James’ Daily Emails

Today’s story is a tip of the cap to my good friend and longtime Podcast Artistry™ client, Jennifer Hill who often tells the story of how to “train” a flea. As the story goes, a flea can jump incredibly high compared to its tiny size. However, if you put the flea in a jar and…

This past week, an associate of mine posted on Facebook that a friend of hers was looking to get some work in the podcasting business, specifically as a show notes writer and writing transcriptions. Since I’m taking on some new clients this summer and might be in need of some help with such things, I…

A young and very gifted writer was in a quandary. She had won awards in her school, and had even been published in a few nationally syndicated publications. Her future looked bright and promising. Yet she was stuck in a slough of intellectual mud. This brilliant, once seemingly unstoppable writer had fallen into a deep…

The other day I was driving along here in Virginia Beach and a sign outside a Mazda dealership caught my eye. It said to visit such and such website and, “RESERVE THE MAZDA OF YOUR DREAMS!” Now I’m no marketing genius, but I have never heard the word “Mazda“ and the words “of your dreams“…

Those of you who follow this newsletter know that I’m a spiritual man. In fact, the emails that have an overtly religious theme in the subject line are overwhelmingly the most opened emails, and there’s not a close second, so I can see where I’m striking a nerve with these things. In that spirit, I…

A recent conversation with a new podcast production client led me to this video showing a mother and father eagle teaching its baby how to fly. I had always heard about how eagles will push their babies out of the nest so they’re forced to teach themselves how to fly. What I didn’t understand until…

Awhile back I featured the great John Lee Dumas on the This Is What We C.R.A.V.E. podcast. Among the things we discussed was how John’s massive financial success with his podcast in the 2013-14 timeframe caused people to (erroneously as it turned out) assume that having a podcast was the secret sauce to making gobs…

Who do you get mad at when you realize you’ve believed something that is either blatantly false or you’ve been misled in some way? Do you get angry at the person who misled you? Or do you get angry at yourself for believing the falsehood or the lie without really questioning anything? I guess both…

My friend Tom Woods is publishing a book containing stories shared by his followers about their experiences living through the Covid lockdowns and attempted transformation of how human beings interact with one another. Although I can’t say I suffered any true hardship, I did have some interesting experiences I’ve been wanting to put into writing.…

“Hello darkness, my old friend…” Everybody knows the iconic Simon & Garfunkel song, but do you know the amazing story behind the first line of The Sounds of Silence? It began 62 years ago, when Arthur “Art” Garfunkel, a Jewish kid from Queens, enrolled in Columbia University. During freshman orientation, Art met a student from…