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Most people don’t know that you’re considered a cancer survivor at the moment of diagnosis. It wasn’t always this way. Sixty years ago, a cancer diagnosis was a death sentence. And if you did survive, you were left to figure out the rest of your life on your own. But some survivors demanded something different, something better. This is The Cancer Mavericks, a deep-dive narrative into the people who fought for better treatment, forced doctors to listen, and pushed America to see the human si ...
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Knownst to Matthew Zachary, but unknownst to others, long before the Award-Winning documentary "The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship" hit podcast feeds, a pilot episode was storyboarded and produced to test the waters with our newly minted production team, helmed by acclaimed executive producer, Steve Lickteig. If all went to plan, we wo…
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Welcome to the series finale of The Cancer Mavericks. In this final episode, we reflect on the first seven episodes through the lens of history and progress with a series of insightful conversations featuring some of healthcare's most influential and visionary voices across the past four decades. If history is a teacher, we have learned that change…
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A cancer diagnosis sucks no matter what — but factors like income, education, racism, geography, housing, and access to health care, known as "social determinants of health," can worsen the burden. When researchers zoom out from individual experiences and survey cancer survivors, they see patterns called social determinants of health. Individual ci…
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For decades, the portrayal of cancer in movies and television was grim. If a character was diagnosed with cancer, it was a near certainty they'd be dead by the credits. But, like cancer treatment itself, Hollywood evolved, and many storylines about cancer became stories of survival. In this episode, we ask the question, "Who influences us and why?"…
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Facing a diagnosis of cancer at any age is horrible. But for young adults, it’s just plain different. Not better. Not worse. Different. Those diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 39 are on a planet all their own, often left to fend for themselves as lost voices sandwiched between pediatrics and adult cancer. The consequences of living with, through…
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In just over 20 years, the number of cancer survivors in the United States has doubled to 17 million survivors, each confronting their new (ab)normal lives. From chemo brain to PTSD, medical debt to workplace discrimination, this episode follows survivors along with their unique—and often difficult—paths post-treatment. In this episode, we hear fro…
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Advocacy can take many forms in the cancer community — from advocating for yourself or a loved one to receive the best possible treatment to calling your Congressperson or testifying on Capitol Hill to demand increased access to care. This episode explores different ways cancer mavericks have elevated survivors’ needs and improved their lives, incl…
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By the 1980s, cancer was no longer a death sentence. But the question of what surviving actually meant was unanswered. Cancer survivors had to navigate issues around employment, relationships, and the emotional and physical side effects of treatment in a world that largely didn’t know what to do with them. (and they were still called “victims.”) In…
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Mary Lasker used to say that more money was spent on advertising campaigns for gum than was spent on cancer research. She’d seen the effects of that almost non-existent budget first hand: she watched people close to her die from cancer, including her advertising exec husband. She was outraged by the lack of money and research devoted to ending the …
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Most people don’t know that you’re considered a cancer survivor at the moment of diagnosis. It wasn’t always this way. Sixty years ago, a cancer diagnosis was a death sentence. And if you did survive, you were left to figure out the rest of your life on your own. But some survivors demanded something different, something better. From OffScrip Media…
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