Curveball: A podcast about possibility

She’s built businesses from Google searches, walked away from law school with zero regrets, and could roof your house tomorrow if she had to. (Seriously.) Taylor Bradford doesn’t follow straight lines. She doesn’t need to. From law school to oil and gas to running her own event rental company – Taylor’s journey is one big entrepreneurial improv show, powered by grit, gumption, and a lifelong crush on Google University. She’s also the voice behind And So (formerly Boss Girl Creative), a decade...

She was six when the world told her she was wrong – for coloring outside the lines. So she spent decades getting it all right. Until illness forced everything to stop, and her inner artist finally picked up the brush. What spilled out next? Messy, wild, glorious truth. Deborah Ann Baker was the model of perfection – a PhD in counseling psychology, the gold medals, the mask that never cracked. Until her body did. A sudden diagnosis brought her life to a halt. No more pushing. No more pretendin...

She spent 15 years becoming a doctor. And then she quit. Dr. Zarya Rubin did what most people only fantasize about: she stepped off the treadmill before it broke her completely. After chasing the dream of medicine all the way to Columbia and beyond, she hit a wall – the kind you don’t bounce back from with a vacation or a green juice. It took a literal wake-up call (a phone call, actually) to snap her out of the “I’m fine” trance and into a radically new life. In this conversation, Zarya shar...

What happens when a “painfully shy” woman loses her job, sells her house, packs up her family (and two dogs), and starts a business from a 300-square-foot RV? Turns out, she finds her voice — and helps hundreds of speakers find theirs, too. Nona Prather used to be the quiet one. The behind-the-scenes girl. The “don’t call on me” kid who hated public speaking and avoided the spotlight like it was contagious. But then 2020 hit like a wrecking ball. Nona and her husband both lost their jobs. Ins...

What do you do when your TEDx is about to blow up… and a pandemic blows everything up instead? Robbie Samuels had it all lined up. TEDx talk? Check. Big breakout moment? Imminent. Ten years of reputation-building as the go-to networking expert? Locked. And then March 2020 hit. In a matter of days, the world shut down–and Robbie’s in-person speaking career went poof. Most people would’ve panicked. Robbie pivoted. He threw a virtual happy hour on Zoom, invented a whole new offer in real time, a...

Her husband was diagnosed with cancer. She quit her job. Not the plot of a rom-com – Toby Myles’s real life. And it led her exactly where she was meant to go. Toby Myles had a plan – a dream, really. Leave her corporate job of 15 years, grow her handmade jewelry biz, ride into the sunset with her newly retired husband and a few restored motorcycles. But life had other ideas: incurable blood cancer kind of ideas. Most people would cling to the job, the benefits, the security blanket. Toby hand...

She failed accounting. Became a top storyboard artist. Got booted by the industry. Painted 40 canvases in 30 days. Sold 11 in an hour. Susan Peppler’s story is what happens when you follow your joy and trust your gut – even when it’s covered in paint. Susan Pepler didn’t set out to become a professional fine artist. She just kept following what felt almost impossible – and then doing it anyway. In this vibrant and joy-splashed episode, Susan shares how she went from flunking business school (...