John McDermott
@mcdermott
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Writer | Contributor: @Esquire, @GQmagazine, @GuardianUS | Alumnus: @AdAge @Digiday @WeAreMEL
Los Angeles, CA
Joined July 2010
“Guy told me I should give feedback in a ‘compliment sandwich.’ There should be a compliment, some criticism, followed by another compliment. I said, ‘That’s not a compliment sandwich, man. You name the sandwich by the filling. That’s a criticism sandwich on compliment bread.’”
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@lcmichaelides [Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You” plays in the background]. Your tax dollars can help someone in need like Lindsey, a former McKinsey analyst who raised millions of VC and now, tragically, has to get a real job like the rest of us.
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Indiana vs. Notre Dame: The I Just Took a Job at a Big 4 Accounting Firm and Live in Lincoln Park With a Few of my College Buddies Bowl.
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Last year, Esquire assigned me to write a profile about Jay Shetty, the ultra-famous self-help influencer and guru to the stars. At first, I thought Shetty was smarmy but ultimately harmless. But as I began my background research, I found Shetty had committed rampant plagiarism.
Uncovering the higher truth of Jay Shetty
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@viperwave The Einstein reveal; the JFK name drop; Oppy suiting up in his high-waisted trousers, pipe and wide-brimmed hat. it was a superhero film about scientists and politicians.
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The entire allure of college football was that each conference had a distinct regional identity, with its own unique playing style, and all of that has been undone by realignment.
Sources: Washington and Oregon are "fully engaged" with the Big Ten. Things remain fluid, but are trending in that direction.
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@kattenbarge There's literally a movie being projected onto an enormous screen right in front of you. Boredom is not an acceptable excuse.
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@bychloecaldwell Journalists are handy narrative devices because you can drop them into any scenario. Why are they here? Because they’re writing a magazine story, obviously.
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@coldhealing Tripp, Traxx and Tredd sounds like a TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES bad guy trio.
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I have an email tracker, and it's very fun to see all the fancy magazine editors who passed on the Jay Shetty story suddenly re-open the pitch emails they rejected several months back.
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A growing contingent of people says caffeine is just as potentially addictive and dangerous as other psychoactive chemicals, and that it's time we start thinking about and regulating it as such. I write about the anti-caffeine movement for @Esquire:
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@esquire I interviewed @michaelpollan, the undisputed 🐐🐐🐐 of food writing, for this piece and he did not disappoint.
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@BarstoolBigCat That’s a cat-cow stretch and it’ll do wonders for your back. Entire PMT crew should do it as prehab before taping.
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Some highlights from the investigation:. – Shetty did not spend three years in a temple in India, as he often claims. He spent the majority of that time in Watford, a town just outside of London. – Shetty's origin story, about how his life was changed at age 18 by a lecture.
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@Only1NatHere @lcmichaelides The entitlement, privilege and obliviousness of these people knows no bounds.
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@RepSantosNY03 @Mets You managed to make “Mets” a two syllable word. You never cease to amaze.
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Shout out to the @esquire art team for making this excellent infographic about different caffeinated beverages and the amount of caffeine they contain.
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My deepest, most profound thanks to my fearless editor, @samwolfson, who did the long, hard work of seeing this piece from draft to publication.
"the Tom Cruise of Hare Krishna" @mcdermott spent the past year investigating the origin story of Jay Shetty - the wellness guru who has risen to the top of Holywood and officiated Ben and Jen's wedding
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@Notdojaaa A friend once told me understanding satire is a good litmus test for someone’s intelligence.
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Jay has told a bunch of minor lies, too, that didn't make it into the final draft of the story. For instance, his website ( claimed for years that he received a degree in Behavioral Science, a degree that his university doesn't even offer.
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Chaitanya Lila, Jay's former girlfriend and a certified psychotherapist, released this video yesterday on TikTok and Instagram explaining why she went on-the-record in The Guardian article. (Re-posted here with her permission.)
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The University of Illinois Fighting Illini football team is one egregious no-touchdown call away from being 5-0 and ranked in the top 20.
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@micsolana You’re not really helping the image of Tech Bros as a bunch of obtuse, humorless dorks.
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@archivemileyc Her cover of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make me Lonesome When You Go" is incredible
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@RaxKingIsDead FWIW, I've found that being the only non-drinker in the group isn't that big of a deal. Most people don't even notice. Went to a bachelor party and didn't drink, and every morning one of the bros would tell me, "Man, you were so fucked up last night!".
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@micsolana Just to be clear: I’m self-employed, run my own business, a content production shop, I’ve boot-strapped the entire thing, and I don’t whine on Twitter when things don’t go my way. No one owes you a good living. The entitlement of you people is astounding.
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Shetty's origin story is that he was uninterested in spiritualism until he saw a monk give a lecture at his university. In his book, Shetty writes he only attended this lecture because a friend promised him they could go to the bar afterward and grab drinks. But on his website
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You spend your life dismissing conspiracy theorists as loons, only to have Jeffrey Epstein come along and tie together Goldman Sachs, the Rothschilds, the CIA, the Royal Family and pedophile politicians into one neat little package.
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@BrotiGupta A profile of Alan Lefkowitz, the therapist who treats all of the stand-up comedians in New York, going back to Richard Lewis in the '70s.
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After much soul-searching, I have realized the error of my ways. The Sarah McLachlan song I meant to reference is “In the Arms of an Angel.” I deeply regret the mistake and hope you can forgive me.
left, entrepreneur (job) employing 15 people (jobs) trying to keep her business alive. right, writer for esquire who thinks the chance they lose their jobs is funny, because it means they have to… get jobs. the point is not to make sense. the point is to delight in human misery.
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It brings me no joy to report that the people who were against paying college players and allowing them to transfer were right — college football and basketball have been professionalized to the point they’ve lost their unique appeal.
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After much soul-searching, I have realized the error of my ways. The Sarah McLachlan song I meant to reference is “In the Arms of an Angel.” I deeply regret the mistake and hope you can forgive me.
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I also spoke with @NikkiGlaser who waxed poetic on how coffee is a cultural signifier, conferring a sense of importance and sophistication.
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@helen "What the participants don't know is that I've swapped their dogs with other, cuter dogs to test their loyalty to their pets.".
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@ifyoucantwell Lol. I think that’s what makes the series so beautiful, tho—when you’re 32, you feel like your youth is over (BEFORE SUNSET). Then you grow up and realize life goes on longer than you once thought, for both better and worse (BEFORE MIDNIGHT).
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Another error on Jay's website: This blog post claiming he's Buddhist. (He's Hindu.)
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The entire allure of college football was that each conference had a distinct regional identity, with its own unique playing style, and all of that has been undone by realignment.
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Thanks to @h3h3productions for having me on the show to discuss the Jay Shetty investigation.
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Vice, BuzzFeed, Mic, Mashable, etc. burned through billions of dollars in VC $$$ only to be outlasted by the legacy media titles they were supposed to disrupt. Turns out brands matter.
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This is incredible, but running a 2:37 marathon still isn’t as impressive as running a profitable, general-interest magazine company.
Lovely day at The Boston Marathon. Spent much of it running with a guy trying to set the world record for someone dressed as a banana. Ended up hitting exactly my goal: 2:37:57 for 7th place in my age group.
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@Jesse_Brenneman They spent the entire season alluding to a conspiracy that involved the highest levels of state politics and then it was just some guy.
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For the record, I think they deserve to get paid. But the professionalization of college sports has come at a cost.
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@1929stockcrash If it's LA Chess Club, it's because it's 95% speed dating service and 5% chess club.
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My dad called me right as I was about to go on air and left me a voicemail telling me the date and time and that the news was reporting my story.
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I started running at the beginning of the pandemic to ease my anxiety and two years later I ran a 3:44 marathon.
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@DerekPutin That, or these people have all their relationships mediated through the internet and have never experienced a genuine IRL friendship.
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@Joe_Kells That's what I'm saying; Big Ten is about three yards and a cloud of dust out of the I-formation. Keep your fancy forward passes in the Pac 10 where they belong.
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@h3h3productions Jay's ex-girlfriend Chaitanya Lila, a licensed psychotherapist, just released a 23-minute YouTube video addressing Jay's defenders in their religious community and critiquing his life-coaching school.
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Forget about the egg shortage — I went to three grocery stores today that were all out of Kerrygold.
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@CartoonsHateHer 100%. It's also a virtue signal. If someone is in therapy in perpetuity, then they're using it to showcase how emotionally evolved they are, when in reality they have no intention of applying anything they've learned to their own lives and behaviors.
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@hwallop Market forces are trying to kill true journalism, but some of us refuse to go quietly into the good night.
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@clarkdotcomstar @esquire Read the section on genetic predispositions for caffeine metabolization. You probably don’t have the enzyme that breaks down caffeine.
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My single favorite piece of Jay Shetty content is this YouTube video of Shetty, a New York Times bestselling author, explaining how he reads a book a day. His secret? He doesn't read them — he skims, sometimes skipping entire sections.
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I was on the Zoom call. The call was pre-recorded, with Jay answering pre-selected questions, and the chat function was disabled. I know that many students from the school have asked for clarification about the school's qualifications in light of the @GuardianUS report. Jay.
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Cum Town fans checking out The 1975 are even more horrified by what they're hearing than 1975 fans checking out The Adam Friedland Show.
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@BeeBabs He's the prime example of what happens when influencers and celebrities replace journalists and academics as trusted public intellectuals.
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The reason movie theaters are struggling is because they don't make trailers with a gruff-voiced man saying, "In a world. " anymore. I have no idea wtf any of these movies are about.
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BREAKING: Jay just hosted a Zoom Q&A w/ students from the Jay Shetty Certification School, the life-coaching school whose credentials are in question, and he completely ignored questions about the school's accreditations.
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Yesterday, at the media opening for Super Nintendo World, I met the president of Nintendo America and learned his name is, I shit you not, Doug Bowser (@thetruebowser). Still processing this information.
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For @GQMagazine, I wrote about the chess craze in the NBA, with @luka7doncic, @kporzee, @KlayThompson, Derrick Rose and tons of other NBA players taking up the oldest board game in the world as a hobby.
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@esquire @BetaBilly99 Usually when an adult film actor crosses over, it's a pornstar trying to go mainstream. But @FleshMechanic19 has done the opposite — he left a promising acting career to become a hugely popular OnlyFans performer. My latest @Esquire column:
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@missmollymary Did you ever listen to The Bens, the EP made by Folds, Kweller and Lee? It rocked so hard.
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@TRizzyRoberts @RMcElhenney Doesn't say it was the creators' decision. But either way, SUNNY is not above capitulating to woke culture.
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I pitched this article to Men's Health. Went through three rounds of revisions. When I was sent a final proof of the article, it had been completely rewritten w/o my consent or knowledge. My voice had been taken out entirely and the framing of the piece completely changed.
Ben Patrick has a controversial plan to help you beat chronic pain—and transform your athleticism in the process.
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