EPISODE DESCRIPTION:

Libby Amber Shayo didn’t just survive the pandemic—she branded it. Armed with a bun, a New York accent, and enough generational trauma to sell out a two-drink-minimum crowd, she turned her Jewish mom impressions into the viral sensation known as Sheryl Cohen. What started as one-off TikToks became a career in full technicolor: stand-up, sketch, podcasting, and Jewish community building.

We covered everything. Jew camp lore. COVID courtship. Hannah Montana. Holocaust comedy. Dating app postmortems. And the raw, relentless grief that comes with being Jewish online in 2025. Libby’s alter ego lets her say the quiet parts out loud, but the real Libby? She’s got receipts, range, and a righteous sense of purpose.

If you’re burnt out on algorithm-friendly “influencers,” meet a creator who actually stands for something. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t filter. And she damn well earned her platform.

This is the most Jewish episode I’ve ever recorded. And yes, there will be guilt.

RELATED LINKS

• Libby’s Website: https://libbyambershayo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/libbyambershayo
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@libbyambershayo
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/libby-walker
• Schmuckboys Podcast: https://jewishjournal.com/podcasts/schmuckboys
• Forbes Feature: Modern Mrs. Maisel Vibes https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshweiss
• Medium Profile: https://medium.com/@libbyambershayo

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

When the system kills a $2.4 million study on Black maternal health with one Friday afternoon email, the message is loud and clear: stop asking questions that make power uncomfortable. Dr. Jaime Slaughter-Acey, an epidemiologist at UNC, built a groundbreaking project called LIFE-2 to uncover how racism and stress shape the biology of pregnancy. It was science rooted in community, humanity, and truth. Then NIH pulled the plug, calling her work “DEI.” Jaime didn’t quit. She fought back, turning her grief into art and her outrage into action. This episode is about the cost of integrity, the politics of science, and what happens when researchers refuse to stay silent.

RELATED LINKS

• The Guardian article

• NIH Grant

• Jaime’s LinkedIn Post

• Jaime’s Website

• Faculty Page

FEEDBACK

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

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Allison Applebaum was supposed to become a concert pianist. She chose ballet instead. Then 9/11 hit, and she ran straight into a psych ward—on purpose. What followed was one of the most quietly revolutionary acts in modern medicine: founding the country’s first mental health clinic for caregivers. Because the system had decided that if you love someone dying, you don’t get care. You get to wait in the hallway.

She’s a clinical psychologist. A former dancer. A daughter who sat next to her dad—legendary arranger of Stand By Me—through every ER visit, hallway wait, and impossible choice. Now she’s training hospitals across the country to finally treat caregivers like patients. With names. With needs. With billing codes.

We talked about music, grief, psycho-oncology, the real cost of invisible labor, and why no one gives a shit about the person driving you to chemo. This one’s for the ones in the waiting room.

RELATED LINKS

• AllisonApplebaum.com
• Stand By Me – The Book
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• The Elbaum Family Center for Caregiving at Mount Sinai

FEEDBACK

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

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

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.

RELATED LINKS

• Cancer and Careers
• Rebecca Nellis on LinkedIn
• 2024 Cancer and Careers Research Report
• Working with Cancer Pledge (Publicis)
• CEW Foundation
• I'm Not Rappaport – Broadway Info

FEEDBACK

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

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

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 collide and promising scientists get crushed in the crossfire. Nikki shares how she’s fighting to stay in the field, teaching the next generation, and rewriting her grant for a world where even the word “diversity” can get you blacklisted. The conversation is raw, human, and maddening—a reminder that the real “war on science” doesn’t happen in labs. It happens in inboxes.

RELATED LINKS:

• Dr. Nikki Maphis LinkedIn page

• Dr. Nikki Maphis’ page at the University of New Mexico

• Vanguard News Group coverage

• Nature article

• PNAS: Contribution of NIH funding to new drug approvals 2010–2016

FEEDBACK:

Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, visit outofpatients.com.

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

Carla Tardiff 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, between data and decency. She’s also sharp as hell, deeply funny, and more purpose-driven than half of Congress on a good day.

This episode is about the work no one wants to do, the stuff no one wants to say, and why staying angry might be the only way to stay sane.

Come for the laughs. Stay for the rage. And find out why Family Reach is the only adult in the room.

RELATED LINKS

• Family Reach
• Financial Resource Center
• Carla on LinkedIn
• Morgridge Foundation Profile
• Authority Magazine Interview
• Syracuse University Feature

FEEDBACK

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

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

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 daughters born with PKU still couldn’t get a straight answer from the very system she trained in.

We sat down in the studio to talk about the unbearable loneliness of rare disease parenting, the disconnect between medical knowledge and human connection, and what it means to weaponize science against silence. She talks about bias in the NICU, the failure of healthcare communication, and why “resilience” is a lazy word. Her daughters are grown now. One’s a playwright. One’s an artist. And Jennifer is still raising hell.

This is a conversation about control, trauma, survival, and rewriting the script when the world hands you someone else’s lines.

Bring tissues. Then bring receipts.

RELATED LINKS

• When the Baby Is Not OK (Book)

• Jennifer’s Website

• Jennifer on LinkedIn

FEEDBACK

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

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 two decades to reach the brink of independence as a cancer researcher, only to watch offers and grants vanish in the political chaos of 2025.

Oliver brings her story into sharp focus, tracing the impossible climb toward a tenure-track position and the human cost of a system that pulls the ladder up just as people like Na reach for it. This conversation pulls back the curtain on the NIH funding crisis, the toll on early-career scientists, and what happens when personal tragedy fuels professional ambition.

Listeners will walk away with a raw sense of how fragile the future of cancer research really is, and why people like Na refuse to stop climbing.

RELATED LINKS

• Dr Zhao at Baylor College of Medicine
• Dr Zhao on LinkedIn
• Dr Zhao's Science article
• Indirect Costs explained by US Congress

FEEDBACK

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

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