Taryn Southern is an American storyteller, public speaker, artist, and brand strategist who works with emerging technologies.

While in school, she competed in American Idol and received a grant to travel to Peru to study the shamanic use of ayahuasca among rainforest communities.

[11] Her song "New World" was tokenized using blockchain technology to enable hundreds of collaborators to split backend royalties on sales and streams of the track.

[19] On July 2, 2007, Southern released her first YouTube video, which garnered more than a million views and appeared on FOX and MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.

She cited the YouTube algorithm as problematic for the digital community, and a desire to focus on other creative endeavors and experiments with emerging technology.

[29] She went on to host and executive produce DirecTV's first original series, Project My World, before landing other jobs in the entertainment industry and building a YouTube channel.

[36] The series, which launched in 2015 and 2016, was an exploration of internet culture, and featured guests ranging from celebrity/science enthusiast Seth MacFarlane and King Bach to psychedelic advocate Zach Leary and activist musician Kate Nash.

[40][41] In October 2021, Taryn Southern filed a lawsuit against her former fiancé, Bryan Johnson, alleging that he abandoned her after her breast cancer diagnosis.

However, during her cancer treatments in 2019, she alleged that Johnson demanded she move out of their shared home, leaving her without a steady income to cover her medical expenses.