Short Bio

Matthew Zachary survived brain cancer at 21 and spent the next thirty years refusing to let American healthcare off the hook. He is the author of We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America’s Healthcare Nightmare (Wiley), the founder of We the Patients, a national movement organizing patients into collective civic power, and the host of Out of Patients, healthcare’s longest-running independent podcast.

Byline

Matthew Zachary survived brain cancer at 21. He is the author of We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America’s Healthcare Nightmare (Wiley, 2026), founder of Stupid Cancer, and founder of We the Patients.

Long Bio

Matthew Zachary has spent three decades making American healthcare less cruel. A 30-year brain cancer survivor, he founded Stupid Cancer, the largest nonprofit for young adults with cancer, and launched The Stupid Cancer Show, widely regarded as the first healthcare podcast, which evolved into the award-winning Out of Patients. He produced The Cancer Mavericks, a documentary series about the rebel patients who changed modern oncology. He is the author of We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America's Healthcare Nightmare (Wiley, 2026) and the founder of We the Patients, a national movement organizing patients into collective civic power. A concert pianist who has performed for audiences of thirty thousand, he has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, Time, and The Atlantic. He is healthcare's most inconvenient truth teller.