Saturn Return & Synastry w/ Astrologer Erin Taj

Welcome back Katrina Kemp! Katrina is an actor, producer, activist, DJ, and intuitive from LA. 

Katrina not only shares her own coming-of-age story as a person with pseudoachondroplasia but also speaks to the relatively new project of people with Dwarfism collecting their own history, free from the gaze of average-height people. 

She explains how people with dwarfism were enslaved for centuries and how being forced to labor as circus performers still inform how they’re treated in the modern movie industry (and the world at large) today. Katrina traces the relationship between erasure and exploitation in media and reflects on how vital it was for her to find representation and community online growing up. 

“We find each other deep, deep in the internet. But other people are finding us too,” Katrina says. 

This sets the stage for our discussion of “Dear Average Height People,” a film Katrina is producing by director Aubrey Smalls. As far as Aubrey and Katrina know, this is the very first documentary comedy special to be directed and produced by people with Dwarfism. In fact, they haven’t been able to find ANY films, shows, or specials created by people with Dwarfism and urgently want that to change. 

The film is about dwarfism, disability hate groups, agency, and freedom. It portrays a global network of people with dwarfism who may live far away from each other, but who live in deep solidarity. It illustrates the way obsessive hate groups target and harass people with Dwarfism online, as well as how platforms like Youtube encourage violence and monetize torment.  It also depicts how talented, beautiful, funny, and diverse the Dwarfism community is around the world. 

Listen to hear Katrina’s many insights about beauty, bodies, surveillance, her bone to pick with Stephen Spielberg, Britney Spears, L’Express, Diane Arbus, inhalants, and more… 

“People experience epiphanies with me every day… every hour if I allowed it,” Katrina says. 

Follow Katrina on IG, Twitter, Twitch, and Youtube. Please consider contributing what you can to “Dear Average Height People.” Pledge your support on Indiegogo here.  Production crew volunteers, exhibition and performance spaces, and community partners are also welcome to donate resources. 

+ For more Katrina on the pod, listen to our Britney Spears episode from 2021. 

Thanks to Margot Padilla for engineering and editing this episode. Our show music is “Let Me Love You” by Dis Fantasy. Follow me on IG: @TSTAR7. 

Recorded 10/3 at Pirate Studios Silverlake. Pirate is open 24/7 in Silverlake and West Adams, as well as all over the US, UK, Germany, and Ireland. They have DJ, rehearsal, and podcast studios for everyone to use. Book online and let yourself inside. Click here and use the code TIERNEY for $10 off your first booking. Write me: tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com

Haewon Asfaw and Ale Lemus are friends, abolitionists, and pop culture enthusiasts. In this episode, they explain how practicing abolition together informs the way they watch their favorite Bravo shows together, especially The Real Housewives. Whether you’ve watched every episode of every franchise or have never seen the show, our conversation is for you. 

Listen to hear Haewon and Ale use real relationships from The Real Housewives to articulate ideas about conflict, punishment, and revenge. Using memorable moments from the Bravo canon, they also dissect capitalism, individualism and white dominant culture.  

Haewon offers a working definition of abolition and advocates for the need to study whiteness as a mental health issue. Ale discusses intergenerational healing in the Bravoverse and makes me cackle with comments like, “Big Kathy is a figure that looms large in Beverly Hills.”

Plus, they tell me about valuing your relationships as your currency and finding your resources within them. Listen for a fun meditation on celebrity culture and the cult of Bravo.  

Follow Haewon and Ale!

Thanks to Margot Padilla for engineering and editing this episode. 

Recorded 10/3 at Pirate Studios Silverlake. Pirate is open 24/7 in Silverlake and West Adams, as well as all over the US, UK, Germany and Ireland. They have DJ, rehearsal and podcast studios for everyone to use. Book online and let yourself inside. Click here and use the code TIERNEY for $10 off your first booking. 

Our show music is “Let Me Love You” by Dis Fantasy. Follow me on IG: @TSTAR7. 

Write me: tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com. 

Rachael Finley is the author of the new book “Nobody Ever Told Me Anything,” a memoir and survival guide detailing her highly isolated childhood in South Florida and unique coming-of-age experience online. 

She tells me about exploring the duality of women through writing about her mother, surviving her 11-year-old year squatting alone in a vacation rental while her mom sought out mental health treatment, and broadening her horizons by hanging out at the mall. 

At the mall, she met strangers for the first time and began experimenting with the parts of herself she thought the world should know and the parts they shouldn’t… tailor-fitting parts of herself for an audience… a lifelong experiment that led her to write this unfiltered book.

Follow Rachael on IG @instasteak and buy her book on Shop Hot Lava here. 

Thanks to Margot Padilla for engineering and editing this episode.  

Recorded 10/3 at Pirate Studios Silverlake. Pirate is open 24/7 in Silverlake and West Adams, as well as all over the US, UK, Germany and Ireland. They have DJ, rehearsal and podcast studios for everyone to use. Book online and let yourself inside. Click here and use the code TIERNEY for $10 off your first booking. 

Our show music is “Let Me Love You” by Dis Fantasy. Follow me on IG: @TSTAR7. 

Write me: tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com. 

Hi! Michelle Badillo is back. Watch her as Winnie, the sardonic astrologist in the latest season of "Search Party," streaming now on HBO Max. Michelle has also written for beloved shows including "One Day at a Time," "The Bold Time,"  "The Great North" and more. Watch her new project, "A League of Their Own," this August. 

We talk about our relationship and individual writing practices. Lots of chit-chat and tabloid musings. I drink a Coca-Cola and say Lacan when I mean Kristeva. I sound square despite my desire for narcotic freedom for all...fentanyl crisis much? 

Recorded on 5/27/22 at Pirate Studios Silverlake.
Thanks to Margot Padilla for engineering and editing.  

Our show music is "Let Me Love You" by Dis Fantasy.

Follow me on IG: @TSTAR7 
Write me: tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com

Support the show (https://cash.app/$TierneyFinster)

I'm back from a prolonged hiatus with my very first solo ep! What a risk! Tell me how it goes! I talk about losing a friend, traveling for the first time since the pandemic began, turning 30, getting engaged, and more. I also discuss my love of Lindsay Lohan and Anthony Kiedis, the shameless way I engage with Bravolebrities, and my year of only reading memoirs. 

Please subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. New interviews coming soon! Follow me on IG @TSTAR7 and write me with questions and comments at tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com. 

Thanks to Margot Padilla for engineering and editing. 

Our show music is "Let Me Love You" by Dis Fantasy. 

Welcome back Beth Pickens! My favorite art consultant, art counselor & lesbian-feminist  money coach (she's a Capricorn too!) We celebrate her new book “Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles” and discuss some of its core topics — money, time, fear, grief, isolation, education, and asking for what you want. Listen for a chance to win your own copy! 

Beth shares tons of tips to enhance your experience of both your art and your life. Investing time and money into yourself, distinguishing isolation from solitude, and warming up for your own creative practice are all talked about. We also explore staying connected to stillness while an abundance of ways to spend time become available to us. Beth gives advice to artists with common fears like experiencing disappointment while pitching and avoiding promoting your completed projects. 

Beth says, “For artists, the hard thing is not attaining goals, getting the grant or getting the opportunity or the show or whatever, the hard thing is being present for it and actually enjoying it.”

She reminds us all, "We can’t solve interior situations with exterior things!"
 
Follow Beth, buy her book & listen to her podcast. (Some LA libraries also have the book!) 

Tierney Talks is engineered & edited by Margot Padilla + hosted & produced by Tierney Finster.  Subscribe to the show wherever you're listening.  Our show music is "Let Me Love You" by Dis Fantasy. Listen to their new track "I Want You" on Bandcamp now. 

Holistic esthetician ANDREA ÁMEZ returns to the show for the first time since launching the ÁMEZ Marketplace and developing her ANTI-POLLUTANT MASQUE w/ ALIANGÉ.

We discuss building an independent skincare brand during the peak of the celebrity skincare boom, hand-picking products for her own retail platform and formulating her first masque with protective and reparative properties.

We pour ourselves into the topic of perfume and luxuriate in memories of the defining scents of our pasts. We touch on hair brushing and hair serums, meditating and resourcing inner power.  Andrea talks about treating kilaris pilaris, identifying melasma, using microcurrent facial devices at home, double cleansing sensitive skin and more. She explains choosing mineral vs chemical sunscreen, protecting your skin from the sun while driving and incorporating smaller lines into your wellness rituals. There are tons of ÁMEZING tips! All rooted in Andrea’s interdisciplinary knowledge of holistic wellness, health, beauty and experiential personal care.

Listen to learn how to win your own ÁMEZ x ALIANGÉ ANTI-POLLUTANT MASQUE, courtesy of the ÁMEZ MARKETPLACE :) Visit AMEZSKIN.COM to shop the marketplace or to book a service with Andrea in LA. Follow Andrea on IG @amez_pro and @amez_marketplace.  For the full list of every product we discuss in this ep and more, check the show notes and IG. Want more? Listen to Quarantine Glam with a Holistic Esthetician or Unpretentious Glam

Subscribe to Tierney Talks wherever you're listening now.  Rate and review too!

Our show music is "Let Me Love You" by Dis Fantasy. Listen to their new track "I Want You" on Bandcamp now.

Tierney Talks is engineered & edited by Margot Padilla & hosted  & produced by Tierney Finster. 

Alissa Nutting talks about adapting her novel "Made For Love" into a TV series and reflects on writing her singular first novel "Tampa" almost nine years after its release. She tells me about creating a character that engages with being loathsome and going over the top to make your point. We discuss eating breakfast at McDonald's and eulogize the Mexican Pizza at Taco Bell. Toward the end, I endorse a new drugstore lip product, share the perfect spring coffee order, gush about the documentary "Naughty Books" and more.

Watch Alissa's new TV series "Made For Love" on HBO Max. Buy her books "Made For Love," "Tampa" & "Unclean Jobs For Women and Girls: Stories" on Bookshop.

Subscribe to Tierney Talks wherever you're listening now. If you liked this episode, revisit my conversation with Michelle Badillo here.

Follow Alissa on IG @nutting_alissa  & Twitter @alissanutting.

Our show music is "Let Me Love You" by Dis Fantasy. Listen to their new track "I Want You" on Bandcamp now.

Tierney Talks is engineered & edited by Margot Padilla & hosted, written & produced by Tierney Finster.

Follow @TSTAR7 on IG & write to me -- tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com

Links:
Alissa's Grub Street Diet
Revlon ColorStay Satin Ink Liquid Lipstick
Naughty Books on Hulu
Burgers at chi SPACCA
Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear by Dr. Carl Hart 

Niko Karamyan (@nikotheikon), Saturn (@saturnrisin9) and Katrina Kemp (@kueenkatrina) join us after watching "Framing Britney," the new New York Times documentary about Britney Spears. Saturn decodes Britney's ability to use performance as protest, Katrina recounts spending time with Britney and paparazzi in the Valley as a high-school stan and Niko raises questions about the role of the rose imagery in Britney's quest for autonomy. We discuss our emotional responses to the doc, explore what else we wish it would have touched on and tell precious Britney stories (including an epic dance battle). Also: the sick connection between Amanda Bynes and Jamie Lynn Spears (trigger warning!), the way Britney's torturous predicament led to the creation of a personal space bubble law in LA  and the Felicia Culotta of it all.  Katrina pulls an oracle card for the #FreeBritney movement. "Look at what white men do to their daughters," Saturn says, summarizing it all. Recorded on the anniversary of Anna Nicole Smith's death, we love you Anna! Write to Tierney -- tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com Our show music is "Let Me Love You" by Dis Fantasy. Recorded and edited by Margot Padilla. Hosted, written and produced by Tierney Finster.

Erin Taj joins us to share astrological knowledge juicy enough for beginners and devotees alike. Taj breaks down fixed, mutable and cardinal signals, explains astrology as geometry and defines what houses mean in the context of your natal chart. She teaches what having planets “conjunct” and “square” one another means, expands on popular misconceptions of rising signs and discusses favorite parts of her own astrological makeup. Saturn Return, synastry and generational forecasting based on Pluto are also hot topics. “No one owns astrology,” Taj says, “It’s embedded in us to be curious.” 

Write to Tierney -- tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com 

Our show music is "Let Me Love You" by Dis Fantasy. Recorded and edited by Margot Padilla. Hosted, written and produced by Tierney Finster.