Fast talk, real feeling, cultural side-eye.
Around The Way Curls moves like a private voice note that accidentally became a public record. Shanti and Antoinette turn family updates, beauty mishaps, celebrity news, political headlines, books, AI, and late-night anxiety into sharp, funny, emotionally open conversation.
PRESS PLAY
Around The Way Curls is a duo conversation with the texture of real friendship: fast, interruptive, affectionate, and always one sharp turn away from a larger point. Shanti and Antoinette do not separate life talk from culture talk. A family lunch, a new relationship introduction, a haircut, a headache, or a late-night spiral about purpose can sit beside Iran, Israel, nuclear negotiations, AI, Paramount, celebrity fallout, and the cost of integrity. The show’s rhythm is casual, but its attention is serious. It notices how the news lands in the body. It also notices how entertainment teaches people what to excuse, who to shame, and what kinds of harm get repackaged as spectacle. Recent episodes revisit reality television through the language of consent and production ethics. They question media ownership, political messaging, workplace AI, water use claims, and the strange pressure to keep functioning while public life feels unstable. The pop-culture range is wide: Kanye, Usher, Jay Z, Cesar Chavez, Kristi Noem, the Oscars, MBJ, Jonathan Majors, Octavia E. Butler, Homegoing, and industry power all pass through the same conversational room. The personal material is just as central. Aging, exhaustion, parenting, partnership, renting, retirement fears, school, and children’s futures appear not as tidy self-help prompts but as the thoughts that keep people awake. The humor keeps the show moving. The tenderness gives it weight. Its chaos is not random; it is the sound of two people trying to stay honest while everything keeps demanding a reaction. Around The Way Curls suits people who want cultural commentary that still feels human at the edges: opinionated, funny, intimate, and willing to admit confusion before finding the clearer sentence.
Made for: For people who want messy, funny, emotionally intelligent conversation about culture, politics, relationships, and adulthood. It especially fits listeners who like commentary that starts in lived experience instead of studio polish.
What sets it apart: The show’s edge comes from the way Shanti and Antoinette let ordinary life and major headlines occupy the same space. It feels less like a segment machine and more like two close voices tracking the world in real time.
Rooted in friendship, humor, and self-actualization, Shanti and Antoinette are a differing, but dynamic duo who explore both the profound and the profane because #DualityIsAThing.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Shanti and Antoinette make history immediate by tracing how politics, media, and personal memory change meaning over time.
Around The Way Curls turns conversation into a way of tracking how public events become personal understanding. Shanti and Antoinette move between everyday life, politics, entertainment, and memory, questioning one another as they test what they know.
Nuclear capability gets the Rice Krispies treatment; you stay for Shanti and Antoinette's candid detours.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A messy, funny conversation about being busy, surgery, books, and Iran.
Around The Way Curls keeps its attention on personal conversation as it moves through being busy, surgery, books, and Iran. Shanti and Antoinette come across as open about not always feeling right in the body, and that gives the episode a plainspoken honesty that never feels…
A candid meditation on how past choices keep the future awake.
Shanti and Antoinette shape the episode around the private pressure points of a life: a father's remarriage, a partner meeting the family over vegetarian Chinese food, and the late-night thoughts that will not stay quiet.
A loose conversation about politics, AI anxiety, streaming talk, and everyday interruptions.
Shanti and Antoinette move restlessly from politics to AI anxiety, then into a company-made note-taker, a boss who dismisses the water-use claim as fake, and the familiar pull of wanting the article anyway.
A messy, lucid run from banter into a sharp Iran breakdown.
The episode starts in a state of mild collapse and turns that mood into something useful, moving from makeup banter and doom-spiral jokes into a clear-eyed look at the U.S. and Israel strikes on Iran.
A breezy return grows into a pointed look at reality TV exploitation.
Around The Way Curls opens on an easygoing catch-up built around hair talk, straight-hair jokes, the Dyson Airwrap, and a cut that only really shows itself when it is not tucked into a bun.
A family lunch opens into a humane look at the life built and the lives imagined.
Family lunch becomes a doorway into the lives people can no longer live. Around The Way Curls starts at a Chinese vegetarian restaurant, where a father's 15th anniversary lunch brings a new relationship into view for relatives.
A chicken-sandwich detour turns into a story about collaboration and failure.
The episode moves from blessings and fried chicken sandwiches to Chef Jimmy Thomas, then eases into the harder work of getting people aligned.
Marketing war stories turned into usable playbooks.
Revenue leaders talking shop on AI, pipeline and value.
Shanti announces she's stepping back from the podcast for three weeks to focus on opening the Sable Collective, a boutique for women of color in Philadelphia.
The hosts discuss their emotional reaction to watching the HBO documentary 'Exterminate All the Brutes' about colonization and historical revisionism, expressing anger and sadness about the surreal nature of reality.
Shanti recounts a lunch where her Ukrainian stepmother sang a James Brown-inspired song in a quiet restaurant, revealing intense family dynamics.
Shanti opens by holding up Maya Angelou, who worked as a streetcar conductor, cook and stripper, as proof that a life led by intuition can still produce "wisdom and hope and possibility." She relays Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson's claim, from a December 15th luncheon, that Black maternal mortality rose over 200% (Shanti first said 300%) in states with abortion bans.
Around The Way Curls host Shanti and her co-host mix personal updates with coverage of Ryan Clark's ESPN departure and Mitch McConnell's 92-day absence.
Around the Way Curls returns to Spotify after Shanti and Antonette describe a year in “purgatory” with the platform.
Shanti and Antoinette start with a check-in.
["Shanti opens with a Chinese vegetarian lunch where her father's Ukrainian wife sings a custom James Brown-style song for their 15th anniversary and pays for the whole table.", "She then recommends the Philadelphia Art Museum exhibition on Noah Davis, the artist who helped build the Underground Museum in Los Angeles and wrote about making Black people look normal.", "From there the episode turns into a discussion of counterfactual thinking, which Shanti describes as the habit of replaying \"what if\" and \"if only\" paths about rent, retirement, and Jolie's future.", "Antoinette pushes the conversation toward Broadway, motherhood, and freedom, asking what people actually want from the lives they did not choose."]
This episode features a promotional segment for Avocado Mattress, highlighting its organic materials and Earth Month sale, with a brief personal anecdote about supporting Cardi.
The hosts discuss personal experiences like headaches, dehydration, teeth grinding, and past hauntings while casually chatting about hair styling and self-care.
Shanti and Antoinette open with their usual banter before the talk shifts to politics, AI, and that feeling that everyone is watching everything.
Shanti and Antoinette open in a jittery, joking mood.
The hosts of Around the Way Curls introduce their podcast, encourage listener engagement through phone calls, and hint at discussing partnership and life experiences.
Shanti and Antoinette come back after a break and jump right into hair, straightening, and the Dyson Airwrap.
The hosts discuss their personal experiences with womanhood, cultural identity, and recent TV shows like White Lotus.
The hosts discuss celebrity controversies including Nicki Minaj vs Cardi B, Bad Bunny's political statements, and Leonardo DiCaprio's reported investments in Gaza.