Casey Quinlan
(Photo: Chet Strange for The New York Times)

TueNight 10: Casey Quinlan

(Photo: Chet Strange for The New York Times)

Age: 67

Basic bio: Casey Quinlan blends her background in network news and standup comedy to inform her health policy work. She hosts the podcast Healthcare Is HILARIOUS and wrote the Amazon bestseller Cancer for Christmas: Making the Most of a Daunting Gift. She causes trouble for a living.

Beyond the Bio: I was never one to suffer fools, or societal expectations for what I could/should/might be. All together, the only restrictions I feel on my life, and my potential to drive positive change for humanity, is this freakin’ pandemic lockdown … but this ol’ girl is figuring that out on the fly. Like she has everything else. And she’s still here!

What makes you a grown-ass lady? I let a lot of stuff go, since life’s too short to try to fix something that’s irreparably broken, or to pick up someone else’s baggage. And I have zero fucks to give about societal expectations of “lady.”

Here’s her TueNight 10:

1. On the nightstand: Enough books to crush me if they fell, .38 revolver, antique crochet box, three cut glass boxes that belonged to my grandmother, back scratcher, photos of the beach. (It’s a bookcase headboard.)

2. Can’t stop/won’t stop: Staring down stupid, fighting for human rights in healthcare, talking about data privacy in the surveillance economy, and working hard to find the funny in… all of the things.

3. Jam of the minute: Gary Clark Jr., Ray Wylie Hubbard, John Prine, Yola.

4. Thing I miss: People (in COVID19 lockdown right now, no plans to break that), traveling to conferences (see previous!), my mom and dad (died 29 days apart in ’02).

5. 80s crush: Toss-up between Prince and Tom Petty.

6. Current crush: Mike Monteiro. Read his book Ruined By Design. You’ll be crushing, too!

7. Latest fave find: Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack newsletter.

8. Last thing you lost: My sanity, over a Trump tweet (it’s an hourly thing around here).

9. Best thing that happened recently: I got to interview James Heathers, the PhD “data thug” brainiac behind the Twitter feed @JustSaysInMice. It was AMAZEBALLS.

10. Looking forward to: Non-pandemic-wise: Working on a doc series on patient leadership in healthcare. Pandemic-wise: Hearing live music in the room again, getting on a plane to head to a health/research/policy meeting, drinking at a beach bar.

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