is up to us is a true story written and produced by Shannon Burkett. Co-produced by Jenny Maguire. Directed by Alan Taylor. Starring Merritt Wever, Alessandro Nivola, Cynthia Nixon, and Cooper Burkett. &nb...

Lexi Silver is 15 years old. She lost both of her parents before she turned 11. That should tell you enough—but it doesn’t. Because Lexi isn’t here for your pity. She’s not a sob story. She’s not a trauma statistic. She’s a writer, an advocate, and one of the most emotionally intelligent people you’ll ever hear speak into a microphone.

In this episode, Lexi breaks down what grief actually feels like when you’re a kid and th...

Michelle Andrews built a career inside the pharma machine long before anyone knew what “DTC” meant. She helped launch Rituxan and watched Allegra commercials teach America how to ask for pills by name. Then she landed in the cancer fun house herself, stage 4 breast cancer, and learned exactly how hollow all the “journey” slide decks feel when you’re the one circling the drain.

We talk about what happens when the insider bec...

Dr. Anne Marie Morse walks into the studio like a one-woman Jersey Broadway show and leaves behind the best damn TED Talk you’ve never heard. She’s a neurologist, sleep medicine doc, narcolepsy expert, founder of D.A.M.M. Good Sleep, and full-time myth buster in a white coat. We talk about why sleep isn’t a luxury, why your mattress does matter, and how melatonin is the new Flintstones vitamin with a marketing budget. We u...

Gigi Robinson grew up with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disease that turns your joints into overcooked spaghetti. Instead of letting it sideline her, she built a career out of telling the truth about invisible illness. We talk about what it takes to grow up faster than you should, why chronic illness is the worst unpaid internship, and how she turned her story into a business. You’ll hear about her days schlepping to physical...

Episode Description:

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a Bronx-born pediatric nurse with stage 4 colon cancer survives, raises a kid, becomes a policy shark, and fights like hell for the ignored, meet Vanessa Ghigliotty. She’s not inspirational. She’s a bulldozer. We go way back—like pre-Stupid Cancer back—when there was no “young adult cancer movement,” just a handful of pissed-off survivors building something out ...

Risa Arin doesn’t just talk about health literacy. She built the damn platform. As founder and CEO of XpertPatient.com (yes, expert with no E), Risa’s taking a wrecking ball to how cancer education is delivered. A Cornell alum, cancer caregiver, and ex-agency insider who once sold Doritos to teens, she now applies that same marketing muscle to helping patients actually understand the garbage fire that is our healthcare sys...