Shawn Ryan: There's A Battle For Your Soul, It's Happening Right Now

1. 0:00 – 2:18

   Intro

   1. SBSteven Bartlett0:00

      You said you think you visited hell.

   2. SRShawn Ryan0:02

      I know I did, and it was more real than anything I've experienced. It was the most amount of fear I'd ever felt in my life. My body was contorted. It was doing things that the human body shouldn't do.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett0:14

      Do you think you were possessed? Because subsequently you've had several exorcisms.

   4. SRShawn Ryan0:17

      Yes. The things that are happening are just undeniable.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett0:20

      What happened?

   6. SRShawn Ryan0:21

      I'll tell you what I experienced.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett0:22

      Just before we get into all of that, you have lived a remarkable life.

   8. SRShawn Ryan0:25

      I was in the US Navy, went to Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, and done some insane missions. I mean, you learn a lot of critical life lessons, but there's another side too. I mean, you get addicted to those type of environments, adrenaline.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett0:39

      And after your CIA contracting role, you moved to Medellin, Colombia?

   10. SRShawn Ryan0:43

       Yeah. It was probably the most dangerous thing I'd ever done.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett0:46

       Did you get involved in the drug dealing networks?

   12. SRShawn Ryan0:48

       Yes. I never really dealt. It was more setting up the network, figuring out who the players are that gave me the rush. There's not very many people that can pull some [beep] like that off. But then this guy, Freddy, and he said, "The police were after me." They had planted a bug in the light fixture outside of my door, and then they...

   13. SBSteven Bartlett1:08

       You now have built one of the biggest podcasts on planet Earth.

   14. SRShawn Ryan1:11

       Yes, but my show will not appear in popular podcasts because of something that I was saying a long time ago. It had to do with the [beep] .

   15. SBSteven Bartlett1:18

       That is very fucking weird. Do you think podcasters are being compromised by guests being planted on their shows or in other ways?

   16. SRShawn Ryan1:24

       Yes. Here's one example. Trump administration crushed it in the election cycle, right? Really utilized the podcast. They saw the power of it. It was a great tactic, and so I think that they have people inside of all the platforms that we use, and this has happened to me because one time I had a guy come on, and we can talk about that.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett1:40

       And you endorsed Trump before the election.

   18. SRShawn Ryan1:42

       I wanted him to win.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett1:43

       Have you changed your opinion on Trump now?

   20. SRShawn Ryan1:45

       Oh, yeah, for a multitude of reasons. I probably shouldn't even be saying this, but...

   21. SBSteven Bartlett1:52

       Before this episode starts, I have a small favor to ask you. Two months ago, 61% of the people that watched this channel weren't subscribed. We're now down to 58%. My goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've made on this channel, if you like this channel, can you do me a small, quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, the more we can invest in bringing you even better guests. Thank you, and enjoy this episode. [upbeat music]

2. 2:18 – 3:29

   What Made Shawn Ryan?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:18

      Shawn Ryan, you have lived a remarkable life for so many different reasons. Um, I feel like you've lived several different lives as well, dare I say. But for anybody that might not be familiar with your smash hit show and your incredible journey through the military, can you give me a, a, a top line on the career that you've had before you got into podcasting, for those that might not know?

   2. SRShawn Ryan2:41

      Yeah, joined the US Navy at, I think I enlisted at age 17. Went straight to, into the Navy SEAL program, went to BUD/S, went to SEAL teammate, spent five and a half years in the Navy, and then left that, became a real estate agent. I had read a book by Donald Trump way back then on, this is it, How to Get Rich. It inspired me to become an entrepreneur and failed miserably.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett3:08

      [laughs]

   4. SRShawn Ryan3:09

      So then I looked at government contracting, started contracting for Central Intelligence Agency, started a small State Department gig, got picked up for the CIA contract, did that through Blackwater, then jumped over to a company called SOCT, and then, uh, wound up getting picked up direct contractor for the agency with no middleman.

3. 3:29 – 6:00

   What Separates a Navy SEAL From the Rest of the Military

   1. SBSteven Bartlett3:29

      And you said that you wanted to be a Navy SEAL. Now, for, for international audiences that might not know what a Navy SEAL is relative to just, like, being in the Army, what is the distinction?

   2. SRShawn Ryan3:39

      A Navy SEAL, SEAL stands for Sea, Air, and Land, so you operate in the sea, air, and the land. It's, uh, special operations. So it is, uh, one of the most prolific special operations units in the world. You go through a training pipeline that's a couple years long. You go through BUD/S, which if you make it, um, without getting hurt or without getting rolled back, that's six months. I didn't make it without rolling back, so I think I spent about nine months there. Then you go to jump school, then you go to SQT, SEAL Qualification Training, which is kind of where they turn you into... I guess I shouldn't say they turn you into a special operator, but, but that's the f- the final school. Then you get your SEAL trident, and then you spend another year to year and a half training at your SEAL team before you ever even get the opportunity to, to, to deploy, uh, for the country. Diving, jumping, land warfare, demolition, small unit tactics, lots of time in a kill house, lots of time in land warfare, all different, uh, operational environments, desert, winter, jungle. You name it, we're in it.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett4:48

      Is it equivocal to the SAS, which is, like, the British version of the Special Operations team?

   4. SRShawn Ryan4:53

      I would say, yeah, SAS or SBS.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett4:56

      Okay. And you must have seen some pretty horrific, interesting, unforgettable things while you were on those tours of duties around the world.

   6. SRShawn Ryan5:05

      Yeah. Yeah. Operated in a lot of different environments. The first thing I ever saw, uh, that was, that, that, that, that was warfare-ish, it wasn't really hot. I thought it was hot at the time, but, uh, 2004, we went to Haiti when Aristide got pulled out of power. It was the first time I'd really seen true poverty, and, uh, I don't know if you've ever been there, but I mean it, you know, the sewage goes right into the streets. All the prisoners had broken out. We'd, there were dead bodies floating around in the water, bullet holes everywhere. Every once in a while, I'd see a car on fire. I mean, it was just mass chaos. It really wasn't anything compared to what I would see later on, but, uh, but that was the first place. And then Afghanistan, uh, we went there after Operation Red Wings, uh, happened. That was, uh, the biggest loss in SEAL team history

4. 6:00 – 8:35

   What Really Happened During Operation Red Wings

   1. SRShawn Ryan6:00

      at the time.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett6:00

      What was Operation Red Wings?

   3. SRShawn Ryan6:02

      Have you ever seen the movie Lone Survivor?

   4. SBSteven Bartlett6:04

      No.

   5. SRShawn Ryan6:05

      Okay. There was a, a sniper element on a mountaintop that was, that was surveilling a town that had a high value t- uh, terrorist in, in there. And, um, the sniper hide was compromised by a goat herder. Goat herder went back to town and told everybody what he had seen and then, and then they ambushed the element up there. Helicopters went down, and then there was one guy that survived it. And so it was, it was the biggest loss ever in SEAL team history at the time. That happened in, on June 28th, and I think we were there by late, late September or Oc- early October, I believe is when we were there. We did some, um, hit some targets, but they were pretty much all dry holes. Grabbed a couple of prisoners, um, stuff like that. And then we actually went home early, and then I went to Iraq. Well, I went to Iraq. My platoon went home. I had decided I wanted to get out at that point. Uh, it just, for me, it wasn't really what it was, uh, what I thought it was gonna be.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett7:08

      What was it?

   7. SRShawn Ryan7:09

      I thought it would be a lot more combat. I wanted to go out every night and do the job, do direct actions, do CQB, do sniper stuff, whatever. I just wanted to work. And, uh, we weren't getting that in Afghanistan. It was few and far between, and this was '05 timeframe and... '05, '06 timeframe. I can't remember what happened, uh, but the elections were dragging on, and so I had a OIC, which is kinda like the leader of a, of a SEAL platoon. He had f- found a way to farm us out to conventional units that were getting hit, were getting hit on supply routes with, with roadside bombs, uh, suicide bombers, stuff like that. And so we would attach into these conventional units and train them up. "Hey, this is how you, this is how you run surveillance. This is how you come up with a mission," basically. And we would teach them everything from how to plan the mission, to how to set up a sniper hide, how to shoot, how to insert, how to exfil, uh, how to position all the different teams. And then we would go out there, we would take them with us and, uh, hunt the people that were killing our guys. And every time we went out, we'd, we had killed the bad guys, uh, the terrorists, within, within 24 hours of being out there. And then we'd move on to the next unit. And that was my last deployment.

5. 8:35 – 9:45

   How Becoming a Navy SEAL Changed Him

   1. SBSteven Bartlett8:36

      When you came back from the SEAL team, were you a different man?

   2. SRShawn Ryan8:39

      Definitely.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett8:40

      In what way were you changed?

   4. SRShawn Ryan8:43

      A lot of ways. You learn, uh, a lot of critical life lessons, uh, in the SEAL teams and being in environments like that, and your personal drive just goes through the roof. Uh, what you realize that you can accomplish as a human being, uh, is far more than I think what the normal person thinks. Your ability to, to work in stress, uh, in extreme stress, uh, goes through the roof. There's another side too. I mean, you get addicted to adrenaline. You get addicted to those type envir- of environments. You succumb to the culture that comes with that, which is a lot of drinking, fighting, all those things.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett9:30

      So you're in the Navy SEALs.

   6. SRShawn Ryan9:32

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett9:34

      You contract with the CIA for a while, and then I guess the other, you know, pretty tremendous accomplishment is you now have built one of the biggest podcasts on planet Earth where you interview people just like I do here.

   8. SRShawn Ryan9:44

      That is correct.

6. 9:45 – 18:16

   Are Podcasters Being Compromised by Planted Guests?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett9:45

      Do you think podcasters are being compromised by sort of guests being planted?

   2. SRShawn Ryan9:50

      Yes. I have no proof, but yes. In a, in a, in a couple of different ways. So here's one example. But not just podcast. Let's go influencers, not just podcasters. So Trump administration crushed it in the elections, in the election cycle, right? Different podcasts. They, they really utilized the podcast. They saw the power of it. They utilized it, and, uh, it was a great tactic. And then afterwards, you know, I think a lot of podcasters and influencers, they felt powerful because, you know, the t- they got close to the president. They got close to the administration. And if you saw what happened, you know... Do you remember the Epst- the first Epstein file release?

   3. SBSteven Bartlett10:37

      Yes.

   4. SRShawn Ryan10:37

      When they had all these people show up and they're holding up the binders and sh... You know, they did not understand that the minute that happened, they were captured.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett10:47

      Who was?

   6. SRShawn Ryan10:48

      The, everybody that was in those pictures.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett10:50

      Oh, okay. Yeah.

   8. SRShawn Ryan10:51

      They can no longer be a th- free thinker because w- maybe they are a free thinker, but the appearance that they just gave off is that they are in a tribe, you know? And they were smart to do this and, and I've had several invites. I always turn it down because no, I don't, I don't, no. I'm not doing that. I'm not-

   9. SBSteven Bartlett11:08

      Invites to where?

   10. SRShawn Ryan11:10

       In- invites to wherever.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett11:11

       The White House or whatever.

   12. SRShawn Ryan11:12

       Football games.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett11:13

       Oh, okay.

   14. SRShawn Ryan11:13

       The White House. This, that. You know, public events where you'll be seen, where you'll be photographed, where it looks like everybody's on one team and we're all having a party and we're all friends and all this shit. You know, that's a way to capture what you're doing without you even realizing it and showing the world, "Hey, look, we have, we have Steven. We've got him. We've got pictures of him holding binders up. We've got pictures of him at dinners with us. He's on our team." And maybe you didn't want that, but you were so fixated on being close to power-

   15. SBSteven Bartlett11:45

       Mm

   16. SRShawn Ryan11:45

       ... that you didn't even realize it was happening.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett11:49

       Mm.

   18. SRShawn Ryan11:49

       And now those, those people are all, those people are all captured. It feels like once in a lifetime stuff.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett11:55

       Once in a lifetime.

   20. SRShawn Ryan11:55

       "Hey, we want you to come, you know, ride on Air Force One. Ride on Marine One. Do this. Do this with us. Do this." No, I'm not doing any of that shit. I know what this is. You're trying to capture me and put me into a, a group, you know? You can't allow that to happen. Otherwise, you hit a ceiling, and, and the minute that happens, you've hit the ceiling.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett12:15

       Mm.

   22. SRShawn Ryan12:15

       And you don't know what kind of decisions these people are gonna wind up making later on.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett12:20

       So that was one of the ways you can be captured

   24. SRShawn Ryan12:22

       That's one of the ways. You're talking about people being inserted into the podcast circuit.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett12:26

       Yeah.

   26. SRShawn Ryan12:27

       Yeah, I think there are definitely people that are in the podcast circuit that are planted, but maybe they don't even know

   27. SBSteven Bartlett12:33

       Guests or hosts or both?

   28. SRShawn Ryan12:35

       Probably both

   29. SBSteven Bartlett12:36

       Probably both

   30. SRShawn Ryan12:37

       You know? But like you said, we were talking about it offline, but yeah, I th- I think there are guests that come out of nowhere, and all of a sudden you see these, these people that nobody's ever heard of, and they get just unfathomable traction and numbers. But it's not because they have a good life story. It's not because of something miraculous that they've done. Y- y- it's just they're talking about current events, you know? And I think the way that this works is, you know, you could talk to somebody for two, three, four, five hours, you know, but the mission, you know, the piece of infor- it may only be one sentence-
7. 18:16 – 20:10

   Did He Endorse Trump?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett18:16

      Did you endorse Trump before he, before the election?

   2. SRShawn Ryan18:20

      I was supportive of him. I wanted him to win I don't think I gave any official endorsements or anything. I did get put in that, that sphere. What nobody remembers is I've, I offered the Democratic Party, I mean, you can look it up. I think it's in The Washington Post. We were talking to Kamala's team. I wanted to have her on. I wanted to have everybody on.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett18:40

      So they said no. Kamala Harris' team said no.

   4. SRShawn Ryan18:43

      They said no, but it wasn't just a hard no. We were talking about it. We were coming up with an outline. They, they-- I had all these things that I wanted to talk about. They said, "Well, we don't want to talk about that. We don't want to..." I said, "I'll tell you what. You guys just tell me what you-- I don't care what you want to talk about. I know I can hold my own. So you, you give me the topics, and I'll develop the outline. How about that?"

   5. SBSteven Bartlett19:04

      And when Trump came on, was there anything he didn't want to talk about?

   6. SRShawn Ryan19:07

      There were no guidelines.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett19:09

      I think this should be a little bit of a, sort of a, a lesson for the Democratic Party about how to navigate in this, these environments.

   8. SRShawn Ryan19:15

      Yeah. They're learning.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett19:17

      When K-Kamala came on my show, which was after the election and after she'd lost and all that stuff, no guidelines.

   10. SRShawn Ryan19:22

       Oh, really?

   11. SBSteven Bartlett19:23

       Zero.

   12. SRShawn Ryan19:24

       That's good.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett19:24

       She didn't tell me there was anything I couldn't talk about, but I think at that point she had, they had nothing to lose. I actually think at that point she didn't even have the same team anymore.

   14. SRShawn Ryan19:31

       That's good.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett19:32

       She came and she was, in my view, she was honest. She, she said, "Joe Biden kind of screwed me over." She was swearing.

   16. SRShawn Ryan19:38

       Mm-hmm.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett19:38

       She-- there was none of this sort of like cookie cutter polished politician senator bullshit.

   18. SRShawn Ryan19:42

       You got the real thing.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett19:43

       She just was super relaxed.

   20. SRShawn Ryan19:45

       That's good.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett19:46

       And I just wish you'd offered that side of her to shows like yours beforehand because it would've been good to see the comparison.

   22. SRShawn Ryan19:52

       Yeah. That's what I wanted to do, you know? And, and, uh, I, I had RFK on when he was still running as an independent. But yeah, we, we got very close to Kamala, and then at the last minute, uh, they backed out. I wish it would've happened. I don't think it would've changed the outcome, but, um, but I wish it

8. 20:10 – 21:11

   Has His Opinion on Trump Changed?

   1. SRShawn Ryan20:10

      would've happened.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett20:11

      Have you changed your opinion on Trump now?

   3. SRShawn Ryan20:13

      Oh, yeah.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett20:14

      Really?

   5. SRShawn Ryan20:14

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett20:15

      Why?

   7. SRShawn Ryan20:17

      Oh, man. For, just for a, a multitude of reasons. I'm just, you know, to put it plainly, I'm, I'm not really happy about anything that's happening right now. I think he's totally gone against what he said he was gonna do, and what do you think? Are you happy?

   8. SBSteven Bartlett20:35

      I'm not an American, so I tend to like try and, you know... But I think, I mean, one of the things I think a lot about is this situation in Iran and, um, how much of a blunder that appears to be. I, you know, I don't know a ton about the military or war or conflict, but logically, I can't reason my way out of that situation. Like, I can't find a good outcome at this point to what's going on there. And because you have been a service person, you served, uh, served for America, I was curious to get your perspective on what you think is going on there, and do you see a, a golden bridge or a positive outcome?

9. 21:11 – 22:21

   How the Military Feels About Deployment to Iran

   1. SRShawn Ryan21:11

      No.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett21:11

      No?

   3. SRShawn Ryan21:12

      I, I don't. At this point, I, I don't, I don't know what's going on there anymore. Nothing seems to make any damn sense to me. I don't think there's any positive outcome for America.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett21:22

      When you talk to your former colleagues in the military, what's the general sentiment around the deployment and the situation there?

   5. SRShawn Ryan21:30

      They think that they are involved for, for another country's, uh, interests.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett21:36

      Whose interests is it for?

   7. SRShawn Ryan21:39

      I think Israel probably has the majority of the interest here.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett21:42

      I sat here with J.D. Vance. He said that, you know, we're the, he said, "We're the jun-- we're the senior partner." But it sounds like your colleagues are saying that m-maybe that's not necessarily the case.

   9. SRShawn Ryan21:50

      It doesn't seem like that's the case to me.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett21:52

       Do you buy the narrative that Trump invaded or, or started the war for reasons related to nuclear weapons?

   11. SRShawn Ryan22:00

       No.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett22:01

       No? What do you think the real reason is, Shawn?

   13. SRShawn Ryan22:04

       I don't know. You know, anything I say would just be speculative, but I don't think they're for our interests.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett22:11

       And so why would Trump be sucked into doing something for a non-American country's interests?

   15. SRShawn Ryan22:18

       That's a great question I don't know the answer to.

10. 22:21 – 29:10

    Would America Be Better Off If Democrats Had Won?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett22:21

       Do you think America would be better off if, uh, the Democrats had won?

    2. SRShawn Ryan22:25

       I think that these are seemingly more and more to be one and the same.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett22:36

       And this is why you're sort of retracting from politics is because you're sort of, it sounded like you're a bit disillusioned by all of these candidates.

    4. SRShawn Ryan22:44

       Yeah. I've had-- I mean, I just... Pretty much every one of them that I've had on has just lied straight to my face.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett22:52

       Really?

    6. SRShawn Ryan22:53

       And to everybody who watches. You know, what I'm interested in is, is I think that there is a possibility that, maybe it's already happened, but I think that there's a possibility that America, uh, may no longer be the superpower or will not be shortly for a multitude of reasons. I mean, if you look at, you know, the, the, uh, power that, that China's power structure, nuclear. They're going nuclear, and we're still batting around this shit here in America. Should we go nuclear? What are we gonna do about our power grid and, and the, the petrodollar? I mean, you've had, um, what's that guy's name? He does a great breakdown on it. Professor, the game theory guy.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett23:35

       Yeah. Professor Cheung.

    8. SRShawn Ryan23:37

       Yeah. He does a great breakdown of it, and at, I mean, when you think about it, it's like holy shit. And, and you think about everybody that we've pissed off, you know, in America. I mean, e- like Canada, for example.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett23:48

       Hmm.

    10. SRShawn Ryan23:48

        You know, they wanted to pipe in, uh, what is it? Keystone Pipeline. Biden said no. They don't want it. Trump says, so they start to make deals with other countries, China. Now Trump is penalizing them for it. I can't remember the exact, uh, t-tariffs, but it went from somewhere around twenty-five percent to fifty percent to a hundred percent or, you know, whatever, but we're penalizing them, and it's like, shit, man. Four years ago or less, they wanted to pipe it in. Now we got this new guy. He want-- And now we're gonna penalize them because they're not gonna pipe it in, and they're looking at us like These people are fucking crazy. They're like dealing with a schizophrenic. How do you do business with that? I mean, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, you can't do business with, with, with an entity like that. You can't. And I think the whole world is, is seeing this, you know, because it's happening to damn near the whole world. Except one country, Israel. But everybody else, you know, we're destroying our relationships with. And, and yeah, does, does the U.S., you know, put in the majority of the money and take the m- you, you know, t- it, it like put in the majority of the risk, you know, with a lot of the things? Yes, we do. But we still need allies, you know, and, and you can't just shit and ruin everybody's trade infrastructure and oil trade and, and, and, and penalize people for making changes for some- for something that they tried to do earlier, you know, with you. And, and it's happening all over the world. And so one of the things that I'm interested in, uh, that I'm looking for is I want to start talking to, starting with the UK, I wanna talk about when, you know, what did it look like for the UK when, when the U.S. took the, the superpower ship, you know, back in World War II? What did that actually look like? Because all we hear is all this doom and gloom and, you know, oh, you know, it's gonna be lawless. It's gonna be, you know, our currency's gonna go to zero. Look, that, that all might happen. It might. I don't know. I'm not... But it might be, maybe it's a, I don't know, maybe it's a good thing. Was it that bad in the UK when... So I wanna bring on a historian to actually find out what, what exactly did that look like? I'll tell you one thing, if we do lose it, it's gonna take a lot of these, a lot of PAC money, you know, out of U.S. politics. It's gonna, you know, hopefully force politicians to actually look at our country and, and concentrate on our country. You know, another thing I wanna do, I, I, I probably shouldn't even be saying this. I wanna do a thing called 50 States in 50 Days, where you go to the poorest parts of each state and just film it and look at this shit. Look at this shit. Why are we sending all of our money to all of these other foreign countries when this shit is happening right here in New York? Tomorrow, we're gonna be in New Jersey, and the next day we're gonna be in Wisconsin, and then we're gonna go to California, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, every single state, and just show how much poverty and how disgusting certain parts of this country are, and why the fuck are we sending all of our money to all these foreign countries instead of taking care of our own people? It's disgusting. Our politicians have totally abandoned us. They're just, they're runaways. And then I want to call out every single senator, congressman, governor, and just look at this. This is your state. This is your state. This is the state that you represent, and this shit is happening all around you. Look at this.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett27:42

        Hmm. There's both a, I guess, a disrespect here at home, but there's also, as you point at, like a disrespect of allies. And, you know, you can put the tariff there and whatever, but I think one of the things that made the U.S. the superpower that it is still, but you know, that's increasingly in question, is there was this sort of peace by strength or whatever the phrase is.

    12. SRShawn Ryan28:04

        Mm-hmm.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett28:05

        Like you're strong because you never really have to like say you are, you don't act like a bully-

    14. SRShawn Ryan28:11

        Mm-hmm

    15. SBSteven Bartlett28:11

        ... but we just know you're strong. And then the minute you start acting like a bully, we start going, "Is that strength or is that insecurity?"

    16. SRShawn Ryan28:18

        Mm-hmm.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett28:19

        You know, the s- the, the minute you start insulting countries and being rude about their leaders and saying that, I don't know, Canada is the 52nd state or whatever it, Trump said, that's when it starts to look a little bit more like insecurity.

    18. SRShawn Ryan28:30

        Mm-hmm.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett28:32

        And also that's when I think some of these nations go, "Shit, like maybe we need to band together ourselves instead of banding together with the United States." And I think you're seeing that in Europe now with what's going on with Iran. The European leaders are now coming back together and saying, "Fuck, like we might not be as safe as we thought we were, um, with- in the U.S.'s, you know, with the U.S.'s leadership, and so we need to form a new type of leadership." It's, it's, it's an interest- really interesting time. And do you know what? One might say that China are playing it very smart, not making enemies with anybody. That calm strength.

    20. SRShawn Ryan29:05

        They don't need to do anything. They're watching us self-destruct right now in real time.

11. 29:10 – 32:39

    Why the 2028 Election Matters to Him

    1. SBSteven Bartlett29:11

       Do you care about the 2028 election? Are you gonna get involved in it if the politicians all wanna come back on your show?

    2. SRShawn Ryan29:17

       I don't know. I mean, it depends. Right now, I think probably not. If there were to be some type of a third party, then I would probably get involved. But right now, uh, with what I see, I just don't really see any strong candidates.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett29:37

       You mentioned you had someone on your podcast called Blair who said something which was slightly suspicious to you.

    4. SRShawn Ryan29:43

       Blair Umscoro?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett29:44

       Yeah.

    6. SRShawn Ryan29:45

       Yeah. Yeah, I think that ICE got him, and they're trying to deport him out of the country or something. We got an email about it, which if he was, uh, an asset and actually did all that stuff for us, which, you know, I think he did.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett29:58

       What happened?

    8. SRShawn Ryan29:58

       I guess I, I don't know the full scope. I just know that, uh, he got wrapped up by ICE, and it sounds like they're gonna, uh, deport him, and that he's worried that if they deport him, that he's gonna be killed. Apparently, ICE doesn't care about that. But yeah, you know, he came on, and we were talking about it was a life story. Basically, in a nutshell, he came on, and he was a... He got recruited out of prison to infiltrate the Islamic terrorist cells, the Muslim Brotherhood. And-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett30:27

       He's an American?

    10. SRShawn Ryan30:28

        He is from, uh- I can't remember, uh, Eastern Bloc country. He was able to infiltrate all these, um, like huge, like terrorist cells that had huge weapons caches, and he would go and, and he was a CIA asset, and he would go and, and do the deal, and then all of that, those caches would get shipped to another country where it would... And then it would be in CIA's hands. And so we had this w- long conversation about this, and then all of a sudden he starts talking about, uh, Russians getting nukes into the U.S. And it was just so out of left field, it made me think... You know, I just said earlier, you know, you, you could talk to somebody for two, three, four, five, six, however many hours, and maybe they just need one thing inserted into the podcast, you know, to start a new narrative or to reinforce a current narrative. You know, there's a big, back then, still is today, you know, big narrative. We, we all need to, we all need to hate Russia. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. I'm not saying either way. But, you know, for us to be talking about the global war on terror and his time as a CIA asset infiltrating terrorist networks and, and, and derailing massive weapons caches back to, uh, wherever they were going, you know, and then all of a sudden for him to talk about the Russians bringing in nuclear warheads or whatever it was into the U.S., it was like... And I think I challenged him right on the show, and I said, "You know, how do I know that you weren't sent here just to put that one sentence into the show that came out of left field? That doesn't fit anywhere with any conversation that we've been talking about."

    11. SBSteven Bartlett32:15

        What did he say?

    12. SRShawn Ryan32:16

        He was, you know, taken back. I don't remember exactly what he said. You could probably find the clip somewhere, but that's h- that's how it happens. That's how it happens. I'm not saying that he is or isn't one. I'm saying that's what it looks like when it happens.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett32:31

        And your gut sometimes tells you that you're interviewing someone who is probably s- w- still working on behalf of an agency.

    14. SRShawn Ryan32:37

        Uh-huh.

12. 32:39 – 37:12

    Why He Deletes Podcast Episodes

    1. SBSteven Bartlett32:39

       Do you delete a lot of episodes?

    2. SRShawn Ryan32:41

       No. I've had, I've had episodes that I didn't delete or that I never aired. I've had, I don't know, not very many, but I've had a handful, you know.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett32:50

       What is the reason typically?

    4. SRShawn Ryan32:52

       Well, one time I had a guy come on. This was about the COVID vaccine. And he comes on and, and he's talking about how the COVID vaccine was, was developed in a lab and was patented way before COVID even came out, and it w- was very compelling, and I didn't really think about it until afterwards. But afterwards, when I was thinking about the interviews, 'cause some of these interviews I'll think about all weekend or, you know, days to weeks sometimes after they happen. I mean, it sounded super compelling, and maybe it was real. I don't know. But every time he would... It was COVID-19, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. But then when he would say... He wouldn't say the COVID vaccine was patented prior to y- 2020. He would say the SARS vaccine was patented prior to, you know. So b- but, but the narrative was the COVID-19 vaccine was patented long before COVID-19 ever even came out. But like I said, he would switch it. He would switch... He would be saying, "COVID, COVID, COVID," but then he would say the SARS vaccine. And so y- he left, and I was like, "I mean, there's gotta be like a million different... There's, there's like thousands of variations of SARS and COVID." And so why did he keep switching it? Why didn't he just say the COVID-19 vaccine? Why did he switch it to SARS? And so that, that clicked, and I was... I- it just made me think, "Maybe this isn't factual, and I don't want to..." You know, I've done speculative narrative interviews, uh, lots of them. But, uh, once again, w- we were talking earlier, you know, we have audiences of millions and millions and millions of people, and I don't wanna put something out that's not factual then have somebody make an important medical decision based on-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett34:47

       Yeah

    6. SRShawn Ryan34:47

       ... based on bullshit, and I just didn't wanna gamble that, so I never, I never released the episode. Uh, and I'd talked to lots of doctors and, and, and, and it, it was a, it was a charged subject, you know, at the time.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett35:00

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SRShawn Ryan35:00

       And so... I didn't like the vax. I took it, but I regret it. B- but, b- but whatever, you know what I mean? It doesn't matter. I didn't want anybody making th- that type of a... I know that people trust me. I, I couldn't live with myself if I found out that guy was totally full of shit-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett35:17

       Mm-hmm

    10. SRShawn Ryan35:17

        ... feeding, feeding a bullshit narrative for whatever. And then you got people, you know, either taking it or not taking it based off what he said. So I never aired that. You know, I've had another guy... I've, I, I had... I, I was interested in a lot of the stuff going on in the World Economic Forum, and, and I had this guy that I thought was an expert on the World Economic Forum come on, and he couldn't even tell me what it was.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett35:42

        [laughs]

    12. SRShawn Ryan35:43

        I was like, "Well, what is it? Is it a business? Is it a nonpr- what is it?" He couldn't even tell me, and then he would just start talking about all this conspiracy shit, and I'm like, "Look-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett35:52

        [laughs]

    14. SRShawn Ryan35:53

        ... if you can't even tell me what it is, like, you really have no business being here. So let's just end the interview right now."

    15. SBSteven Bartlett35:59

        Mm-hmm.

    16. SRShawn Ryan35:59

        And recently I had one where this woman on, supposedly she worked for the agency. Then when I started talking about agency stuff, of course everything's classified, so we hide behind the classification system, and the only thing she wanted to talk about was, like, the polygraph. And I'm like, "The polygraph?"

    17. SBSteven Bartlett36:21

        [laughs]

    18. SRShawn Ryan36:21

        "You can't say shit about the polygraph. Like, everybody in there has to take a polygraph. Why are we talking about the... Is this, like, something that you researched really hard on what a polygraph's like, so to make yourself sound legitimate, because you're not talking about anything else?"

    19. SBSteven Bartlett36:35

        Hmm.

    20. SRShawn Ryan36:36

        And, you know, something that may be classified that they don't want out is how to defeat a polygraph, so And, and that was within the past couple months, and, you know, we, we ended that one pretty quickly. [laughs]

    21. SBSteven Bartlett36:49

        Mm-hmm.

    22. SRShawn Ryan36:49

        And I think she knew exactly, you know, it was... So we'll never release that one, but I don't care. You know what I mean? I just, I don't wanna knowingly put things that are bullshit out there.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett37:01

        Mm-hmm.

    24. SRShawn Ryan37:01

        I mean, it's gonna happen. We're gonna make mistakes. I've made mistakes, but, you know, knowingly just for views, nah, I have no interest in that. [paper rustles]

13. 37:12 – 39:38

    Ads

    1. SBSteven Bartlett37:12

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14. 39:38 – 39:49

    Why He Moved to Colombia After Contracting

    1. SBSteven Bartlett39:38

       and spent two years wi- taking al- drinking alcohol.

    2. SRShawn Ryan39:42

       Yeah, I started in Cartagena and, uh, ultimately just decided I'm gonna camp out in Medellín.

15. 39:49 – 41:55

    Did He Get Involved With Drug Networks in Colombia?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett39:50

       Did you get involved in the, the drug dealing networks while you were there?

    2. SRShawn Ryan39:55

       Yes, I did.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett39:57

       How do you categorize this season of your life in Colombia? Because before then you're, you know, you're a SEAL, you're doing contracting work with the CIA, and then it appears that in this season of your life, when I look at it from sort of a bird's eye view, that it represents instability. Disappear.

    4. SRShawn Ryan40:12

       I think what it represents is, you know, just talked about addiction to adrenaline.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett40:18

       Yeah.

    6. SRShawn Ryan40:18

       And I wasn't getting that adrenaline anywhere, and, you know, I would be in the States and it was boring to me. You know, it was, it was, it was boring. Uh, going to the bar and that life just, it had no appeal to me. It was boring. And then on top of that, I was tired of listening to everyday average Americans talk about the war, give their opinions on what we should be doing when none of them have done anything. It just didn't sit well with me. So that's why, you know, when I said I went down to... I d- I didn't want to hear English. I didn't want to hear people asking me for my opinions. I didn't want to hear their opinions. I don't think their opinions mattered. I didn't think that at the time anyways. And so I went down there and it became like a game to me. It wasn't the dealing. I never really dealt, uh, dealt. It was more setting up the network that gave me the rush, and infiltrating networks, and figuring out who the players are and all that, and being able to insert myself into the middle of all of that. You know, in retrospect, [laughs] it was probably the most dangerous thing I'd ever done. Uh, I didn't care. You know, I just, I di- I didn't really have any value for my own life. I wouldn't say I was suicidal at the time, but I just, I was in it for, for the thrill. And to me, there was nothing else that was gonna give me a thrill, a bigger thrill than that. And I figured if, if this gets boring, then I'll probably just die down here.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett41:52

       I'll probably just die down here.

    8. SRShawn Ryan41:53

       Yeah.

16. 41:55 – 46:40

    What Happened With the Police in Colombia?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett41:56

       I mean, it sounds like you came pretty close to getting in significant trouble. At one point, your apartment was bugged by the police.

    2. SRShawn Ryan42:03

       Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I had come home and I was probably... I did, I did a lot of, a lot of drugs down there, a lot of cocaine, and I don't know, I was on a three, four, maybe a five-day bender. And there was this bridge down there that was called, in, in this area called Barrio Antioquia. I don't know what it's like now, but back then you couldn't, you couldn't get in there. You couldn't get a taxi to drive you in there. You couldn't get in there without going through several police checkpoints. Um, but that's where the cheapest and best coke was. And that, that's where all the, the players are. It's all, it's all coming out of that specific neighborhood. And I used to go in there for a thrill and, and like go up the chain, go up the dealer chain, find who's boss is who's boss is who's boss. Anyways, I went down there, uh, with a bunch of girls, and, uh, we went to this bridge called the Puente de los Locos, and it was all these... It, it, it was like a homeless camp and of just insane people. And I went down there with a huge stack of cash and just threw the money up in the air, uh, 'cause I wanted to see what would happen. Of course, they all got up and st- it was like a mad dash, and we almost didn't get out of there, uh, 'cause they had surrounded me, and there was hundreds of people. And so we, we, we wound up getting out of there and in a car, and we got back to my building where I was staying at my penthouse, and one thing I always did was I always took care of the doorman at the building. You know, all the security guys, the d-d- the doorman, they control who comes in and out. They can inform you if people are hanging around that, you know, maybe shouldn't be. People are looking for me, and so I built... That was part of my network, you know, was taking care of them. And so I, anything I got, if I got coke, they got coke. If I got booze, they got booze. If I went clothes shopping, they got clothes. If I got groceries, they got groceries. They always got tipped. They, you know, when I was leaving, I would give them a bunch of my clothes. Like, I just always took care of those guys, and I came back, and, uh, this guy, his name was Freddy, and he said that, uh, the police were after me. One thing, being a foreigner in Colombia, it's almost like a sin for them not to try to take advantage of you, and I had built a lot of trust with, with Freddy, who's my favorite, uh, guy, and I was pissed, and I started yelling at him like, "Man, I g- I give you, like, all kinds of stuff. Like, why would you lie to me to try to get more out of me? I g- I, I always take care of you." And he said, "I'm not doing that." He said, "They came by and they wanted, uh, they wanted copies of your passport. They wanted to know where you came from, who you are, who you work with, all these things." And I was, I just thought he was full of shit, and he said, "Look," he said, "They told me that they have pictures of you throwing money up at a bridge in Barrio Antioquia." And that was, we had just come from there, and so I was like, "Oh, shit, he is not lying." And what he was telling me was that they had supposedly planted a bug in the light fixture outside of my door, and that they had set up a observation point in a building across from me. And so I went up and scrubbed myself of everything, uh, kinda scanned around to see if I could pick up, you know, who was, who was looking at me, who was watching. I'm pretty sure I saw it, and got rid of everything, got rid of all the coke, got rid of everything, and then, uh, I did a SDR to a couple of different internet cafes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett46:15

       An SDR?

    4. SRShawn Ryan46:16

       An SDR, that's a surveillance detection route.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett46:19

       Okay.

    6. SRShawn Ryan46:20

       And, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's a route that you develop to, to figure out if you're being followed or not. So I did that, didn't pick anything up. Bought a couple of different tickets to different places, and, um, was out of there within 12 hours, never to go back.

17. 46:40 – 47:38

    Was Colombia Enough to Make Him Get Clean?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett46:41

       And when you got back to the United States, presumably, had you changed? Was that, was that enough of a close call for you to give up the, the cocaine habits that you had at the time?

    2. SRShawn Ryan46:52

       No.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett46:53

       No.

    4. SRShawn Ryan46:54

       I tried. I, I had cleaned it up a lot. I had cleaned it up a lot, but I went, I started getting bored, and so I did a couple of trips, uh, a trip or two maybe to Panama. Panama was a lot tamer than Colombia, but it's just as easy to get in the middle of it. And then I did one to Costa Rica, and then, I, I can't remember exactly how many. I'd gone a lot of different places. I went to Honduras. I went to San Pedro Sula because it was, uh, it was literally the d- most dangerous place on the planet at the time, so I wanted to go there and feed my adrenaline. I had toned it down a lot, but, um, but I didn't clean it up 100%.

18. 47:38 – 49:47

    The Turning Point That Changed Everything

    1. SBSteven Bartlett47:38

       What was the turning point for you in that season of your life?

    2. SRShawn Ryan47:41

       There were a lot of turning points. One turning point that made me clean it up quite a bit was, uh, my best friend, uh, was, was leaving contracting and, and he had a horrible addiction to opiates, and so he became my purpose. He became my purpose. I wanted to help clean him up, and so in order to clean him up, I had to clean myself up, and, um, I think we made a lot of headway. Ultimately, he did, uh, succumb to his addiction, uh, years later, but that was a turning point, and in, in the middle of that journey, I'd met this, uh, I'd started my therapy myself.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:23

       What was the catalyst for you to go to therapy?

    4. SRShawn Ryan48:24

       [sighs] I just knew I, I needed something, and I had to set an example for my friend. Like, "I'm doing it, so you should do it, too."

    5. SBSteven Bartlett48:38

       There was this call on Mother's Day as well, which I've heard you talk about.

    6. SRShawn Ryan48:41

       That was in Colombia.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett48:42

       That was it while you were in Colombia?

    8. SRShawn Ryan48:43

       That, that was while I was in Colombia.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett48:45

       What was that phone call?

    10. SRShawn Ryan48:46

        That was a I always thought I was OD'ing down there. My ankles would swell up, you know, from lack of blood circulation, and that would freak me out, and lots of, you know, things. And, and I remember my friend told me early on, he said, "You don't, you don't have to worry about OD'ing on coke until things start to slow down. If you're on speed and then everything seems slow, that's when you're riding the edge." And so that started happening. I realized it was Mother's Day once, and I, I called my, my mom in the middle of that 'cause I thought it was gonna be my last day alive. And, um, so that's... Yeah, that's, that, that was a realization point.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett49:43

        And then you found this therapist.

    12. SRShawn Ryan49:45

        And then I found this therapist.

19. 49:47 – 50:53

    Why Going to Therapy Was So Difficult

    1. SBSteven Bartlett49:47

       Was that a challenge to go to a therapist? You know, there's a, there's a lot of stigma associated to, with going to therapy, especially at that time.

    2. SRShawn Ryan49:53

       Yeah, I mean, it was definitely a blow to my ego, but at the same time, you know, I didn't really have any friends. Most of my friends were still operational at the time, and I didn't have any friends where I lived in Florida, and so nobody really knew me. And I didn't have anything else to do. I was like, "What the hell? You know, I might as well try this." And it did help. It helped a lot.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett50:15

       H- how did it help?

    4. SRShawn Ryan50:16

       You know, I think it's amazing how many of your own problems you'll work out yourself in your head just by telling somebody who has a, you know, seemingly unbiased opinion, you know, just with a couple of, a couple of questions. Kinda like how both you and I interview. You don't say much, and people just spill it.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett50:39

       Yeah.

    6. SRShawn Ryan50:40

       And then you can see them working things out in their head as they go along. For me, that's what therapy was, and it's also somebody that can hold you accountable, you know, for, for different things.

20. 50:53 – 54:05

    Why He Turned to Psychedelic Therapy

    1. SBSteven Bartlett50:54

       And around that time you did ibogaine treatment, which I'm somewhat familiar with. It was just after that time, because I worked in psychedelics for a couple years. Well, a year while I was-

    2. SRShawn Ryan51:03

       You worked with psychedelics?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett51:04

       I worked in psychedelics, in the industry.

    4. SRShawn Ryan51:06

       Oh, okay.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett51:07

       Um, and I... Just when I was between leaving my first company and really starting this podcast, I did a year in working in a psychedelics business.

    6. SRShawn Ryan51:14

       Interesting.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett51:15

       Stuff was focused on mental health, so ibogaine was one of the, uh, therapies that I came across and studied and saw the huge, uh, efficacy around addiction. But I've actually never met anybody that did ibogaine. But I remember at the time when I was working in psychedelics, they, they told me that there was this thing called ibogaine you could take. It was quite a intense treatment, quite a long treatment, but there are several cases where people do one dose of ibogaine in a therapeutic setting, and their addiction is cured. That's what I was told, and I was like, "This is crazy." And you, you, you did ibogaine, right?

    8. SRShawn Ryan51:50

       I did ibogaine. Done it twice now.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett51:52

       Oh, wow.

    10. SRShawn Ryan51:53

        And yeah, the first time was amazing. I went down there. Actually, that, that was actually after I'd started the podcast. I have a feeling we're very similar. You probably wrap your entire life up into what you're doing. And we were having... I had a, a six-month-old at the time, my son, and I wasn't present with him because my mind was always in business. It's just all I thought about was business, business, business, the podcast business. I needed something to just, to slow my mind, you know, so that I could be in the moment and actually be present with my, with my wife and with my son. You know, at the ti- I had kicked, I had kicked a lot of things. I wasn't drinking hard alcohol anymore. I, I was... I mean, I was still on... There was no coke for a long time before that, but there was still some pharmaceutical meds that I would, um, dabble in, sleeping meds. But I went down there to be in the moment. That was it, like, like help me compartmentalize or manage business stress because so many opportunities are coming, and if you... You know the deal. You feel... It's like, "Do I need to do all these opportunities? Are these all opportunities all good for whatever?"

    11. SBSteven Bartlett53:03

        Yeah.

    12. SRShawn Ryan53:03

        "Am I a fool if I turn this down?" And I went down there for that, and when I came out of it, had no interest in drinking again. I q- quit all the sleep medications. I had quit the Adderall, and it was effortless.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett53:17

        Wow.

    14. SRShawn Ryan53:17

        It was effortless, and I was able to be present, uh, with my wife and son.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett53:23

        And where do you find yourself today as it relates to alcohol, the substances we've talked about, and your mental health?

    16. SRShawn Ryan53:30

        Gr- I've never been better. You know? I haven't had a drop in over four years. I don't take sleeping medications. I don't take Adderall. I don't... I have, I actually have no vices. None. And then I went to do it again, and, uh, the, the, the next one d- it didn't work out so well for me. [laughs]

    17. SBSteven Bartlett53:50

        The next ibogaine journey.

    18. SRShawn Ryan53:52

        Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett53:53

        Was this recently?

    20. SRShawn Ryan53:54

        This was about, I guess about three months ago now.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett53:57

        And this is the one where I saw on your show you said you, you think you visited hell.

    22. SRShawn Ryan54:02

        Yeah. Yes. That would be

21. 54:05 – 57:07

    What Is Ibogaine and Why Did He Take It?

    1. SRShawn Ryan54:05

       the one.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett54:05

       So for anyone that doesn't know what ibogaine is and what the journey is like, is it a drink that you take, and then it's sort of like a 12-hour-

    3. SRShawn Ryan54:14

       For me, it was a pill.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett54:15

       It was a pill.

    5. SRShawn Ryan54:16

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett54:16

       Okay.

    7. SRShawn Ryan54:16

       It's from a root in, I think, Gabon, Africa.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett54:19

       Okay.

    9. SRShawn Ryan54:20

       Yeah, they state, they say it's the most powerful psychedelic you can do, and I believe it, that. And, and, and then, uh, at this particular place, you do 5-MeO-DMT a day after, uh, your ibogaine journey, and it's some extremely powerful stuff.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett54:37

        Has it changed you, that second-

    11. SRShawn Ryan54:40

        Yes. It's changed a lot of things. I saw you had, uh, Dr. Huberman on-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett54:49

        Yeah

    13. SRShawn Ryan54:49

        ... you know, the other day. He was talking about his faith and all that stuff, and, and I'm on my faith journey as well. And but, you know, one thing is when it comes to psychedelics is I've done ibogaine twice. I've done psilocybin a handful of times. I've done 5-MeO a handful of times. And I got so much out of the first one, and I had a br- a very healthy respect. You know, I would really prepare for them. And then I forced myself to kind of get looser with it, uh, because I, I saw all these other people doing it. And, and I would get these answers to things. You know, really tough business decisions or, or something that, you know, might seem really, uh, beneficial to you, but you don't understand why it's happening, or you think there might, you, you think there might be something else behind it. You know, I would do maybe a psilocybin journey and think on that, and, and it would be like everything became clear. Like, all of it. You could see what the motivations are behind the person that wants to do business with you. You could see the thing over here that's gonna happen if you t- if you take that, that step and, and commit, or maybe you see what happens if you don't. It would be like problem solved, you know. And this has happened multiple times, and not just with business, with family, with relationships, with, with friends. You would be able to piece together, uh, these super complex problems. And, and, and, and it would make sense, and I believe it was real. But also, at the same time, I believe that, and I always have, I believe that you are potentially opening yourself up to a spiritual realm that maybe we should not have access to, and that's something that I always took very seriously. Even when I did loosen up, I would always pray before it. And as my journey through Christianity became stronger and stronger, I would take it more and more seriously, you know, the praying before and during. And which led up to this last one, which was, yeah, I thought, I think I saw hell. I know I did.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett57:05

        You know you saw hell?

    15. SRShawn Ryan57:06

        Yeah.

22. 57:07 – 59:53

    The Hell He Experienced During Ibogaine

    1. SBSteven Bartlett57:07

       Give me some co- context on how, how one would know that was hell and, and if you can at all. I know it's difficult to sort of say these things in human words, but, like, what, what was it?

    2. SRShawn Ryan57:16

       It was total emptiness. When I say I saw, I didn't see fire, I didn't see any of that. And, and where I really felt it was in the 5-MeO experience, and there was nothing. It was the most amount of fear that I'd ever felt in my life. It was the most amount of anxiety I'd ever felt in my life. There was no God. There was no Christ. There was... And it felt like eternity, and this went on for an hour and a half-ish. It felt like I was going through the most intense exorcism you could ever imagine. That's what it felt like. And it felt like things were trying to maybe leave. Maybe not trying. Maybe I was trying to get these things out, and they wouldn't leave. But it felt like abandonment. It, it, it... It's, it's the most horrific feeling you could ever even imagine, and it was more real than anything I've experienced in, in, in real life.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett58:35

       What could you see?

    4. SRShawn Ryan58:37

       In this specific experience, I couldn't see anything.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett58:40

       Okay.

    6. SRShawn Ryan58:40

       I mean, my body was contorted. It was doing things that the human body shouldn't do. There was a f- a friend of mine with me. Told him I didn't want him to come down when I did it, and, uh, I talked... I didn't wanna talk to anybody for weeks after this except my wife, a guy that, um, is a spiritual mentor of mine, and some priests. And, uh, but I, I, so I'd called him several weeks. He kept checking on me, and he said, "Man," he goes, "I know you told me not to go down there," but he goes, "When I heard, uh, you down there," he, he said, "I didn't know if you were hurting people. I didn't know what... I didn't..." He's like, "I had, I just felt like I had to check." And he goes, "I peered around the, the, the stairwell." He just said, "I've, I've, I've never seen a human body doing what you were doing." And this is a MARSOC G-WAN veteran who has, has, uh, seen it all in the Marine Corps, has seen horrific shit. It was a, it was a really bad experience.

23. 59:53 – 1:00:50

    What Happened During His Psychedelic Experience

    1. SBSteven Bartlett59:53

       What do you think it was? Because some, you know... P- people say, well, you had a psychedelic experience, but you think it was something more than just a psychedelic hallucination, per se.

    2. SRShawn Ryan1:00:03

       Yeah. I think it's what I told you. I think that when you dabble in psychedelics, there can be benefits, and I also think that there are... You're opening yourself up to a realm that we were never supposed to have access to spiritually. And I think that you are naked in a world that you or I or nobody living today truly understands. And with that comes... I mean, you're just, you're at a vulnerable point. Things can, can access you that, and you can access them.

24. 1:00:50 – 1:08:14

    How That Experience Changed His Life

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:51

       And from what I saw from watching your videos over the last couple of weeks, your life has been different ever since.

    2. SRShawn Ryan1:00:56

       Mm-hmm. It's been different all right. It's been Dark

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:03

       Really?

    4. SRShawn Ryan1:01:03

       Yeah. It gets better. It's been a lot of supernatural things, things that I just, uh, I mean, I can't even believe I'm saying. I, I talk about some of this stuff, but it's, it is real and, uh, I don't really care what anybody thinks about me, but it has been supernatural things that have happened. It has been nightmares. It has been very odd coincidences, uh, synchronicities, um, lots of that kind of stuff. And, you know, what it's all done, it has, it has drawn me much, much, much closer to Christ.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:48

       I heard you describe that some supernatural things that were going on in your physical environment.

    6. SRShawn Ryan1:01:52

       Mm-hmm.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:53

       But, you know, s- I think you, uh, one of the videos I was watching maybe a week ago, you said that things were, like, falling off the walls in your house.

    8. SRShawn Ryan1:01:59

       Not in my house.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:00

       Not in your house.

    10. SRShawn Ryan1:02:01

        No.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:01

        In other places.

    12. SRShawn Ryan1:02:02

        Mm-hmm.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:02

        Your use of the word dark is really fascinating to me.

    14. SRShawn Ryan1:02:05

        Mm-hmm.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:05

        Is the darkness because of the nightmares, or is it because of your mental state, or is it something else?

    16. SRShawn Ryan1:02:09

        The darkness is because of all of it together. So I'll, I'll give you a... I don't wanna s- talk too long on this-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:16

        Mm-hmm

    18. SRShawn Ryan1:02:16

        ... uh, to be honest with you, but I'll give you the example of the picture frames coming off the wall. So I was in Maine. I did a podcast up there, and I was at my in-laws' house, and I had been put on this, uh, I mean, it's no secret I'd, I'd done some exorcisms now, uh, with two different priests who've also been spiritual mentors of mine. And I went up there, and I've been, I've been, I've, I kept having these nightmares, these, these reoccurring nightmares, different scenarios, but it would, it would destroy my family. I'm sure you've had dreams like this. You wake up, and it takes you a couple minutes to realize it was just a dream. Well, I kept having these, and what all this has done is drawn me f- further into Catholicism. I grew up Catholic, fell away from it. Now I'm back in because I think they're some of the only ones that have an understanding of this realm. And I've been thinking about having this bishop on from the Catholic Church, and I had had this dream where he kept, uh, kind of a, like... We were about to do the podcast, and he kept, like, sending me these, like, cryptic homosexual messages, like he wanted to get with me or something. This was in my dream, and it was just making me furious. Um, and, and it made me hate the Catholic Church, made me hate it. And I woke up from it, and I was like, "I don't wanna be a part of this anymore. This is disgusting." Like, you know, it was a vivid dream. And, uh, but it was all... Yeah, I'd never met him, and then, and I still have never met him. And, and, but I, I, I just kept getting... You know, it was, it was vivid. It was like, "What? We're coming here to do the podcast to talk about the..." [chuckles] So I wake up. These priests had put me on this, uh, prayer regimen. It's called the Libre Cristo method, and so you say it at 6:00 AM, 12, uh, PM, 6:00 PM. So I go out. I kinda shake it off, and I'm like, "All right. I'm gonna go out, and I'm gonna start my prayer regimen." And so I start the prayer regimen, and in the middle of it, I start the St. Michael's Prayer, and a picture frame flies off the wall, and I'm like, "Holy shit." All right? I just had this weird dream that makes me hate Catholicism. Now I'm doing this prayer, and this picture frame flies off the wall. And then it's Sunday, so then I'm going to mass. So I go to mass, and I'm with this guy, uh, we'll call him Hendo, and, uh, he, he, he protects me, protects my family, and he's turned into a spiritual mentor of mine and a good friend. And we're going to mass together, and I'm telling him about these things that are happening, and he knows all the prior stuff. A whole bunch of stuff had, had happened prior to this too. And we get into mass, and, and, uh, I go, and I take communion, and immediately after I took communion, I had an allergic reaction, like immediately. And so this is all, I think we went to 8:00 mass, so this is all within about two hours from end of the dream to the prayer to now we're at mass. Maybe 7:00 AM. I don't know. So I go up. I take communion, come back. I'm kneeling down. My face feels like it's on fire. And he looks at me, and, and he's like, "What?" He's like, "What? What's wrong with you?" And I'm like, "Is my face, is my face red?" And he's like, "Yeah." He's like, "Your f-" He's like, "Your veins are, like, popping out on your forehead, and you look like a tomato." I'm like, "Man, my face feels, like, really hot. I'm having a... I think I'm having a reaction to communion." And I mean, this is, like, seconds after I t- it's not even enough time for an allergic reaction to happen. It happened seconds afterwards. And so, you know, it's these weird... And right before that, I, I had told him, we had, we had got there a little early, and I was like, "Yeah, it's, it's so weird 'cause these things seem to happen in, like-"

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:29

        Hmm

    20. SRShawn Ryan1:06:29

        ... "in sequences." And I was like, "It's just, like, one after the next, and then nothing will happen for a while." And then we went into mass, and bam, there it is. That kind of stuff has been happening to me for three months now.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:46

        Ever since that?

    22. SRShawn Ryan1:06:47

        Ever since that.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:49

        I guess the outstanding question I have is there's this experience you had three months ago. There's these experiences you've had thereafter, and, like, what is... I guess the audience will be thinking, like, what is the conclusion of this?

    24. SRShawn Ryan1:07:00

        It's really interesting because I've, I've done I've been a huge proponent for the psychedelic community and, and all the good that it's done. But the minute you do something and you say something negative about it-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:15

        Mm

    26. SRShawn Ryan1:07:15

        ... pisses everybody off. They d- d- they don't want you to talk about it. How dare you? Y- you know? And, and it's... There's two sides to it, and people need to know that, you know what I mean? And make their own decisions. Like, it's not all good. I just [laughs] I just proved that, you know? And, and do I know what it is? No. Do I know for certain that it came from psychedelics? I'm not saying that it did come from psychedelics. That seemed to be the trigger point, but it kind of appears to me like I'm the only one that's willing to talk about both sides, because people are really upset, you know, that I'm talking about what happened to me, my journey. And, um, like I said, I think that it opens you up to a forbidden realm that we maybe we shouldn't have access to. I mean, a lot of people say, you know, "It lifts the veil." Yeah, it lifts the veil all right, but maybe we have that veil over us for a reason.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:13

        [page flips]

25. 1:08:14 – 1:09:41

    Ads

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:15

       This is something that I've made for you. I've realized that The Diary of a CEO audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health, we all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learnt is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps, and we call this in our team the 1%. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have, is we've made these 1% diaries, and we released these last year, and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours at thediary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. [page flips] There should be a button just down below here. And if it says "Subscribe," you're already subscribed. If it says "Subscribe," that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know, and according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. [page flips]

26. 1:09:41 – 1:11:53

    What Is an Exorcism and What Actually Happens?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:41

       Subsequently, you've had several exorcisms, which you've talked about over on your show.

    2. SRShawn Ryan1:09:45

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:45

       What is an exorcism? 'Cause many of us only know a movie called The Exorcist, and that's the only sort of reference point for an exorcism. But I-- from what I understand, it's a priest that does a pr- a, sort of a process on you with the intent of removing something that is demonic. Is that broadly what happens?

    4. SRShawn Ryan1:10:02

       Yeah. The movies, you know, are, are very extreme to comp- to, to, in comparison to what I've been through. I didn't, you know, do a backwards spider crawl up a wall or, or anything, uh, even close to that. But... And, and I don't really wanna go too far into it-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:18

       Mm-hmm

    6. SRShawn Ryan1:10:18

       ... 'cause I'm, I'm still in this process. To my knowledge, there are two types. Uh, there are possession, which is where you're not really in control of your body and your mind. And then there is oppression, which is things start happening around you, and it could be all the things that we just talked about. It could be financial, it could be health, it could be trying to destroy your family, it could be trying to destroy your faith. It could be all of that, you know? But it's not... But you're still in control of your mind and your body. And so from the, from the, the, the priests that I've talked to, they all think that it is oppression.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:08

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SRShawn Ryan1:11:08

       Oppression, not possession. What is it? I mean, it is, uh, it's a series of prayers. They try to figure out what it is. I don't know exactly everything that they're doing. Some of them have been done in Latin, uh, some of them have been done in English. One of the commonalities seem to be, "Hey, we're gonna do a series of these, and we wanna see if we get any reactions, um, to certain prayers or certain parts of prayers. And if we do see a reaction to a certain part, then we can eliminate certain things and, and, and, and kind of dial in on, on what we think exactly is going on."

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:48

       And you are right in the middle of this at the moment.

    10. SRShawn Ryan1:11:52

        Yeah.

27. 1:11:53 – 1:19:31

    How His Experiences Affected His Family

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:53

       How has it been for your family, for Katie?

    2. SRShawn Ryan1:11:56

       I mean, it's, it's, it's been rough.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:58

       Really?

    4. SRShawn Ryan1:11:58

       Yeah. I mean, imagine, uh, coming home to your wife and kids and saying, you know, just being honest, [laughs] "I j- just got done with my fifth exorcism today."

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:10

       Yeah.

    6. SRShawn Ryan1:12:11

       And then thinking about the things that are going through their head because, you know, you think about, you know, what goes through your head, exactly what you said, the movies.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:18

       Mm.

    8. SRShawn Ryan1:12:18

       You know, what is he... What, like, is he in control of his own mind? What is gonna happen? And then I have the same questions. How bad is this gonna get? What's gonna happen next? Is this sh- is this, is this ever gonna go away? Is this just mine to carry for the rest of my life? What does my wife think? What does she think when she goes to bed next to me every night?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:38

       Mm.

    10. SRShawn Ryan1:12:38

        Does she think I'm, I'm, I'm a crazy person?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:43

        I was just imagining my fiancée's ac- she actually, I think it's probably one of the first times she's ever been here, but she just happens to be here today. She's in one of the other rooms, and I was just thinking, I was imagining coming home and saying that to her. She is very spiritual. She's very religious as well, so I imagine she might pray for me. Um, I imagine, I imagine she'd wanna pray for me.

    12. SRShawn Ryan1:13:01

        Mm-hmm. Well, then you have an amazing woman, and so do I. And she's been with me every step of the way. She's been there for some of them Uh, she's seen some of the things happen, but it's been tough. It's been really tough. And you know what's interesting, too, is wh- when I started talking about this, I'm, uh, you feel like you're, you're alone and you're crazy and, and I never really have cared what other people think about me, but this is pretty, pretty personal, uh, stuff. But especially with the psychedelics thing, I had, uh, extremely influential, uh, military figures, SEALs, SF guys, Delta, like all these guys, uh, have, have reached out and said, "Man, I thought I was the only one that had that kind of an experience." I... And they're telling me how brave I am for talking about it, you know? But, [sighs] I guess what I'm saying is I'm, I'm not the only one, you know, that this, this stuff happens to. I guess I'm just the only one that decided to articulate it.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:03

        How are you?

    14. SRShawn Ryan1:14:05

        I'm good.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:06

        Yeah?

    16. SRShawn Ryan1:14:07

        Yeah. Y- that's, I was going, you know, there is a positive to all of this and, and, you know, for me... Are you a Christian?

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:17

        It's a good question. I was raised Christian in a very, very Christian household.

    18. SRShawn Ryan1:14:21

        Mm-hmm.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:22

        So, you know, to some degree it's somewhat in your bones. I think at like 18, 19, I started having lots of questions, and then I became, I was one of those people in the sort of New Atheist movement they called it, that got really interested in reading all the, like, Richard Dawkins books.

    20. SRShawn Ryan1:14:34

        Mm-hmm.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:35

        And I went through that phase where I just wanted to argue with everybody because I was trying to form my own opinion, and I came out of that and stopped caring. And now I find myself in a place that I would describe as like, um, as agnostic, but curious. And that curiosity, I think maybe from doing this podcast, frankly, and in- interviewing some of the people that I have, has, has continued to develop. So I find myself in a place where I think it would be extremely arrogant for me to say that I didn't think there was something more, but I, I, I don't k- I, I couldn't say what I, what it was. I couldn't define it like some people are able to define it, like the Christian apologists like Wes Huff, Wes Huff can define it. I can't define what that means for me.

    22. SRShawn Ryan1:15:15

        Well, don't you think it's interesting that all these people keep coming on your podcast and bringing this stuff up? People that maybe you would never expect, like, like your most recent one.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:24

        Andrew Huberman.

    24. SRShawn Ryan1:15:25

        Yeah.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:26

        No, it is fascinating.

    26. SRShawn Ryan1:15:27

        You know?

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:27

        It is truly fascinating.

    28. SRShawn Ryan1:15:28

        That's what started happening to me.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:29

        Mm. Oh, on your show?

    30. SRShawn Ryan1:15:31

        Yeah.
28. 1:19:31 – 1:21:42

    Had Supernatural Things Happened Before?

    1. SRShawn Ryan1:19:31

       timing up

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:32

       And have supernatural things ever happened to you before that experience you had three months ago?

    3. SRShawn Ryan1:19:38

       Not like that

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:39

       Not like this

    5. SRShawn Ryan1:19:39

       This is the spiritual realm playing out in real time. A battle over, uh, over my soul

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:48

       A battle over your soul?

    7. SRShawn Ryan1:19:49

       Yeah

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:51

       And this is why you have to pray several times a day is to, I- I'm assuming to reinforce which side of that battle is winning?

    9. SRShawn Ryan1:19:59

       It is to, um, release oppression

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:04

        And you don't know how long you're gonna have to do that for or how long this is gonna take?

    11. SRShawn Ryan1:20:08

        No idea

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:09

        Really? Do you know when you'll know that it's, that battle for your soul has been won?

    13. SRShawn Ryan1:20:14

        All I'm told is that you will just, you'll know.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:17

        Okay

    15. SRShawn Ryan1:20:17

        You will know. It will be, uh, very apparent

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:22

        Is it difficult to be you right now?

    17. SRShawn Ryan1:20:26

        Yeah. I know what this is for me. And now that I know what it is, now, you know, we were talking about responsibility earlier. Now that I know what this is, this is a battle between good and evil, now I, I'm no longer on the fence. I can't pretend that I don't know. So for example, I've already had advertisers who have been with me for years. We just had a meeting on how to deepen the relationship with this one particular advertiser because they've been with me for so long, and they just canceled because they don't advertise on faith-based content. This is a life insurance company who wants to get to people who give a shit about their wife and their kids so that if something goes wrong, their wife and kids are taken care of. Now, I'm sorry, what fucking audience are you trying to reach? People that give a shit about their families and you don't wanna advertise on faith-based content? They are maybe the only ones th- th- that, that put family at the very top of the priority list, and you're gonna cancel when I get farther into

29. 1:21:42 – 1:34:44

    What He Thinks About Sponsors Walking Away

    1. SRShawn Ryan1:21:42

       that?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:43

       How do you feel about that decision? What do you think that is?

    3. SRShawn Ryan1:21:45

       I think it is a influence to try to get me to not talk about it, just like the series of events that happened the night before I had Cardinal Burke on

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:53

       You think it's part of the battle for your soul?

    5. SRShawn Ryan1:21:55

       I think that my platform, as well as yours, has a lot of power. And when you have the ability to reach more people than you and I could ever count in a lifetime, and you're leading people to that book, it pisses a lot of entities off. It pisses a lot of people off. There's no more pretending for me. Like I know what this is, so I have to make a decision, you know, 'cause I do believe in heaven and hell. And so if I say, "We can't do the Bible series anymore because we're gonna lose advertisers," I can't take any of that money with me after this is over anyways. It sucks. I have goals. I'm sure you have goals

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:50

       I think me and you have both probably seen a pattern in the guests we've interviewed. You focused a lot on life stories. One of the remarkable things I notice in the life stories often when I'm asked like, "What is the pattern of these successful people?" I always cite that in their stories, there is a moment when they made a decision that was against their near-term incentives. And often, I mean, this could be, you know, I think about Jimmy Carr. He had a great job and he went to do jokes in pubs for like 5 or 10 years and got paid nothing for it. Or Derren Brown, one of the world's great illusionists who had a great job but went and did card tables in Bristol for 10 years because that was his thing. You look at these moments in their life, you're going, "Only, only an idiot would've done that at that moment." But consistently what it leads to is a better place. And I think when you were saying, you know, I, there's a short-term sacrifice potentially to pursue living more in alignment, I don't know. The conversations I've had is every great person that I've interviewed has, has got that in their story, sometimes several times. They've all walked away from something that other hu- sane humans might not have because of the strength of the incentive in the pursuit of alignment with themselves. Yes, there's some near-term turbulence, but consistently, like living out of alignment is I think a much worse long-term place to be

    7. SRShawn Ryan1:24:03

       Mm-hmm. I think you're right

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:05

       Do you know what I mean? We kind of talked about it even with like booking guests on the podcast. Like, yeah, I could have insert famous celebrity person on, but then I'm s- I'm incrementally swaying away from my own like alignment.

    9. SRShawn Ryan1:24:16

       Mm-hmm

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:17

        And, and you know, in the near term, I might get a couple more subs

    11. SRShawn Ryan1:24:20

        Yep

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:20

        But over the long term, I have a life I hate

    13. SRShawn Ryan1:24:22

        Exactly

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:23

        You know?

    15. SRShawn Ryan1:24:23

        You know? Exactly. You become part of the herd. It's easy to be part of the herd

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:29

        What is your goal now? Is there a, a central goal that you sort of orientate yourself towards with-

    17. SRShawn Ryan1:24:34

        In podcasting or?

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:35

        In podcasting, with your businesses

    19. SRShawn Ryan1:24:37

        In podcasting, you know, I think it's a couple of things. I think it's, you know, we already talked about this

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:43

        The Bible. Yeah

    21. SRShawn Ryan1:24:43

        But I think that, you know, uh, y- your team actually sent me, uh, a similar question before we got here, and I thought a lot about it, you know, 'cause it always changes, but there's one commonality I think in my, in my show, and I just don't want people to be afraid to ask questions, and I don't want people to be so tribal. I've a pretty open mind, you know, regardless of what people think about me. I'll talk to both. So I've had Ro Khanna on several times and Cenk Uygur is a friend of mine, you know Tucker Carlson's a friend of mine, and so I'm open to all ideas. I'm able to say I've made a mistake. I'm able to hold myself accountable, you know, for things. And, and I've publicly made statements saying that I messed up, saying that I've put out misinformation unknowingly, you know. And I have to correct the record 'cause I, I, I, I just, I really pride myself on integrity, and we don't see very many people left holding themselves accountable. And so I, I, you know, a couple-- through my show, I just, I, I, I wanna show that you can ask questions and take a stand for what you believe in, and maybe the repercussions that you have come up with in, in your head aren't gonna be near as severe as, as, as what you, what, what you might think they're gonna be. You know, they say courage is contagious, and I, I think that this country needs-- I think the people in this country need courage. And so I wanna show, like, you can, like, talk about these things and ask questions, and it's gonna be okay, man.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:25

        Hmm.

    23. SRShawn Ryan1:26:25

        It's gonna be just fine. Yeah, you might get a little bit of hate, but, like, I'm, I'm still here, and I've covered some of the most controversial [chuckles] shit on the planet. You know, I think that's really important.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:36

        And what does a, what does a good life mean to you these days?

    25. SRShawn Ryan1:26:40

        A good life to me is just [sighs] create memories with my wife and kids. I think we're both in, in very good financial situations, and I don't know where you came from, but I didn't come from money. And what I've realized is you hear it, and nobody's gonna believe me when I say it, but you just can't buy peace and you can't buy happiness. You have to create it yourself, and you're not going to create it with money. Yep, it will take some s- financial stress off, but it brings a whole other side of, of, of stress. And so you have to do what you love, and you have to live in the moment as much as you can and, and create as many memories with the people that you love as, as, as possible. And, you know, so it's, it's made me, I wouldn't say back off my business 'cause I'm a workaholic and I know you are too, but you have to work smarter and look for the power plays.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:46

        Mm-hmm.

    27. SRShawn Ryan1:27:46

        And sometimes no is the b- is the best business decision you could make, not because y- it was a bad deal, because it wasn't the right deal. Does that make sense? Smarter decisions.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:58

        Makes perfect sense. Uh, it's something, a narrative that I hear from fa- f- from fathers and mothers much more than anybody else because now they really do have to think deeply about priorities. Whereas, you know, I'm yet to have children. I hope we'll have, I will have children soon, but, um, touch wood, but, uh, right now my life is probably a little bit more selfish in that regard than yours is because the competition for my time is my business and then, you know, my partner, my fiancée.

    29. SRShawn Ryan1:28:25

        But you love your business.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:26

        I love it, you know?
30. 1:34:44 – 1:39:45

    What Is Glacier and Why Does It Matter?

    1. SRShawn Ryan1:34:44

       own problem.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:45

       And it's a privacy and digital security mobile app.

    3. SRShawn Ryan1:34:47

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:48

       What does it do?

    5. SRShawn Ryan1:34:50

       We made the simplest phone privacy app of, uh, that's out there. It's got a VPN, it's got secure DNS, and it has burner numbers. You walk around every day, you have all these apps. These apps are sucking information out of your phone. They're pushing it to data brokers. That's being sold to who the hell knows who. I mean, I just had Byron Tau on. He thinks that the Iranians attacked a base by buying data from a data broker and then attacked a US base because of it. Ba- basically tapping into soldiers' phones just through everyday data broker marketing shit. And so what the secure DNS is, is it, it blocks all that from getting sucked out of your phone. The VPN's great, but that's not the focus. The real win here is, is the secure DNS and the burner numbers. I mean, now you can hand out burner numbers. "Yeah, here, you can get ahold of me on this burner number." When that burner... And you feel like that burner number's been abused, you just hit the button, it goes away. They can never contact you again, and you can, you, you buy another one.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:52

       What a cool product, and very well aligned.

    7. SRShawn Ryan1:35:54

       Thank you.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:55

       Yeah. [chuckles]

    9. SRShawn Ryan1:35:55

       Thank you. Look, for, for me, I'm not gonna do two podcasts a week forever. I love to do this. Two a week, it's too much for me and my family, especially traveling around and, and doing foreign countries and this other stuff. Like it, it... I, I have to slim it down. So I'm, eventually I'm gonna go to one a week, and I've been given this platform, and I want to start businesses that I truly believe in that solves a real problem, 'cause I love business. I love... You know, I also think about the other side, like, well, what if I was, what if I was solely a dad and husband, and I didn't get any of the phone calls, and I wasn't able to... I didn't have a creative outlet. I love the creativity of business and, and creating your way on how to win.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:46

        Mm.

    11. SRShawn Ryan1:36:46

        You know what I mean? I think a lot of people hit a roadblock and like, "Oh, shit, didn't work." There's always another way. There's always another way to win.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:54

        Mm.

    13. SRShawn Ryan1:36:54

        You know, and that's, that's one of the things that I took and one of the positive things that I took from my days at contracting for CIA and being a Navy SEAL, is there is always a way to win, but you have to, you have to be creative enough to find all the different avenues to the goal that you wanna get and reverse engineer that.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:13

        And dare I say, have a bit of persistence.

    15. SRShawn Ryan1:37:15

        Yeah. A lot of persistence.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:17

        [laughs]

    17. SRShawn Ryan1:37:18

        It's an education, you know, and you get smarter along the way. So in a long way, I think that's my conclusion.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:25

        We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for And the question left for you is, what is love?

    19. SRShawn Ryan1:37:37

        What is love? The first thing that comes to mind is love is what you're willing to die for.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:47

        Hmm. And what are you willing to die for?

    21. SRShawn Ryan1:37:51

        My family.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:54

        Shawn, thank you. Thank you for being a, an inspiration for us podcasters. We've learned so much from what you do. I think the big lesson that I've taken from you is actually just around kind of what we talked about earlier on, is you're such a high integrity person that lives with such great alignment to what you believe. You do things your way, and that's why I think, you know, people like you, I, I admire so much 'cause in the world we live in, it's so easy to copy and follow and, you know, all those kinds of things. But there are some people I look out there and I go, "Do you know what? That person's doing it their way." I know who they are because what they're producing is so N of 1. It, it... There's only one of them. And that, and so that's, those are the people that I have the most respect for as, as sort of a podcasting peer, and you're certainly one of them. And, you know, as well, w- with the subject matter we talked about, you being in pursuit of your truth and your alignment, even in spite of there being obvious costs like l- losing advertisers or what people might think if. Again, it's a, it's a demonstration of your integrity as a man. And, and then lastly, your, um, real focus on family being at the heart of it and seeing the emotion in your face as you describe this sort of battle that I know a lot of my audience have every single day in their own lives between ambition and goals and these types of things, but then the love of family and kids and all those things is another wonderful reminder for me at this point in my life where I feel like I'm about to tussle with the same situation. So thank you for doing all that you do. I'm a, I'm a great fan of yours, both as a c- fellow creator and podcaster, but also as a man, and, uh, the service for the country as well is something that is of great admiration. So thank you, Shawn.

    23. SRShawn Ryan1:39:21

        Thank you. I was really excited to meet you.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:24

        Oh, thank you.

    25. SRShawn Ryan1:39:25

        And, um, great job with what you're doing.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:26

        Thank you so much. Thank you. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior, and the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out. I bet you, you might love it

Episode duration: 1:39:45