Out of Patients EP420: Stand By She: Allison Applebaum
Allison J. Applebaum, Ph.D., FAPOS grew up surrounded by symphonies, not stethoscopes. Her father, Stan Applebaum, arranged Stand By Me. (Yes. *That* Stand By Me) Her mother was a prodigy. She was supposed to live behind a piano. Instead, she became a ballerina. Then 9/11 shattered everything, and she ran north through the dust into a new life at Mount Sinai. That pivot gave birth to one of the most radical concepts in modern medicine: therapy for caregivers.
She didn’t wait for permission. She built the country’s first mental health clinic for caregivers because no one else bothered to care about the people doing the caring. Now she’s rewriting the rules of medicine by treating caregivers like patients—with charts, billing codes, and actual humanity.
Our conversation hit every nerve: art, trauma, policy, parenthood, legacy.
We laughed about White Nights, Running Scared and Carrie Bradshaw dating Baryshnikov. We called bullshit on a system that praises love while ignoring the labor it takes to sustain it.
Allison reminded me that caregiving is both an act of defiance and survival. Her story proves that empathy without infrastructure is just sentiment.
Matthew Zachary
Producer
Matthew Zachary invented healthcare podcasting before podcasting was a thing. In 2007, fresh off building Stupid Cancer, he grabbed a mic, launched The Stupid Cancer Show and started broadcasting patient stories on internet talk radio when everyone else was still writing blogs.
17 years and 400+ episodes later, Out of Patients is still the most unfiltered healthcare show anywhere.
Matthew doesn't do softball interviews. Brain cancer at 21 taught him that time is finite and bullshit is expensive. He gets guests to say things they'd never tell Congress. CEOs admit what's broken. Patients name what actually hurts. Scientists explain what industry doesn't want you to know. The conversations other shows won't touch because of sponsor concerns or political correctness.
What makes him different: He's been on both sides of the mic. Featured in documentaries, testified before Congress, keynoted hundreds of conferences.
But he's also been the guy puking from radiation, fighting insurance denials, and watching friends die from paperwork.
That dual perspective creates interviews you won't hear anywhere else. He knows which questions make power squirm because he's asked them from hospital beds and boardrooms both.
No pre-approved questions. No PR handlers. No seven-minute segments. Just real conversations with people brave enough to tell the truth about healthcare. After 17 years, Matthew's still the guy Mark Cuban reposts when he wants to understand what patients actually think. Read More
Out of Patients EP425: Doctor No More: MaryAnn Wilbur
