

Jay Shetty’s public relations team made a massive mistake - EP56
We welcome John McDermott to the podcast! The reality is, Jay Shetty has been lying about his past to sell the public a coaching program with FALSE credentials, among other products/books, and somehow has become very well connected with notable celebrities and political figures, even the president. When we first reported on this earlier this year, we knew this article was years old, and Nicole Arbour's much older. But no one was talking about it and Jay Shetty was growing his followers without any issue. He's still super connected and seems to be completely immune to cancel culture, unlike almost anyone else. We were wondering why. Some people have commented saying that brown people just enjoy bringing people down, and we should have original content. First of all, why out of the many thousands of brown podcasters, not one of them have talked about this?? Because they want him on their podcast, or they want to be like Jay one day. We care about being authentic and bringing important conversations into the limelight. We were on to something because millions have viewed our clips and many that commented said they had NO idea about this. What are your thoughts on Jay and were you surprised or have you known about this for a long time? More details: We spoke with John McDermott, the journalist behind The Guardian investigation "Uncovering the Higher Truth of Jay Shetty," after our first Jay Shetty episode went viral. John reached out after our clips blew up, and we got almost two hours with him. It started as a Jay Shetty profile for Esquire, and according to John, Jay's own PR team asked for him by name. He did a sit-down interview with Jay, read 8 Rules of Love (a book full of dating advice from a guy who took a vow of celibacy), and went to the book tour show at the YouTube Theatre in LA, where VIP tickets ran around $1,000 and Will Smith was hanging out backstage. None of it matched the humble former monk image. That's when it turned into an investigation. John built a timeline of every interview Jay had ever done and started fact checking his monk claims. He found Jay's Hare Krishna (ISKCON) name, Ghanashyam Priya Das, plus old blog posts he says contradict the story Jay tells about his three years as a monk, including how much of that time was spent at Bhaktivedanta Manor in Watford, England instead of India. He also talks about the Nicole Arbour video and the plagiarism allegations. Then the part most people probably never heard. Esquire killed the story, and John says his editor told him he was putting his career at risk. He took it to The Guardian. After it published, Jay's lawyers sent a legal threat, John answered it point by point with documentary evidence, and no lawsuit was ever filed. We also get into the Jay Shetty Coaching Certification School. John reports students paid about $7,000, were told on sales calls they could make $10,000 a month as life coaches, and saw marketing that compared the course to a master's degree from UK universities. He emailed those universities. Every one said they had no relationship with the school. Other stuff we cover: - Jay Shetty's religious background and why he rarely names ISKCON - Think Like a Monk, the On Purpose podcast, and who gets platformed by the self-described number one mental health podcast - How a former marketing student built a nine-figure business empire through Facebook, Arianna Huffington, Red Table Talk and WME - Why the Forbes cover story and the New York Times interview never really pressed him - The commodification of spirituality, orientalism, cultural appropriation, and how eastern spirituality gets packaged and sold in the West - Why the South Asian diaspora celebrated the article the most, and what it means for South Asian representation - Spiritual hypocrisy vs. the "paradox" Jay talks about - Why our Jay Shetty reaction clip took off on Instagram but stalled on YouTube - John's follow-up piece


















