The Power of Mindset: Official Trailer
For MasterClass's mindset class, I cowrote the trailer and contributed headlines as well as email and social copy.
James Rickman
Copywriter | Editor | Journalist | Cinnamon Boy
Talking with Josh Malerman and The High Strung
When he was about 14, Josh Malerman saw a strange man in the living room of his parents’ house. The rest of the family was asleep, and Josh was watching USA Up All Night. Sensing movement in the room...
MasterClass: Class Guide excerpts
In addition to editing several of our award-winning Class Guides, I wrote a handful of articles—like the ones collected here.
Playboy Profile: Lina Esco
Lina Esco captured the world’s attention by asking women to free the nipple in the name of equality. Now she’s calling on men to join her crusade to update the Constitution. Will it work?
The Art of Stand-Up: 10 Tips from Tim Heidecker
About halfway through An Evening With Tim Heidecker, an audience member proposes to his girlfriend onstage. This genuinely moving moment is the centerpiece of a set that begins with a mic stand-related tantrum...
Eric Andre for President
Unlike his rivals—with the exception of our actual president—the Florida-born hopeful is building his image on a platform of blatant falsehoods, below-the-belt insults and dereliction of duty.
The Sloppy Boys Blow Minds in “Tha Mastah Bong Rippah”
The Sloppy Boys knew exactly how they wanted to celebrate the release of their third album, Paradiso: with “a big sweaty kooky tour,” in the words of singer-guitarist Tim Kalpakis. Unfortunately, Paradiso came out last July. How does a self-proclaimed “party rock band” endure when parties and rocking are on indefinite hold?
Talking Music and Magic With Phoebe Bridgers and Carmen Maria Machado
The bio that accompanies Punisher, the new album by Phoebe Bridgers, contains no backstory, no direct references to the artist’s work, no case for why you should buy or stream it. It’s a two-page work of fiction set in a haunted house, which makes sense considering it was written by Carmen Maria Machado.
20Q: Lakeith Stanfield
The enthralling actor talks aspiration, Atlanta (and not knowing Donald Glover was once on Community) and the truth behind his surreal Oscars cameo.
Danny Masterson on Life in Scientology
We asked Masterson if we could focus in on the religion—“religious philosophy,” as he calls it—and why it works for him. As it turned out, we spoke with him just after he'd arrived to Sundance, where the already-controversial documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief was about to premiere. All the more reason to hear a bit of Masterson's story.
The Rumpus Interview with Kurt Vile
You can get a sense of Kurt Vile’s many contradictions the second you lay eyes on his new album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze: There is his name, painted in giant letters across an entire building; beneath that is a lower wall festooned with lyrics, and then the man himself, slouching in the corner.
The Panic and Rapture of Martin Amis
Desmond Pepperdine has a secret — one that’s revealed on the first page of Martin Amis’s new novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England. The secret itself is pretty unthinkable, but it precipitates a crime so unthinkable that, once it’s happened, Desmond can’t think about it.
James Rickman (People Get Ready) Talks the Horrifically Happy Stirrings of GWAR's Dave Brockie
Whatever planet Oderus and the Scumdogs were from, I don’t think it’s that far from here.
