Tierney Talks

Send us Fan Mail

Tierney Talks hosted the very first TELETHON ForYourart at Frieze Los Angeles in February. We brought the talk show to the art fair and broadcasted live from the ForYourArt booth on the Paramount Pictures Studio backlot, all Frieze long. The result is a collection of 60+ interviews about art, entertainment and community in Los Angeles. We had so much much!   

This is the second in a five-part series of Tierney Talks episodes documenting TELETHON ForYourart. Use the chapter markers to skip around to specific guests, or just listen to the full episode :)

Today’s guests include:

Jennifer Moon

Jessica Yellin

Emily Segal

Kandis Williams

Andrew Maxwell

Pretend Plants & Flowers

Gabriella Sanchez 

Jori Finkel 

Mandy Harris Williams

Tierney Talks is pleased to partner with For Your Art to present this series of talks. ForYourArt is a source of free information about L.A.'s art scene and ForYourArt’s mission is to inspire more people to make art a part of their daily lives. Follow FYA on IG @foryourart and check out http://foryourart.com/. 

Follow Tierney on IG and Twitter @TSTAR7 and subscribe if you haven’t already. Our show music is “Let Me Love You” by Dis Fantasy (streaming everywhere!) 

Special thanks to Jess Calleiro, Niko Karamyan, Bryan Johnson, Ali Madigan, Cobi Krieger, Bettina Korek, Kevin McGarry, Peter Shire, Kayne Griffin Corcoran and Pretend Plants and Flowers. 

Today’s show was recorded and edited by Margot Padilla and hosted, written and produced by Tierney Finster. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Tierney Talks hosted the very first TELETHON ForYourart at Frieze Los Angeles in February. We brought our talk show to the art fair and broadcasted live from the ForYourArt booth all Frieze long. The result is a collection of 60+ interviews about art, entertainment and community in Los Angeles. We had so much fun! 

This is the first in a five-part series of Tierney Talks episodes documenting TELETHON ForYourart. 

 Today’s guests include: 

Patrisse Cullors, Alexa Demie, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Liz Goldwyn, Sanam Sindhi, Peter Shire, Janicza Bravo, Rachel Lord, Seth Bogart, Sam Buck, Justice Singleton + Blaine O’Neill

Tierney Talks is pleased to partner with For Your Art to present this series of conversations. ForYourArt is a source of free information about L.A.'s art scene and ForYourArt’s mission is to inspire more people to make art a part of our daily lives. Follow FYA on IG @foryourart and check out http://foryourart.com/. Check out their curation of online exhibitions while you stay home.

Follow Tierney on IG and Twitter @TSTAR7 and subscribe if you haven’t already. Our show music is “Let Me Love You” by Dis Fantasy (streaming everywhere!) 

Recorded live on the Paramount Pictures Studio Backlot on February 13, 2020. 

Recorded and edited by Margot Padilla and hosted, written and produced by Tierney Finster. 

Special thanks to Jess Calleiro, Niko Karamyan, Bryan Johnson, Ali Madigan, Cobi Krieger, Bettina Korek, Kevin McGarry, Peter Shire, Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Pretend Plants and Flowers and Universal Standard. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Niko the Ikon is an artist and actor in L.A. Join us for a moody quarantine phone call. We invite you to eavesdrop. 

We discuss creating harmony between you and your living space and bringing intentionality to your interiors. We also alk about bringing love into day-to-day-life and how this time at home feels like a return to our pre-teen lives and friendship. “I’ve been living in a way that I thought was long gone,” Niko tells me. Niko motivates me to clean. We trip out on our relationship to time and space and reflect on sitting at home, spending time alone and how not being a fake bitch is a superpower. 

We meditate on the wealth of what we’ve shared together as long-time friends and get into cybersex, physical touch and healing our heart chakras. We talk about trusting ourselves, trusting our friends and how the shifting culture around mental health has impacted our relationship. Increasing our permission to be emotionally honest as we go. 

We encourage every actor to hold tight to their dream and laugh about auditioning within the limited casting lanes of mainstream media. Niko asks: “Why is it so often that we’re not allowed to be ourselves?”

We recorded this on the 105th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide (April 24) and reflect on the strength of the Armenian diaspora. “Oppression always backfires,” Niko tells me. “The more we deny these things, the easier we make it for the atrocious to be repeated; what a century of denial says is, ‘You can get away with this.’” 

This episode is best enjoyed alongside cannabis (tea, aromatherapy, sunshine, and long-form bathing rituals are great too!) 

Follow Niko on IG @nikotheikon + Tierney @TSTAR7 and subscribe to the show to get the next episode early. Music is “Let Me Love You” by Dis Fantasy (streaming everywhere). This episode was recorded and edited by Margot Padilla. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Andrea Amez is a holistic esthetician, transformational glow-up practitioner and product concierge. Tierney talks to Andrea about taking care of herself while quarantining at home, opening her own skin studio in LA and infusing some expert know-how into your daily skin and beauty rituals. Andrea talks about avoiding obsessive self-grooming, reading your body by paying attention to inflammation and keeping centered as a self-employed person and small business owner amid economic uncertainty. 

Together they discuss beauty acquisitions and brands that plummet in quality after being acquired, the legend of Olaplex, and the mass beauty culture shift currently happening as people can’t maintain their fillers, extensions and other aesthetic treatments. They also talk about trying cannabis sheet masks and skincare and using CBD tinctures meant for consumption as a topical face treatment. 

Tierney reveals the beauty products she’s bought online while staying at home, including a certain cult-favorite hair supplement whose infomercial she loves, reflects on beauty rituals as “prayer” instead of “proof,” and shares a short beauty-inspired reading list. 

Andrea explains avoiding talc in makeup and body products, paying attention to product expiration dates and vetting the use of supplements to increase immunity. She also dishes about meeting her fiance at the Aesop store, bonding over Carol's Daughter hair products and proposing to him in Japan.

Andrea answers listener questions like: How can I reduce my redness and inflammation? What are the best foods for detoxifying your skin? What drug-store products will make for the best impromptu at-home facial? What is the best way to treat a breakout without picking it? What kind of masks and treatments can I whip up at home? How and why should I make my health and beauty routines more “experiential?” Does using a silk pillowcase really make a difference on hair and skin? What can hospital workers use to prevent skin friction from constant mask-wearing? How do I use a gua-sha tool?

There’s also a celebration of Earth Day and the New Moon :) Follow Andrea @amez_pro and check out http://www.amezskin.com/ and follow Tierney @tstar7.  

Tierney Talks proposes you consider matching any money you spend on beauty non-essentials with donations to individuals and organizations. Tierney and Andrea donated to The Okra Project, a collective that brings healthy meals to black trans and gender non-conforming people. You can do the same by PayPal-ing the Black Trans Solidarity Fund – https://www.paypal.me/btsf – and encourage friends to do the same (or go in together!) 

Special thanks to our audio producer Margot Padilla. She produced our opening track too! Stream “Let Me Love You” by Dis Fantasy everywhere <3

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Molly is a writer and iconic Valley Girl. You can read her in tons of magazines like Elle, InStyle, the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. She also wrote the introduction to the newest collection of Eve Babitz essays, “I Used To Be Charming: The Rest Of Eve Babitz.” We talk about Comrade Britney, Mimi Zhu, Lana Del Rey, Rihanna, Grace Jones, Madonna, Eve Babitz, Joan Didion, Susan Sontag and “The Murder of Laci Peterson.” We also talk about interviewing celebrities for magazines, clearing our heads at LA malls and pining for clothes at the old Betsey Johnson store in Sherman Oaks. 

Molly tells us about organizing Angelenos around housing inequality and describes how hosting the Olympics causes cities to fast track gentrification, escalate policing and further criminalize homelessness. She also shares the history of her grandmother’s own experiences as a Jewish-German Olympic athlete in pre-WWII Germany. 

Follow @NOlympics LA for more on that and @mollylambert on IG and Twitter <3

Also, listen to Molly's podcast Nightcall with cohosts Tess Lynch and Emily Yoshida every Monday. Call their hotline at (240) 466 4448 to leave them a message about PLASTIC SURGERY all April.

And check out Molly's special Summer House quarantine podcast via her Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mollyssleazyfriends/posts

Thanks to our audio producer and sound designer Margot Padilla <3 First ep recorded on Skype as we socially distance! 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Tierney Talks celebrated one year of podcasting with a live show at Murmurs, a favorite art gallery, cafe, shop and community space in LA. The variety-show-esque program consists of readings, musical performances, conversations and a DJ set. 

Here’s the timing of everything, just in case you want to listen out of order: 

2:15 - A karaoke-centric reading & performance by writer, sartorialist and Sisters With Invoices founder Amelian Kashiro Hamilton. 

18:04 - PLUR poetry and pop music by artist, organizer and co-founder of Cosmo Visiones Ancestrales La Pachamami. 

33:09 - A one-on-one conversation with State Assembly Candidate Fatima Iqbal-Zubair about how representatives outside of your own district can transform state-wide legislation, repelling corporate funding, running an independent campaign and housing and education inequality in LA. 

57:06 - A one-on-one conversation with artist, activist, model and writer Emily Barker about the history of standardized and invisible norms in architecture, ableist design as structural violence and what inspired their most recent exhibition “Built To Scale.” 

1:31:00 - Amelian's DJ set begins! Featuring incredible adlibs by NikoTheIkon. 

Recorded live and sound mixed by audio engineer extraordinaire Margot Padilla.
Follow me on IG @TSTAR7 and tell me who to talk to next.

Thank you Morgan Elder and Allison Littrell for welcoming us at Murmurs.
Thank you Camila Creates for your wonderful catering and Andrea Ámez for your Ámezing facials. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Beth Pickens helps artists. She invented her own job, combining counseling and arts management, and now works as a consultant for artists and arts organizations in L.A. She is also the author of "Your Art Will Save Your Life" and the host of Getting Real About Money workshops. 

Beth is a Capricorn, like me, and we meet on the first day of Capricorn season for a powerful conversation about working from home, working with other people and working on our relationship to money. 

LISTEN TO HEAR HOW YOU CAN MAKE MORE MONEY IN 2020. 

Beth describes how family is the foundation of group psychology and the way workplaces often mirror the family dynamics of each employee. 

We also discuss coming from families who didn’t self-describe as artistic or feminist and who weren’t highly educated or rich. We talk about Beth’s childhood in the deep Rust Belt, the way attending the opening of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh impacted her adolescence and growing up adoring Andy Warhol before the mass commercialization of his imagery. 

I realize I grew up in the aftermath of a “boom and bust” generation and about different kinds of money damage (and getting over the idea that nothing about money can be positive). Beth says rich people have crazy money damage too! 

We talk about growing up in financially homogeneous neighborhoods (like Beth’s, where the richest family around was comprised of two teachers) and financially dissimilar hometowns (like mine in LA, where heiresses and low-income people could all end up in the backseat together). 

Beth shares one of her own most transformational financial habits and reflects on gauging whether your romantic partner is making you a better artist or not. 

We also touch on blue ocean strategy and The Babysitter’s Club! 

Follow Beth - http://www.bethpickens.com/, read her book and consider attending one of her Getting Real with Money workshops later this year! 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

New episode of Tierney Talks with @paulakahn2020. Paula Graciela Kahn is a congressional candidate currently running to represent California’s 30th District – the San Fernando Valley. Celebrate this “holiday” by listening to a femme against fascism. We talk about the just transition - as in a shift “from an exploitative, extractive, global war economy to a cooperative, regenerative network for local peace economies.”

Paula tells me about how volunteering in Tijuana & observing atrocities at the border & in detention centers inspired her to run for office. She calls to shut down the Adelanto Detention Center in San Bernardino & describes her experiences advocating for detained friends in ICE centers. Paula wonders why ICE budgets are increasing when people are dying in ICE facilities, explains the immigration detention & deportation industry & shares how 9/11 & the Iraq War activated ICE.

We explore her non-profit Cosmovisiones Ancestrales & the notion of using drugs to support people who are victims of state violence through demobilization, disarmament & reintegration. We discuss the first scholarly article about “cult mushroom” ceremonies, how it fueled psychedelic tourism & the present need to create ecological preserves to protect plant medicine. Paula also imagines the recodification of psychedelics & other indigenous plant medicine by white venture capitalists & Western companies patenting indigenous medicine (a la the legal marijuana industry).

We also discuss the deficit of Latinx femmes in Congress & healing as nonlinear. We talk about the housing crisis in the San Fernando Valley & inclusionary zoning. The incumbent candidate, Congressman Brad Sherman, hasn’t done enough in regards to these issues. He’s been in office since 2013 :( She’s sick of trusting strangers to protect her community – please support Paula at the ballot in March! Raise your expectations for who your local rep could be! Send this to someone who votes in the Valley & donate to her campaign via the link in the bio. $5 helps!! More if you’re rich!!! Paula is the most PLUR congressional candidate of all time, promise. Follow her too <3

This episode contains original music by our sound engineer and audio producer Margot Padilla.

https://www.paulakahn2020.com/
http://cosmovisiones.org/
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/kahn2020

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

New episode of the podcast featuring @theaprilflores out now! April is a porn performer, model and artist from Los Angeles. She’s the star of Fat Girl, a fine art book that documents 12 years of her erotic art practice with the photographer Carlos Batts. In 2005, she got her start performing in porn with Belladonna and in 2014, she became the first performer to win the AVN Award for BBW Performer of the Year. She’s won a Feminist Porn Award for her work in “Lesbian Curves 3: Soft Girls and Strap Ons” and wrote about beauty and embodiment in Tristan Taormino’s The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. We talk about learning the term “zaftig” and she clears up my misunderstanding of what a FUPA actually is. 

She’s the first Tierney Talks guest to have her own masturbator toy and tells us all about the molding process (she’s the first BBW to be molded for such a toy & the Amazon reviews are worth reading!) We talk about entering the porn industry as a hobbyist, weed and body dysmorphia and the plus-size amount of work left to do in the fat acceptance movement! We also talk about fat representation in porn vs mainstream fashion and entertainment, enjoying her exhibitionism and her female fan base. April describes the way making porn fulfills her interests in filmmaking and says her main career motivation is to be visibly naked, fat, fucking, having fun and getting paid for it. And we’re smoking weed and wearing lingerie the whole time! Available on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, etc 

Credit and thanks to our engineer and audio producer Margot Padilla, whose band Dis Fantasy made the music you hear at the beginning and end of this episode ("Let Me Love You" and "She Magical." Check out Dis Fantasy's LP, streaming now! 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Andrea Amez is one of my favorite people to speak to in general, but especially about everything to do with skincare, beauty and wellness. Oddly enough, we didn't discuss any products her first time on the podcast, but today she's back with her favorite hair conditioner, lip balm, body wash, deodorant, body exfoliants, facial peels and more in tow.

Find the full list of products discussed here: http://bit.ly/TierneyAmezSummerProducts

Amez explains what my “acid mantle” is, how it differs from my skin's “microbiome” and how probiotic skincare impacts them both. She illuminates the thinking behind "vibrational" and "energy-based" products intended for emotional and spiritual results. She shouts out some of her favorite product lines (@aliangeskincare, @agentnateur, @oseamalibu + dozens more), calls herself a “body wash slut" and answers all my questions.

Such as:
- Should I buy the big bottle of rosewater with glycerin or without?
- What's the difference between $6 hyaluronic acid serum and $300 hyaluronic acid serum?
- Are these vegan gummies really going to hydrate my skin?
- How should I use my new Rose Quartz roller from @chakrubs?
- Why are my freckles more visible directly after sun exposure?
- Is it bad to love products?

Fresh off a trip to Mendocino, I discuss the cannabis tourism industry and wonder about what the next big cannabinoid will be (THC and CBD are 2 / 113). I also talk about William Randolph Hearst printing racist lies about weed in his newspapers because he owned huge timber holdings and paper mills and felt threatened by hemp paper. I hit my @leunebrand vapes and sip @kikoko_hq weed tea until I begin to wonder if I'm saying half the names of these beauty brands right.

I describe being in the operating room during a stranger’s Brazilian Butt Lift and the psychological reasons people love picking at their partner's skin too, both based on @wearemel stories.

Find the full list of products discussed here: http://bit.ly/TierneyAmezSummerProducts

Credit and thanks to Margot Padilla, the best sound engineer. 

Support the show