Researching Real Housewives w/ Haewon Asfaw and Ale Lemus

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: [email protected].