Shawn Ryan Interview: Podcast Infiltration, Supernatural Experiences, and a Battle for the Soul

Former Navy SEAL, ex-CIA contractor, and top-ranked podcast host Shawn Ryan joined Steven Bartlett's podcast to share an extraordinarily wide-ranging and deeply controversial life story — spanning his military career and undercover work inside Colombia's drug networks, to his claim that intelligence agencies are actively infiltrating the podcasting world, and a supernatural experience he describes as "seeing hell" following an Ibogaine session three months ago. It's a rare conversation about power, truth, and faith.

From Navy SEAL to CIA Contractor

Shawn Ryan enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 17 and went directly into the Navy SEAL training pipeline. He explained that SEAL stands for sea, air, and land, with a training cycle spanning several years — including the infamous BUDS (six months of basic training), airborne school, and SEAL Qualification Training (SQT). He openly admitted to being "rolled back" during BUDS, meaning the whole process took him about nine months.

He reflected on several defining deployments: during the 2004 fall of Aristide in Haiti, he witnessed true poverty and chaos for the first time — sewage flooding the streets, bodies floating in water, bullet holes everywhere. Then came a deployment following Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan, at the time the deadliest incident in SEAL history.

After leaving the military, Ryan worked as a real estate agent, attempted entrepreneurship inspired by a Trump wealth book (and failed), then transitioned into government contracting — working for the State Department, Blackwater, SOCT, and eventually becoming a direct CIA contractor. He openly acknowledged how deeply military life had changed him: "You get addicted to the adrenaline, addicted to that environment," which brought with it a culture of heavy drinking and fighting.

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BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) is the core selection phase for U.S. Navy SEALs, conducted on Coronado Island in California over approximately six months. Its most notorious segment is Hell Week — five consecutive days and nights of near-continuous high-intensity training with no more than four hours of sleep — designed as an extreme test of willpower. The overall attrition rate for BUDS typically runs between 70% and 80%. A "rollback" means a candidate is held back to the next class due to injury or performance, rather than being outright dropped — in some ways a greater psychological test than simply quitting. Blackwater (now rebranded as Academi) is one of America's most controversial private military contractors, widely condemned internationally after the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq, which killed 17 civilians. Its very existence reflects the structural shift following the Cold War, in which the U.S. outsourced vast swaths of security and intelligence functions to the private sector.

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The Claim That Podcasts Are Being Infiltrated

As the host of one of the world's largest podcasts, Ryan put forward an explosive assertion: podcasts and influencers are being systematically infiltrated by intelligence agencies. He acknowledged he has "no proof, but believes it to be true."

He pointed to how Trump's campaign effectively leveraged the power of podcasting, and how many podcast hosts and influencers grew complacent after gaining proximity to power. He specifically referenced the moment the Epstein files were first released — the people photographed holding up those folders "were captured in that instant." Once you publicly align with a particular "tribe," you can no longer think freely. Ryan said he has repeatedly turned down White House events and Air Force One invitations: "I know what this is — they want to capture me and put me in a box."

He also described a mechanism by which guests might be "planted": someone could talk for three to five hours, but their actual "mission" is just one line — a sentence they want clipped and spread virally. He cited an example involving a guest named Blair, who shared an account of infiltrating terrorist organizations as a CIA informant, but suddenly inserted a completely out-of-context claim that "the Russians have brought nuclear weapons into the United States" — jarring enough that Ryan challenged it on the spot. Another example he chose to shelve entirely was an interview about COVID vaccines, in which the guest kept quietly substituting "COVID vaccine" with "SARS vaccine" — leading Ryan to decide not to release it, fearing it could mislead listeners making medical decisions.

Ryan also complained that despite his show drawing between 100 and 200 million monthly views and repeatedly topping YouTube charts, it has never appeared in any "trending podcasts" section — leading him to suspect there are "undercover" operatives inside platforms, embedded as ordinary employees on behalf of intelligence services. Author Annie Jacobsen has described this type of claim as a "speculative narrative" rather than a "conspiracy theory" — a framing Ryan agreed with.

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The idea of intelligence agencies influencing media is not entirely without historical basis. The CIA's Operation Mockingbird was a documented Cold War-era program in which the agency systematically collaborated with journalists, editors, and media organizations to spread information aligned with its strategic interests. The program was partially exposed following the 1975 Church Committee hearings, though its full scope remains contested. In the digital era, "influence operations" have migrated from traditional media to social platforms and podcast ecosystems. Multiple transparency reports from Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms since 2019 have confirmed coordinated disinformation campaigns by state actors. The "plant a single line" mechanism Ryan describes bears a logical resemblance to what intelligence researchers call "strategic narrative insertion" — though Ryan himself acknowledges a lack of direct evidence, making his claims closer to experiential intuition than falsifiable assertions.

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Reflections on Trump and America's Standing

Ryan admitted he supported Trump before the election but made clear his views have since changed: "He has completely gone back on everything he said he would do." He expressed particular disappointment over the situation with Iran, arguing that U.S. military involvement there primarily serves Israel's interests rather than America's own. He spoke bluntly about his fear that America may no longer be — or may soon cease to be — a superpower: China is steadily advancing in nuclear energy and structural power while the U.S. consumes itself in internal conflict; Trump's tariff policies (such as raising tariffs on Canada from 25% to 100%) are destroying trade relationships with allies and making America look "like you're doing business with someone who has schizophrenia."

He plans to launch a "50 days, 50 states" project to film the most impoverished communities across America, asking why the country sends money abroad while ignoring poverty at home.

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The U.S.-Canada trade tensions Ryan referenced stem from the Trump administration's 2025 reimposition of tariffs on a wide range of Canadian goods, starting at 25% and escalating further — triggering reciprocal tariffs from Canada. Multiple economists have described this as the most serious rift between Western allies since the post-WWII Bretton Woods framework. The "superpower decline" thesis is not unique to Ryan. Political scientist Paul Kennedy introduced the concept of "imperial overstretch" in his 1987 work The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, arguing that devoting excessive resources to military commitments and overseas obligations erodes a nation's economic foundations — a framework frequently applied to America's strategic predicament over the past two decades. Ryan's concern, as a former intelligence contractor, about China's strategic patience reflects a broader anxiety within U.S. national security circles: that authoritarian systems may have structural advantages in executing long-term strategic plans, compared with democracies governed by short electoral cycles.

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The Colombia Years and Addiction

After leaving CIA contracting work, Ryan — then 34 — moved to Medellín, Colombia, where he spent roughly two years in a highly unstable lifestyle. He admitted to becoming deeply embedded in drug networks, though he insists he "never actually dealt drugs" — what drew him was the thrill of building networks, running infiltrations, and identifying the players behind the scenes. He candidly acknowledged that at the time he placed "no value on his own life" and was purely chasing a rush.

After a dangerous encounter in Barrio Antioquia, he discovered police had him under surveillance — listening devices had been hidden inside light fixtures outside his door, and an observation post had been set up in the building across the street. Through a network he'd built by treating a doorman named Freddie with kindness, he received a warning, confirmed it via surveillance detection routes (SDR), and fled the country within 12 hours — never to return.

Back in the U.S., he still hadn't fully broken free from cocaine until helping a close friend battling opioid addiction gave him a sense of purpose. Combined with starting therapy, he gradually got clean. A Mother's Day phone call — made when he believed it might be the last day of his life — became a pivotal turning point.

Ibogaine, "Hell," and Spiritual Warfare

Ryan shared two experiences with Ibogaine treatment. The first, undertaken after his podcast had launched, helped him quit alcohol, sleeping pills, and Adderall entirely — "effortlessly" — and allowed him to be truly present with his wife and children. But a second session three months ago was something else entirely.

He described it as "seeing hell" — not flames, but total void, extreme terror and anxiety lasting roughly an hour and a half, feeling like the most intense exorcism imaginable: "no God, no Christ, like an eternity of abandonment." His body contorted in ways he describes as unnatural. A MARSOC veteran friend who glanced through a stairwell window said he had never seen a human body move that way.

Ryan believes psychedelics "lift the veil" — but "perhaps that veil exists for a reason" — exposing a person to a spiritual realm they were never meant to enter. In the three months since, he says he has experienced a series of events he describes as "supernatural": recurring nightmares, picture frames flying off walls, and an allergic reaction within seconds of receiving communion. He has since undergone multiple exorcism sessions — he emphasizes "oppression" rather than "possession" — and priests have put him on a regimen of the Libera Christo prayer three times daily.

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Ibogaine is a natural alkaloid extracted from the root bark of the West African shrub Tabernanthe iboga, used for centuries in the Bwiti religious ceremonies of Gabon. Its pharmacological profile is unique, acting simultaneously on dopamine, serotonin, κ-opioid receptors, and multiple other systems. Acute experiences typically last 18 to 36 hours and involve intense visual and memory-based hallucinations, described by researchers as a "once-in-a-lifetime" state of consciousness. Recent clinical studies — including Stanford University research on veterans — have shown Ibogaine to have significant single-treatment efficacy for opioid addiction and PTSD. However, due to cardiotoxicity (QT interval prolongation risk), it remains a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States, with legal treatment available primarily in Mexico, Portugal, and a few other countries. The extreme physical responses and intensely negative emotional content Ryan describes in his second session are consistent with documented "underworld" or "dark journey" phenomena associated with Ibogaine, which some researchers attribute to unresolved psychological trauma surfacing during the experience.

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A Turn Toward Faith and Content Choices

The experience drew Ryan back to Catholicism. He plans to launch a series on his podcast working through the Bible book by book — a project he expects to take years. The night before he was set to record with Cardinal Burke, a senior Catholic figure, another series of what he describes as supernatural events occurred — which he took as a sign that he was doing the right thing.

This shift has come at a real cost: a life insurance advertiser he had worked with for years pulled out, citing a policy of "not advertising in faith-based content." Ryan found this baffling — this is precisely the audience most invested in family values. He frames this kind of resistance as part of "spiritual warfare": "When you have the ability to point people toward that book, it angers a lot of entities."

Both Ryan and Bartlett agreed on a pattern they've observed among genuinely successful people: real success often flows from decisions that go against short-term self-interest but are deeply aligned with who you are. For Ryan, even at the cost of advertising revenue, "I can't take any of that money with me" — so he's pressing ahead with the Bible series.

Family and the Good Life

Toward the end of the interview, Ryan opened up with deep feeling about his family. He has been completely sober for over four years — no alcohol, no sleeping pills, no Adderall, "no vices of any kind." He acknowledged that as a workaholic, balancing career and family is an ongoing battle, and he carries guilt about not spending enough time with his children.

His advice to Bartlett was: build your career with everything you have while you don't yet have children — but stay alert to the risk that "the career can destroy the family." Asked what the good life looks like, his answer was simple and firm: "Creating memories with my wife and children." "You can't buy peace and happiness — you have to create them." And when asked "What is love?" he said: "Love is what you would die for." What he would die for is his family.