How To Get a Great Haircut
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are you stuck in a hair rut? On this episode of How To!, Courtney Martin brings on Alana Lucia Balestrino, hairstylist, barber, and founder of the Brooklyn-based studio Baddies. Alana explains how to work with a stylist or barber to get a haircut you love.
If you liked this episode check out: How To Dress with Confidence. Also: Decoder Ring's Mystery of the Mullet.
Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, I'm Susie Weiss, and I've noticed there's just simply not enough podcasts in the world. So I'm launching my own. Let's go. Let's go, baby. Second Thought is a weekly show about pop culture. The stuff everyone's been binging, arguing about, obsessing over. Here's the thing about heated rivalry. I mean, even the most devoted swifties, I think we can agree, not our best work. We'll be hosting thoughtful conversations with culture's most important figures. Talk about genius. |
| 0:22.6 | Talk about generational talent. |
| 0:23.7 | Coming to headphones near you |
| 0:24.8 | on April 17th with a first guest you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:29.9 | I was sitting at the hair salon, dreading it and thinking this is a weird thing to have a problem |
| 0:37.1 | with, but at the same time, it's |
| 0:39.3 | something that's so ever present, literally on my head. Why not figure out whatever hangups I |
| 0:45.5 | have about it? Welcome to how to. I'm Courtney Martin. Hair. It's the feature that perhaps |
| 0:52.4 | says the most about us, right? It's connected to culture, |
| 0:55.8 | heritage, gender, personality. Before you even speak, your hair communicates something crucial |
| 1:01.0 | about who you are. When you take all of that out a sprinkle of beauty standards and a dash |
| 1:06.7 | of social anxiety, suddenly there's a lot of pressure to get your hair right. Which is why today's |
| 1:13.7 | listener wants some help. Hi, I'm Nick. I'm a Philadelphia theater maker. I'm 28. And I think men, |
| 1:23.6 | my age, are at the point where often they've sort of figured out a hairstyle and they go to their barber and say, give me whichever buzzer and cut it this way. |
| 1:33.2 | And I've just personally never settled on anything. |
| 1:36.0 | Right now, I wear my hair long. |
| 1:38.7 | It's about shoulder length, a little bit of wave or curl to it. |
| 1:43.3 | I've also spent a lot of time with short, high and tight, |
| 1:47.3 | like standard man haircut type deal. So that's sort of been my rhythm the past 10 years or so. |
| 1:54.7 | Let it grow out and then cut it all off. I love how you said the standard man haircut. Has that |
| 2:00.4 | been externally motivated at times? Like, |
| 2:02.3 | you have particular jobs where you felt like you needed to show up in a certain way? Or has it always |
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