30-Year Brain Cancer Survivor
Author and Speaker
Podcast Pioneer
Unfiltered Voice of Reason
MATTHEW ZACHARY
AMERICAN
PATIENT RIGHTS ACTIVIST
AMERICAN
PATIENT RIGHTS
ACTIVIST
MATTHEW ZACHARY
30-Year Cancer Survivor
Author and Speaker
Podcast Pioneer
Unfiltered Voice of Reason
TRUSTED SOURCE
“Matthew Zachary is the irreverent, informed friend you WISH you could talk to when the US healthcare system has you screaming or crying."
Susannah Fox, Author
Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care
For three decades, Matthew Zachary has been standing up for patients inside a healthcare system that prioritizes profits.
“The People’s Voice in Healthcare”
– People magazine
“A Pioneer and Provocateur.” — Atlantic
“An Incomparable Storyteller.” — Klick Health
“MZ Is Why We Do What We Do.” — AbbVie
“A Real American Advocate.” — Walgreens
“He Really Rallied the Troops.” — Amgen
“A Pioneer and Provocateur.” — Atlantic
“An Incomparable Storyteller.” — Klick Health
“MZ Is Why We Do What We Do.” — AbbVie
“A Real American Advocate.” — Walgreens
“He Really Rallied the Troops.” — Amgen
MATTHEW ZACHARY
BORN WITH CANCER AND CONGENITAL CHUTZPAH
At 21, I was diagnosed with a life-threatening, golf ball-size, rare malignant brain tumor that ended my piano career.
I survived—but that was just the beginning of my story.
I went from 'you're going to die' to survivor to the guy marching into Washington with 30 years of receipts and an organized patient constituency that nobody saw coming.
“Matthew inspires me and so many others in the fight for a better healthcare system by centering the interests of patients as a core principle of future reforms.”
--Wendell Potter, Publisher and Executive Editor of HEALTH CARE un-Covered
Matthew Zachary has:
Delivered hundreds of keynotes
Logged millions of podcast downloads
Worked with brands and institutions that are serious about doing better—not just sounding like they are.
A PATIENT PROCLAMATION FOR OUR TIMES
NOW AVAILABLE
A PATIENT PROCLAMATION FOR OUR TIMES
In a system designed to protect profits over patients…
it’s time for a second opinion.
Matthew Zachary is the author of We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America's Healthcare Nightmare (Wiley, 2026), which makes the case that American healthcare was not broken by accident — it was built this way on purpose. And that the patient community is the largest unorganized political constituency in American history. It is time they knew it.
VOICE OF AMERICA’S PATIENTS
Matthew Zachary founded Stupid Cancer, helping to ignite an overdue cancer movement by building the largest adolescent and young adult cancer community in the world. He gave voice to millions of patients, survivors, and caregivers who didn’t fit neatly into a system that had long overlooked them.
THE PODFATHER
OF HEALTHCARE
THE PODFATHER
OF HEALTHCARE
Back before podcasting was a thing, Matthew Zachary launched The Stupid Cancer Show in 2007, the first healthcare podcast in America, predating the medium itself.
He produced The Cancer Mavericks, an award-winning documentary about the rebel patients who changed modern oncology.
Now in its 19th year, Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary has 238,000 monthly listeners and 2.3 million lifetime downloads. It is the show that started the conversation America is still not ready to finish.
THE FIGHT ISN’T OVER
It’s just getting started.
Matthew Zachary does not ask hard questions for the sake of it. He asks them because the answers are damning and somebody has to say so on the record. His work has moved from storytelling into civic organizing, from giving patients a voice into giving them a constituency. The book, the podcast, the op-eds, and the national listening tour are all the same argument: patients outnumber everyone who is profiting from their confusion, and it is time they knew it.
LET IT ALL OUT
I don’t do awareness campaigns.
I do outcomes.
My work is about organizing patients into a constituency that American healthcare cannot afford to ignore. Not through awareness. Through civic power, electoral pressure, and thirty years of knowing exactly how the system works and who it works for
If that makes you uncomfortable, we’ll probably get along just fine.
