Sometimes I find myself in the throes of writing agony. I don’t like the term writers’ block because it implies a certain impermanence. But what is vernacularly referred to as writers’ block, is part and parcel of the creative act itself. Anyone who’s tried to do something creative for an extended period of time can vouch for this. No one can exact…

I came across a novel that used food as tool for reflection into the life and mind of a few characters. Rachel Khong’s first novel Goodbye Vitamin, is about a woman who moves back home to care for her father, who has started to develop Alzheimer’s. And Khong meditates on this family by refocusing on their daily activities. From cooking to eating, t…

In August, West Virginia University announced that it would be dissolving its Department of World Languages, Literature and Linguistics. And a couple months after that, my school Middlebury College, chose to eliminate a faculty position in its creative writing department. As someone studying English Literature, and who cares deeply about the future…

I read Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land when it first came out in November of 2020. That time was filled with rampant polarization, multiple quaratines, alternative realities, an insurrection, and politics that was so messy it was near impossible to find any hope and see America as this Promised Land that Obama wrote about. Thinking about the …

Last November, I had Alexander Chee on the show. And in preparation for his interview, I read The Best American Essays 2022. I came across an essay titled “Ghosts.” This essay stood out from the rest of the anthology because it seemed to have 9 iterations. When I read further, I was baffled at the idea that a writer had used Artificial Intelligence…

About 6 months into my first year of college, I found myself soliloquizing to some friends about the beauties of suburban life. It struck me immediately that I was longing for a world that I found profoundly boring for 18 years, and had swore to never replicate. I was going to live my big life in cities. Yet the pleasures of driving around open roa…

As part of this mini series on the past and future of the music industry, I wanted to speak to another person who’s been a force in the industry for years. I came across an article in The Nation that was called The End of the Music Business. This piece presented the history of a century in recorded music that began with pre-war 78-rpm gramophone re…

In 2019, I went to New York City for 24 hours. I told my high school teachers I was sick, postponed two tests, and asked for an extension on a project; all because Jerome Lowenthal had agreed to give me a piano lesson at the Juilliard School. On a cold New York Winter Night, I went to his studio and he heard me play Bach and Beethoven. We went on f…

If you keep up with academic chatter in English literature, there’s a debate going around about the versatility of English degrees, and of the fairly insular nature of literary criticism that comes out of academia. A piece in the New Yorker earlier this year, titled The End of the English Major, prompted me to do some thinking about the world of li…

Imagine writing a history of the world from the perspective of a small California town that spans less than 30 sq. miles. That’s exactly what Malcolm Harris did. His new book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World was published earlier this year by Little Brown and Company. This is a sweeping historical account of the foundin…

I’ve been interested in this genre of “abstract hip hop” for a while now. The classification has existed for many years, usually referring to rappers and artists who make perhaps more esoteric music than mainstream hip-hop artists. Kenny Segal has been a consistent presence over the past decade or so, and received several accolades for his producti…

Indian politics has always been a beast I’ve been afraid of broaching both on the show and in my personal conversations. There are countless nuances that are often difficult for listeners outside the country—including myself—to understand. And the debate is so fluid and rampant that it’s easy for opinions to be misconstrued and cast-aside. A conver…

On today’s episode we have poet Elisa Gabbert. Elisa is the author of six collections of poetry and essays. Her two latest books are the essay collection The Unreality of Memory published by FSG Originals and the poetry collection, Normal Distance, published by Soft Skull Press. The Unreality of Memory is a collection that reckons with disasters la…

Alexander Chee is the author of two novels, Edinburgh, and The Queen of the Night and one collection of essays called How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He was also the editor for the 2022 edition of The Best American Essays Anthology, which was just published by HarperCollins. Alexander has the uncanny ability to methodically examine his own …

Once in a while you get musicians that evade all possible descriptors. Such is the case today’s guest AV Dummy. All I can say with certainty is that the London-based band is made up of vocalist BUCHANAN, Producer Christy Carey, Bass player Sat Chatterjee, and Drummer Jerome Johnson. They recently released their debut album titled PORNOVIOLENCE. Thi…

On today’s episode we have playwright, screenwriter, and professor Zayd Ayers Dohrn. He recently wrote and hosted the new podcast Mother Country Radicals for Crooked Media. This podcast is an audio documentary about his parents Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers who were radical activists in an organization called the Weather Underground. Dohrn chronic…

On today’s episode we have novelist and Zen Buddhist Priest Ruth Ozeki. She is the author of several books, including A Tale for the Time Being which was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, and her latest novel The Book of Form and Emptiness was published by Penguin Random House in 2021 and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2022. Ozeki also t…

On today’s episode we have novelist Emily Temple. She’s currently the managing editor at LitHub and her debut novel The Lightness was published in 2020 by Harper Collins. The Lightness is the story of three teenaged girls who find themselves at a summer meditation retreat in Colorado called “The Levitation Center.” Determined to unlock the secrets …

On today’s episode we have writer Jo Ann Beard. She is the author of the essay collection The Boys of My Youth, the novel In Zanesville, and her latest collection Festival Days was published in 2021 by Little Brown and Company. She has won several awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. Her essay “The Fourth State of Matter” on the Univ…

On today’s episode we have writer, critic, and lecturer at Harvard University, Maggie Doherty. Maggie’s writing has appeared in several places including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Yale Review, and The Nation. She’s also the author of the book The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s, which was pub…

On today’s inaugural episode we have poet, novelist, biographer, screenwriter, and Professor at Middlebury College, Jay Parini. Throughout his illustrious career, Parini has authored several biographies on writers including Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, and Gore Vidal. His novel about Leo Tolstoy, The Last Station, was adapted into an award winning…

In this week's podcast, we discuss the issues surrounding photos and your right to use them in social media. The Olympics are coming up in 2020, but you need to be careful or possibly avoid talking about it on your social media business pages. Get the full scoop by listening to this week's PALO Buzz!…

Are you in a creative slump? We'll give you some tips on how to get the juices flowing again. What's a Google guide? Are they uploading photos to your GMB page without you knowing?Par Palo Creative

Facebook is rolling out a new feature for businesses and their customers that allows users to book appointments directly through Facebook and Instagram. You can now find your favorite podcast in Google Search. Wait, hasn’t that always been around? Sort of, but that was based on podcast structured data elements.…

Google Plus is no longer. Be sure to check your website, email signatures, and other places to remove the old icons and links. What do you do if Facebook goes down? Should you pause your ads? We'll get some basic tips from Ryan. Is content marketing a new thing? Jim doesn't think so. And... What was Stephanie up to last weekend? Find out who took h…

PALO Creative is a digital marketing firm in Ohio. In today's episode we discuss Inbound marketing tactics and discuss website CMS choices and issues.Par Palo Creative

Did you know you can now clear your Facebook history? Get ideas for your Instagram stories. Bing integrates LinkedIn targeting data for ads, and more on this week's episode.Par Palo Creative

On the PALO BUZZ If your business gets a nasty review online, what’s the best course of action? There are steps you need to take to managing your online reputation.PLUS, Facebook is testing ads in its search results and how you can use virtual reality to promote your business.Par Palo Creative