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

Key Takeaway

Protect your attention and relationships by treating every opportunity as a trade-off. Before saying yes to a deal, invitation, or extra commitment today, ask: “Does this solve a real problem, fit my values, and leave room for the people I love?” If the answer is no, decline it. Ryan argues that the best decision is often not the fastest money or biggest visibility, but the choice that preserves integrity, presence, and long-term alignment.

Episode Overview

Shawn Ryan recounts his path from Navy SEAL and CIA contractor through addiction, dangerous thrill-seeking, therapy, recovery, and podcasting. He discusses skepticism toward political tribalism and media narratives, his intense and personally interpreted psychedelic experiences, and his effort to prioritize faith, family, integrity, and purposeful work. The conversation repeatedly returns to independent thinking, careful platform stewardship, and the costs of ambition.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Shawn Ryan: There's A Battle For Your Soul, It's Happening Right Now from Diary of a CEO. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

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My body was contorted. It was doing things that the human body shouldn't do. Do you think you were possessed? Because subsequently you've had several exorcisms? Yes. The things that are happening are just undeniable. What happened? I'll tell you what I experienced. Just before we get into all of that, you have lived a remarkable life. I was in the US Navy, went to Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan and done some insane missions. I mean, you learn a lot of critical life lessons. But there's another side to it. I mean, you get addicted to those type of environments, adrenaline.

And after your CIA contracting role, you moved to Medellin, Colombia? Yeah, it was probably the most dangerous thing I'd ever done. Did you get involved in the drug dealing networks? Yes, I never really dealt. It was more setting up the network, figuring out who the players are that gave me the rush. There's not very many people that can pull some **** like that off. But then this guy Freddy, he said the police were after me. They had planted a bug in the light fixture outside of my door and then they...

You now have built one of the biggest podcasts on planet Earth. Yes, but my show will not appear in popular podcasts because it's something that I was saying a long time ago. It had to do with the ****. That is very, very weird. Do you think podcasters are being compromised by guests being planted on their shows or in other ways? Yes. Here's one example. Trump administration crushed it in the election cycle, right? Really utilized the podcast. They saw the power of it. It was a great tactic.

And so I think that they have people inside of all the platforms that we use. And this has happened to me because one time I had a guy come on and we can talk about that. Had you endorsed Trump before the election? I wanted him to win. Have you changed your opinion on Trump now? Oh yeah, for a multitude of reasons. I probably shouldn't even be saying this, but... Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed.

So when we have our best episodes on the show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make the show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much.

Sean Ryan, you have lived a remarkable life for so many different reasons. I feel like you've lived several different lives as well, dare I say. But for anybody that might not be familiar with your smash hit show and your incredible journey through the military, can you give me a top line on the career that you've had before you got into podcasting, for those that might not know? Yeah, I joined the U.S. Navy. I think I enlisted at age 17, went straight into the Navy SEAL program, went to BUDS, went to SEAL Team 8, spent five and a half years in the Navy, and then left that, became a real estate agent.

I had read a book by Donald Trump way back then on, this is it, how to get rich. It inspired me to become an entrepreneur and failed miserably. So, then I looked at government contracting, started contracting for central intelligence agencies, started in small state department gig, got picked up for the CIA contract, did that through Blackwater, then jumped over to a company called Sockt, and then wound up getting picked up direct contractor for the agency with no middleman. And you said that you wanted to be a Navy SEAL.

Now, for international audiences that might not know what a Navy SEAL is relative to just being in the Army, what is the distinction? A Navy SEAL stands for Sea, Air, and Land. So, you operate in the sea, air, and the land. It's special operations. So, it is one of the most prolific special operations units in the world. You go through a training pipeline that's a couple of years long, you go through BUDS, which if you make it without getting hurt or without getting rolled back, that's six months.

I didn't make it without rolling back. So, I think I spent about nine months there. Then you go to jump school, then you go to SQT, SEAL qualification training, which is kind of where they turn you into, I guess I shouldn't say they turn you into a special operator, but that's the final school. Then you get your SEAL trident, and then you spend another year to year and a half training at your SEAL team before you ever even get the opportunity to deploy for the country.

Diving, jumping, land warfare, demolition, small unit tactics, lots of time in a kill house, lots of time in land warfare, all different operational environments, desert, winter, jungle, you name it, we're in it. Is it equivocal to the SAS, which is like the British version of the special operations team? Yeah, SAS or SPS. Okay. And you must have seen some pretty horrific, interesting, unforgettable things while you were on those tours of duties around the world. Yeah. Operated in a lot of different environments. The first thing I ever saw that was warfare-ish, it wasn't really hot.

I thought it was hot at the time, but 2004, we went to Haiti when Aristide got pulled out of power. It was the first time I'd really seen true poverty. And I don't know if you've ever been there, but the sewage goes right into the streets. All the prisoners had broken out. There were dead bodies floating around the water, bullet holes everywhere. Every once in a while, I'd see a car on fire. I mean, it was just mass chaos. It really wasn't anything compared to what I would see later on.

But that was the first place. And then Afghanistan, we went there after Operation Red Wings happened. That was the biggest loss in SEAL team history at the time. What was Operation Red Wings? Have you ever seen the movie Lone Survivor? No. Okay. There was a sniper element on a mountaintop that was surveilling a town that had a high-value terrorist in there. And the sniper hide was compromised by a goat herder. The goat herder went back to town and told everybody what he'd seen. And then they ambushed the element up there.

Helicopters went down, and then there was one guy that survived it. And so it was the biggest loss ever in SEAL team history at the time. That happened on June 28th, and I think we were there by late September or early October, I believe is when we were there. We hit some targets, but they were pretty much all dry holes. Grabbed a couple of prisoners, stuff like that. And then we actually went home early, and then I went to Iraq. Well, I went to Iraq. My platoon went home.

I decided I wanted to get out at that point. For me, it wasn't really what I thought it was going to be. What was it? I thought it would be a lot more combat. I wanted to go out every night and do the job, do direct actions, do CQB, do sniper stuff, whatever. I just wanted to work. And we weren't getting that in Afghanistan. It was few and far between. And this was 05 timeframe and 05-06 timeframe. I can't remember what happened, but the elections were dragging on.

And so I had an OIC, which is kind of like the leader of a SEAL platoon. He had found a way to farm us out to conventional units that were getting hit. We're getting hit on supply routes with roadside bombs, suicide bombers, stuff like that. And so we would attach into these conventional units and train them up. Hey, this is how you run surveillance. This is how you come up with a mission, basically. And we would teach them everything from how to plan the mission to how to set up a sniper hide, how to shoot, how to insert, how to exfil, how to position all the different teams.

And then we would go out there, we would take them with us and hunt the people that were killing our guys. And every time we went out, we had killed the bad guys, the terrorists within 24 hours of being out there. And then we'd move on to the next unit. And that was my last deployment. When you came back from the SEAL team, were you a different man? Definitely. In what way were you changed? A lot of ways. You learn a lot of critical life lessons in the SEAL teams and be in environments like that.

And your personal drive just goes through the roof. What you realize that you can accomplish as a human being is far more than I think what the normal person thinks. Your ability to work in stress, in extreme stress, goes through the roof. There's another side, too. I mean, you get addicted to adrenaline, you get addicted to those type of environments, you succumb to the culture that comes with that, which is a lot of drinking, fighting, all those things. So you're in the Navy SEALs, you contract with the CIA for a while.

And then I guess the other pretty tremendous accomplishment is you now have built one of the biggest podcasts on planet Earth, where you interview people just like I do here. That's correct. Do you think podcasters are being compromised by guests being planted? Yes. I have no proof, but yes. In a couple of different ways. Here's one example. Let's go influencers, not just podcasters. The Trump administration crushed it in the election cycle. Different podcasts. They really utilized the podcast. They saw the power of it. They utilized it.

And it was a great tactic. And then afterwards, I think a lot of podcasters and influencers, they felt powerful because they got close to the president. They got close to the administration. And if you saw what happened, do you remember the first Epstein file release? Yes. And they had all these people show up and they're holding up the binders and shit. They did not understand that the minute that happened, they were captured. Who was? Everybody that was in those pictures. Oh, okay. Yeah. They can no longer be a free thinker because maybe they are a free thinker, but the appearance that they just gave off is that they are in a tribe.

And they were smart to do this. And I've had several invites. I always turn it down because no, no, I don't. No, I'm not doing that. Invites to where? Invites to wherever. The White House. Football games. The White House. Public events where you'll be seen, where you'll be photographed, where it looks like everybody's on one team and we're all having a party and we're all friends and all this shit. That's a way to capture what you're doing without you even realizing it and showing the world, hey, look, we have Steven.

We've got him. We've got pictures of him holding binders up. We've got pictures at him at dinners with us. He's on our team. And maybe you didn't want that, but you were so fixated on being close to power that you didn't even realize it was happening. And now those people are all captured. It feels like once in a lifetime stuff. Hey, we want you to come ride on Air Force One, ride on Marine One, do this, do this with us, do this. And I'm not doing any of that shit.

I know what this is. You're trying to capture me and put me into a group. You can't allow that to happen. Otherwise you hit a ceiling. And the minute that happens, you've hit the ceiling. And you don't know what kind of decisions these people are going to wind up making later on. So that was one of the ways you can be captured. That's one of the ways. You're talking about people being inserted into the podcast circuit. Yeah. Yeah. I think there are definitely people that are in the podcast circuit that are planted, but maybe they don't even know.

Guests or hosts or both? Probably both. But like you said, we were talking about it offline. But yeah, I think there are guests that come out of nowhere and all of a sudden you see these people that nobody's ever heard of and they get just unfathomable traction and numbers. But it's not because they have a good life story. It's not because of something miraculous that they've done. It's just they're talking about current events. And I think the way that this works is you could talk to somebody for two, three, four, five hours, but the mission, the piece of it may only be one sentence that they know is going to hit, that they know they're hoping gets clipped.

Or they can clip. And then that goes viral. Or maybe we've done something, this has happened to me, these people can come on and they'll make predictions about what's going to happen in different geopolitical events that are going around the world, Ukraine, Israel, whatever it is, whatever the thing. And then you get a text, hey, I told you this was going to happen. And it's like, you're dead. Tell me, how the fuck did you know that? You know? And, and it's like, how do you, how do you even remember this?

You said that because you did 50 shows, you know, you did 50 different podcasts and in a two month span, how do you remember you said that on mine? And when I have things like that happen, I'm like, Oh, they got me. I wouldn't have believed any of this. I wouldn't as an ordinary civilian, I wouldn't have believed any of this stuff even existed until I started learning about the spy organizations around the world. And cause I don't, how do I say this? You kind of grew up thinking the world is as it seems.

And then you learn, and then you see, I don't know, James Bond and you go, okay, that's a movie. And at some point I realized that these things were actually true. Like that there are lots of different sort of spy agencies and networks around the world. And they use all these operations. They compromise people. They put them in certain situations. There are people living here in New York city right now that are living lives. We assume are real. They've got families, they've got jobs, they've got businesses, they've got all these things, but they're actually planted from another country and the other country is like funneling the money to support them and prop up a fake life.

Like when I learned all these things, I suddenly became very cautious generally about like calling anything a conspiracy. And then you sit here with these spies. I mean, I've probably, you've interviewed a lot of CIA spies. If someone, I'd heard someone saying this on a podcast, I would've thought they were a conspiracy theorist. I would have dismissed it and gone fucking idiot. Now, maybe from doing this, no, no, no, no. I, it makes logical sense to me. Like if I was insert adversary, that's what I would do.

I would get insert great podcast guest. I'd get that because I'd know that the minute they have one good podcast performance, every podcast calls them, you can do a hundred million views of just one good podcast performance and can you influence a podcast performance? Can you send traffic to a podcast? Theoretically? Could you, of course you could. I think you can, I think that they, you know, I think that they, I think that they have people inside of all the platforms that we use. Here's an example.

I started talking about a certain subject very early on, and I'm not going to say we got shadow banned, but there was a lot, I'm still not even in the top most, what is that section on YouTube, the most popular podcasts, we're number three on Spotify today, we've been the number one on YouTube, uh, several different times, but I can't get into the, my, my show will not appear in popular podcasts because it's something that I was saying a long time ago. It was, it had to do with, um, terrorism.

Oh, this section. Yeah. Oh, you'll never see mine in there. We get like 150 to 200 million views a month. It's not in there. Yeah. You've got more us views this week than Rogan has. God, isn't it? But anyways, so I think that there are people inside, you know, and I'm not saying that the companies even know, you know, cause that's how, that's how this game works. This is the intelligence work is, you know, is the primary job, but the cover is, oh, I'm just an employee at YouTube, you know what I mean?

Oh, I'm just an employee at Meta. Oh, I'm just an employee at tech top. Oh, I'm just an employee, but it's a mole inside the organization that nobody really realizes is happening. Hmm. You know, Andy Jacobson calls it a speculative narratives instead of conspiracy theories. Speculative narrative, speculative narratives. I love that. I mean, she knows a lot about conspiracy theories herself. I mean, she's like basically studied and proven a lot of them aren't conspiracies. So I'm guessing she, she's saying that in a way that is supportive of the idea that these speculative narratives are often true, I'm not complaining.

I have a great, I have a great partnership with YouTube. I love, they've been great to me. You know what I mean? I'm, I don't really give a shit if I'm in that or not. I just find it very odd that we're not, you know, it's just like, well, this doesn't make much sense. I think with all platforms, there is, there's a, there's a human element where there's someone at the office picking, I mean, that's the case with all. It seems to be the case with all these platforms.

Did you endorse Trump before he, before the election? I was supportive of him. I wanted him to win. I don't think I gave any official endorsements or anything. I did get put in that, that sphere. What nobody remembers is I've, I offered the Democrat party. I mean, you can look it up. I think it's on the Washington post and we were talking to Kamala's team. I wanted to have her on. I wanted to have everybody on. So they said no, Kamala Harris's team said no. They said no, but it wasn't just a hard note.

We were talking about it. We were coming up with an outline. They, I had all these things that I wanted to talk about. They said, well, we don't want to talk about that. We don't want to, I said, I'll tell you what you guys just tell me what you, I don't care what you want to talk about. I know I can hold my own. So you, you give me the topics and I'll develop the outline. How about that? And when Trump came on, was there anything he didn't want to talk about?

There were no guidelines. I think this should be a little bit of a sort of a lesson for the democratic party about how to navigate in this, these environments. They're learning. When Kamala came on my show, which was after the election and after she'd lost and all that stuff, no guidelines. Well, really? Zero. That's good. She didn't tell me there was anything I couldn't talk about, but I think at that point she had, they had nothing to lose. I actually think at that point she didn't even have the same team anymore.

That's good. She came in, she was in my view, she was honest. She, she said, Joe Biden kind of screwed me over. She was swearing. She, there was none of this sort of like cookie cutter, polish politicians, she just was super relaxed. That's good. And I just wish she'd offered that side of her to shows like yours beforehand, because it would have been good to see the comparison. Yeah, that's what I wanted to do, you know? And, uh, I, I had RFK on when he was still running as an independent, but yeah, we, we got very close to Kamala.

And then at the last minute, uh, they backed out. I wish it would have happened. I don't think it would have changed the outcome, but, um, but I wish it would have happened. Have you changed your opinion on Trump now? Oh yeah. Really? Yeah. Why? Oh man, for just for a multitude of reasons. I'm just, you know, to put it plainly, I'm, I'm not really happy about anything that's happening right now. I think he's totally gone against what he said he was going to do. And what do you think?

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

I was curious to get your perspective on what you think is going on there. And do you see a, a golden bridge or a positive outcome? No, no, I don't. At this point, I don't, I don't know what's going on there anymore. I, nothing seems to make any damn sense to me. I don't think there's any positive outcome for America. When you talk to your former colleagues in the military, what's the general sentiment around the deployment and the situation there? They think that they are involved for, for another country's, uh, interests.

Whose interests is it for? I think Israel probably has the majority of the interest here. I sat with JD Vance. He said that, you know, where the, he said, we're the junior, we're the senior partner, but it sounds like your colleagues are saying that maybe that's not necessarily the case. It doesn't seem like that's the case to me. Did you buy the narrative that Trump invaded or started the war for reasons related to nuclear weapons? No. No. What do you think the real reason is Sean?

I don't know. You know, anything I say would just be speculative, but I don't think they're for our interests. And so why would Trump be sucked into doing something for a non-American country's interests? That's a great question. I don't know the answer to. Do you think America would be better off if the Democrats had won? I think that these are seemingly more and more to be one in the same. And this is why you're sort of retracting from politics is because you're sort of, it sounded like you were a bit disillusioned by all of these candidates.

Yeah. I've had, I mean, I just pretty much every one of them that I've had on has just slide straight to my face and to everybody who watches. You know what I'm interested in is, is I think that there is a possibility that maybe it's already happened, but I think that there's a possibility that America may no longer be the superpower or will not be shortly. For a multitude of reasons. I mean, if you look at, you know, the, the power that the China's power structure, nuclear, they're going nuclear and we're still batting around the shit here in America.

Should we go nuclear? What are we going to do about our power grid and the petrodollar? I mean, you've had, um, what's that guy's name? He does a great breakdown on it. Professor the game theory guy. Yeah. Professor Chung. Yeah. He does a great breakdown of it. And I mean, when you think about it, it's like, holy shit. And, and you think about everybody that we've pissed off, you know, in America, like Canada, for example, you know, they wanted to pipe in a, what is the Keystone pipeline?

Biden said, no, they don't want it. Trump says, so they start to make deals with other countries, China. Now Trump is penalizing him for it. I can't remember the exact tariffs, but it went from somewhere around 25% to 50% to a hundred percent or, you know, whatever, but we're penalizing them. Shit man, four years ago or less, they wanted to pipe it in. Now we've got this new guy. He won't. And now we're going to penalize them because they're not going to pipe it in. And they're looking at us like, these people are fucking crazy.

They're like dealing with the schizophrenic. How do you do business with that? I mean, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, you can't do business with, with, with an entity like that you can't. And I think the whole world is, is seeing this, you know, because it's happening to damn near the whole world, except one country, Israel, but everybody else, you know, we're destroying our relationships with. And, and yeah, does, does the US, you know, put in the majority of the money and take them, you know, like put in the majority of the risk, you know, with a lot of the things, yes, we do, but we still need allies, you know, and, and you can't just shit and ruin everybody's trade infrastructure and oil trade and, and, and, and penalize people for making changes for some, for something that they tried to do earlier, you know, with you and it's happening all over the world.

And so one of the things that I'm interested in that I'm looking for is I want to start talking to, uh, starting with the UK, I want to talk about when, you know, what did it look like for the UK when, when the US took the, the superpower ship, you know, back in world war II, what did that actually look like? Because all we hear is all this doom and gloom and, you know, oh, you know, it's going to be lawless. It's going to be, you know, our currency is going to go to zero, but that, that all might happen.

It might, I don't know. I'm not, but it might be, maybe it's, I don't know, maybe it's a good thing. Was it that bad in the UK when, so I want to bring on a historian to actually find out what, what exactly did that look like, I'll tell you one thing. If we do lose it, it's going to take a lot of these, a lot of PAC money, you know, out of us politics. It's going to, you know, hopefully force politicians to actually look at our country and, and concentrate on our country, you know, another thing I want to do, I probably shouldn't even be saying this, I want to do a thing called 50 states in 50 days, where you go to the poorest parts of each state and just film it and look at this shit.

Look at this shit. Why are we sending all of our money to all of these other foreign countries when this shit is happening right here in New York, tomorrow, we're going to be in New Jersey and the next day we're going to be in Wisconsin, then we're going to go to California, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida. Every single state and just show how much poverty and how disgusting certain parts of this country are. And why the fuck are we sending all of our money to all these foreign countries instead of taking care of our own people?

It's disgusting. Our politicians have totally abandoned us. They're just, they're runaways. And then I want to call out every single Senator, Congressman, governor, and just look at this. This is your state. This is the state that you represent. And this shit is happening all around you. Look at this. There's both, I guess, a disrespect here at home, but there's also, as you point out, like a disrespect of allies and, you know, you can put the tariff there and whatever, but I think one of the things that made the US the superpower that it is still, but you know, that's increasingly in question is there was this sort of.

Piece by strength or whatever the phrase is like you're strong because you never really have to like, say you are, you don't act like a bully, but we just know you're strong. And then the minute you start acting like a bully, we start going, is that strength or is that insecurity? You know, the minute you start insulting countries and being rude about their leaders and saying that, I don't know, Canada is the 52nd state or whatever. Trump's dead. That's when it starts to look a little bit more like insecurity.

And also that's when I think some of these nations go shit. Like maybe we need to band together ourselves instead of banding together with the United States. And I think you're seeing that in Europe now with what's going on with Iran, the European leaders are now coming back together and saying, fuck, like we might not be as safe as we thought we were. Um, we're in the U S is, you know, with the U S is leadership. And so we need to form a new type of leadership.

it's it's it's an interesting really interesting time and you know what one might say that china are playing it very smart not making enemies with anybody that calm strength they don't need to do anything we're watching us self-destruct right now in real time do you care about the 2028 election are you going to get involved in it if the politicians will want to come back on your show i don't know i mean it depends right now i think probably not if there were to be some type of a third party then i would probably get involved but right now uh with what i see i just don't really see any strong candidates you mentioned you had someone on your podcast called blair who said something which was slightly suspicious to you blair i'm squirrel yeah yeah yeah i think that ice got him and they're trying to deport him out of the country or something we got an email about it which if he was uh an asset and actually did all that stuff for us which you know i think he did what happened i guess i don't know the full scope i just know that uh he got wrapped up by ice and it sounds like they're gonna deport him and that he's worried that if they deport him that he's gonna be killed apparently ice doesn't care about that but yeah you know he came on and we were talking about it was a life story basically in a nutshell he came on and he was a he got recruited out of prison to infiltrate the islamic terrorist cells the muslim brotherhood he's an american he is from uh i can't remember uh eastern block country he was able to infiltrate all these uh like huge like terrorist cells that had huge weapons caches and he would go and and he was a cia asset and he would go and and do the deal and then all of that those caches would get shipped to another country where it would and then it would be in cia's hands and so we had this long conversation about this and then all of a sudden he starts talking about uh russians getting nukes into the u.s and it was just so out of left field it made me think you know i just said earlier you know you you could talk to somebody for two three four five six however many hours and maybe they just need one thing inserted into the podcast you know to start a new narrative or to reinforce a current narrative you know there's a big at back then still is today you know big narrative we we all need to hate russia maybe we do maybe we don't i'm not saying either way but you know for us to be talking about the global war on terror and his time is a cia asset infiltrating terrorist networks and and and derailing massive weapons caches back to uh wherever they were going you know and then all of a sudden for him to talk about the russians bringing in nuclear warheads or whatever it was into the u.s it was like and i think i challenged him right on the show and i said you know how do i know that you weren't sent here just to put that one sentence into the show that came out of left field that doesn't fit anywhere with any conversation that we've been talking about what did he say he was you know taken back i don't remember exactly what he said you could probably find the clip somewhere but that's that's how it happens i'm not saying that he is or isn't one i'm saying that's what it looks like when it happens and your gut sometimes tells you that you're interviewing someone who is probably still working on behalf of an agency do you delete a lot of episodes no i've had i've had episodes that i didn't delete or that i never aired i've had i don't know not very many but i've had a handful you know what is the reason typically well one time i had a guy come on this was about the covid vaccine and he comes on and and he's talking about how the covid vaccine was was developed in a lab and was patented way before covid even came out and it was very compelling and i didn't really think about it until afterwards but afterwards when i was thinking about the interviews some of these interviews i'll think about all weekend or you know dazed at weeks sometimes after they happen i mean it sounded super compelling and maybe it was real i don't know but every time he would it was covid19 covid covid covid but then when he would say he wouldn't say the covid vaccine was patented prior to 2020 he would say the SARS vaccine was patented prior to you know so but but the narrative was the covid19 vaccine was patented long before covid19 ever even came out but like i said he would switch it he would switch we would be saying covid covid covid but then he would say the SARS vaccine and so he left and i was like i mean there's got to be like a million different there's there's like thousands of variations of SARS and covid and so why did he keep switching it why didn't he just say the covid19 vaccine why did he switch it to SARS and so that that clicked and i was it just made me think maybe this isn't factual and i don't want to you know i've done speculative narrative interviews lots of them but i once again we were talking earlier you know we have audiences of millions and millions and millions of people and i don't want to put something out that's not factual and have somebody make an important medical decision based on yeah based on bullshit and i just didn't want to gamble that so i never i never released the episode and i talked to lots of doctors and it was a charged subject you know at the time and so i didn't like the vex i took it but i regret it but but whatever you know what i mean it doesn't matter i didn't want anybody making that type of a i know that people trust me i couldn't live with myself if i found out that guy was totally full of shit feeding feeding a bullshit narrative for whatever and then you got people you know either taking it or not taking it based off what he said so i never aired that you know i've had another guy if i had i was interested in a lot of the stuff going on in the world economic forum and and i had this guy that i thought was an expert on the world economic forum come on and he couldn't even tell me what it was i was like well what is it is it a business is it a non-profit what is it he couldn't even tell me and then he would just start talking about all this conspiracy shit and i'm like look if you can't even tell me what it is like you really have no business being here so let's just end the interview right now and recently i had one where this woman on supposedly she worked for the agency then when i started talking about agency stuff of course everything's classified so we hide behind the classification system and the only thing she wanted to talk about was like the polygraph and i'm like for the polygraph shit about the polygraph like everybody in there has to take a polygraph why are we talking about the is this like something that you researched really hard on what a polygraph is like so to make yourself sound legitimate because you're not talking about anything else and you know something that may be classified that they don't want out is how to defeat a polygraph so and that was within the past couple months and you know we we ended that one pretty quickly and i think she knew exactly and it is so we'll never release that one but i don't care you know what i mean i just i don't want to knowingly put things that are bullshit out there i mean it's gonna happen we're gonna make mistakes i've made mistakes but you know knowingly just for views nah i have no interest in that it used to be that working for yourself was a massive massive risk but that world has completely changed and arguably in some situations it can be more risky working for someone else if you've got a business idea that you can't stop thinking about i think you owe it to yourself to at least try and make it happen and that is where our show sponsor shopify comes in their smart platform includes everything you need to start selling and get that idea off the ground they have this drag and drop editor they have this ai sidekick and helps you they 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something that just happens randomly but when you're operating at the highest level you can't just leave that to chance really you don't want to bad days are expensive and you need to be able to zone in on demand that's the idea behind our sponsor ketone iq a company i've invested in and become a co-owner of because i've seen for myself the profound impact it has on me as a podcaster sometimes i'm here with an investor or a business person or a philosopher or someone talking about menopause whatever it might be i need my brain to be sharp ketone iq is a premium focus fuel for your brain and delivers sustained mental clarity and focus so you can be more intentional about creating the conditions for focused work and it's no longer just chance because your best work shouldn't have to depend on a lucky moment so go to ketone.com slash steven for 30 off or you can head to cvs and get your first shot for free that's right ketone iq is now available at cvs locations nationwide and then once you did your stint um through the sort of security era of your life after your cia contracting role at 34 you moved to medellín colombia and spent two years with taking out drinking alcohol yeah i started in cartagena and uh ultimately just decided i'm going to camp out in medellín did you get involved in the the drug dealing networks while you were there yes i did how do you categorize this season of your life in colombia because before then you're you know you're a seal you're doing contracting work with the cia and then it appears that in this season of your life when i look at it from sort of a bird's eye view that it represents instability i think what it represents is you know just talked about addiction to adrenaline and i wasn't getting that adrenaline anywhere and you know i would be in the states and it was boring to me you know it was it was it was boring going to the bar and that life just it had no appeal to me it was boring and then on top of that i was tired of listening to everyday average americans talk about the war give their opinions on what we should be doing when none of them have done anything it just didn't sit well with me so that's why you know when i said i went down i didn't want to hear english i didn't want to hear people asking me for my opinions i didn't want to hear their opinions i don't think their opinions mattered i didn't think that at the time anyways and so i went down there and it became like a game to me it wasn't the dealing i never really dealed uh dealt it was more setting up the network that gave me the rush and infiltrating networks and figuring out who the players are and all that and being able to insert myself into the middle of all of that you know in retrospect it was probably the most dangerous thing i'd ever done uh i didn't care you know i just i didn't really have any value for my own life i wouldn't say it was suicidal at the time but i just i was in it for the thrill and to me there was nothing else that was going to give me a thrill a bigger thrill than that and i figured if if this gets boring then i'll probably just die down here yeah i mean it sounds like you came pretty close to getting in significant trouble at one point your apartment was bugged by the police yeah yeah i uh uh i had come home and i was probably i did i did a lot of drugs down there a lot of cocaine and i don't know i was on three four maybe a five day bender and there was this bridge down there that was called in in this area called barrio antioquia i don't know what it's like now but back then you couldn't you couldn't get in there you couldn't get a taxi to drive you in there you couldn't get in there without going through several police checkpoints um but that's where the cheapest and best coke was and that's where all the the players are it's all it's all coming out of that specific neighborhood and i used to go in there for a thrill and and like go up the chain go up the dealer chain find whose boss is whose boss anyways i went down there uh with a bunch of girls and we went to this bridge called the puente de los locos and it was all these it was like homeless camp and of just insane people and i went down there with a huge stack of cash and just threw the money up in the air so i wanted to see what happened of course they all got up and it was like a mad dash and we almost didn't get out of there uh because they had surrounded there was hundreds of people and so we we we wound up getting out of there and in a car and we got back to my building where i was staying at my penthouse and one thing i always did was I always took care of the doorman at the building.

You know, all the security guys, the doorman, they control who comes in and out. They can inform you if people are hanging around that maybe shouldn't be, people are looking for me. And so I built, that was part of my network, you know, was taking care of them. And so anything I got, if I got Coke, they got Coke. If I got booze, they got booze. If I went clothes shopping, they got clothes. If I got groceries, they got groceries. They always got tipped. When I was leaving, I would give them a bunch of my clothes.

Like I just always took care of those guys. And I came back and this guy, his name was Freddy. And he said that the police were after me. One thing, being a foreigner in Columbia, it's almost like a sin for them not to try to take advantage of you. And I had built a lot of trust with Freddy. He was my favorite guy. And I was pissed. And I started yelling at him like, man, I give you like all kinds of stuff. Like why would you lie to me to try to get more out of me?

I always take care of you. And he said, I'm not doing that. He said, they came by and they wanted, they wanted copies of your passport. They wanted to know where you came from, who you are, who you work with, all these things. And I was, I just thought he was full of shit. And he said, look, he said, they told me that they have pictures of you throwing money up at a bridge in Barrio Antioquia. And that was, we had just come from there. And so I was like, oh shit, he is not lying.

And what he was telling me was that they had supposedly planted a bug in the light fixture outside of my door and that they had set up a observation point in a building across from me. And so I went up and scrubbed myself of everything, kind of scanned around to see if I could pick up, you know, who was looking at me, who was watching. I'm pretty sure I saw it and got rid of everything, got rid of all the coke, got rid of everything. And then I did a SDR to a couple of different internet cafes.

An SDR? An SDR, that's a surveillance detection route. Okay. And it's a route that you develop to figure out if you're being followed or not. So I did that, didn't pick anything up. Bought a couple of different tickets to different places and was out of there within 12 hours, never to go back. And when you got back to the United States, presumably, had you changed? Was that enough of a close call for you to give up the cocaine habits that you had at the time? No.

No. I tried. I had cleaned it up a lot. I'd cleaned it up a lot. But I went, I started getting bored and so I did a couple of trips, a trip or two maybe to Panama. Panama was a lot tamer than Columbia, but it's just as easy to get in the middle of it. And then I did one to Costa Rica. And then, I can't remember exactly how many. I got a lot of different places. I went to Honduras. I went to San Pedro Sula because it was, it was literally the most dangerous place on the planet at the time.

So I wanted to go there and feed my adrenaline. I had toned it down a lot, but I didn't clean it up 100%. What was the turning point for you in that season of your life? There were a lot of turning points. One turning point that made me clean it up quite a bit was my best friend was leaving contracting and he had a horrible addiction to opiates. And so he became my purpose. He became my purpose. I wanted to help clean him up. And so in order to clean him up, I had to clean myself up.

And I think we made a lot of headway. Ultimately, he did succumb to his addiction years later, but that was a turning point. And in the middle of that journey, I had met this, I had started my therapy myself. What was the catalyst for you to go to therapy? I just knew I needed something and I had to set an example for my friend. Like, I'm doing it, so you should do it too. There was this cool on Mother's Day as well, which I've heard you talk about.

That was in Columbia. That was it while you were in Columbia? That was while I was in Columbia. What was that phone call? That was a, I always thought I was ODing down there. My ankles would swell up from lack of blood circulation and that would freak me out and lots of things. And I remember my friend told me early on, he said, you don't have to worry about ODing on coke until things start to slow down. If you're on speed and then everything seems slow, that's when you're riding the edge.

And so that started happening. I realized it was Mother's Day once and I called my mom in the middle of that because I thought it was gonna be my last day alive. And so that's, yeah, that was a realization point. And then you found this therapist? And then I found this therapist. Was that a challenge to go to a therapist? You know, there's a lot of stigma associated with going to therapy, especially at that time. Yeah, I mean, it was definitely a blow to my ego, but at the same time, you know, I didn't really have any friends.

Most of my friends were still operational at the time and I didn't have any friends where I lived in Florida. And so nobody really knew me and I didn't have anything else to do. I was like, what the hell? You know, I might as well try this. And it did help. It helped a lot. How did it help? You know, I think it's amazing how many of your own problems you'll work out yourself in your head just by telling somebody who has a, you know, seemingly unbiased opinion, you know, just with a couple of questions.

Kind of like how both you and I interview. You don't say much and people just spill it. And then you can see them working things out in their head as they go along. For me, that's what therapy was. And it's also somebody that can hold you accountable, you know, for different things. And around that time, you did Ibogaine treatment, which I'm somewhat familiar with just after that time, because I worked in psychedelics for a couple of years. Well, a year. While I was- You worked with psychedelics?

I worked in psychedelics in the industry. Oh, okay. And just when I was between leaving my first company and really starting this podcast, I did a year in working in a psychedelics business. Interesting. That was focused on mental health. So Ibogaine was one of the therapies that I came across and studied and saw the huge efficacy around addiction. But I've actually never met anybody that did Ibogaine. But I remember at the time when I was working in psychedelics, they told me that there was this thing called Ibogaine you could take.

It was quite a intense treatment, quite a long treatment, but there are several cases where people do one dose of Ibogaine in a therapeutic setting and their addiction is cured. That's what I was told. And I was like, this is crazy. And you did Ibogaine, right? I did Ibogaine, done twice now. Oh, wow. And yeah, the first time was amazing. I went down there. That was actually after I'd started the podcast. I have a feeling we're very similar. You probably wrap your entire life up into what you're doing.

And we were having, I had a six-month-old at the time, my son, and I wasn't present with him because my mind was always in business. It's just all I thought about was business, business, business, the podcast, business. I needed something to slow my mind so that I could be in the moment and actually be present with my wife and with my son. At the time, I had kicked a lot of things. I wasn't drinking hard alcohol anymore. I was, I mean, I was still on, there was no Coke for a long time before that, but there were still some pharmaceutical meds that I would dabble in, sleeping meds.

But I went down there to be in the moment. That was it. Like, help me compartmentalize or manage business stress because so many opportunities are coming. And if you, you know the deal, you feel, it's like, do I need to do all these opportunities? Are these opportunities all good for, whatever? Am I a fool if I turn this down? And I went down there for that. And when I came out of it, had no interest in drinking again. I quit all the sleep medications. I quit the Adderall.

And it was effortless. It was effortless. And I was able to be present with my wife and son. And where do you find yourself today as it relates to alcohol, the substances we've talked about, and your mental health? Girl, I've never been better. You know, I haven't had a drop in over four years. I don't take sleeping medications. I don't take Adderall. I don't, I have, I actually have no vices. None. And then I went to do it again. And the next one didn't work out so well for me.

The next Ibogaine journey? Yeah. Was this recently? This was about, I guess about three months ago now. And this is the one where I saw on your show, you said you think you visited hell. Yeah. Yes. That would be the one. So for anyone that doesn't know what Ibogaine is, and what the journey is like, is it a drink that you take, and then it's sort of like a 12-hour? For me, it was a pill. It was a pill? Yeah. It's from a root in, I think, Gabon, Africa.

Okay. Yeah, they say it's the most powerful psychedelic you can do. And I believe that, and then at this particular place, you do 5-MAO-DMT a day after your Ibogaine journey. And it's some extremely powerful stuff. Has it changed you? That second? Yes. It's changed a lot of things. I saw you had Dr. Huberman on, you know, the other day. He was talking about his faith and all that stuff. And I'm on my faith journey as well. But you know, one thing is, when it comes to psychedelics, is I've done Ibogaine twice.

I've done psilocybin a handful of times. I've done 5-MAO a handful of times. And I got so much out of the first one, and I had a very healthy respect. You know, I would really prepare for them. And then I forced myself to kind of get looser with it, because I saw all these other people doing it, and I would get these answers to things. You know, really tough business decisions, or something that might seem really beneficial to you, but you don't understand why it's happening, or you think there might be something else behind it.

You know, I would do maybe a psilocybin journey and think on that, and it would be like everything became clear. Like, all of it. You could see what the motivations are behind the person that wants to do business with you. You could see the thing over here that's gonna happen if you take that step and commit. Or maybe you see what happens if you don't. It would be like, problem solved. You know, and this has happened multiple times, and not just with business, with family, with relationships, with friends.

You would be able to piece together these super complex problems, and it would make sense. And I believe it was real. But also, at the same time, I believe that, and I always have, I believe that you are potentially opening yourself up to a spiritual realm that maybe we should not have access to. And that's something that I always took very seriously. Even when I did loosen up, I would always pray before it, and as my journey through Christianity became stronger and stronger, I would take it more and more seriously, you know, the praying before and during.

And which led up to this last one, which was, yeah, I think I saw hell. I know I did. You know you saw hell. Yeah. Give me some context on how one would know that was hell, and if you can at all. I know it's difficult to sort of say these things in human words, but like, what was it? It was total emptiness. When I say I saw, I didn't see fire. I didn't see any of that. And where I really felt it was in the 5MAO experience, and there was nothing.

It was the most amount of fear that I'd ever felt in my life. It was the most amount of anxiety I'd ever felt in my life. There was no God. There was no Christ. There was, and it felt like eternity, and this went on for an hour and a half-ish. It felt like I was going through the most intense exorcism you could ever imagine. That's what it felt like. And it felt like things were trying to maybe leave, maybe not trying. Maybe I was trying to get these things out, and they wouldn't leave, but it felt like abandonment.

It's the most horrific feeling you could ever even imagine, and it was more real than anything I've experienced in real life. What could you see? In this specific experience, I couldn't see anything. My body was contorted. It was doing things that the human body shouldn't do. There was a friend of mine with me. Told him I didn't want him to come down when I did it, and I talked. I didn't want to talk to anybody for weeks after this, except my wife, a guy that is a spiritual mentor of mine and some priests, but I called him several weeks.

He kept checking on me, and he said, man, I know you told me not to go down there, but he goes, when I heard you down there, he said, I didn't know if you were hurting people. He's like, I just felt like I had to check, and he goes, I peered around the stairwell. He just said, I've never seen a human body doing what you were doing. And this is a MARSOC GWAD veteran who has seen it all in the Marine Corps, has seen horrific shit.

It was a really bad experience. What do you think it was? People say you had a psychedelic experience, but you think it was something more than just a psychedelic hallucination, per se? Yeah. I think it's what I told you. I think that when you dabble in psychedelics, there can be benefits. And I also think that you are opening yourself up to a realm that we were never supposed to have access to spiritually. And I think that you are naked in a world that you or I or nobody living today truly understands.

And with that comes, I mean, you're at a vulnerable point. Psychedelics can access you, and you can access them. And from what I saw from watching your videos over the last couple of weeks, your life has been different ever since. It's been different. All right. It's been dark. Really? Yeah. I think it's better. It's been a lot of supernatural things, things that I just, I mean, I can't even believe I'm saying it. I talk about some of this stuff, but it is real. And I don't really care what anybody thinks about me, but it has been supernatural things that have happened.

It has been nightmares. It has been very odd coincidences, synchronicities, lots of that kind of stuff. And you know, what it's all done, it has drawn me much, much, much closer to Christ. I heard you describe that some supernatural things that were going on in your physical environment. But, you know, I think one of the videos I was watching maybe a week ago, you said that things were like falling off the walls in your house. Not in my house. Not in your house. In other places.

Your use of the word dark is really fascinating to me. Is the darkness because of the nightmares or is it because of your mental state or is it something else? The darkness is because of all of it together. So I'll give you a, I don't want to talk too long on this to be honest with you, but I'll give you the example of the picture frames coming off the wall. So I was in Maine, I did a podcast up there. And I was at my in-laws house and I had been put on this, I mean, it's no secret, I had done some exorcisms now with two different priests who've also been spiritual mentors of mine.

And I went up there and I kept having these nightmares, these reoccurring nightmares, different scenarios, but it would destroy my family. I'm sure you've had dreams like this. You wake up and it takes you a couple minutes to realize it was just a dream. Well, I kept having these and what all this has done has drawn me further into Catholicism. I grew up Catholic, fell away from it now back in because I think they're some of the only ones that have an understanding of this realm.

And I've been thinking about having this bishop on from the Catholic church. And I had had this dream where he kept kind of like we were about to do the podcast and he kept sending me these cryptic homosexual messages, like he wanted to get with me or something. This was in my dream and it was just making me furious and it made me hate the Catholic church, made me hate it. I woke up from it. I was like, I don't want to be a part of this anymore.

This is disgusting. It was a vivid dream. And but it was all I never met him and I still have never met him. And but I just kept getting, you know, it was it was vivid. It was like, we're coming here to do the podcast to talk about the book. So I wake up, these priests had put me on this prayer regimen. It's called the Libra Cristo method. And so you say it at 6 a.m., 12 p.m., 6 p.m. So I go out, I kind of shake it off and I'm like, all right, I'm going to go out and I'm going to start my prayer regimen.

And so I start the prayer regimen and in the middle of it, I start the St. Michael's prayer and a picture frame flies off the wall. And I'm like, holy shit, all right, I just had this weird dream that makes me hate Catholicism. Now I'm doing this prayer. And this picture frame flies off the wall and then it's Sunday. So then I'm going to mass. So I go to mass. And I'm with this guy, we'll call him Hendo, and he protects me, protects my family, and it's turned into a spiritual mentor of mine and a good friend.

And we're going to mass together and I'm telling him about these things that are happening. And he knows all the prior stuff, whole bunch of stuff that did happen prior to this, too. And we get into mass and and I go and I take communion. And immediately after I took communion, I had an allergic reaction, like immediately. And so this is all I think we went to eight o'clock mass. So this is all within about two hours from end of the dream to the prayer to now we're at mass, maybe seven a.m.

I don't know. So I go up, I take communion. I come back. I'm kneeling down. My face feels like it's on fire. And he looks at me and he's like, well, he's like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, is my face red? And he's like, yeah, he's like you're he's like your veins are like popping out in your forehead and you look like a tomato. I'm like, man, my face feels like really hot. I'm having a I think I'm having a reaction to communion. And I mean, this is like seconds after it's not even enough time for an allergic reaction to happen, it happens seconds afterwards.

And so, you know, it's these weird and right before that, I had told him we had we had got there a little early and I was like, you know, it's so weird because these things seem to happen in like in sequences. And I was like, it's just like one after the next and then that'll happen for a while. And then we went into mass and bam, there it is. That kind of stuff has been happening to me for three months now. Ever since that, ever since that, I guess the outstanding question I have is there's this experience you had three months ago, there's these experiences you've had thereafter.

And like what is I guess the audience would be thinking, like, what is the conclusion of this? It's really interesting because I've done I've been a huge proponent for the psychedelic community and and all the good that it's done. But the minute you do something and you say something negative about it, it pisses everybody off. They don't want you to talk about it. How dare you? You know, and it's. There's two sides to it, and people need to know that, you know what I mean, and make their own decisions like it's not all good, I just I just prove that, you know, and do I know what it is?

No. Do I know for certain that it came from psychedelics? I'm not saying that it did come from psychedelics. That seemed to be the trigger point, but it kind of appears to me like I'm the only one that's willing to talk about both sides because people are really upset, you know, that I'm talking about what happened to me, my journey. And like I said, I think that. It opens you up to a forbidden realm that we maybe we shouldn't have access to, I mean, a lot of people say, you know, it lifts the veil, yeah, lifts the veil, all right, but maybe we have that veil over us for a reason.

This is something that I've made for you. I realize that the diverse audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health, we all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny, small steps. And we call this in our team the one percent.

And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done is that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these one percent diaries and we released these last year and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again.

And you can get yours at thediary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. Subsequently, you've had several exorcisms, which you've talked about over on your show. What is an exorcism? Because many of us only know a movie called The Exorcist. That's the only sort of reference point for an exorcism. But from what I understand, it's a priest that does a sort of a process on you with the intent of removing something that is demonic. Is that broadly what happens? Yeah, the movies are very extreme in comparison to what I've been through.

I didn't do a backwards spider crawl up a wall or anything even close to that. And I don't really want to go too far into it because I'm still in this process. To my knowledge, there are two types. There are possession, which is where you're not really in control of your body and your mind. And then there is oppression, which is things start happening around you. And it could be all the things that we just talked about. It could be financial. It could be health. It could be trying to destroy your family.

It could be trying to destroy your faith. It could be all of that, but it's not. But you're still in control of your mind and your body. And so from the priests that I've talked to, they all think that it is oppression, oppression, not possession. What is it? I mean, it's a series of prayers. They try to figure out what it is. I don't know exactly everything that they're doing. Some of them have been done in Latin. Some of them have been done in English. One of the commonalities seem to be, hey, we're going to do a series of these and we'll want to see if we get any reactions to certain prayers or certain parts of prayers.

And if we do see a reaction to a certain part, then we can eliminate certain things and and kind of dial in on what we think exactly is going on. And you are right in the middle of this at the moment. Yeah. How has it been for your family, for Katie? I mean, it's it's it's been rough. Brilliant. Yeah. I mean, imagine coming home to your wife and kids and saying, you know, just being honest, I just got done with my fifth exorcism today. Yeah. And then thinking about the things that are going through their head, because, you know, you think about, you know, what goes through your head, exactly what you said, the movies, you know, what does he look like?

Is he in control of his own mind? What is going to happen? And then I have the same questions. How bad is this going to get? What's going to happen next? Is this is this is this ever going to go away? Is this just mine to carry for the rest of my life? What does my wife think? What does she think when she goes to bed next to me every night? Does she think I'm I'm a crazy person? I was just imagining my fiance's, I should think it's probably one of the first time she's ever been here, but she just happens to be here today.

She's in one of the other rooms. And I was just thinking, I was imagining coming home and saying that she is very spiritual. She's very religious as well. So I imagine she might pray for me. I imagine I imagine she'd want to pray for me. Well, then you have an amazing woman and so do I. And she's been with me every step of the way. She's been there for some of them. She's seen some of the things happen, but it's been tough. It's been really tough.

And, you know, what's interesting, too, is when I started talking about this, you feel like you're alone and you're crazy. And I never really have cared what other people think about me. But this is pretty, pretty personal stuff. But especially with the psychedelics thing, I had extremely influential military figures, SEALs, SF guys, Delta, like all these guys have reached out and said, man, I thought I was the only one that had that kind of an experience. And they're telling me how brave I am for talking about it, you know, but.

I guess what I'm saying is I'm not the only one, you know, that this this stuff happens to, I guess I'm just the only one that decided to articulate it. How are you? I'm good. Yeah. Yeah, I was going, you know, there is a positive to all of this. then, you know, for me, are you a Christian? It's a good question. I was raised Christian in a very, very Christian household. So, you know, to some degree, it's somewhat in your bones. I think at like 18, 19, I started having lots of questions.

And then I became, I was one of those people in the sort of new atheist movement they called it, that got really interested in reading all the like Richard Dawkins books. And I went through that phase where I just wanted to argue with everybody because I was trying to form my own opinion. And I came out of that and stopped caring. And now I find myself in a place that I describe as like, as agnostic, but curious. And that curiosity, I think maybe from doing this podcast, frankly, and interviewing some of the people that I have, has continued to develop.

So I find myself in a place where I think it would be extremely arrogant for me to say that I didn't think there was something more. But I couldn't say what it was. I couldn't define it, like some people are able to define it, like the Christian apologists, like Wes Hough can define it. I can't define what that means for me. Don't you think it's interesting that all these people keep coming on your podcast and bringing this stuff up? People that maybe you would never expect, like your most recent one?

Andrew Huberman. No, it is fascinating. It's truly fascinating. That's what started happening to me. Oh, on your show? That's where the seed was planted. Like I said, I grew up Catholic, but that's what started happening to me, is all these people started coming on, and it was fascinating to me to hear their journey. But I was like you, on the fence. You got baptized quite recently. Yeah, I can't remember what year. 2024, I think it was. Yeah, on Easter. It's just funny how it works. So where I was going, with all this stuff that's happening, and it's scary, but it gets less scary and less scary.

What it is doing is strengthening my faith and my wife's faith in Christ, because the things that are happening are just undeniable. You said to Tucker Carlson in July, I'm going through a crazy spiritual transformation right now. It must be somewhat difficult to share this with the world, for lots of different reasons, because it's a subjective experience. So to sort of communicate that publicly, I could see as you were explaining it, you're well aware that people will think it's like, what's he talking about? Whatever. When you deliver your truth, you also acknowledge, as you're saying it, some people will think I'm just saying, but you just have to take my word for it.

So it's not easy to make that decision to share it. What inspired that? What inspired your decision to come out and tell your audience very publicly that you're going through this? A couple of reasons. One is, we get access to a lot of people that nobody gets access to. You know, and we get a lot of time with them. I ask them on my podcast, I just ask the questions, you know, that I'm genuinely curious and for myself. And on top of that, I feel like it's kind of maybe my responsibility, or maybe I'm supposed to do that, you know, because I do have one of the biggest podcasts in the world.

And I'm just a normal guy. And I think a lot of people realize that about me. And because I get the access to the people that I get access to, you know, I think it's important that I ask those kinds of questions. You know, one thing that came out of this, you know, for me is I just, I've never, some of these things, some of these supernatural type things happened the night before I had Cardinal Burke on. And he is very high up in the Catholic church.

And so one thing I decided I wanted to do is, because I got way more involved in politics than I wanted to be. And now I think pretty much all of them are just lying pieces of shit. And so I don't really want to do it anymore. Well, that leaves a huge gap in my content. And I'm not saying I will never do it again, but it's unlikely. So now I have this gap that's opened. And I am obviously very interested in Christianity now. And I've read maybe half the Bible, maybe a little bit more, understand maybe five, 10% of what I've read.

So what I want to do is, you know, just like I was saying, I think I'm supposed to ask these questions and then, and I get access to people that almost nobody gets access to. And so I want to do a series breaking down every single book in the Bible on my podcast. And it'll take several years, you know, to get through it all. But right when we kicked it off with Cardinal Burke, the night before all these wild, supernatural things, you know, started happening the night before.

And so to me, that's a sign like, yeah, I am supposed to be doing this. Were those the supernatural things we talked about before? Or is this lots of other different set the timing? You cannot make the timing up. And have supernatural things ever happened to you before that experience you had three months ago? Not like that. Not like this. This is the spiritual realm playing out in real time. A battle over, over my soul. A battle over your soul. Yeah. And this is why you have to pray several times a day, is to, I'm assuming to reinforce which side of that battle is winning.

It is to release oppression. And you don't know how long you're going to have to do that for or how long this is going to take? No idea. Really? Do you know when you'll know that it's that battle for your soul has been won? All I'm told is that you will just, you'll know, you will know. It will be very apparent. Is it difficult to be you right now? Yeah. I know what this is for me. And now that I know what it is now, we were talking about responsibility earlier.

Now that I know what this is, this is a battle between good and evil. Now I'm no longer on the fence. I can't pretend that I don't know. So for example, I've already had advertisers who have been with me for years. We just had a meeting on how to deepen the relationship with this one particular advertiser because they've been with me for so long. And they just canceled because they don't advertise on faith-based content. This is a life insurance company who wants to get to people who give a shit about their wife and their kids so that if something goes wrong, their wife and kids are taken care of.

Now, I'm sorry. What fucking audience are you trying to reach? People that give a shit about their families and you don't want to advertise on faith-based content. They are maybe the only ones that put family at the very top of the priority list. And you're going to cancel when I get farther into that? How do you feel about that decision? What do you think that is? I think it is an influence to try to get me to not talk about it. Just like the series of events that happened the night before I had Cardinal Burke on.

You think it's part of the battle for yourself? I think that my platform, as well as yours, has a lot of power. When you have the ability to reach more people than you and I could ever count in a lifetime, and you're leading people to that book, it pisses a lot of entities off. It pisses a lot of people off. There's no more pretending for me. I know what this is. So I have to make a decision, because I do believe in heaven and hell. And so if I say, we can't do the Bible series anymore because we're going to lose advertisers.

I can't take any of that money with me after this is over anyways. It sucks. I have goals. I'm sure you have goals. I think me and you have both probably seen a pattern in the guests we've interviewed. You focused a lot on life stories. One of the remarkable things I noticed in the life stories often when I'm asked, what is the pattern of these successful people? I always say that in their stories, there is a moment when they made a decision that was against their near-term incentives.

I think about Jimmy Carr. He had a great job, and he went to do jokes in pubs for five or ten years and got paid nothing for it. Or Darren Brown, one of the world's great illusionists, who had a great job but went and did card tables in Bristol for ten years because that was his thing. You look at these moments in their life, you go, only an idiot would have done that at that moment. But consistently, what it leads to is a better place. And I think when you were saying there's a short-term sacrifice potentially to pursue living more in alignment, I don't know.

The conversations I've had is every great person that I've interviewed has got that in their story, several times. They've all walked away from something that other sane humans might not have because of the strength of the incentive in the pursuit of alignment with themselves. Yes, there's some near-term turbulence, but consistently, living out of alignment is, I think, a much worse long-term place to be. It's like you're right. Do you know what I mean? We talked about it even with booking guests on the podcast. Yeah, I could have Insert Famous Celebrity Person on, but then I'm incrementally swaying away from my own alignment.

In the near term, I might get a couple more subs, but over the long term, I have a life I hate. Exactly. You become part of the herd. It's easy to be part of the herd. What is your goal now? Is there an essential goal that you orientate yourself towards? In podcasting? In podcasting with your businesses. In podcasting, I think it's a couple of things. We already talked about this, but I think that your team actually sent me a similar question before we got here. I thought a lot about it because it always changes, but there's one commonality, I think, in my show.

I just don't want people to be afraid to ask questions. I don't want people to be so tribal. I have a pretty open mind, regardless of what people think about me. I'll talk to both. I've had Ro Khan on several times. Cenk Uygur is a friend of mine. Tucker Carlson is a friend of mine. I'm open to all ideas. I'm able to say I've made a mistake. I'm able to hold myself accountable for things. I've publicly made statements saying that I messed up, saying that I've put out misinformation unknowingly.

I have to correct the record because I really pride myself on integrity. We don't see very many people left holding themselves accountable. You know, through my show, I want to show that you can ask questions and take a stand for what you believe in. Maybe the repercussions that you have come up with in your head aren't going to be near as severe as what you might think they're going to be. They say courage is contagious. I think that people in this country need courage. I want to show that you can talk about these things and ask questions, and it's going to be okay, man.

It's going to be just fine. Yeah, you might get a little bit of hate, but I'm still here, and I've covered some of the most controversial shit on the planet. I think that's really important. Trevor Burrus And what does a good life mean to you these days? Cenk Uygur A good life to me is just creating memories with my wife and kids. I think we're both in very good financial situations, and I don't know where you came from, but I didn't come from money. And what I've realized is you hear it, and nobody's going to believe me when I say it, but you just can't buy peace, and you can't buy happiness.

You have to create it yourself, and you're not going to create it with money. Yep, it will take some financial stress off, but it brings a whole other side of stress. You have to do what you love, and you have to live in the moment as much as you can and create as many memories with the people that you love as possible. I wouldn't say back off my business because I'm a workaholic. I know you are too, but you have to work smarter and look for the power plays.

Sometimes no is the best business decision you could make, not because it was a bad deal because it wasn't the right deal. Does that make sense? Smarter decisions. It's a narrative that I hear from fathers and mothers much more than anybody else, because now they really do have to think deeply about priorities. Whereas I'm yet to have children. I hope I will have children soon, but right now, my life is probably a little bit more selfish in that regard than yours is, because the competition for my time is my business and then my partner, my fiance.

But you love your business. I love it, yeah. There's nothing else you'd rather be doing. For whatever it's worth, I think you're doing the right thing. The time for you to build is now, because when you do have kids and you do realize how fast they grow and you look when your kid's born and then six months, you look back and you're like, holy shit, he was this big and now he's this big, and now he's this big five years later. And you're like, I mean, it makes me tear up right now.

It's like, where did it go? Where did the time go? So build, man. Build it as big as you can get it right now. Look for the smart deals. And then I hope you do get the opportunity to... to raise kids. But business can destroy a family. You got to be careful of that. Why is that the warning that you give me? Is that from experience? And what you said, you're mysterious, thinking about the speed of growth of your son. Why? You only get one shot at this.

You're everything to them. And if you're not there, somebody else will be everything to them. Where is this coming from, Sean? You can see it sometimes. It's a battle. I mean, it's a battle, you know, for me. And so the time, you know, it's always, you know, you hear people complain about it and try to find it all the time. What is the right balance? How do you do the balance? I don't know. I do the best I can to figure it out. But you can see how much time they want to spend with you and all the phone calls and all the business deals and, you know, the shit that seems so important because it's going to put you at the next level, you know, and you're probably like me, your team's like, holy shit, Steven's got to pivot and we got to get the shit done by in 12 hours, you know, and it's those kind of phone calls, you know, like, hey, this guy went on this, we're going to shift this podcast to this day, put this one in, this thing hit, you know, it's a chessboard, you know what I mean?

And that's a 24-hour day business to be the best. You're always switched on. Even when you're not trying to be switched on, you're switched on. Pistons are firing in your brain all the fucking time. And you got your two-year-old over there that just wants to play trains with you and you can't get in the mode. You can sit there and push a toy train around, but they know when you're there and when you're not there. Have you got regrets in this regard? Or is it guilt?

What is the emotion? Yeah, there's some guilt. With that being said, I'm very close with my kids, but I could be closer. And that really matters to you, doesn't it? It takes a lot for me to leave home to come do stuff like this. Incredibly admirable, you know, and dare I say that even, you know, I think about all the gifts my parents gave me by demonstrating the values of work and striving and overcoming. And I think generally, like, some of the gifts that I look back on as a young kid, but we didn't come from money, some of the things that I'm most thankful to my parents of is just, it's nothing they said.

It's not that they pushed the trains around with me. It's like the fundamental lessons they gave me about life by vicariously watching how they conducted themselves. And one of the things I think about with my mom is just like, she never complained. She just worked all the time for us, you know, to make sure that we were good. And to the point that at one point she started sleeping on this bag of rice in the back of her little corner shop and she never complained. And through that, she taught me the lesson of like hard work and striving.

And there's no possibility that I'd be sat here now with a life that I love, doing something that I love, with a perspective that has been helpful for me in terms of dealing with hardship and all those things, if I hadn't watched her through her absence teach me this lesson. So I sometimes, you know, all I say that to say that the nature of the absence, I think also matters, you know, cause that's going to be the story. I think for a lot of that was the story for me.

It's like, well, where was my mom? My mom and my dad, they were out working for me, but it's a trade. It's a trade. Yeah. It's a trade because am I as close to them as I might've been otherwise? No, but you're talking about necessity. Yeah. And what we're talking about is abundance. Yeah. Yeah. True. Yeah. And there's a difference. So what's your conclusion there? Is there a conclusion? Is there an action to take us there? I'm still figuring it out, but the conclusion is look for the power plays, look for things that make sense, hold off for the right deals, only do what you really believe in.

The quick money is all bullshit. Like my newest business glacier. I didn't know that was going to come, but I knew something big was going to come that made sense. And I've turned down so many opportunities because I just, I didn't feel like it was me. And then this came along and it was just me solving my own problem. And it's a privacy and digital security mobile app. What does it do? We made the simplest phone privacy app that's out there. It's got a VPN, it's got secure DNS, and it has burner numbers.

You walk around every day, you have all these apps. These apps are sucking information out of your phone. They're pushing it to data brokers that's being sold to who the hell knows who. I mean, I just had Byron Tao on. He thinks that the Iranians attacked a base by buying data from a data broker and then attacked a US base because of it. Basically, tapping into soldiers' phones just through everyday data broker marketing shit. And so what the secure DNS is, is it blocks all that from getting sucked out of your phone.

The VPN is great, but that's not the focus. The real win here is the secure DNS and the burner numbers. I mean, now you can hand out burner numbers. Yeah, here, you can get ahold of me on this burner number. When you feel like that burner number's been abused, you just hit the button, it goes away, they can never contact you again, and you buy another one. What a cool product, and very well aligned. Thank you. Thank you. Look, for me, I'm not going to do two podcasts a week forever.

I love to do this. Two a week, it's too much for me and my family, especially traveling around and doing foreign countries and this other stuff. I have to slim it down. Eventually, I'm going to go to one a week, and I've been given this platform, and I want to start businesses that I truly believe in that solves a real problem because I love business. I also think about the other side. What if I was solely a dad and husband, and I didn't get any of the phone calls, and I didn't have a creative outlet?

I love the creativity of business and creating your way on how to win. I think a lot of people hit a roadblock and like, oh, shit, it didn't work. There's always another way. There's always another way to win. That's one of the things that I took, and one of the positive things that I took from my days in contracting for CIA and being a Navy SEAL is there's always a way to win, but you have to be creative enough to find all the different avenues to the goal that you want to get and reverse engineer that.

Rupert Murdoch And dare I say, I have a bit of persistence. Trevor Burrus Yeah, a lot of persistence. It's an education, and you get smarter along the way. In a long way, I think that's my conclusion. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question to the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for, and the question left for you is, what is love? Rupert Murdoch What is love? The first thing that comes to mind is love is what you're willing to die for.

Trevor Burrus And what are you willing to die for? My family. Rupert Murdoch Sean, thank you. Thank you for being an inspiration for us podcasters. We've learned so much from what you do. I think the big lesson that I've taken from you is actually just around kind of what we talked about earlier on is you're such a high integrity person that lives with such great alignment to what you believe. You do things your way, and that's why I think people like you, I admire so much because in the world we live in, it's so easy to copy and follow and all those kinds of things.

But there are some people I look out there and I go, do you know that person's doing it their way? I know who they are because what they're producing is so n of one. There's only one of them. And so those are the people that I have the most respect for as sort of a podcasting peer, and you're certainly one of them. And you know, as well, with the subject matter we talked about, you being in pursuit of your truth and your alignment, even in spite of there being obvious costs like losing advertisers or what people might think if, again, it's a demonstration of your integrity as a man.

And then lastly, your real focus on family being at the heart of it and seeing the emotion in your face as you describe this sort of battle that I know a lot of my audience have every single day in their own lives between ambition and goals and these types of things. But then the love of family and kids and all those things is another wonderful reminder for me at this point in my life where I feel like I'm about to tussle with the same situation. So thank you for doing all that you do.

I'm a great fan of yours, both as a fellow creator and podcaster, but also as a man, and the service for the country as well as something that is of great admiration. So thank you, Sean. Thank you. I was really excited to meet you. Great job with what you're doing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Running a small business can feel a lot like being alone at sea and too often you're not steering the ship yourself. You're getting dragged underneath all of the admin things like offer letters, onboarding, wages, payroll, filing taxes and health insurance.

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