Always Choose Orange

What in the world is a “clearness committee” and what could it possibly have to do with our creativity? In today’s episode, we make a few observations about a short excerpt from Parker J. Palmer’s book  Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation  and examine the relationship between feedback, question-asking, and increased clarity when it comes to our art and purpose. We also talk ab...

Do you ever want to quit working on a creative project because it feels like a slog? Or find yourself saying that you just need to get it done as fast as you can so you can move onto something else? If that sounds familiar, number one: you're not alone, and number two: thankfully, there are some tools for that. This episode of  Always Choose Orange  uses a clip from a recent J. Cole interview...

How do songs actually come into being? In this episode of  Always Choose Orange , Mat Charley (co-founder, lyricist, and producer of Raynes) and I talk about the craft and obsession behind his songwriting. After more than 30,000 hours spent writing music, Mat has learned that songs rarely emerge from force alone. Instead, they reveal themselves gradually through melody, iteration, and careful atte...

Have you ever looked into your closet thinking, “None of this feels right?” In this episode of Always Choose Orange, I talk with stylist Ellie Richards about how clothing can act as a mirror for how clearly we understand ourselves. Drawing from fashion psychology, Ellie explains why developing a personal style starts internally rather than with aesthetics or trends. Instead of copying influencers...

How do you design an experience or piece of art that transforms someone rather than simply giving them more information?  In this thought-provoking episode of  Always Choose Orange , author and philosopher Peter Rollins and I talk about how he's spent the last 20+ years of his life plumbing the depths of some of the deepest philosophical and theological questions. From his early days creating...

In March of 2024, Coulou sat down in the bedroom of his Brooklyn apartment with his guitar, some effects pedals, and a trumpet. What happened next was something special. He set up a camera, strummed his guitar, found some chords he liked, looped them, grabbed his trumpet, sounded the first note, and Coulou’s Cafe Trumpet Meditations were born. Now, two years later, Coulou has released more than 65...

How do you keep moving forward once your work begins to resonate with people on a larger scale? In this episode of  Always Choose Orange , I talk with mixed media painter Sarah Detweiler about the quieter, more complicated season that follows increased public recognition. While Sarah’s  Hidden Mother  series helped her understand herself more deeply as an artist, this conversation focuses on what...

What does it take to see the world around you the way an artist sees it?  In this episode of  Always Choose Orange , I chat with visual artist Nasir Young about how skateboarding transformed the way he moves through cityscapes and how that way of seeing laid the groundwork for his detailed oil paintings. His work documents the small, often overlooked wonders of urban life, including brick walls, c...

With 2025 behind us, my brother Andrew and I check in with each other to talk about some of the most powerful, entertaining, and interesting books we read in the second half of the year. Between the two of us, we read a lot of books (probably too many) so these were, for us, the best of the best. We use the following questions as a guide: Which book surprised you the most? What is the most ambitio...

What does it actually take to build a sound slowly and deliberately?  In this episode of Always Choose Orange, I talk with electronic music producer and multi-instrumentalist Ankurana about the long, unglamorous reality of developing a musical voice — years of experimentation, hundreds of abandoned ideas, and learning when to stop adding and start listening. We talk about: Learning music productio...

Any Austin changed the rules of gaming content on YouTube. So what happens after that? In his return to Always Choose Orange, Austin reflects on the growth and influence of his channel over the past year. We talk about the benefits and challenges of bringing on additional team members, the one thing he believes should be the true goal of time management, and how he uses the rise of imitators as co...

How do cultural values shape narrative structure? This is one of the main questions in author Henry Lien's most recent book,  Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling.  After leaping headfirst into writing at age 42 and spending some formative time at the Clarion Workshop learning from George R.R. Martin, Kelly Link, and Chuck Palahniuk, Henry developed a fascination wit...

You know what they say, “you can’t spell artificial without art!” …What? What do you mean you haven't heard that? I'm sure someone, somewhere has said it… Anyway, in today's episode, we explore a provocative idea put forth in Carl Wilson’s book  Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey To The End of Taste  that in a sense, all authenticity in art is a kind of performance. If we a...

Have you ever been in a meeting that just as easily could have been an email? Have you slogged through a personal development book only to realize that the whole thing could've been summed up in a few tidy bullet points? With the advent of LLMs such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini, it's easier than ever before to access information in a fraction of the time. And many times, that's a gr...

After a two month hiatus, Always Choose Orange is back with a new episode! But here's the question —  what exactly is it? A quiet manifesto? A book review for three Pulitzer Prize-winning meditations on the human experience? Or, is it merely a Trojan horse I'm using to transport some really great Ursula K, Le Guin quotes into your ears? Whatever it is, come ready to explore a way of readin...

We're a little more than halfway through 2025 and it’s time for a six-month reading check-in! In this episode, my brother Andrew joins me to discuss six books that affected us during the first half of the year. We use the following questions as a guide: Which book surprised you the most? What is the most ambitious book you read this year? Which book had the best prose? What is one book that ma...

Andrea Burgay is a visual artist from Syracuse, New York, currently based in Brooklyn. Her practice centers on collage, sculpture, and mixed-media assemblage, often utilizing found and vintage materials to explore themes of transformation, decay, and renewal. Through layering, tearing, and reassembling paper, books, and ephemera, Andrea creates works that reflect the passage of time and the interp...

Dr. Deirdre Barrett is a renowned psychologist, author, and dream researcher affiliated with Harvard Medical School. Serving as a Lecturer in Psychology within the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance, she teaches courses on dreaming to undergraduates, psychiatry residents, and psychology interns. Dr. Barrett's research explores dreams, hypnosis, and evolutionary psychology. S...

Alex Eckman-Lawn is a Philadelphia-based artist and illustrator known for his intricately layered, hand-cut paper collages. His work explores themes of control, psychological complexity, and the hidden architecture of the human body. Alex’s distinctive visuals have appeared across a wide spectrum of media, including comic books, album and book covers, music videos, t-shirts, and gig posters. He ha...

A single sentence at the start of a book can set the tone for everything that follows. In this week's episode, we dip our toes into the mysterious and powerful world of epigraphs — the quotes or passages that open some of our favorite stories. We explore the many purposes of epigraphs, from foreshadowing and framing to adding emotional or intellectual depth. We examine how they can elevate a w...

Jon Guerra is a singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas, renowned for his distinctive style of devotional music. Jon describes his work as "less Sunday morning worship music and more Monday morning prayer music." His critically acclaimed albums — including  Keeper of Days  (2020),  Ordinary Ways  (2023), and most recently,  Jesus  (2025) blend poetic lyricism with minimalist instrumentati...

Tara Sellios creates monumental photographs using real bones, insects, dried flowers, and natural light—assembled by hand and captured in a single shot on an 8×10 large-format camera. In this episode of  Always Choose Orange , Tara walks through her entire creative process: from early sketches and symbolic research to assembling upright sculptural scenes, working with articulators and entomologist...

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She often works in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Shaw is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, an honorary doctorate from Yale, five Grammys, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She ha...

In the conclusion to our five-episode series on enjoyment, we examine the relationship between understanding and sharing. Using the  coffee taster's flavor wheel , the  Studio Binder YouTube channel , and  Scott McCloud's books on comic-making , we look at the way developing a vocabulary helps us process and understand a sensory experience. And to wrap things up, we'll use a probably-a...

Getting lost is often thought of as a bad thing. However, when it comes to art, it can be a major contributor to our sense of enjoyment. This week's episode hones in on six access points to getting lost in something you love. From allowing your mind to freely associate to memorizing pieces of a poem, we'll examine some practical ways to look at art from a new angle.   FOR EXCLUSIVE CREATIV...