WALK IT OFF: The Cancer Series Men Never Got
Let's start here: If you're a man with cancer, the odds are good that no one has asked you how you're really doing. Not your doctor. Not your employer. Maybe not even your friends or your own family.
You're expected to "be strong," "fight hard," and "stay positive"—whatever the hell that means when you're staring down chemo, radiation, surgery, erectile dysfunction, and a world that thinks your pain is a private matter.
That silence? It's killing us.
In fact, it's been killing us for decades upon decades.
Walk It Off: Men Don't Talk About Cancer is the first podcast series that calls bullshit on that silence. It's raw, it's personal, it's long overdue, and it's my latest creation as an inspirational disciple and descendant of The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship.
(It's also a love letter to Trevor Maxwell xwell and the MAN UP TO CANCER cinematic universe of support and community he built from scratch)
This series is for the guys who've been through it. The ones who are still in it. The ones who think they're the only ones falling apart because they can't find their footing in a post-diagnosis life that stole their identity, masculinity, confidence, and voice.
This series is a brick through the window of toxic resilience.
Three episodes are locked and loaded to premiere on September 11 at the Man Up To Cancer Gathering of Wolves in East Stroudsburg, PA—a fitting launch for a show that doesn't tiptoe around what men are actually going through.
Why "Walk It Off?" Well, if you have to ask, you may never know. But here's a clue: It's what my care team told me when I wrapped treatment for brain cancer in 1996. "You're a guy. Get on with your life. Some people are worse off than you who didn't have cancer." Walk It Off is the series I wish existed when I got sick.
It's built for the men who were told to shut up, tough it out, and move on. The ones who never got a chance to name what they were feeling, let alone deal with it. The ones who still feel like asking for help means weakness—the ones who were taught that crying is a character flaw. The ones who think vulnerability is some Oprah BS they don't have time for.
Men don't talk about cancer.
But they're dying in silence. Literally.
This show breaks that silence wide open.
We're launching Walk It Off in partnership with some seriously brave and credible organizations: Man Up To Cancer, Cheeky Charity, ZERO Prostate Cancer, Let's Win Pancreatic Cancer, Testicular Cancer Foundation, and Stupid Cancer. These folks aren't playing the awareness game. They're doing the messy work of saving lives, restoring dignity, and making sure no one fights invisible battles alone.
Walk It Off is anti-pinkwashing at its finest. It is the trench-level storytelling I've come to believe is where authenticity happens. Mainstream cancer content panders hard and fast. It edits out the messy stuff. It's afraid of being too dark, too real, too male. That's why this series was vital for me to bring to the surface.
Men don't talk about cancer.
But they should.
And we're done waiting for permission.
Some inconvenient truths this series tackles:
-
Most men react to a cancer diagnosis by going inward. Isolation is baked into the script.
-
Masculinity norms tell them to be stoic. The body count proves that strategy sucks.
-
Doctors don't talk about sex. Or shame. Or loss of identity. They focus on survival, then walk away.
-
Survivors get PTSD. Depression. Erectile dysfunction. Divorce. But who's asking them how they're doing? No one.
And if they try to talk about it, they don't know where to go or what words to use.
So instead? They just walk it off until they can't.
This series meets them at that breaking point and lets them know they're not crazy, they're not broken, and there's a wolfpack waiting to greet them at the door with love, compassion, and support.
We’re kicking off with three episodes that pull no punches. Each one cracks open the unspoken realities of what it means to be a man with cancer—and not the glossy brochure version. These aren't awareness episodes. These are reckoning episodes.
EP1 confronts the shame spiral: what happens when your body betrays you and you're expected to suck it up and keep going. It’s about the silence men are sentenced to when masculinity is mistaken for muteness. You’ll hear stories from guys who ignored their symptoms, isolated themselves, and paid the price—and from those who clawed their way out by finally saying something.
EP2 is about brotherhood. Or the lack of it. Cancer is lonely as hell, but it doesn’t have to be. This one’s for the men who found a wolfpack, whether online, in advocacy circles, or sitting next to them in the chemo ward. It’s about connection, survival, and refusing to disappear quietly.
EP3 goes where no one else wants to: the aftermath. The not-so-glorious survivorship. The identity crisis. The PTSD. The stuff you’re supposed to “walk off” once treatment ends and the world moves on. This is the part where no one checks in, no one brings casseroles, and no one asks how your sex life is holding up.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever weird app you still use to listen to stuff so you don't miss the downbeat on September 11th when all three episodes drop.
Share it. Rate it. Text it to your dad, your friend, your coworker who just got diagnosed and has no idea where to turn.
Don't wait for this to trend. Be the reason it does.
Big thanks to Merck, Takeda, and Arco Advocacy for stepping up and making all of this possible. And epic shoutout to producer Mary Rose Madden for bringing it all home to, once again change the world.
MZ out.