Dr. MaryAnn Wilbur trained her whole life to care for patients, then left medicine behind when it became a machine that punished empathy and rewarded throughput. She didn’t burn out. She got out. A gynecologic oncologist, public health researcher, and no-bullshit single mom, MaryAnn walked straight off the cliff her career breadcrumbed her to—and lived to write the book.

In this episode, we talk about what happens when doctors are forced to choose between their ethics and their employment, why medicine now operates like a low-resource war zone, and how the system breaks the very people it claims to elevate. We cover moral injury, medical gaslighting, and why she refused to lie on surgical charts just to boost hospital revenue.

Her escape plan? Tell the truth, organize the exodus, and build something that actually works. If you've ever wondered why your doctor disappeared, this is your answer. If you're a clinician hiding your own suffering, this is your permission slip.

RELATED LINKS

• MaryAnn Wilbur on LinkedIn
• Medicine Forward
• Clinician Burnout Foundation
• The Doctor Is No Longer In (Book)
• Suck It Up, Buttercup (Documentary)

FEEDBACK

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Episode 5 of Standard Deviation with Oliver Bogler on the Out of Patients podcast feed pulls you straight into the story of Dr Ethan Moitra, a psychologist who fights for LGBTQ mental health while the system throws every obstacle it can find at him.

Ethan built a study that tracked how COVID 19 tore through an already vulnerable community. He secured an NIH grant. He built a team. He reached 180 participants. Then he opened an email on a Saturday and learned that Washington had erased his work with one sentence about taxpayer priorities. The funding vanished. The timeline collapsed. His team scattered. Participants who trusted him sat in limbo.

A federal court eventually forced the government to reinstate the grant, but the damage stayed baked into the process. Ethan had to push through months of paperwork while his university kept the original deadline as if the shutdown had not happened. The system handed him a win that felt like a warning.

I brought Ethan on because his story shows how politics reaches into science and punishes the people who serve communities already carrying too much trauma. His honesty lands hard because he names the fear now spreading across academia and how young scientists question whether they can afford to care about the wrong population.

You will hear what this ordeal did to him, what it cost his team, and why he refuses to walk away.

RELATED LINKS

Faculty Page

NIH Grant Details

Scientific Presentation

Boston Globe Coverage

FEEDBACK

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Chelsea J. Smith walks into a studio and suddenly I feel like a smurf. She’s six-foot-three of sharp humor, dancer’s poise, and radioactive charm. A working actor and thyroid cancer survivor, Chelsea is the kind of guest who laughs while dropping truth bombs about what it means to be told you’re “lucky” to have the “good cancer.” We talk about turning trauma into art, how Shakespeare saved her sanity during the pandemic, and why bartending might be the best acting class money can’t buy. She drops the polite bullshit, dismantles survivor guilt with punchline precision, and reminds every listener that grace and rage can live in the same body. If you’ve ever been told to “walk it off” while your body betrayed you, this one hits close.

RELATED LINKS

• Chelsea J. Smith Website

• Chelsea on Instagram

• Chelsea on Backstage

• Chelsea on YouTube

• Cancer Hope Network

• Artichokes and Grace – Book by Chelsea’s mother

FEEDBACK

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When Julia Stalder heard the words ductal carcinoma in situ, she was told she had the “best kind of breast cancer.” Which is like saying you got hit by the nicest bus. Julia’s a lawyer turned mediator who now runs DCIS Understood, a new nonprofit born out of her own diagnosis. Instead of panicking and letting the system chew her up, she asked questions the industry would rather avoid. Why do women lose breasts for conditions that may never become invasive? Why is prostate cancer allowed patience while breast cancer gets the knife? We talked about doctors’ fear of uncertainty, the epidemic of overtreatment, and what happens when you build a movement while still in the waiting room. Funny, fierce, unfiltered—this one sticks.

RELATED LINKS

• DCIS Understood

• Stalder Mediation

• Julia’s story in CURE Today

• PreludeDx DCISionRT feature

• Julia on LinkedIn

FEEDBACK

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Dr. Rachel Gatlin entered neuroscience with curiosity and optimism. Then came chaos. She started her PhD at the University of Utah in March 2020—right as the world shut down. Her lab barely existed. Her advisor was on leave. Her project focused on isolation stress in mice, and then every human on earth became her control group. Rachel fought through supply shortages, grant freezes, and the brutal postdoc job market that treats scientists like disposable parts. When her first offer vanished under a hiring freeze, she doubled down, rewrote her plan, and won her own NIH training grant. Her story is about survival in the most literal sense—how to keep your brain intact when the system built to train you keeps collapsing.

RELATED LINKS

• Dr. Rachel Gatlin on LinkedIn

• Dr. Gatlin’s Paper Preprint

• Dr. Eric Nestler on Wikipedia

• News Coverage: Class of 2025 – PhD Students Redefine Priorities

FEEDBACK

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EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Before she was raising millions to preserve fertility for cancer patients, Tracy Weiss was filming reenactments in her apartment for the Maury Povich Show using her grandmother’s china. Her origin story includes Jerry Springer, cervical cancer, and a full-body allergic reaction to bullshit. Now, she’s Executive Director of The Chick Mission, where she weaponizes sarcasm, spreadsheets, and the rage of every woman who’s ever been told “you’re fine” while actively bleeding out in a one-stall office bathroom.

We get into all of it. The diagnosis. The misdiagnosis. The second opinion that saved her life. Why fertility preservation is still a luxury item. Why half of oncologists still don’t mention it. And what it takes to turn permission to be pissed into a platform that actually pays for women’s futures.

This episode is blunt, hilarious, and very Jewish. There’s chopped liver, Carrie Bradshaw slander, and more than one “fuck you” to the status quo. You’ve been warned.

RELATED LINKS

• The Chick Mission
• Tracy Weiss on LinkedIn
• Fertility Preservation Interview (Dr. Aimee Podcast)
• Tracy’s Story in Authority Magazine
• NBC DFW Feature
• Stork’d Podcast Episode
• NuDetroit Profile
• Chick Mission 2024 Gala Recap

FEEDBACK

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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

FEEDBACK

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For guest suggestions or sponsorship, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.

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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

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.