Transcript of Shawn Ryan Interview: Trump’s Betrayal – Tucker Carlson Show

I mean, Roblox, for example — we did an episode on what was going on on Roblox, and I think we took like $5 or $6 billion off the cap table in one day, or one week. And I think, you know, that’s good. But so where am I going?

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, can you back up? You became obsessed with evil?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I just — well, I think it started, you know, with COVID and the LGBTQ stuff. And I don’t really care what adults are doing, but 8-year-old kids — that just really bothered me. Like, it still does, it really bothers me. And so that’s kind of where it started. And then it’s just everywhere you look, you know, everywhere you look is a lie. The institutions are lying, the politicians are lying, everybody’s lying. People are manufacturing narratives just to create controversies so they can boost their views. And I don’t know who to believe. I don’t know what to believe anymore at all.

I mean, even here — what’s his name? Steve. Steve, he’s a reporter here. The Somalia fraud that’s going on.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh yes, Steve Robinson.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, love that guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s a great man.

SHAWN RYAN: But it just — I don’t know, I just became obsessed with all this shit that’s going on in the world, and it’s dark, man.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you felt it was your job to uncover evil?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And, you know, I say that — oh, I can’t be influenced, like I don’t let advertisers influence me and I don’t let politicians tell me what to do, even though they’re calling me trying to tell me what to do. “Don’t talk about the land sale in Utah.” “Don’t talk about—” “Actually, this guy really helped me with my campaign.” Actually, I don’t really give a f* who helped you with your campaign. But now I lost where I was going with this.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you said you became obsessed with evil, uncovering evil. You focused on evil, and that somehow led to a spiritual transformation.

Finding Hell: The Ibogaine Experience

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, well, so it never ends is basically what I’m getting. I was talking about audience and I was talking about being influenced. And then everywhere you go, people are patting you on the back and patting you on the butt — “Good job, you know, you’re doing God’s work.” And you see the views and you see the comments and you see the likes and you see all the reaction videos and everybody’s just praising you. And it gets to you.

TUCKER CARLSON: I didn’t realize it was getting to me, but it’s not the criticism that destroys you, it’s the praise, flattery. That destroys you because you—

SHAWN RYAN: But they don’t know what God wants. So you got all these millions of people interacting with you, telling you these things everywhere you go. And it gets to you. And, you know, we talked last night about my last — I just got back from an ibogaine 5-MeO experience. Didn’t go great. Found hell. Hell.

TUCKER CARLSON: Hell.

SHAWN RYAN: And I don’t want to go too far into it because I don’t want to have a meltdown on your show, but I’m just not ready, you know, to dive into it. But yeah, I’ve felt what hell was going to be like. Not like seeing devils and fire and whatever, demons and all that. Like, it was a feeling, and I never ever want to feel that again, ever. So, you know, it was a successful experience, I guess. I never ever want to do it again.

TUCKER CARLSON: Maybe the most successful experience.

Returning to Faith and Turning a Corner

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it definitely sent me down a new path that I’m still trying to figure out. But I went to Mass on Sunday and I’m full-blown going back into the Catholic Church now. And the priest here in Maine was talking about — I want to butcher this, but he was talking about wheat and weeds. Have you heard this analogy?

Good people are the wheat and the bad are the weeds. And every once in a while, a weed will come out and he’ll start calling out all the weeds, only to become a weed himself. And basically what he’s getting at is, I can sit here and I can call out this evil all the time, you know, and uncover all the f*ed up shit that everybody’s doing, that everybody has put their blind faith in. But in the end, we’re all evil. We all have an evil side to us.

And then you meet these people and they’re very charismatic, and you’re like, “Oh man, he seems like a really nice person. He’s a nice guy.” Maybe he is, but he’s influenced. They are influenced. We are influenced.

And I think it’s time to turn a corner because we all have an evil side. We all are selfish in our own ways. And it’s too easy to call other people out all the time. And maybe they don’t realize they’re doing — I think a lot of them do. I think a lot of them know, but I don’t think that’s really necessarily what God wants.

The way I used to do it is, I would wait until something came across my desk or something came to my attention that I felt really passionate about — like kids. And then I would do the thing and it would be so explosive. It would be like the perfect storm. And then all the praise came behind that, and I think I got caught up in that praise. And then now I’m searching for — what’s the next one? What’s the next thing? Let’s talk about Neuralink. Let’s talk about Trump. Let’s talk about Israel. Let’s talk about every—

TUCKER CARLSON: Everybody.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, everybody’s doing something. And a lot more than others. And I’m still passionate about those topics, but it never ends. It never ends. And I feel like I was maybe shown hell and I’m still experiencing it, for a reason.

And, you know, I gave you the analogy last night — if my son’s playing with the electrical socket and he keeps sticking his finger in there, and I’m like, “No, don’t. Hey, you’re going to shock yourself. Hey, go timeout. All right, that’s it.” Eventually I’m just going to let him stick his finger in there and figure out why I don’t want him to stick his finger in. And I think maybe that’s what Christ did to me. He was like, “All right, here it is, buddy. You want to feel it? That’s what it is.” And I never want to touch that shit ever again.

Faith, Truth, and the Reality of Hell

TUCKER CARLSON: Boy, you seem very—

SHAWN RYAN: I have to—

TUCKER CARLSON: Very resolved on that. I mean, it sounds like it was— you really got a taste of it.

SHAWN RYAN: Worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my— yeah, it’s indescribable.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s funny, normally I have curiosity. I would like want to know more, but I actually don’t want to know more because it’s upsetting even hearing that. And so you came away thinking that God directed you to this place to teach you something, and that thing was you want to avoid hell.

SHAWN RYAN: I hope that’s what it is. First I thought that’s where I’m going, but now I think maybe that’s what it is.

TUCKER CARLSON: What were your first reactions? Like, your first reaction was, I don’t want to go there. So what do you do to keep from going there?

SHAWN RYAN: Pray, build a relationship, plant some seeds maybe. I don’t know, I’m still trying to figure it out. One thing I told you, I’ve read maybe half the Bible. I can comprehend maybe 5-10% of it. And so one thing I’m kind of kicking around is maybe going through every book and doing a full-blown— I mean, look, we both have access to pretty much anybody we want in the world, right? And so that’s the upside of the job, is it? Yes, I think because they have access to you too.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it’s fair.

SHAWN RYAN: And maybe I bring on the best theologians, maybe whoever I want to learn from and bring them in. And let’s start with Genesis. Let’s— and it’ll force me to read it. And then maybe we do this every week, maybe we do it every other week, maybe we do it every day. I don’t know yet. I actually have a meeting with my team, who’s like extended family to me, about how we’re going to put this all together.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is everyone on your team on board with this way of thinking, do you think?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. You mean Christian? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

The Podcast Journey and a Changing Worldview

TUCKER CARLSON: When you started— what year did you start the podcast?

SHAWN RYAN: Christmas 2019.

TUCKER CARLSON: 2019. Boy, that’s fast. So almost 7 years. What were your views on Christianity then?

SHAWN RYAN: I just didn’t really think about it. I didn’t really think about politics. But then COVID happened, you know, shortly— what, a couple months after? And so that’s kind of when I started paying attention. I was pissed off about things about Benghazi and Hillary Clinton and stuff like that. But other than that, it seems like a different world, doesn’t it? It was a different world. But yeah, I’ve just learned you can’t— you just can’t really trust anybody in that realm. Very few people you can trust. And I interviewed this guy Pete Blaber.

TUCKER CARLSON: Have you heard of Pete Blaber?

SHAWN RYAN: Pete Blaber was a colonel over at Delta. And we both know there’s tons of lies have come out of the military.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve noticed.

Military Lies and the Iraq Invasion

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I mean, some of the biggest— he talked about the Pat Tillman stuff, he talked about Operation Anaconda. You can see another lie coming out of Development Group. Lots of those. Lots of lies coming out of the SEAL Teams. Lots of movies made that were bullshit. But he actually uncovered a lot of that stuff on my show because he was a part of it. And like, the Iraq invasion was based off of lies. Do you know about this? The water truck and the air conditioning unit and the sentry guard?

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

SHAWN RYAN: So there was a Delta unit out there, and when Colin Powell was— what, SecDef? Was that what he was?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, or Secretary of State.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, Secretary, whatever. And they sent him some imagery, and Pete was like— Pete said, “I don’t want to hear what you guys think this stuff is. Me and my guys will figure it out. We’ll get it back to you, and then you’ll have an unbiased— we don’t want to be swayed.”

And so they checked into it. And so what I guess the Department of State said was a mobile Scud missile launcher and a WMD factory with a huge air filtration system on the roof and sentry guards outside the door— what Delta, arguably the best special operations unit in the world, came up with is that’s a water truck, a huge water truck, because they’re in the middle of the desert and they need water. And that big air filtration unit on the roof is an air conditioner because they’re in the desert. And the sentry guard outside is a dude taking a piss.

And he sent it in and they totally just discarded everything and launched the invasion. And then, you know, with all the lies coming out of just the SEAL Teams alone— and there are a lot of lies coming out of the SEAL Teams. It’s like, this was a total f*-up, let’s hand out some awards and turn some people into heroes and that kind of stuff.

TUCKER CARLSON: How do the men who receive those awards do that? Because they know.

Disillusionment with Military Institutions

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. But they don’t look happy. Don’t look like happy people, at least to me. But it just, you know what it made me realize is— I was like, man, I was ashamed to have ever even been a SEAL. And there’s all kinds of— the Eddie Gallagher case, that was all f*ing lies. They were going to pin their own guys to the wall for bullshit. The Blackwater incident. That was all lies. They deleted the drone footage to prove their innocence. But it just made me think, I’m like, man, I was a part of that institution. I wish I never was.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you wish you were never a Navy SEAL?

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I don’t regret it. I enjoyed my time there. But I mean, it’s just I obviously don’t align with the ethics. And whatever value system they’re going off of, which doesn’t seem to be much.

But anyway, so the point being is that’s just one institution inside of the U.S. Navy. That’s it. One small— very SEAL Teams, very, very small part of the U.S. Navy. And then he’s talking about Ranger Battalion. And then there’s all these other units. And it just made me think, man, this is just one war in one small part of the U.S. government. Very small part. So that means every single U.S. institution out there is doing the same shit. Obviously CIA, obviously FBI, everything. All Congress, all of the Senate, everybody in it. The presidents, everybody.

And it just made me realize how— the whole country is just built off dishonesty, literally lies. And then you think, man, I’m only 43 years old, like a very small snippet in the time of the country, let alone the world. In all the other countries and all of their institutions. And then it’s just— it’s like what we said last time. Everything is a lie. Everything you fing know is a lie. Everything you think you know, everything in the history books, it’s all fing lies. All of it.

The One Truth

TUCKER CARLSON: So when you look ahead, you became one of the most successful people in this business, amazingly.

SHAWN RYAN: There’s only one truth, and I think that’s— I’m just not really interested in anything else anymore because it’s all garbage. And it’s that black book right behind you, the Holy Bible.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the one truth.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s it. You can’t even look anywhere else. It’s so painfully obvious at this point.

TUCKER CARLSON: To me. Other than the experience you just had that you alluded to, what convinced you that that’s real?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, well, I’ve had a ton of encounters. I mean, even after that, there’s been a—

TUCKER CARLSON: After—

SHAWN RYAN: It’s been a long 3 weeks. And I’ll just say this— I’ve talked to some of the most respected exorcists in the country. And I’ve been working with them and things have happened. Really scary shit. And if that’s happening and that’s real, which is more real than anything I’ve ever experienced, then the other is definitely real too.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right. That’s exactly right. If there are supernatural forces that are evil acting on people, which there are, and I’ve experienced them personally, then that’s proof of God. Is that what you’re saying?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s not faith to me anymore. It’s fact. It is 100% fact. There’s just no other way to look at it.

Doing the Right Thing

TUCKER CARLSON: Isn’t that a comforting fact?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it is. I mean, I don’t know what the hell we’re in for here in the future, but it’s definitely comforting knowing that if you do the right thing— and we all know what that is— and you do your best, then hopefully you’re going to end up in a good place.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not sure all of us know what the right thing is. When you say do the right thing, what is that thing?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, I think people know. It’s a feeling. Do you think these people all feel good about all the lies they’re spreading around? No, they get lost in them. They forget what— if they lie so much, they forget what they lied about. Can’t even keep track of them all.

TUCKER CARLSON: Lying is like that, isn’t it? Did you— there’s not a lot of talk about hell in the United States. You’re younger than I am, but we grew up in the same country. You don’t— you know, you can go a whole day without hearing anyone mention hell in a literal sense. Most Americans don’t really believe there’s an actual risk of going to hell. Did you?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, but I just never imagined it to be anything close to what I just experienced.

TUCKER CARLSON: Never. What did you think it was?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think the human mind can imagine that kind of agony and torture and aloneness.

TUCKER CARLSON: Aloneness.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. I don’t think it— you just can’t. You can’t put it together unless you feel it. And I either felt a small glimpse or I got the whole thing. Either way, I’m sure it could be a lot worse. I don’t know how, but it was bad. It was really the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. I just can’t even describe it.

I actually brought my priest on and recorded a whole episode on this. I don’t know if I’ll release it because it’s personal, but I wanted for my family to see it if nothing else. I want my son and my daughter to see it eventually. Maybe they’ll go through something similar. And like I said, it’s ongoing, so I’m not out of whatever this is yet. Because I want to document the whole spirit experience. Some people journal. I just shoot the video. I talk.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why wouldn’t you release that?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. I just want to make sure I’m in a clear headspace before I do it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think that’s very wise. I never wait for a clear headspace before making decisions.

SHAWN RYAN: I usually don’t either.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve paid the price many times.

SHAWN RYAN: I usually don’t either.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I’m not a pause before acting guy.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve been pretty vulnerable. I’m an open book. Maybe I just saved this one for myself because most of my stuff is out there. And the only thing I really won’t talk about is my family, of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: But that’s not you, that’s them you’re protecting.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. But it gets weird. You meet people and they think they know you because they do, kind of. But you’re like, what do you know about me? What have you heard that I’ve said? You know nothing about them. And it just puts you in a really uncomfortable state sometimes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do I know what you mean? Yeah. You get used to it after a while.

But yeah, of course I know what you mean. It’s weird, but everyone has a weird life in their own way, and that’s the way that we have a weird life. That’s what I think to myself anyway. Everyone’s got their own thing they have to deal with. But that is very strange, and it can make you a solitary person, and you wind up not wanting to deal with anyone you don’t know well and trust.

SHAWN RYAN: And that’s me. I’m fine with that though.

TUCKER CARLSON: I am too.

On Podcasting and Speaking with Authority

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t even like doing these anymore. I haven’t even done one of these since yours. Really? Yeah, I just don’t like doing them anymore. I feel like everybody has an expectation of me, and I never want to get caught up talking about sh that I don’t know. I see a lot of people that they turn into a character. They feel pressure like they have to know something, and then they just fing go with it. The next thing you know, you actually have no idea what the f you’re talking about.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve been there so many times— if you run a cable news show where you’re not in control of the topics, you’re responding to the day’s news. I did this for like 25 years. And you look at the papers or Twitter or whatever, and it’s whatever everyone’s talking about. That’s what you have to talk about. And sometimes it’s right in your sweet spot of knowledge, and other times it’s so far out— you know, it’s about American Indian reservation policy or something. It’s like you don’t know anything, and you all of a sudden sort of look down on the set and see yourself speaking in a commanding tone with false authority on something you literally know nothing about at all.

SHAWN RYAN: And then eventually you get caught, of course, or you indict yourself.

TUCKER CARLSON: You lose self-respect after a while because you know it’s all fake, which is worse, I think. And I’ve definitely participated in that. “Let me tell you about the Hungarian Civil War,” says the man who doesn’t speak Hungarian or whatever. That’s bad. And that’s the beauty of this gig, is you get to pick. You get to talk about what you want to talk about. And if you have some restraint and some self-respect, you restrict yourself to topics that you have developed views about, some knowledge of, you think matter— like objectively matter. You don’t have to talk about other people’s priorities, so that helps.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I like hanging out with you though, so I want to do this one.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, well, I’m not—

SHAWN RYAN: I’m too old to judge, but I mean, back to the— it just got to the point where I just don’t even know why I’m beating the same f*ing drum over and over, and it’s like, what are we doing here, man? Is anything getting solved? Like, if everybody knows what’s going on now, it’s out there.

TUCKER CARLSON: How many times can you point out that everything’s a lie before it’s just pointless?

SHAWN RYAN: Pretty much.

TUCKER CARLSON: And discouraging, by the way— this is what I think to myself because I have had exactly the same thoughts that you’re describing. It’s like, is this good? Is it good to keep telling— I mean, obviously 9/11 is not what they told us. I’m not exactly sure what it was, but they’re lying about it. Kennedy assassination, obviously they’re lying about it. Everything they’re lying about because they’re liars. So I’ve made all those points about a million times, but with decreasing enthusiasm. And at a certain point you’re like, I’m telling people something they already know. I’m not actually bringing the truth because the truth is unknowable. Like, I can’t figure out what happened really. And maybe I’m just making people hopeless.

The Fall of Empires and America’s Future

SHAWN RYAN: It’s kind of what I’m getting at. I mean, I don’t even think we’re the superpower anymore. I think that’s becoming more and more obvious every day. So let’s phrase it like this: what do you think it looks like if we do lose this, lose our place in the world? Do you think it’s going to be that bad?

I’ve been looking into some of this— what happened when Germany fell, what happened when the UK fell, and what happened to the USSR when it fell. And some of them were really bad, and some of them, like the UK stuff, didn’t really seem that bad. Like they still had law and order. Their currency was still worth money. I think they had a lot of debt. Property rights still existed. But they just— the world figured it out. “We don’t need to answer these people anymore. There’s a new sheriff in town.”

TUCKER CARLSON: There are only 2 things you need to survive long-term, in my opinion. One is a coherent nation. Like, you have to have Germans. Like, everyone understands what a German is. You’ve got a shared history, language, cultural assumptions. You have something in common with your countrymen. And you have to have your dignity and your self-respect. You can’t be convinced to hate yourself just because you lost something. They can’t break your spirit. They can’t turn you into the prison bitch. Because if that happens, then there’s no recovery at all. And the loss isn’t measured in GDP. It’s much bigger than that.

So I would argue that the collapse of the British Empire, the collapse of the German state in 1945— the country was literally split in half— those were pretty soft landings on a surface level, but they were profound, and those nations were destroyed for all time.

Whereas Russia, which went through in ’91 when the Soviet Union dissolved, went through a period of 10 years of lawlessness and oligarchs and the mafia and people getting shot to death in Moscow and life expectancy plummeting and everything that we read about in the Western press. But actually, Russia remained a coherent nation with a shared vision of the future. It remained an actual place, like a real place. And now it’s recovered, and now it’s a great power again. It’s the world’s largest country, and it has a sense of itself as that, and it will continue. It will outlive us. They will outlive Germany and the UK, that’s for sure.

My ancestors are from the UK and Germany, so I’m kind of on their side in some deep sense. But just objectively, they’re not going to exist because there’s no such thing as a German anymore. The majority of births in the UK are non-English. So what does it even mean? There’s no country.

SHAWN RYAN: But before that, I mean, it was a soft landing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, they had rationing in Britain for 10 years after the war.

SHAWN RYAN: I didn’t realize.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh yeah. Some genius on the internet will correct me, but I think for 10 years. It wrecked the British economy. The fall of empire. The empire really ended in 1918, but whatever. The point is, Americans still thought Britain was a real country and impressive. It was our parent. Being ambassador to the Court of St. James was the highest honor in the US State Department. There was a lot of prestige that attached to Britain. Not so much anymore.

But the country itself was gone. And you know you’re gone when you start importing people to replace your children. What’s your birth rate doing? Are people reproducing? Do they have enough confidence and enough self-respect to keep the project going with their genes? No, they don’t.

So I think the bigger the empire, the farther out over its skis it gets, obviously the harder it falls. The uglier the crash. And I’m worried about our country because there is no coherent nation.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah.

The Labor Crisis and the English Language

TUCKER CARLSON: I spoke to an employer this morning, a big industrial employer who’s a close friend of mine. Republican, optimistic, very smart, very decent, Christian person. And he said to me, “We have zero unemployment in the state.” That is a Midwestern state. He said, “Zero unemployment. I don’t care what they tell you, we can’t find English-speaking workers. Nobody speaks English, and you have to speak English to work in our plant— for safety reasons. And we can’t find them. Nobody speaks English.”

And this is in a major American Midwestern state. This is a major industrial company, makes things. He said we can’t find them. In fact, he told me one of his competitors is going out of business because of labor shortages. And the problem is English. There just aren’t enough English speakers in the United States to staff a factory.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy sh.

The Noise Within: Social Media, Ego, and Finding God’s Direction

TUCKER CARLSON: So I think those of us who live in kind of legacy communities where half your neighbors had an ancestor in the Civil War are not seeing what the country is becoming. Because we’re cut off from it, because we live in these little pockets that look like our childhood, but they’re— but that’s not a reflection of what the country is.

Oh, that’s not happening in Russia or China or Iran. So those are the measures. Like, all this stuff like, oh, the nuclear program and whoever is running the country today and Yeltsin versus Putin, it’s like, who cares? That’s all window dressing. I mean, those are meaningful, I guess. I mean, of course they’re meaningful, but they’re not ultimately the measures that matter.

What matters is who lives in your country. Are there people whose ancestors live there, or are they brand new people who have no connection at all to the country, are likely to treat the current occupants with contempt, and is it a source of income and people to be exploited anyway? So yeah, I’m concerned.

SHAWN RYAN: We all are.

Be the Person You Want Everyone Else to Be

TUCKER CARLSON: So, but you’re saying that really the main problem to be addressed is not what’s happening outside of us or in our political system, but what’s happening inside of us. I think, as you said, we’re all kind of evil.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I think so. I don’t know how to fix it, Tucker. I mean, what the f* do I know? But I think maybe people need to tune out a little bit and start working on themselves. Maybe, for lack of a better term, just be the person you want everybody else to be. And that probably won’t work, but that’s what I’m going to do.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the only thing. That will work. Be the person you want everyone else to be. Have you ever had this experience when you’re arguing with someone, up to and including your wife, but you’re mad at someone who you know well, and you look at that person in your mind, you’re like, “I’m mad at Shawn because he’s doing this, he’s being this way, and if only he would stop doing this or being that way, things would be fine.”

And then this is like a very common marital experience, I think, for people. And then you ultimately realize, like, whatever you’re accusing the other person of doing is exactly what you’re doing. Like, you’re being grouchy.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You realize, actually, I’m being grouchy.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. “You don’t think like me.” That’s what it is.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. But there’s something in people that wants to accuse others of doing exactly what they’re doing. Have you done that?

Stepping Back from the Noise

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, all the time. All the time. And sometimes I can’t even see it because I’m big on self-reflection and how I can improve. And I’m really big on trying to make sure that I don’t get too far ahead of my skis, that my ego doesn’t blow up. But you just don’t see a lot of things in yourself.

And so, like I told you last night, I’m just not really— that’s why I’m off everything now. The only thing I’m on is YouTube, but I don’t even look at the back end of the metrics or the financials like I used to. I’m not on Instagram, I’m not on X, I’m not on TikTok, I’m not on anything. I don’t want to see any comments, I don’t want to see any view counts.

I don’t want to hear, “Shawn, you’re doing God’s work.” I don’t want to hear, “Shawn, you suck.” I don’t want to hear, “Shawn, you’re a f*ing Qatari whatever.” I don’t want to hear any of it. I don’t want to hear the praise. I just want to hear God. And I want to be quiet so I can hear that and start leaning a lot more into my intuition, which I’ve always kind of prided myself on anyways. But it’s impossible to do it with all the noise. Especially with all the praise. And so I needed to be quiet so I know what to do and I know how to act.

TUCKER CARLSON: People will hear that and say, but you run one of the biggest podcasts and your podcast is about the rest of the world. How do you know what’s happening in the rest of the world outside of your own home if you’re not on social media?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t care anymore. Okay, I don’t care anymore. My podcast will be whatever I want it to be, and it always has. Well, I guess I can’t say it always has been because I leaned into the audience there for about probably a little over a year, leading up to the last presidential election. I was doing what I wanted to do, but then I saw— that’s when all the praise started coming. And I’m just done with that. So I’m just waiting for God’s direction to tell me what to do. And then with the Bible thing, I think that’s what I’m supposed to do.

The Trap of Audience-Driven Content

TUCKER CARLSON: Leaning into your audience— I mean, that’s a very familiar thing to anyone who does this for a living. Can you just describe that a little more for people who don’t?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, it’s what I’ve been saying.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s the praise, it’s the comments, responding to it, programming on the basis of it.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s, “What do they— oh, these numbers shot up, we need to do more of this. Oh, that’s going to be big numbers, let’s do that.” And I mean, I’m not saying I totally sold out to it or anything, but it was a big driver. It was a huge driver. And I wanted to take the number one slot. I wanted the $200 million deal that Rogan got. I’m not going to get it. That’s just not how my life works. I always have to— nothing is ever handed to me. And I always have to find other avenues to get what I want.

TUCKER CARLSON: Would you want $200 million?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I mean, of course that’s what I wanted. Now I don’t give a shit because now I see it just never f*ing ends. It never ends at this point.

Now I realize that I was putting money and attention and maybe power— and I fing thought I was somebody because of who I’m associated with. I can fing access anybody in the world. What the f* do you know? They probably know more than I do. I don’t know shit.

And I’m watching my kids get older and I’m like, “F, man, how much time did I miss?” Because of my own bullshit, my own ego. Like, “I’m fing somebody, look who I’m having lunch with, look who I’m going to see, look who I’m talking to, I know everything.” And then you get all the information and what do you do with it? Nothing. You just f*ing look cool, you sound important. And your kids are growing up. Yeah, makes me sad. I don’t want to do that again.

Figuring It Out Before It’s Too Late

TUCKER CARLSON: If it makes you feel better, having been in this business my whole life, I think every single person goes through what you’ve described, and the life cycle of yours is the shortest I’ve ever heard. If you figure that out in a year, while your children are still small, you haven’t gotten to the “Cat’s in the Cradle” stage where they’re like, “Yeah, you blew it, Dad, we hate you.”

SHAWN RYAN: I hope I never get to that stage.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you won’t because you figured it out young. You went through it really fast. But there are people— I can think of one in particular, really good guy, great guy, very well informed, very famous person in our business— missed his entire life. Was a great guy, fun guy to have lunch with. Knows everybody, knows everything. Funny storyteller. You’d like him, but a tragic, tragic person. And was left at the end with literally nothing.

SHAWN RYAN: Gone, man. Gone.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s gone. He gained the world but lost his soul. And I know a lot of people like that.

SHAWN RYAN: Me too.

Keeping Hubris at Bay

TUCKER CARLSON: So, no, I couldn’t agree with you more. So you said that you have a program, and if you don’t mind, I would love to know what your program is for keeping hubris at bay, for keeping yourself from imagining you’re God when you’re not. You’re obviously disciplined. You were a SEAL, so you’re a self-disciplined person. What steps do you go through other than getting off social media to keep yourself from getting delusions of omnipotence?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, this is all new to me, so I don’t know what to tell you. The psychedelics cracked me open, wide open again. And like I said, I’ll probably never do them again.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because they— you got what you wanted from them?

SHAWN RYAN: I can’t say I got what I wanted, but I didn’t get anything from them. I got it all from God. And I kept saying that, like, psychedelics would be like a f*ing quick fix for me. I just want to clean it out, I want to reset. And I would take all the science that they’re finding, the good things about it, and justify it.

But in the end, I think you’re opening— you’re just in a forbidden realm that maybe we should or should not be fing around in. I won’t be fing around in that realm anymore, I can tell you that. I got strict guidance— strict guidance from God— and that is, don’t mess around in that anymore.

But it’s done a lot of great things for people. And it’s done a lot of great things for me. As painful as this is to go through, I’m thankful for it. But yeah, I don’t know what the steps are, Tucker. I’m just figuring it out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Maybe saying it out loud is the first one.

Staying Grounded and Avoiding Yes Men

SHAWN RYAN: I think the steps are listen to your wife, pay attention to your kids, and some of the people that are really, really close around you. But even that, even with my team, like I told you, my team’s like my family. Like Tim, who’s sitting over here, he’s been with me since the 5th episode. And Kimball is— he’s been with me since he’s 17. He’s like 26 or 27 now. Darren’s been with me since— Elijah’s been with me since I think the 5th episode too. He runs my whole company now. He started off making like $200 an episode doing sound, like a sound engineer. Now he runs my whole company. I hired all these f*ing CEOs and all these bigwigs to come in and run them, and this kid— I love that he runs circles around him. And I trust them with my life. So we’re like a family. But even with them, my show has just gotten so big, it’s inflated all of our egos. We’re a bunch of good people with inflated egos that don’t realize that we all have inflated egos because of what we built. And I would constantly— I’m like, is my ego getting to me?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, sir, you’re perfect.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s not— it’s not that though. It’s not that. They tell me when I’m f*ing up. It’s not that. It’s—

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m just kidding.

SHAWN RYAN: Their ego is also being inflated because they’re just as much a part of this as I am. They’ve built something massive, and that grows an ego. And they see the comments and they get the praise. They go through all of that with me. So we’re all blind to it. It takes somebody close that’s not inside of it to set your ass straight. Does that make sense?

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course it, it absolutely—

SHAWN RYAN: It’s not the yes men. I don’t have any yes men.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t either. I hate people like that.

SHAWN RYAN: Fired all the yes men.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve had a couple hyper-annoying kids work for me over the years who I truly love, 2 of them at different times, and they were the no men, and they would doubt everything and constantly criticize me in a hyper-annoying way. But I trusted them because I thought they were being honest. They’re both kind of autistic, and they’d be like, “I think it’s really stupid what we’re doing.” I would always want to say, “Shut up, I employ you.” But then I would force myself to listen, and I learned more from them. Both turned out to be very successful in life, actually. I loved having people like that. As much as I hated having people like that.

SHAWN RYAN: I always listened to them.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Oh, me too.

Embracing Authenticity Over Success

TUCKER CARLSON: So as you embark on whatever is going to happen next in your professional life, does part of you think, “Well, gee, I’m so successful in conventional terms, maybe I shouldn’t mess with the formula?” Are you afraid?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Have you even thought of that?

SHAWN RYAN: Like, what happens if the numbers go to zero? I don’t care because it’s not worth doing if it’s not authentic. So if they go to zero, then they go to zero. But if I am doing what God wants me to do, then they’re not going to go to zero, are they?

TUCKER CARLSON: I personally think it’ll be bigger, actually. For what I know, that’s not why you’re doing it, but if I had to guess, I would say that anyone— even former Navy SEALs who’ve never been in broadcasting before— anyone who’s as honest as he can be succeeds. I think that.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because there’s so little of it. I don’t think the measure is, are you always right? No one is. I’m certainly not. But if you’re making an obviously sincere effort to tell the truth, people really love— they crave it because there’s just not much of it at all. That’s the superpower. And you seem like you’re embarking on a radical version of that, so I bet you you’re going to have radical results. Not that you care. And because you don’t care, that’s why it’s going to work.

SHAWN RYAN: If it happens, it happens. And if it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

TUCKER CARLSON: Are the people closest to you totally on board with this?

SHAWN RYAN: I think so. We’ll find out later this week when we have the meeting, but they’re going to be, you know what I mean? They’re going to be.

Supernatural Forces and a Divine Encounter

TUCKER CARLSON: So did you know that there were supernatural forces, demons that could act on people? Did you grow up knowing that? Did you think about that?

SHAWN RYAN: I definitely didn’t grow up knowing that. The first time I felt it— I thought maybe we chatted about this last time, but maybe we didn’t— but the first time I really felt it was maybe 3 years ago. I just done the— my Ryan Montgomery, who you met, and— Love that guy. He’s one of my best friends. He’s going to be my son’s godfather.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.

SHAWN RYAN: Here next month. But I just did his episode, which really hurt me. And Tyler Andrew Vargas, who was the survivor at Abbey Gate, he was like 24 years old, had his arm blown off, had his leg blown off, has a bag. And I’m watching this kid hobble up my stairs. With the Afghan withdrawal and the lies that came out about that, and nobody would talk to him.

Here’s a God thing. My whole team was like, “You need to get this kid.” And I’m like, he didn’t want— he’s got like every major news outlet probably wanting to talk to him. Tucker Carlson probably wants to talk to him. Joe Rogan. I’m like, “He doesn’t want to f*ing talk to me. There’s no way.” And I pinged him on Instagram and he hit me right back.

A lot of the guests come out, we have breakfast the day of, or we have dinner the night before. And I’m having breakfast with him and his fiancée, and he started crying and he’s like, “Man, all these news networks were trying to get me. Good Morning America interviewed me for like 7 hours and they released— I can’t remember— it was like 5 minutes or 5 seconds. I think it was like 5 seconds of the interview. I was there for 7 hours.” And he’s like, “I looked at my fiancée and I said, I just wish the Shawn Ryan guy would just reach out to me.” And he pulled up his phone and sure as shit, there was a message from me. And he broke down right there at the table.

TUCKER CARLSON: That is wild.

A Breakdown in Sedona and an Internal Battle

SHAWN RYAN: And so me and my wife went to Sedona. We went on this vacation to Sedona. I had just found out how bad it is with what’s going on with kids online and the sex exploitation and pedophiles and all that kind of stuff. And then the day after I did that interview was Tyler Andrew Vargas. And then, one friend that I had where I live at the time— a genuine friend, a successful guy who owns some hospitals— he didn’t need anything from me. I don’t need anything from him. I really enjoy those relationships. I know there’s not a f*ing hidden ask getting ready to happen or some kind of agenda or a photo op or whatever it may be. Just genuine. We can go out to eat and it’s not going to be, “Hey, could you— I got this new—” that kind of shit. Just genuine friendship.

Anyways, he died. He died on a hunting trip. His name is Dan Cirillo. He died on a hunting trip with his son, had a heart attack.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, come on. At what age?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. He was probably mid to late 50s if I had to guess. But I mean, I’m happy for him. Look, if that’s how I go— on a hunting trip with my son who’s raised and doing great—

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree. Then as someone who’s 57 though, I’m opposed to the timeline.

SHAWN RYAN: Me too, right?

So all these things happen and then we’re in Sedona and I have a breakdown on the plane. I don’t really break down, other than lately. And my wife’s like, “What the hell is going on with you?” And I started telling her.

The last day, I was like, “All right, I’m just going to come off my phone for the week and maybe I’ll feel better.” And I felt a little bit better. And then I got on my phone and I saw this country music star that I had a lot of respect for at the time. And she’s going on about how drag queens should be able to shake their ass in front of toddlers. And I was like, “Oh man.” A couple of weeks later she gets a big show. Anyways.

So I see this stuff and I’m like, “F*, man.” So I tell— I smoke a joint and tell Katie, “We’re going on a hike. We’re going to go up to this energy vortex. I want to see if I feel something.” The joint didn’t help. And we get up there, and dude, I went like bananas.

This is one thing about the psychedelic stuff that I didn’t really like, where it took me. I was looking for all these other fing things. I was into looking at crystals and all this shit— “Oh, energy comes out of the crystals and whatever.” And we go up to this fing vortex, and I’m like, “I don’t feel shit.” So we’re marching back down, hiking back down, and I’m having like this internal battle in my head.

I’m like, “Maybe I shouldn’t be worried about dismembering kids and politicians and schools and athletes and celebrities pushing— you should be the opposite sex, let’s put some hormones in you, let’s get you in the hospital.” And I’m like, “Maybe I’m the f*ed up one. Maybe nobody else seems to give a shit. Maybe it’s me. Why are you fighting this shit?”

And it felt like I was surrendering my soul or my heart to the devil, maybe. There was like this internal battle going on, and I was literally trying to convince myself that I’m the— like, I’m feeling all this pain because— this is when the MAPS thing started coming out, the “minor attracted person.” Can’t call them pedophile, gotta call them a minor attracted person because that’s offensive, Tucker. And so I’m trying to convince myself, “Shawn, maybe you’re just— this is old school thinking. Maybe you shouldn’t be so upset about all this stuff.”

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re the crazy one.

A Divine Encounter in Sedona

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. It’s dark and we get— we’re staying at a really nice resort down there and there’s a guarded gate and I pay attention to that because my background, SEAL and contracting for CIA. So I pay attention to that kind of thing and those guys, that demographic of people love my show, because of all the military guys I’ve had on it. So they all know me and I stop and talk to them all. We’ve been there for a week.

And this old man comes out of the guard shack and he’s trying to talk to me and I’m looking at him over my shoulder, like giving the body language, like, not now, buddy. I don’t want to, I don’t give a shit what you have to say. I just want to go to my f*ing room. And then Katie, my wife, stops and talks to him. And I’m like, oh shit. So I turn around and I square up to him, and he looked at me and he read my mind from front to back. He said, “You know all the shit that’s going on with the kids? That’s not your fight.”

And then he kept talking, and I was really worried about China. That was when the spy balloon traversed over the US and he brought up something about China and I like lost it. I was like, “How the f* are you in my head? How do you know? How are you in my head?” And so I totally blanked out on the rest of what he said, but I knew it was— he said like 2 or 3 more things and then, “Have a good night,” and walked back into his guard shack.

And I’d never seen this dude. I thought I’d met all the people that worked there because we’re in and out and we’re going back to our— we’re staying in this bungalow thing, like a duplex.

The Ghost of Gabe

And there was this guy, my best friend, who died of heroin, but he was always known as a protector. His name was Gabe. He was just a badass. He was a pro hockey player before he joined the SEAL Teams. He was an enforcer, and then he joined the SEAL Teams. He’s the guy, like, if you’re in trouble, you know Gabe’s going to come whip some ass and get you out of it. And then I met him contracting for the agency, and we became really good friends, and he had the same reputation there.

When we first got there, we’d seen this guy and he looked identical— same. He could have been a twin. You could tell them apart, but he could have been an identical twin to Gabe. And I’m in this super vulnerable state and this guy’s like everywhere we’re at this week. I pointed him out and Katie was like, “Yeah, that looks identical to him.” If we’re out in town at a restaurant, this dude’s out there. If we’re on a hike, he’s like right behind us or coming back. If we go to the pool, he’s at the pool. It was just weird. This guy’s like always around.

I’m on top of shit like that. And I know where you’re going. It wasn’t like surveillance or anything like that. So we’re walking back to the bungalow that we’ve been at all week. And I’m like, “I think that guy in the guard shack was God just talking to me.” And Katie goes, “Yeah, you think, Shawn?” And I was like, “That’s fing crazy.” And she’s like, “That’s not fing crazy.” She said, “Shawn, God’s always talking to you. You just don’t make the room to let him in.”

And then we go to our bungalow and this dude is staying on the other side of it. So I took that as this guy’s like maybe some other something else kind of watching over us while I’m in this vulnerable state.

A Text from Beyond

And then I get into the bungalow and I start crying and I’m like, “What the hell is going on?” And get this— let me pull this text up, I’ll read it to you. We’re talking and my phone dings and it’s Dan’s daughter, who I’ve never met. She doesn’t have my number. Her dad just died. And I get this text on the hunting trip with his son.

It says: “Hey Shawn, this is Taylor, Dan’s daughter. My dad requested that I reach out to you. I had a moment with him the other day when my mom and I walked into his gun room. It was the first time she had been in there since his passing, and I felt the whole room waken like invisible stars were just bouncing off the walls. There were a few people in the room, but he really grabbed me by the balls, as he would say, and made a couple of clear points. I want you to know he spoke very gently, very smooth-like, and he was calm and tranquil. One favor he asked of me is that I contact you when I’m ready. He didn’t give me any more direction than that, but I think he would just like you to know he sees you or feels you. My mom told me recently you had become his best friend and favorite person to be around, and if that’s true, it’s safe to say he really loved you. Just exactly as you are. Unfortunately, my dad didn’t really talk about our personal lives. We had more of a feeling-type relationship, not a lot of talking, but just the right amount of loving from afar. If there’s ever a chance you’d feel comfortable talking about yours and his story, I’d love to hear about it, and I’m sure he would too.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah. So that changed my life forever.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you talk to her?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s an incredible story.

SHAWN RYAN: Pretty wild, isn’t it?

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you doubt it, or did you—

SHAWN RYAN: Not at that point.

TUCKER CARLSON: You knew.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, that all happened in about 15 minutes from walking through the gate to seeing Gabe’s identical twin to Dan’s daughter, who had never met me and didn’t have my phone number, texting me that.

TUCKER CARLSON: This is not what you expected when you got on the flight to Sedona.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s one way to put it.

God Is Always Talking to You

TUCKER CARLSON: How much— your wife said that God is always talking to you, but you don’t hear it because you’re distracted. Do you think that’s true?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then I think it happened again in that year and a half I was telling you about, that I let all the praise and all that get to me. Yeah, I got too wrapped up in it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, we’ve all been there for sure, especially with knowledge. It’s not just money and fame or all that. I’ve never taken any of that seriously. But the idea that you know stuff that civilians don’t know, that’s a kind of arrogance and lie. You said that. You said like, “You don’t know the things I know, why am I even listening to you?”

SHAWN RYAN: Yep.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve definitely been there.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s a pretty f*ed up place to be.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it’s a pretty subtle temptation too, because of course, who doesn’t want more knowledge? Isn’t the whole point of this business to find out how things work?

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what everybody will make you think.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s what I’ve always assumed. And then, as my wife once pointed out to me, Adam and Eve didn’t get ejected from the garden because of their ignorance, but because of their knowledge. So the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, I have mixed feelings about. I used to think that was like the highest virtue, was just to know more. But having learned a lot more than— I think, not to be arrogant— more than most people, I’m not sure it got me anything. It definitely didn’t get me to understanding.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you feel that as you learned, as you uncovered more and more lies, did you feel happier, more content, more at peace? Did you feel like you had a deeper understanding of other people, or did you just feel agitated?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, just agitated. Just anger and rage. And all the time I bring it home and I try to play with my kids and I wasn’t there. My head wasn’t there. And I try to smoke a joint or something to get in the present moment. That wouldn’t work. So I quit all of that shit. I have no vices now. It’s great.

Giving Up the Vices

TUCKER CARLSON: When did you give up weed?

SHAWN RYAN: About a month ago.

TUCKER CARLSON: How’s it going? Great. Any downsides?

SHAWN RYAN: Nope.

TUCKER CARLSON: Didn’t affect your sleep?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know what’s affecting my sleep.

TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t sleep anyway, so that’s not—

SHAWN RYAN: That’s not— that’s all this other stuff that I’m going through right now that’s affecting my sleep. It’s not that.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you gave up weed. No drinking.

SHAWN RYAN: No drinking. Haven’t had a drop in over 4 years. That happened after Ibogaine. Yeah. And then, yeah, now no caffeine.

TUCKER CARLSON: No caffeine.

SHAWN RYAN: Nicotine.

TUCKER CARLSON: No nicotine.

SHAWN RYAN: Sorry.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, now— okay, sorry, but Shawn, I was with you up until right then, but you start getting into nicotine and that’s like crazy town.

SHAWN RYAN: No drugs, no weed, no nothing.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you think of it?

SHAWN RYAN: It’s great. There’s just nothing to mask your emotions. F*ing naked in front of everybody. It’s happening. When I’m reading that text, that would never happen before. I’m feeling things. I’m feeling emotions that before I just felt rage, just anger. That’s pretty much it. Now I’m feeling all of them.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think that’s why we use substances. We don’t have to do that, right? Was it a hard transition?

SHAWN RYAN: Not as hard as you think.

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t feel on overload?

SHAWN RYAN: This is what puts me on overload.

TUCKER CARLSON: Was it hard to get off? What was harder, getting off caffeine and nicotine or social media?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: How long did it take to get over your withdrawals?

SHAWN RYAN: Not long. My circumstances are a little different because the things I’m dealing with right now, and what I was describing to you with the priests and that kind of stuff, is just so much more important and so much more real. So I just have to deal with that, which means I can’t be dealing with this. And I know what this will do. I know it will throw me back on the path that I was on, and I just don’t want any part of that anymore.

The Phone as the Apple

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re describing the phone as actively evil? I mean, that’s what you’re saying?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. I mean, one person showed me— talking about Adam and Eve— you know, what is that?

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s an apple.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, with one bite out of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve never thought of that. Huh. So it’s like this is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, basically. I never thought of that. Me neither. You can tell what a deep person I am. How often do you have a realization like that and you understand that something you’ve had in your hand every 5 minutes for the last 10 years, you’ve never really thought about it?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: How am I missing the most obvious things?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. We’re all a slave to it.

The Glacier App

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re rolling out an app called Glacier.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: One of my least favorite things to talk about is technology, or apps I should say, or other people’s projects, or like what someone’s selling or whatever. Every time I interview someone— not every time but very often— it’s like, “I’ve got this new thing, can you talk about it?” You actually didn’t mention this to me at all. You didn’t want to talk about it. And I hate this topic, but this is an interesting enough thing that I would actually like to push you on it a little bit.

The Glacier App: Privacy in a Surveillance World

TUCKER CARLSON: So one of the big problems I have with phones is that they’re not private, of course. And not just for us. I mean, it’s obvious if you’re in broadcasting, you’re going to be surveilled. And I know that I am, but just like everybody is. And it’s upsetting and there’s really kind of no solution to it. I’ve spent a lot of time on this topic and I’ve never seen anything that protects people from it. But it sounds like this app might help. What is it?

SHAWN RYAN: Can I just tell you the story? Yeah, that would be better than me trying to get into the technicalities of everything that I don’t know and understand that well. It just came from paranoia. I think last time I checked, I think I interviewed 8 people that got picked up for the administration. 2 of them thanked me personally because they said my interviews are the ones that got them in there. One of them got picked 5 days after I released the interview, Secretary of War.

And just after they all got in there, some of them trying to influence me, and senators and congressmen and other people. And I’m like, now that they’re in there, it’s like they want me to do shit, or they did. I pretty much have made my statements, like I’m very loud about shit, and I want them to get the message. Like, don’t f*ing ask me for that stuff.

But again, I got paranoid. Like, are they monitoring me now because they’re worried I’m going to go against them? Or like, what’s going on? And then the Bao Shikem interview happened in Taiwan, and I started getting paranoid about that. So anyways, I started looking up— I was like, I need something, if anything, just for peace of mind. Like, if they’re listening when I’m talking to my wife, if they’re listening when I go to dinners with people— like, what is happening?

TUCKER CARLSON: Short answer, yes.

SHAWN RYAN: So I started asking around for a black phone. Like, what is the one that people are using? Is there a real one, or is it all these bullshit gimmicky ones that came out? And a friend of mine said, yeah, this is what the tier 1 units and the intelligence communities and stuff are using. It’s called Glacier. So I called who’s now my COO, Elijah, and I was like, “Hey, get in touch with this company. I want a phone and I want one for everybody on the team.” So he got in touch and I was like, “See if they’re interested in advertising.” And he’s like, “Yeah, they love the show.” I was like, “Really? That’s cool. See if they’re interested.”

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s a community that watches your show, I think it’s fair to say.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And I was like, “See if they want to do an equity deal.” Yeah, they want to do an equity deal. And I was like, “All right, let’s get the product and see if we like it and if it actually works.” And then I found out the price of the product and I was like, holy shit. It’s very expensive for a phone and even more expensive for the service.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like, ballpark, close to 10 grand for the phone?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, and maybe a little bit more than that for the service. And so I was like, man, that’s a lot.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m like, well, we’re getting them because I’m super f*ing paranoid. And they have like kidnapping features for kids, and they can upload and delete footprints in different countries so that— they can do all kinds of wazoo shit, like totally delete your digital footprint from wherever and upload a fake one. They have a messaging service that tunnels you in. So the Signal leak that happened early on— that’s impossible to happen. You could have your entire organization in this one chat where you can’t accidentally add the wrong Tucker in there, you know what I mean?

TUCKER CARLSON: And you couldn’t put Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic on your group text.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. Yeah, that might be worth 10 grand.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, actually. So anyways, I was like, man, I would love to do business with you guys, but this— we’re shooting for like top-tier tech CEOs, C-suite execs, and maybe government contracts, which you guys already have a foothold in. And I was like, I would be interested if you had like an application that was maybe close to that, or maybe some of the features that you have in this aren’t in that— something that’s more affordable that everybody can use. And they said, “Well, we obviously have a program, we can turn it into an app.” And I was like, “All right, let’s see what that looks like.” So we did it, and we spent about a year putting it all together.

So it’s called the Glacier app. And a lot of the VPN companies that podcasters are representing are owned by China, or they’re owned by Israel, or they’re owned by Russia.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re fake.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And you can look it up. Don’t take my word for it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I dropped a VPN sponsor over this exact question.

SHAWN RYAN: Me too. Yeah, me too. And I didn’t know that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I didn’t know that the VPN is basically a digital honey trap.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And there’s a Chinese company that owns like a whole conglomerate of these things. So anyways, we’re all American VPNs, no data is stored at all. Secure DNS, data blocking. So I think this morning before I came in here, we just launched it. It just happened to come out like 2 days ago, and just by 11 AM, we had like 830 web trackers blocked on the phone, which is the marketing shit. And I don’t even have social media apps on my phone— told you I deleted them all.

And then we have a burner number service on there. So especially for somebody like you or I who’s meeting all these people, maybe you don’t want everybody to have your number. So you can go in there and pick any area code you want, buy a burner number and give that to these state actors. Or for regular people— you get a hotel, you do a poll, you make a contribution to a political campaign, you order a pizza, whatever it is— your number goes up for sale and then you’re getting 50 million spam calls. So you can buy however many burner numbers you want, and if the relationship goes sour, you just burn the number and pick a new one. And then they have no way to contact you ever again. So yeah, we call it the Glacier app, and it’s affordable, everybody can get it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Does it help prevent you from being spied on?

SHAWN RYAN: It does the things that I told you it does. And there’s nothing that’s foolproof, being honest. Like, I’m sure there’s some way to possibly defeat it, but for the majority of stuff, it’s going to block 99% of the stuff that comes in.

TUCKER CARLSON: What if your phone number’s on the internet?

SHAWN RYAN: What if your phone number’s on the internet?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, my number’s on the internet.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, it’s not going to delete your phone number off the internet. But you can get as many new ones as you want, so—

TUCKER CARLSON: And you just go to the Apple Store and get it?

SHAWN RYAN: Yep, you go to the Apple Store and get it, or theglacierapp.com, either one. It’s just for iOS right now. We’ll have Android out in a couple months. But with your number, just— Glacier aside— if you get rid of your number, you want to keep it and get a new one. You don’t want to burn the number that you have all your banks and all that kind of stuff tied to, because if somebody else picks that up, then it would be a bad deal for you.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’d be a bad deal.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t do online banking as a result, or online whatever. Yeah, I don’t do online anything. I just never was impressed by all that stuff. I order ammo on my phone. That’s it. It’s the only transaction I do on my phone.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ll bet you got a lot of that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I do. Yeah, I have a lot of that.

Don’t Put Your Faith in Any Man

TUCKER CARLSON: So what— I know you’re not in the business of giving like advice to people. You’re clearly coming from a place, especially now, of like genuine humility. And you said it’s important to work on yourself before you start running around telling other people how to live, and I respect all of that. But if you had a son who was like 15 or 25 or older and said, “What advice would you give me about how to live?” What would your advice be?

SHAWN RYAN: Don’t put your faith in any man.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Don’t put your faith in any man. You’re going to be disappointed every single time.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s really wise. There’s something in us that wants to believe in other people. Did you put your faith in Pete Hegseth?

SHAWN RYAN: Yep.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was your takeaway from your interview with him?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, if I remember right— I mean, I don’t remember the interview that well— but Pete wanted to be the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

TUCKER CARLSON: He did, in the first term.

SHAWN RYAN: And I just don’t really have much interest in the Veterans Affairs. And so I steered the interview into, “What would you do if you were Secretary of Defense?” Because I was much more interested in that kind of stuff than I was with the Veterans Affairs. Being a veteran, I just think the VA is a lost cause.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And so I steered it that way. And then 5 days later— after the release— the guy gets— I didn’t even want to interview Pete because it was a book. He had a book out and he’s a Fox News guy and I f*ing hate Fox News. And I was like, I don’t want to interview him because he’s a Fox News guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And I was like, all right, we’ll do it. And then it was like, all right, hurry up and get this interview out. Let’s get this over with.

TUCKER CARLSON: You didn’t think you were about to change the history of the world?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And then 5 days later, he gets picked up for Secretary of Defense.

TUCKER CARLSON: What did you think when you heard that?

SHAWN RYAN: I was like, holy shit. That’s crazy. And then it inflated my ego. I’m like, holy shit, the show has power. Then I went to the Army-Navy football game and he points at me, he goes, “Thank you.” I was up at the box with all the bigwigs— Vance and Trump and all of them. And I’m like, what the f* am I doing here? But it inflates my ego and I’m like, holy shit. And then everybody else gets picked— Kash Patel, Tulsi. Now I’m not saying like I’m the guy, but for that one, that interview definitely had some influence.

TUCKER CARLSON: How do you think it’s gone?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. I mean, the funny thing is you see all these people get up there and they get addicted to this f*ing power that they do not have, right? You know, it’s like you think you’re so powerful—

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s so—

SHAWN RYAN: but you can’t even—

TUCKER CARLSON: smart.

The Powerlessness of Political Influence

SHAWN RYAN: You can’t even say what’s on your mind. You’re powerless. You have no fing power. You’re just around power that’s telling you what to do and what to say. And it’s like, I don’t get the addict— but they probably don’t see it, you know what I mean? They probably don’t see it. But they think they have all this power and they really— they don’t have any fing power because they can’t say what they really think. They can’t say what they were— they won’t even stand up for what they believe in, man.

Like, look at the shit that’s happening. You really— you’re going to sit here and tell me the f*ing country’s going great while the President of the United States’ kids are buying private islands with bunkers? Must be going great. Fair.

TUCKER CARLSON: I hadn’t thought of it that way. That’s probably not a good sign then, right?

SHAWN RYAN: Maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe they got some insider information. But, you know, I mean, how can you— like, what?

On Fox News and Media Bias

TUCKER CARLSON: Why do you hate Fox News? It’s so great.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I should give it another chance. It’s probably been 3 or 4 years since I’ve watched it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Me too. I don’t think I’m missing anything, but can you drill down a little bit on that? What about it turned you off? I’m just interested.

SHAWN RYAN: I worked there at one point, so yeah, I mean, it’s just lies over there too, I think, you know. It’s with both. It’s not just Fox News, it’s all of them. It’s all of them, you know.

And you see, especially like now, I haven’t seen it in a while, but I would see things pop up on X and stuff and I’m like— and the older generation that watches it, that’s how I know what’s going on on there, you know. And it’s like, man, did you know about like this and that, the other? Like, are you getting a full picture here? They don’t know anything. It’s just crazy to me. Like, they’d listen to only one source. And it’s like, man, you’re not getting a full picture here. And they’re hiding shit from you. Maybe they’re not lying— they probably are— but they’re hiding shit from you. They’re hiding the full picture. They’re hiding the full picture of the Upstate Files. They’re hiding the full picture of everything.

Iran War, like, is anybody over there talking about the petrodollar?

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

Schizophrenic Leadership and the Canada Pipeline

SHAWN RYAN: Is anybody talking about the schizophrenic leadership that we’re dealing with right now? Like this shit with Canada. Like, could you imagine doing business with the US? Like the Canada pipeline. And I’m going to butcher this, but like, the Biden administration denied it. They didn’t want the Keystone— was it Keystone? Yeah, Keystone Pipeline coming in. And then they’re like, okay, so then they do some deal with China, and then we throw like a 25%. Then Trump comes in, we throw a 25% tariff on them for doing business with China. Then we throw a 35%. Then we do 100% tariff and it’s like, dude, what the f* is Canada supposed to do?

They tried to pipe it right into the Midwest. We denied it. Now you’re going to put 100% tariff on them for making a deal with somebody else that we— they offered us at the beginning? Like, if I was a foreign country, there’s no way in f*ing hell I would do business with the United States.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because there’s no continuity. It’s just— no.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it’s literally like dealing with a crazy person, like a schizophrenic f*ing crazy person. Like, shit, I just offered this to you guys like a couple years ago. Now you’re going crazy on me. What are you supposed to do?

TUCKER CARLSON: I think you’re supposed to remember that’s just one. I think the answer is Putin is bad. He’s very, very bad.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s the rumor.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think one of the main reasons that the United States— which is protected from the rest of the world by the world’s largest oceans, never been invaded, has all the natural resources we need and a lot of great and smart people— the whole reason that we’ve been perpetually at war really since 1917 is because identifying a foreign threat or foreign enemy, something to worry about far away, removes attention from our own bad leadership. It’s a way of our leaders saying, okay, you’re right, but Putin. But honestly, the problem is Putin or Hitler, who’s been dead for 85 years or whatever.

The Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s Rising Power

SHAWN RYAN: It’s like this Strait of Hormuz stuff. From what I understand, nobody really controlled it before.

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

SHAWN RYAN: Now Iran has discovered, like, holy shit, the United States can’t even shut us down. So now there’s— I’m sure there’s going to be taxes and escorts and everything until the end of time, because if we can’t shut them down, nobody’s going to shut them down. Of course, you know what I mean? And so, hello, new gas prices. Like, they’re not f*ing coming back.

TUCKER CARLSON: We just turned Iran into a global power. Yeah, and it will remain a global power for the rest of our lives, at least.

SHAWN RYAN: Good job, admin.

Pete Hegseth and the Department of War

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, good job. Did you think when you interviewed Pete Hegseth— since you served in the military under a Secretary of— well, then it was Defense, now it’s of War. In fact, let me just interrupt myself and say, what do you think of the change from Defense Department to Department of War?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, I thought it was stupid. I thought it was like, what, why? You’d know that’s just going to piss people off.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s the—

SHAWN RYAN: Who cares? We had to make a big show about it. I mean, I think Pete has done some good stuff, you know. He’s cleaned up maybe all of the DEI stuff. I think that’s great. Good job, you know what I mean?

But I don’t really know how much influence the SECDEF even has anymore. Good job on that because that sucked. And I saw a lot of— I saw morale come back. I still got some buddies in, but I’ll tell you what, I just had some buddies leave and everybody knows what this is. Everybody knows they’re fighting for Israel. It’s a joke. And this isn’t me saying this— this is them. This is the guys that are going to go over there in Tier 1, Tier 2 units that are joking around saying like, yeah, this isn’t even for us.

And throughout history, that’s not a winning strategy. Especially since if they don’t believe in what they’re potentially going to do— which hopefully they’re going to do nothing— but high probability they’re going to do something. And they know it’s not for the United States, it’s for a foreign country. Then the fight’s out of the dog, buddy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, especially because they could get killed. I mean, it’s kind of high stakes.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what I’m getting at. Yeah, they know it’s not for us. We’re not defending our country.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you think they know that?

SHAWN RYAN: No, I don’t think they know that. I know they know that because I just had a going away party for one, and that’s all he was talking about. It’s f*ing sad.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, it’s such a betrayal. It’s such a betrayal.

SHAWN RYAN: Like, why don’t you just get out, man?

TUCKER CARLSON: Because it’s what he does for a living, right? What do you do after that?

SHAWN RYAN: Exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like, probably start a podcast.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

Life After Service

TUCKER CARLSON: No, but seriously, what do you do? I don’t know if we need more shooting schools or executive protection. I mean, those— I feel for those guys. They have these specialized talents, skills honed at great expense over years.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, you know, you got to give them hope. Because yeah, that’s where most of them wind up. And a lot of them are happy doing it, you know. My guy is. But just saying, if you don’t, then you have to be willing to reinvent and start from zero and go to one. And that’s really f*ing hard to do, but that’s what you have to do.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you talk to people getting out a lot?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, not a lot, but I mean, I’m getting older, you know, so I’m losing touch. And most of my generation is out.

TUCKER CARLSON: How do they feel about what they did?

SHAWN RYAN: Pissed.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Majority of them are pissed.

TUCKER CARLSON: And these are GWOT people?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: What are they mad about?

SHAWN RYAN: They don’t believe it was for the right reasons. I just told you the Pete Blaber episode, you know— the whole Iraq invasion was based off of a f*ing lie. A water truck, an air conditioning unit, and a guy taking a piss outside of a building.

TUCKER CARLSON: That sounds like weapons of mass destruction to me, Shawn.

SHAWN RYAN: We sure showed them, didn’t we?

TUCKER CARLSON: So at some point you got recruitment problems if people believe what you just said, right?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I would imagine. I don’t know what the numbers are.

TUCKER CARLSON: When you were over there, did you think a lot about why you were over there?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, but information didn’t flow like it does now. So we all thought we were there for the right reasons. And really the only gripe was coming home and listening to all the liberal Democrats bitching about the war. Turns out they were right the whole f*ing time.

TUCKER CARLSON: I know. That’s a head trip right there. That’s hard for me to admit, but it’s true. So that raises the question. Guys in SEAL teams or Delta or any of the most famous and highly trained special operator types— I always assume that they’re right-wing Republicans. I’ve always thought that. Is that still true?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. I don’t really— everything’s just so mixed up now. I mean, shit, you just got a love letter from my mother-in-law who hated you a year ago, you know what I mean?

TUCKER CARLSON: Every—

SHAWN RYAN: Everybody’s mixed up. I don’t think anybody knows.

TUCKER CARLSON: She showed me a very nice letter. She’s now a subscriber.

SHAWN RYAN: I thought she was never going to talk to me when you wrote her a letter a year ago.

TUCKER CARLSON: I did. I wrote it in jest, but also from one Protestant to another, I thought I could make a connection.

SHAWN RYAN: But anyway, and you did.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s hilarious. She seems very sweet, actually. Everything’s so messed up now. That’s right. How would you describe your politics? Do you have politics or are you just not even interested anymore?

SHAWN RYAN: I’m a Christian.

A Wave of Faith in the Younger Generation

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. So my last question is, what do you think? You know what’s going on in your life. You’ve had— and thank you for talking about it. I know it’s like you’re in the middle of it, so it’s hard to talk about it. But do you see it happening in other people? Like, do you think there’s something bigger going on?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh yeah, I mean, yes I do. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not though. I think that there are people also that are coming to Christ who are like, “Oh, look what happened to that guy,” you know what I mean? With his view counts or what it— like, it’s like the thing to do now sometimes, you know. So I don’t know. But yeah, I think there’s a wave of it happening. I mean, there’s definitely a resurgence in the younger generations.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: And so that’s really cool. That’s really cool to see.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you see that?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I see it. I see it. I see when I go to church, everybody’s paying attention. And I bounce around from all kinds of different churches.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not this morning.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, the priest didn’t show up out here, I should say.

Faith and Spiritual Warfare

TUCKER CARLSON: You texted me this morning, you want to go to church with me? This is the least Christian state out of 50, so there aren’t many churches and active churches. But you decide Monday morning you’re going to church?

SHAWN RYAN: I go 3 to 4 days a week now. Really? Yeah, I like to bring — I bring my 2-year-old and then the next day I bring my 4-year-old. And after each time we go to Mass, I bring them to breakfast and we get some one-on-one time and then take them home and then I go to work.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the best.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s awesome. I love it. And they’re into it. Really? Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I remember bringing my 2-year-olds to church and it was like a nightmare. They’re climbing on your head in the middle of communion.

SHAWN RYAN: It will be if I bring them together, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, is that right? You split them up? That’s smart.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, one-on-one time with Dad, and they want to go. They ask me, “Can I go with you today?” And really, it’s pretty cool. Yeah, we talk about communion. They ask about the special bread. It’s pretty neat.

TUCKER CARLSON: And do people who you grew up with, who you talk to, your friends, guys you served with — are they thinking more about God than they did?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh yeah, all of them. You know what’s really cool actually is, you’re addicted to the fight. I can see it. These guys are addicted to the fight. I’m addicted to the fight. A lot of these guys have fought for 30-plus years. Like a guy like Tom Satterlee, who I brought to the out party with me.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: He was in Somalia, you know, when that whole thing went down. And then the whole team — yeah, amazing human.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, amazing.

SHAWN RYAN: All these guys are like, you know, addicted to the fight now. Man, there’s just so many of us that are diving into spiritual warfare and learning about it. So that’s — it seems to be the new thing with my old community. Really? Yeah, it’s pretty neat.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think of it as guys who are the real doorkeepers, people who are actually pulling the trigger, pretty secular group, I always thought. Is that fair?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I would say so. But in these times, not so much.

TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you for talking about all this. I know it’s painful, but I think it’s really inspiring.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you. Well, thanks for having me, man.

TUCKER CARLSON: Literally anytime.

SHAWN RYAN: I love coming out here.

TUCKER CARLSON: I love having you. Shawn Ryan, thank you.

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