#229 AJ Gentile - Creator & Host of The Why Files

AJ Gentile is an American producer, writer, actor, and YouTube personality best known as the creator, host, and writer of "The Why Files," a channel that delves into conspiracy theories, mysteries, and unexplained phenomena with engaging storytelling and a skeptical lens. Before gaining fame on YouTube, Gentile worked in Hollywood as a producer and writer, contributing to projects like The Naughty Show (2011) and Stoned Science (2018), and provided voice-over work, including roles in The Legend of Korra. In 2011, he co-founded SpeedWeed, a cannabis delivery company, with his brother Gino and wife Jen. The Why Files has amassed a large following for its professional, encyclopedia-like analysis of conspiracies without interruptions. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: ⁠https://betterhelp.com/srs⁠ This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. ⁠https://americanfinancing.net/srs⁠ ⁠https://tryarmra.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://aura.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://shawnlikesgold.com⁠ ⁠https://ketone.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://patriotmobile.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://ROKA.com⁠ ⁠https://USCCA.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://ziprecruiter.com/srs AJ Gentile Links: The Why Files - https://www.thewhyfiles.com YT (The Why Files) - https://www.youtube.com/@TheWhyFiles X - https://x.com/ajgentile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Tic Tac. Lace up and get your game on because the Tic Tac lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper Tic Tac. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mints. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper Tic Tac today.

• 0:59Shawn Ryan?

  AJ Gentile, welcome to the show.

• 1:01Speaker 05

  Good to be here.

• 1:02Shawn Ryan?

  It's good to have you.

• 1:03Speaker 05

  This is exciting for me. I'm a fan.

• 1:06Shawn Ryan?

  Well, this is exciting for me because I'm a fan. In fact, I was telling you at breakfast, you are the only YouTube channel that I watch on a consistent basis. Because I don't want to hear all the noise and stuff. I kind of live in it. And, man, you just have a great presentation, great topics. It just sucks you in. So you are what me and my wife watch just about every night when we climb into bed. And so to meet you is pretty surreal. Thank you for coming.

• 1:35Speaker 05

  At breakfast, I said that. I said, I don't believe you, but it's very sweet. And I'll say it again, but it's very nice of you to say.

• 1:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it's real. It's real. But, um, yeah, so I want to, I want to talk about a couple of, a couple of the videos that I've seen on your platform in particular. And I want to talk about why you got into it and where you came from. And, and, and I think it'll be an awesome interview. So, but, um...

• 2:06Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody starts off with an introduction here. So AJ Gentile, the creative force behind the hit YouTube channel, The Y-Files, where you dive into mysteries, myths, and conspiracies with millions of subscribers. A talented voice actor, producer, and writer known for your captivating narration and the hilarious commentary from your animated sidekick, The Hecklefish. A Mensa member with a sharp skeptical mind, always presenting intriguing stories before breaking down the facts and scientific explanations. You hook me every single time. A dedicated truth seeker who started The Y-Files in 2020, blending entertainment with education to help audiences question the unknown

• 2:52Shawn Ryan?

  while grounding it in reality. And you do a perfect job of it. So, a couple of things to get through here before we actually kick the interview off. Everybody gets a gift.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  Really?

• 3:05Shawn Ryan?

  Any guesses?

• 3:07Speaker 05

  I mean, you already let me shoot the Winchester. That was a great gift.

• 3:10Shawn Ryan?

  It was a good gift, right?

• 3:11Speaker 05

  Yes, sir.

• 3:12Shawn Ryan?

  You gonna get one?

• 3:13Speaker 05

  Yes, immediately.

• 3:14Shawn Ryan?

  What'd you think of that Sig?

• 3:16Speaker 05

  I loved it. The optic was amazing.

• 3:19Shawn Ryan?

  You gonna get one of those too?

• 3:21Speaker 05

  I don't know what that is. You know, I'd like guns, but I'm not a...

• 3:24Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I got a buddy over at Sig. His name's Jason. And we talk about your show all the time. And so he gave me this. He wanted me to give it to you.

• 3:35Speaker 05

  What?

• 3:36Shawn Ryan?

  So that's what you were shooting out there before the interview. That's the Sig P211 GTO.

• 3:43Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 05

  Dude, no.

• 3:47Shawn Ryan?

  21 rounds in the mag, plus one in the pipe.

• 3:50Speaker 05

  That is incredible.

• 3:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. So what'd you think of that thing? Did you like it?

• 3:55Speaker 05

  Now I love it.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  That's amazing. I didn't see that. This is like being on Oprah. You didn't even telegraph that gift. That is amazing.

• 4:05Shawn Ryan?

  I'm glad you like it. And...

• 4:09Speaker 05

  I don't think people know how nice you are.

• 4:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, they'll figure it out, baby, eventually.

• 4:13Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 4:17Shawn Ryan?

  Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears, legal in all 50 states, made in the USA. The Siggs actually made the USA too. But um, yeah, that is, that is our main merch. And they're hard to come by. They sell out quick, so wanted to give you one of those.

• 4:32Speaker 05

  And those are just regular gummies, or?

• 4:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 4:36Shawn Ryan?

  Don't eat a bunch of bags and call me and say, "I don't feel anything yet." We've had that happen before.

• 4:41Speaker 05

  Okay. So I eat these gummies after the other gummy?

• 4:44Shawn Ryan?

  They're probably, they're probably worse for you than the good gummies. You know, because those have sugar and red dye and all the shit that's gonna be illegal soon. So they'll probably be illegal in all 50 states here by the end, by the end of the year. But uh, and then, we both have a Patreon account.

• 5:00Speaker 05

  We do.

• 5:00Shawn Ryan?

  Right? So, one of the things that I offer my Patreon community, and they've been here since the beginning, when I started this, this thing in the attic of my house, and it was just me and my wife, and they've been through here, they've been with us since, since, since the very beginning. We've grown it into a hell of a community. And uh, so one of the things that we do is we offer them to ask each and every guest a question. And this is from Ian Lane. "On the Y-Files, you walk a line between exploring wild conspiracies and keeping the audience grounded in facts. Have you ever stumbled on a piece of information that made you stop and think, 'This is bigger than I want to touch.'" This sounds like

• 5:45Shawn Ryan?

  our breakfast conversation. And if so, what made you decide to hold back?

• 5:51Speaker 05

  Um, the one episode that, that, that really got me emotional was, I was doing The Dark Side of DARPA. And I went into that, everyone knows DARPA and their projects and, and their science going back to whatever, 40s, 50s, 60s. But in the, as I was going through the research, I found the connection between DARPA and Agent Orange and Agent Purple and all of that, all, all the Vietnam chemicals. And I got very emotional about that because my father-in-law is, suffers from everything, every illness that you can have from Agent Orange.

• 6:26Shawn Ryan?

  Was he a Vietnam vet?

• 6:28Speaker 05

  He was, Air Force.

• 6:29Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, two of us. Um, and I, it, it was a very frustrating episode because it, it's close to me and my family.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  And it took Jerry thirty years to get his benefits. And it just made me furious. Because my family stocked with military and law enforcement. And it's, I think in that episode, I said something like, when your country needs you, you answer the call. But when you need your country, take a number. And it took thirty years. And it wasn't that much money. And that was an episode that was very emotional and I attacked very aggressively. You know, whether it was DuPont, or the government, or CIA, or the military. I attacked everybody because I was just, I was just like Yosemite Sam. Because I was so angry. And when I finished that episode, I was thinking, ah, this isn't that super fun.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  You know, there's not a lot of fish, there's not a lot of, my show is supposed to be fun. So I was not gonna let it, I wasn't gonna release it. And then I just felt it was important. And maybe my platform could bring some attention to it. I didn't think anyone would really like that episode. And there was just an outpouring of response from vets, saying, "Thank you."

• 7:48Shawn Ryan?

  I gotta watch, I haven't seen that one.

• 7:49Speaker 05

  It's, it starts out fun, but it gets kinda dark.

• 7:52Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, I mean, did your dad get all of his benefits?

• 7:59Speaker 05

  This is my father-in-law.

• 8:00Shawn Ryan?

  Your father-in-law?

• 8:01Speaker 05

  I don't know if he got all of them. It wasn't a lot of money. There's not enough money for all the stuff that, that these guys, more, more soldiers were injured by the chemicals than were injured in combat. Vietnam gave, frustrates me, the whole, the whole subject.

• 8:18Shawn Ryan?

  Me too, me too. Well, is he still alive? Well, I would love to help you get him all of the benefits that he deserves, if he needs that. And so, little bit, you know, this isn't supposed to be about me at all. But when I left contracting for the CIA, I had nothing, nothing. And my best friend was, who was also a SEAL, and then we contracted together at the agency. He was, he had fallen into heroin addiction, as a lot of vets do. And, and so, I was trying to...

• 9:00Shawn Ryan?

  Help him get better and put my whole life aside um to make that happen and so where I started was trying to find out how in the fuck do you get VA benefits at least get some at least get the healthcare that you're deserved and it was it was it was crazy and um I I couldn't get anybody to help help me and then somebody had sent me a a contact and said you should call this woman her name's Peggy Matthews and she's out of uh Boston and she is an older woman has this very small nonprofit very grassroots runs it out of the living room of her house and took me in and I

• 9:45Shawn Ryan?

  credit this woman was saving my life and my best friend Gabe's life up to a certain point he did wind up passing from from his addiction but uh but she really took us under her wing and um and said you know I've been doing this for a long time I want to help the special operations community because nobody understands it inside of the VA nobody gives a shit and uh and then when she got him she asked me if I would help spread the word throughout the special ops community and I did that and now she is she has helped thousands of special ops guys and uh but

• 10:25Shawn Ryan?

  her real passion is the Vietnam generation so I would I will give you that contact I'll make I'll make the connection and um if there's anything that he's not receiving that he is entitled to he'll get it through her and another thing there is this you had mentioned something about you know there's not enough money that's fucking bullshit every single person that signs up and signs that dotted line to go into the military and and and serve this country that money is already set aside for you up to 100% disability plus more and

• 11:05Shawn Ryan?

  So it's, it's, he's already entitled to it.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 11:09Shawn Ryan?

  It's just navigating the way to, to, to get there and, uh, and she's mastered it. So I'll give you that connection.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  That'd be nice. It seems like the system is set up to be confusing, especially if you're an older guy and you're sick and you're just, you know, sure how to make your mortgage. I mean, come on.

• 11:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. It's insane. It's insane how this country continues to treat the veterans that have served it from, from, from the beginning, all the way up until this point. And, uh, it's a real travesty. But, but so DARPA was involved in Agent Orange and all this stuff?

• 11:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, DARPA was involved in so many dark projects going back to the beginning.

• 11:53Speaker 05

  But, but yeah.

• 11:55Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Well, that got heavy quick.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  I know. We got right into the deep water.

• 12:00Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  Instead of the fish.

• 12:01Shawn Ryan?

  But, but, um, so I want to talk, how, where did you, where did you come from? How did the Y-file start?

• 12:12Speaker 05

  I guess I'll skip 20 years. I'm born in the Bronx, raised around New York City, Long Island. And, um, back east was dabbling in stand-up and acting and voice work. And finally landed a decent gig in radio, uh, working for MTV. You're not old enough.

• 12:30Shawn Ryan?

  You're working for MTV?

• 12:31Speaker 05

  MTV and VH1 in early 2000s. So, um, was doing that and then came out to LA to work for Playboy Radio on Sirius XM.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  You're too young to remember that, but Sirius XM was a thing.

• 12:45Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not as young as you think I am. I must look young today. This, I'm going to have to wear this more often.

• 12:51Speaker 05

  So I was always around like show business, but always on the outside. You know, radio is like the, that's like the lowest rung. It's like, there's like radio and then there's open micers. So I was always kind of on the outside, but I, I wanted to be a host. I wanted to be an on-camera host. I, I took classes and a lot of training. I did very well. Was auditioning a little bit, never, nothing really landed.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  And just, just kind of slipped away from it. And then over the course of the next maybe 10, 15 years, through a couple of different businesses that were always launched with my wife, Jen and my brother Gino. We opened a podcast studio around 2014.

• 13:33Shawn Ryan?

  Can I backtrack real quick? So you, you were trying to make it in the entertainment industry and they stiff armed you. In four years after you start a podcast, you're consistently in the top fucking 10. How hilarious is that? I hate the entertainment industry.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  I spent 20 years.

• 13:53Shawn Ryan?

  You're, you're the perfect example of what they missed. Like, how the fuck did you miss this one? Top 10 podcasts in four years, totally missed it. I love it. I love these stories.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  I won't say the network, but it was very, it was really glorious to turn down an offer last week from, from a network. It's like, I was here the whole time.

• 14:14Speaker 05

  So now the answer is no.

• 14:16Shawn Ryan?

  Still the same guy.

• 14:17Speaker 05

  I am. Still talking about the same stuff. My host reel from 25 years ago is really me talking about Area 51 and aliens and conspiracies. It's like, that's what is fun to me. So we had a podcast studio. It, it fell apart. We tried it again in like 2019. And we were a studio hosting shows and we hosted a lot of big shows from, um, a lot of comedians from the Comedy Store would, would operate out of our studio. And we weren't making any money, couldn't make any money podcasting. And then COVID hit. And then, you know, Jen comes to me and says, uh, they're going to lock down the city. All businesses are going to close. And I'm like, they can't do that. I said, don't, don't listen to the media.

• 15:02Speaker 05

  They can't do that. It's, it's against every law and constitution. We're going to be fine. She's like, I think they're going to do it. And they did it. I'm in Los Angeles and our studio was on Sunset, uh, which, so the story gets worse. And so they locked us down and me being me saying, "I'm not wearing a mask and I'm not shutting down. We're staying open." You know, and I was very vocal about it. Let them come and shut us down. Just roll camera on it. But it didn't matter because the talent wouldn't come in and nobody would come in. And it was, everyone was afraid and with the masks and everything. So now we're just, money's just fallen. We're just going down the drain. We're living off of savings, could not make anything. Not really sure what to do. And

• 15:47Speaker 05

  then divine providence, I guess, was Black Lives Matter hit LA. And I don't know, when I talk to people about what Los Angeles was like during that time, they're often surprised when I say that, you know, I'm not used to seeing police SUVs upside down on fire, but we saw that all the time. No, it was that, it was that bad. All the time. All the time. And like, I'm surprised that nobody really knows that. But that information didn't get out. So at this time, the city's on fire, our whole studio is surrounded by tents that we can't do anything about. And there was one night

• 16:31Speaker 05

  where they set fire to the building next door to us, which was a juice bar. And I don't know how much money's in a juice bar, but we just happened to be in a building that was just like a concrete block. We were in like, it was like a fortress. But there was, but when they were attacking the buildings on the block, I was there in the studio, asleep on the couch in the middle of the room, with guns on the table, with my wife there. And outside, it sounds like The Walking Dead. You just hear howling and screaming and sirens. And then after it calms down a little bit, maybe it's 3, 4 in the morning. We're on our way home, going down Sunset, make the left onto Highland. And for those people who know LA, Hollywood and Highland is a very busy intersection. And there's

• 17:16Speaker 05

  a lot of stores and stuff there. And it's just, it's just like zombies are out and they're knocking on windows and looting everywhere. And we're just trying to, trying to get back home. And we're on Hollywood and Highland and suddenly a crowd turns to us with baseball bats and just starts coming. And...

• 17:39Speaker 05

  I throw it in reverse and I'm flying backwards down Hollywood Boulevard in the middle of the night with all this stuff going on. And Jen's like, "You're gonna hit somebody." I said, "Look, if they're in the street, they're meat. We gotta, I'm not gonna stop. They're gonna yank us out of the car." We finally got home and we said, "That's it. We're done. We're leaving. L.A. is done." We started packing immediately and left and headed to Scottsdale, Arizona. And that was 20, I guess, still 2020. No job, still living off savings.

• 18:15Shawn Ryan?

  So they were just destroying everything and anyone?

• 18:20Speaker 05

  Everything and anyone.

• 18:22Shawn Ryan?

  With no rhyme or reason?

• 18:23Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 18:24Shawn Ryan?

  They just see a car coming towards them, they're like, "Yeah, that one. Let's get them."

• 18:28Speaker 05

  We were stopped at the light. It's like, "Why am I stopped at the light?" So then lights didn't matter, you know? I gotta get my wife out of here. So it was a frustrating and scary time, but it was a good time to get out of L.A. And I loved Los Angeles. I got there in 2005. I felt like I was on vacation every day. I loved that city. It was amazing. And it's not anymore, and I hope it comes back. I think it has a chance to.

• 18:57Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 18:58Speaker 05

  But in trying to figure out what to do, I had been watching all these comedians do podcasts, and I didn't think YouTube was anything. I thought YouTube was for, you put your videos of your cats on there. You know, I'm like an old guy. I'm watching cable. And Jen's like, "No, a lot of people watch YouTube." I'm like, "Really?" She said, "You know, our shows here have 14 million subscribers." I'm like, "What? What?" I'm like, "Oh." I said, "Well, I've been a writer, a host, a producer, an editor professionally for networks on and off all my life. I can do YouTube. That's like a layup." And it is the hardest thing I ever did. It was so hard, and I think you could relate to this.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  It was so hard that if I knew how hard it was, I probably wouldn't have had the stamina to stick with it because...

• 19:51Speaker 05

  Nobody was watching. I've just video after video, pouring my heart into it. Nobody was watching.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  But I just felt like, ah, I like doing this. And even though nobody was watching, there still were 500 people watching. And my Patreon had 12 people who are still members. And two of them are employees now. Hi, Victoria. She was a Patreon member who was just a rock star. It's like, we need to hire this one.

• 20:23Speaker 05

  Jen, my executive producer.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  So it was just, um, you know, do you want me to get into the channel?

• 20:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, now I want to hear like, I want to hear the struggles.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  The struggles?

• 20:34Shawn Ryan?

  I want to see how much we can relate on this.

• 20:37Speaker 05

  When I first started, so I did a lot of research on how to do the channel right. You know, how to make a living at this. And it wasn't looking to be 5 million subscribers. I don't even know why so many people watch. I'm still feel like I'm a scrappy little channel. And so it's very confusing.

• 20:57Shawn Ryan?

  You still feel like you're a scrappy little channel?

• 20:59Speaker 05

  I do, and I feel like every day it's gonna go away and the numbers are, we're plateauing. It just gets constant.

• 21:07Shawn Ryan?

  I feel the same way. Yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 05

  It's constant.

• 21:10Shawn Ryan?

  Endless discussions with the team on, we're declining. We're plateauing. It's over. They're gonna censor us.

• 21:19Speaker 05

  And it's so not over for you. And my last video is the best performing one in the history of the channel. So, okay, maybe we can still do this a little longer. But when I started the channel, the plan was to do science videos and then the weird ones that I liked and try to balance it. And all the YouTube consultants said, you know, you gotta skew young, high energy, smash that like. So my earlier videos are, I mean, my first video was about math. And then, you know, I did top 10 list, like top 10 weirdest animals, dangerous places, areas, things, like everyone was doing. And it was like, hey, hit that like, I'm doing this, this is my energy, this is who I am. And it wasn't who I was. And nobody's watching this. No one was responding to it.

• 22:04Speaker 05

  And it didn't feel right anyway. I just felt like this is the performance they say to do. And I just started to get frustrated and I guess about a year and a half in and you had sixty, seventy episodes, I just said, "I'm gonna just do what I wanna do. I'm gonna make the show that I would wanna watch." And you know what? The biggest response I'm getting from the audience are people my age, forties and fifties. So, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna lean into Gen X, just be authentic and just tell the stories that I like. And then, that's when it happened.

• 22:34Shawn Ryan?

  I love that, man.

• 22:36Speaker 05

  I mean, that's so, if, if there's creators watching you, which there are, my advice is just be yourself, be, be authentic, be raw, just let all the wounds show. Like I was telling you at breakfast, on my, on the Wi-Fi I was backstage, these videos of me crying, talking about depression, I just, I just own it. Just own it.

• 22:58Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you're, you're like one of the only people I've ever heard that does this.

• 23:03Speaker 05

  No.

• 23:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man. Are you kidding me? People are scared to death of authenticity. They're scared to death of authenticity and being vulnerable. And I've talked to countless people that, you know, that wanna start a YouTube, I love helping people. I mean, that's, that's what this show kinda developed into what it is, is I just wanted to help people and bring exposure to everything from corruption to the, where it really started was I just got tired of, like, veterans not being able to get a business going because nobody would give them exposure. And, and so, in, in, in, that's, that's how it started, man, was

• 23:49Shawn Ryan?

  bringing exposure to, to veteran businesses through their journeys of vulnerability, to be authentic, and, and it worked. And, but I think that, you know, you can tell people, be authentic, be vulnerable.

• 24:07Shawn Ryan?

  They can't do it.

• 24:08Speaker 05

  It's it's hard to it's hard to let down the guard. It certainly was for me as a as a lifelong performer. It's you're always doing a performance, you know, even if in your normal life, you have certain characters or traits that you emphasize more with your buddies that when you're with your wife. There's kind of different roles that you play. So it's kind of hard. It's it's difficult to let down that that guard. But what I started to.

• 24:35Shawn Ryan?

  How did you know? I mean, what hit you, especially coming from entertainment? I mean, entertainment, I mean, it's just everything's fake. The media, the mainstream media is fake. The news channels are fake. They're all bought. They all have, you know, politics is fake. Movies for a long time, I think people didn't realize how much how much propaganda is inserted into into mainstream media. You know, Hollywood movies and until they went overboard and then everybody kind of figured it out. I'm I'm with everybody else. I didn't have any inclination that it was all bullshit until everybody else started talking about it. But yeah, I'm just curious.

• 25:18Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, they're scared to death of authenticity. And and so how did you, especially coming from there? And all the fakeness and all the bullshit moving. I mean, what hit you that it was like, just be authentic?

• 25:34Speaker 05

  So I I suffer from anxiety and depression, but not severely. A little medicated for it, but not heavily. Like, I'm I'm high functioning. I'm I'm on the spectrum, but I'm high functioning. You know, I'm very uncomfortable talking about myself, very uncomfortable being in the center of attention. I'm the guy at the party hiding in the corner. So my outlet would be to perform, to do voice work, be a character, be on stage, be an actor. Because then the lines are prepared for you. Even if you're doing stand up, you've already written it. So you have control. It's I have control, even though I'm putting myself out there. I have I know what the words are. I know what comes next.

• 26:18Speaker 05

  I know what I'm doing right and wrong. So to be authentic, that all goes away. And it's like, I don't know what I'm going to say next. Like, as I'm sitting here now, I don't know what I'm going to say next. But I think it was when I started talking to my community, which I would call a community more than an audience, but like the people that really supported me since the beginning. I just started engaging with them through live streams and like with our Patreon live streams, fans turn their cameras on, like we all talk together. And I found myself just opening up because maybe because they were fans, they were just excited to hear from me. But it became almost like a therapy for me. Like I can, I could tell these people anything.

• 27:02Speaker 05

  They're not judging me. I'm, you know, there's always going to be the assholes in the comments. But for the most part, it was like, hang in there. I'm going through the same thing. You know, what you're doing is important. It was very encouraging. So eventually the wall just comes down. And now when I live stream, you just don't know what I'm gonna, you know, Jen gets nervous, she'll hear me going into a direction. She's like, ah, I'm like, I'm just saying it. So I'm the most honest in my life when I'm talking on that stream to, to the people who watch the show. And I'll say anything and it's the truth. Now, I don't, I won't out somebody. I won't share a secret if it's, if it's a confidence. But if someone asks me, you know, are you going through something right now? Cause you don't look good.

• 27:46Speaker 05

  Cause for about a year during the channel, I was not doing well. And so I would say, I'm not doing well. I'm stressed out all the time. I'm not sleeping, I'm not eating, I'm losing weight. I'm not healthy. My doctor's concerned and this is just where we are.

• 28:03Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 28:05Speaker 05

  You know, but better now. It's a process.

• 28:09Shawn Ryan?

  You seem great. Are you comfortable here?

• 28:12Speaker 05

  You make it comfortable. I was terrified coming here. I was terrified coming here. You know, at some point I want to start talking to the, like if I'm researching an episode and I, I start emailing with the Grand Master Knights Templar and I'm emailing with him for like, in research, it would be nice to actually have Timothy Ogan sit down and have a conversation about Knights Templar. That would be pretty cool. So if I'm gonna do that, I need to be comfortable in a conversation. So I'm trying to do that here. And I specifically chose your show and you because I, your team is amazing. You've been kind since the beginning, extremely professional.

• 28:55Speaker 05

  But it seems like everybody's going out of their way to make me feel like comfortable. Like we just shot guns, we had breakfast, you know, we hung out. It just feels like, uh, it feels like you're hanging out with friends here and I haven't met any of you guys before. But I knew that coming in because that's, that's your reputation. And I've watched your interviews. I've read lots of articles about you, including hit pieces. And it's like, this is an interesting guy that I wanna know. And I think I can learn a lot from just having a conversation with Sean.

• 29:27Shawn Ryan?

  Man, well, thank you. Thank you. That means a lot. And it's gonna mean a lot to my team, too. So.

• 29:33Speaker 05

  Do the best.

• 29:34Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. What was the, what was the turning point?

• 29:38Speaker 05

  For getting, feeling better?

• 29:42Shawn Ryan?

  For the Y-Files.

• 29:44Speaker 05

  When it started to be successful?

• 29:46Shawn Ryan?

  Was it a immediate pivot?

• 29:49Speaker 05

  It was a hockey stick.

• 29:50Shawn Ryan?

  It was a hockey stick.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was, it was a year and a half to two years of just flat. I think at end of year one was forty, fifty episodes. I had maybe fifteen hundred subscribers, twenty-five hundred, and nobody was watching, you know, two hundred views, three hundred views. And the second year was similar. Started to get better. I think I ended the second year with like twenty-five thousand subscribers, but still was getting twenty-five hundred views. So you can't make a living doing any of that. But I was, but I was enjoying it and just seeing people respond to the content was encouraging. And it wasn't working. So it was like, I might as well just keep doing this because it's fun and a few people are responding. And what happened was, my brother Gino said, "You should do TikTok."

• 30:34Speaker 05

  And I was like, "No way, I'm doing TikTok. No." He's like, "You should put shorts on TikTok, because that could expose people to the channel." So reluctantly, I did it, and in just a few days, a couple of videos on TikTok brought in like millions of views. I think it was, um, I did the coincidences between JFK and Abraham Lincoln. People just liked that video. And that brought a lot of people over to my channel. So suddenly, I was at 250,000, 400,000 subscribers, which was incredible. But subscribers are not, subscribers are a vanity number. Sponsors don't care about that. Nobody really cares about that. It's views is where you get paid.

• 31:19Speaker 05

  So 400,000 subscribers, 1,500 views. Nobody was watching, because these are all kids coming over watching shorts. So I just kind of, it was frustrating, and I just sort of hoped that something would break through. And it took about three or four weeks, and then my video on Operation High Jump, which was Admiral Ward going down to the hollow earth in Antarctica, that got 50,000 views in a day. And I was like, "Oh, my God."

• 31:49Speaker 05

  I couldn't even believe it. I couldn't even, never even fathom that kind of number. And from there, it was, it was a hockey stick through about 2023. I mean, things are growing, but kind of slow growing. But for 2003, my hockey stick was kind of like yours right now, is what it was. You know, 300,000 subscribers in a month. People were watching. The videos were hitting a million in a month. Couldn't believe it. It hit a million in a month? The video started to hit a million in a month. Damn.

• 32:23Speaker 05

  And around then, at this point, I think Jen is the breadwinner. She was Chief Operating Officer for Side Night and Happiness, which a lot of your listeners will know, it's like a comic book cartoon company, a lot of fun. We were in Dallas at that point. And I remember I came downstairs and I had like sketched out this chart with like, hey, if I get this many views, it could equal this amount of money per month. You know, and if I can get to like 200,000 views, we can make like $5,000 a month and I could make a living. I remember she looked at it and she was like, that's a lot of views. I was like, I know, but you know, if I, she's like, no, no, I support it. I support it, but you know, it's a lot of views. So she was supportive but hesitant, which is fair.

• 33:08Speaker 05

  But now I wish I kept that chart because we had a million views in 16, 17 hours now. Damn.

• 33:17Speaker 06

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• 33:47Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 34:17Shawn Ryan?

  A million views in 16 to 17 hours?

• 34:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm, I have two personalities. One is constant anxiety and fear of losing. And the other is I can't believe what's going on. I must be in a coma. I hope I don't wake up.

• 34:35Speaker 05

  Because I really don't understand it. Yeah. It's not false humility. I'm glad people are having fun. I'm glad that they respond to the content.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  You know, it like everyone on the team is having a lot more fun than I am on this ride. You know, being pitched by networks and stuff now, it's crazy.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  But me, I'm still just the anxious guy trying to make a deadline, still doing half the editing. And, you know, staying up all night. I've got a camp shower in my office that sometimes I have to, you know, if I'm there overnight, take a camp shop propane camp shower. Nice. Del Taco at 3 a.m. What does the anxiety come from? I've always had it, but um, well, I'm going to say something really embarrassing now, but I have to because it's my brand. So,

• 35:23Speaker 05

  therapy never worked on me. I've always it therapy just never worked on me. I'm always trying to like figure out what the therapist is getting at or, you know, trying to solve it. So what I did was I created an AI therapist. And I did something maybe unwise, but we'll find out. I I loaded um, a software program. I'm I'm a tech guy. I used to be an engineer. I loaded an AI platform with all my emails, correspondence, everything I've ever written, text messages going back to 1999. All of it. And I asked it to create a personality profile. And it output this profile that had at twice,

• 36:04Speaker 05

  at two points, reading it, I was started to cry because it was like, now I understand. Now I understand. And this is just from me loading a computer with all this stuff because the computer has no emotions. Does care. It's analyzing patterns, which is that's really all we are, right? So then I just started interacting with this AI by AI therapist. And in the interaction, you get more and more drilled down into into certain aspects of your personality, revealing things I had never known before, you know, going back to issues with my father, mother, all that stuff. Apparently, I suffer from loss aversion, which is whenever I have something, I'm worried that it's going to be taken away. And that's kind of what it is.

• 36:45Speaker 05

  It's like, rather than enjoy success, instead, I'm worried about losing it. And it's very frustrating. And I don't really know how to solve it, but at least I'm aware of my, some of my blind spots are getting illuminated a little bit.

• 37:01Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I suffer from anxiety. I used to suffer from it really bad. In fact, at breakfast, we were talking about, I did a video on it, you've done stuff on it, and I just, I was like, hey, this is why I feel this way, this is why I think my anxiety comes. And then I was like, I talked about the ways that I, the things that I utilize to power through it. And, you know, starting this was this podcast, I mean, I'm not a conversationalist at all. I'm probably the most boring guy that you can, you can, I don't do small talk.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  You're a therapist.

• 37:46Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not good at it.

• 37:47Speaker 05

  You're a therapist.

• 37:48Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I learned this from therapy, because I went to three, three and a half years of therapy, twice a week after I left the agency. And I realized, when I was talking to my therapist, who is amazing, and that a lot of the things that were bothering me would just work themselves out just from me talking to her. And she might say 20 words in a 45-minute session. And, but just hearing me verbalize it, like, oh, yeah, that is kind of, maybe I shouldn't be doing that. But, but, but as far as like the fear of it all going, of, of, of losing, or, I mean,

• 38:31Shawn Ryan?

  it's interesting, I was just talking about this yesterday with John Rich, and, you know, I interviewed Jim Caviezel, and about the, that movie he did, I think it's Sound of Freedom was maybe the last one, it was about child trafficking. And at some point in that conversation, he had brought up, you know,

• 38:52Shawn Ryan?

  Cause I'm, we were talking about this at breakfast. It could, I always, even when I built this, I built something that I could resell. I didn't wanna, a, you know, cause I still think like that. I'm like, this could all be taken away in the snap of a finger. It's who knows who pissed somebody off. We talk about a lot of things here. We kick a lot of rocks over and I'm like, this could end at any moment. And I remember Jim said, he was talking about himself, about all his cars and just all these possessions that, that he has. And he said, you know, but that could all be taken away at any moment in time.

• 39:31Shawn Ryan?

  And I'm ready to give it all back because none of it actually matters. What matters is my kids and my wife and my friends. And I really took that in and I was like, that's the only fucking way to live, man. Like, none of this shit really actually means anything.

• 39:50Speaker 05

  It does not.

• 39:51Shawn Ryan?

  It's just shit.

• 39:52Speaker 05

  It doesn't mean anything.

• 39:53Shawn Ryan?

  And so I think if you, uh, for me, you know, when I adapted that mindset, it, my anxiety went, it's like, and I didn't even really have that much, you know, but, but, um, that's just the way I think now, you know, it's, it's, this is all, we got some cool things. I got some great artifacts in here. Got some cool toys, but you know what? I mean, and there is an aspect too. I mean, when I think back to when things were much simpler and I wasn't running a business and, yeah, now, now the money's there and, and, and fame, which I hate, has come with it and all these things, but, but it's just, you know, when you think back, it's like, man,

• 40:38Shawn Ryan?

  remember when I was a SEAL and the only thing I had to worry about was going on an op and everything else was handled and those were simpler times for me. And this, what I live in now is the most complicated life I've ever, the most complicated time in my life that I've ever lived. I mean, and so, you know, I think, all right, well, if it does all end. Then I go back to that and maybe I buy a skid steer and start a land clearing company or something like that and just live as simple as possible.

• 41:15Speaker 05

  There's something attractive about that.

• 41:16Shawn Ryan?

  And when you, when you think about that, you know, it's, it's, it's not the end. It's just a different chapter if it does go away. And I think, I don't know, for me, I've prepared myself psychologically that, that when this, when, cause it will eventually, it will fizzle out, people will get bored, they'll hate me, I don't know what, you know, I'll get canceled, who knows? But it's just, it's just a moving into a new season of life and, and who knows, man? Maybe that season will even be better than this one, you know, and, and that really puts me at ease. Just talking about it puts me at ease.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  We could probably cut this out if you don't want to talk about it, but you mentioned that you were starting a network.

• 42:02Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  That's more than hedging a bet. I mean, that's, that's, that's helping others, that's creating a legacy, that's creating a, a business in a situation that if your show did take a hit, which I don't anticipate it will, you're absolutely on fire. I think you're aware of that. But by building a network, then you have this infrastructure where you're helping other people succeed and then maybe this isn't that important.

• 42:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, yep. I mean, I, I, well, no, I'm not going to cut any of this. I mean, I, I think about that all the time. The one thing that I, I don't really have many regrets, but maybe one regret, I don't know if it's a regret, a regret because I've helped so many people, but personal stuff, you know what I mean? Like I said, when I started this, it wasn't, it wasn't even about me, it still isn't about me. But, you know, now I have a team that, that relies on the business and, and anyways, where was I going with this?

• 43:03Speaker 05

  We're just talking about things that could end at any minute.

• 43:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Where was I going with this? Damn it, too many, been blown up too many times. What were we going after?

• 43:13Speaker 05

  Uh, we were talking about anxiety.

• 43:17Speaker 05

  You know, and how, how, how you're managing it?

• 43:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, I, I was always a little upset with myself because I didn't build something that I could sell. Meaning, this isn't something that can get passed down to my kids. This isn't something that my wife can take over. This isn't something that if I get sick or die or get, you know, I can't move around. This tragedy happens. This isn't something that I can hand to my team and say, run this. You know, and that, that always bothered me is, man, there, there isn't a way out of this. There isn't, I didn't build a legacy thing that I can pass down to, to future generations of my family or my team or whoever.

• 44:02Shawn Ryan?

  And, but rather than sit there and whine and bitch about it all the time, I, we were talking about this at breakfast. I mean, now, now I'm building companies, you know, and I'm building companies that I'm gonna advertise here, that I'm gonna sell, or I'm gonna pass it down, you know, to, to my son and my daughter, my wife. And so-

• 44:26Speaker 05

  Have you tried sesh nicotine? It's really, it's really good.

• 44:30Shawn Ryan?

  Do I have a sesh?

• 44:31Speaker 05

  I haven't.

• 44:32Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, so yeah, so I started, you know, instead of, instead of whining and complaining about it, and I didn't have any time, you know, to start something because of the show and all the stuff that goes under this, we both know plenty about that. You know, I started focusing my energy on building new companies. And, and instead of having to rely on advertisers all the time, I'll build my own companies, advertise those companies. And so now we're in the process, by the end of this year, we'll have launched three new companies plus a network, so I guess technically four companies. And, and, and-

• 45:10Shawn Ryan?

  I just, I think people put limitations on themselves and, and yeah, there's limitations for sports and all these things, but when you find what you're good at, there are no limitations.

• 45:22Speaker 05

  There aren't.

• 45:23Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing, nothing can get in my way.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  If you love it, you know, if you find the thing, if you love it and, and you're good at it, you know, the difference between a career and a vocation was always kind of confusing to me until I started doing this and realized that vocation, that word comes from vocal, is a calling, it's not a job, it's not a career. So even before the channel was very successful, I felt like I'm meant to do this. Connecting with people, entertaining people, having fun, and somehow it became a sort of a family show. I don't know, I don't know why seven-year-olds are learning about Agent Orange, but they are.

• 46:04Speaker 05

  I have a nine-year-old sending me videos about audit the Fed and taxes are theft, which is glorious, but, but those are the things that, that give me a lot of fuel because what I'm doing is not really that important, but it's, I'm bending the universe a little bit in my direction.

• 46:25Shawn Ryan?

  I think what you're doing is very important, and here's why. Because I think that the, not only the US, but the world as a whole has lost the ability to critical think. And when, with your episodes, I mean, you bring in all the information, all the conspiracies, all the points of views, and it forces people to think critically. And then at the end, you, you save your opinion or how you think until the end. And I, I think it's very important because it's a, it, it, in a way, it's a critical thinking exercise.

• 47:02Speaker 05

  It is.

• 47:03Shawn Ryan?

  In a world where nobody does that anymore. Everybody is told how to think through mainstream media, through social media, through Hollywood, through all of that, they are, they have, it's, it's, I actually just did a documentary on this, it's called Cognitive Warfare, you know, and they inject, they, they inject and project what they want you to see, how they want you to think, and... You have.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  Lovely to do an episode on that. That's on your documentary. That sounds interesting. Um, I try not to inject my opinion too much in it. I tried to say, here's, here's all the stuff I found out. If there are things that are definitely debunked, I will say so, like this didn't happen. But this, I couldn't really, I can't really debunk this part. You decide. I'm not here to convince anybody. I'm not a pundit. Um, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I enjoy the stories. And that's why the format is the first two thirds of the episode. I just tell it like it's true. Just so you can have the experience of, like, I know this channel. I know eventually he's gonna say, but is it true? But this one looks like it could, this one could be real.

• 48:13Speaker 05

  And, and that, that's what I'm trying to, to capture is, you know, I get people that are angry at me for debunking their favorite stories. It's like, ah, I'm did, don't you want to know what really?

• 48:25Shawn Ryan?

  I was angry when I watched the moon, the moon landing. What I was like, what? He thinks we landed on the moon?

• 48:32Speaker 05

  The moon I go back and forth with. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if men walked on the moon. I think that we, we probably landed on the moon, but I'm not sure men walked on the moon. But it's, uh, that's, that's a tough one.

• 48:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we're gonna dive into that a minute. I want, I want to go into, I mean, you had mentioned, we were talking about anxiety still and you had mentioned maybe a new show segment or something, bringing, bringing the people that you, you utilize for your research on the topics that you discuss in. And we're talking about being a conversationalist. And you know, what, what I think is interesting is, I mean, you're, you're a commentator. Are you talking to a camera or is somebody behind that camera?

• 49:18Speaker 05

  No, I'm talking to a teleprompter. I'm, I'm reading.

• 49:22Shawn Ryan?

  I can't do that stuff. I cannot talk to a camera. It, it, we've tried to get me to do some commentary stuff. I just, I can't do it. It's talking to, I used to put paper targets. I used to, I used to do this, I used to do this series called Hard Truths. And one of my, one of the guys that have been with me the longest would, would drive in and I'd make him sit across from me just to talk to him. Just so I'm talking to somebody and if he could make it, then I would set a paper target in the chair and I would talk to the paper

• 50:02Shawn Ryan?

  target. Cause I cannot look at a camera and just go. And, you know, starting the podcast of like, like I, just like I had mentioned, I'm not a, I'm not a conversationalist. I definitely wasn't at the time. And so that's where I just took my therapy and I was like, just listen, just don't interject, don't try to relate, don't do any of that stuff. Just be a sponge to whatever's coming out of the person across from you and, and maybe

• 50:36Shawn Ryan?

  guide the conversation. And, and what I learned is if you, if you can be comfortable in silence, most people cannot be comfortable in silence. They will fill the room. They will fill the room because they feel awkward and you won't have to. And that's actually, that's, that's actually one of the things, one of the first things that I loved about my wife is that we could just sit there and not talk and be totally comfortable. And I was, I was like, man, I was like.

• 51:17Shawn Ryan?

  There's like, nobody I can do this with. Everybody has to talk all the time, so, you know, and I think you'll find that when you start doing your interviews is, is they'll fill the silence. You won't have to.

• 51:32Speaker 05

  I could feel it sitting here, when, when we get a little quiet. Like, I feel like, maybe I talk now, but I'm, but we had breakfast, so I know, you know, that technique, and I'm trying to, to learn these things. It was something that I just filed away, is you said, "Don't try to be relatable." That's a really interesting point. Is, "Don't try to be relatable," because it's, you know, trying to relate to the guest, you're just trying to have a conversation, you don't have to know anything about it. Whether I'm talking to a physicist or a ghost hunter, who cares? Just tell, just tell me what's, what you feel.

• 52:08Shawn Ryan?

  And, you're already interested in the topic, and so, I think, you know, here we go, now I'm gonna relate to you, after you said, "Don't relate to anybody," but, you know, I only, I only take interviews that, where I'm interested in the subject matter. And so, it's, it's a genuine curiosity, and we've, you know, we've turned down a lot of big, big names, I, like, I get scared, I get intimidated to interview athletes, because I'm not into sports, you know, and, and, but I try it, because I want to challenge myself, but, but we'll get, we'll get big, big, big names that want to come on the show, and I'm like, "Man, I just, I don't know what to talk about with this person, I'm not, I'm not interested."

• 52:52Shawn Ryan?

  I know this would be great for the channel, I know it would be great for the show, and it would probably be huge numbers, but I'm just gonna be sitting there, because I'm not interested in anything this person has ever done, so, we're gonna pass.

• 53:07Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 53:09Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, uh, and it's, it's, it's, it's served me well, you know, and, and, in, in, in a lot of the, a lot of the, all of the biggest interviews I've ever done, it's not, it's not Trump, it's not...

• 53:27Shawn Ryan?

  Gavin Newsom, it's not these ginormous names that everybody knows. The biggest stories are the ones of everyday people who are doing extraordinary things, who never get recognition, or military, special ops, conventional guys that have done the unfathomable. And those are the stories that my audience really resonate with the most. I mean, the biggest interview I ever did was Brian Montgomery. He was a hacker who now tracks down pedophiles.

• 54:05Shawn Ryan?

  And he was the most, he probably suffered from the most, he had the most anxiety about coming on the show of anybody ever. And made him comfortable. It's the biggest interview we've ever done. It's at like, almost 10 million views, and when you get all the clips and shorts and all that stuff, it's hundreds of millions of views.

• 54:29Speaker 05

  Why was he nervous?

• 54:32Shawn Ryan?

  He's a tech guy. You know, one thing about tech guys is...

• 54:36Speaker 05

  We like, I like to be in a small space alone with a machine.

• 54:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 54:41Speaker 05

  That's my comfort zone.

• 54:42Shawn Ryan?

  Very unsure of himself, doesn't like being around people, smacked it out of the park. And, um, and, so I don't know, I hope that, I hope maybe that helps you a little bit.

• 54:55Speaker 05

  It does.

• 54:56Shawn Ryan?

  Gives you some confidence in that. And the questions will come naturally when you're, when you're just feeding your curiosity.

• 55:04Speaker 05

  I think that's the key. Like when you just, just a couple of days ago, you had that CEO of the asteroid mining company, I watched all of that because you don't see him anywhere. But that was a fascinating, I was, I'm interested in all of those things. I look at the chapters, I'm like, oh, I guess I have to watch all of this because I like all that stuff. But you don't see him anywhere. So that kind of stuff, you know, those are the sorts of people that I would, that I reach out to for my show. So that, it doesn't matter if he's famous or not, I know that's going to be an interesting dude to talk to.

• 55:39Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you do it.

• 55:40Speaker 05

  The studio's all done, we're just waiting for me to have the balls.

• 55:45Shawn Ryan?

  You've got them. Just do it, man. Just do it. And then the other thing that we both know is, you know, the audience loves to watch the progression of a channel. You know, and, and so you're introducing something new and you're gonna have to develop it and you're taking your audience on the journey with you. They're, they're gonna, they're gonna coach you. They're gonna critique you and they're gonna wish the best for you, you know, and, and take that in.

• 56:12Speaker 05

  No, that's, that's interesting that you say that, because, um, starting the channel is watching some consultant say, "You just gotta start. Doesn't matter. Don't worry about your gear, your lighting. Get your phone and just start doing episodes. You're gonna hate your first 20 episodes." And I remember going, "I'm, I'm not gonna hate my phone. I'm gonna be fine." And now my, I just cringe at every, like, episode one through 70. It's like, I, this, how does anyone watch this? It's terrible.

• 56:39Speaker 05

  But the audience does respond to that. They go back and watch that old stuff saying, "You've come a long way, brother."

• 56:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man.

• 56:46Speaker 05

  And I take it as a compliment. And that's why I don't delete any of those old episodes. Yeah, and so I'd love to delete a few of them, but it feels dishonest. Like, a whole episode where I'm just completely out of focus. You're just, the focus is just on the bulletin board, so you can't even see me. But I'm, I'm just leaving it up there.

• 57:04Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel, do you feel, I mean, you're a truth teller. And so I'm curious, do you feel a responsibility, that, that a, a responsibility comes with truth, truth telling?

• 57:17Speaker 05

  I think I'm more of a storyteller. And, and maybe that's, maybe that's a way for me to rationalize it, because I, I don't wanna have, I don't wanna have the responsibility. I don't want any power. I don't wanna, I don't want to be a leader. I don't wanna be any of that stuff. I just wanna entertain people with fun stories. Um, and just get them thinking differently, or just cheer them up if, have a bad day. Um, my only responsibility, I feel, is if, if I do find a piece of a story that's not that well-known...

• 57:50Speaker 05

  And even if I cover something that's been covered a lot, I don't stop researching until I'm pretty convinced I can bring something new. Like, episodes like Crop Circles, or even the moon landing, it's like, people keep asking me to do these episodes, it's been, these have been done since the 60s. Uh huh. But they want it, so I'll do it, but I won't stop researching until I find those nuggets that entertain me and go, "Oh, I didn't know that," so I know the audience won't. So I think that's, I feel responsibility there, like, I gotta find something new, that, for a story that's maybe known. And I don't hold back, if I find something ugly, I just say it, like, this is, I'm reminded

• 58:31Speaker 05

  of the Montauk Project episode, which is, uh, the Montauk Project is, this is like a time travel urban legend about, um, Stranger Things is based on it, out in Long Island, these experiments done in camp, out in Camp Hero, you'd sit in a chair and you'd focus your psychic energy and travel through time, all this stuff, this is a military project, of course, and it is all based on a book and a series of books by Preston Nichols. So I'm researching, I'm doing the episode, and I'm, and I'm loving it, because I read Preston Nichols books when they came out, you know, after hearing about them on Art Bell. I'm doing the episode, it's coming along fine, and then I find out that, um, Preston Nichols was maybe inappropriate with a lot of young men.

• 59:16Speaker 05

  So at some point in the episode, it got kind of, it started to get a little dark, and I actually stopped in the episode, and I said, "Look, I know you have families watching, if you have kids watching, sign this in the way." And I said, "Seriously, because I'm gonna tell you the truth about this story." And then I told the truth about what I learned about Preston Nichols.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  It's all alleged, but I said, "Here's what I found, and it's ugly." And, kind of ruins the story, it certainly ruined the magic for me, but I felt a responsibility.

• 59:53Speaker 05

  I don't know. It's good you did that. I, I, I think it is. It felt like the right thing to do at the time. But, um, I don't know if, if that's what the audience wanted. It's hard to tell. But I had, I had to say what was going on. And this was someone that I really respected. Too bad. Where did the, where did the hecklefish come from? I wanted a sidekick. I needed a sidekick, um, cause hecklefish is... Those are available on the Wi-Fi store, by the way. I'm not here to plug. Uh, I think we're sold out anyways.

• 1:00:37Speaker 05

  Uh, I needed a sidekick because I, I knew that when I would talk about the weird topics and the conspiracy topics, you kind of need, um, a foil. I need someone to lighten the mood when it gets dark. He'll just come in with, he'll just start singing a song or something and just like a, a, a room, my train of thought. But it just lets the audience go, ah, it's just, we're not taking it too seriously. All right, yeah, we're talking about the CIA is throwing people out of the window. All right, that's, that's the story. All right. Uh, it happened, it's for sure. But we can have a little fun along the way. But also he serves as the voice of the audience. So if I'm saying something totally outrageous, I know that people watching are gonna be

• 1:01:21Speaker 05

  going, what are you talking about? So if I, like, if I'm talking about quantum mechanics or quantum theory, he will hop in and call me Poindexter and a nerd, you know, a nerd or whatever, and say, you know, some of us actually went to our prom, we didn't stay home and, and write programs. So can you explain, please, what the double slit experiment is? He serves as the stand-in for the audience and, and a pressure release valve. Genius. It was Jen's idea. I said, I need, I need a sidekick to just sit there. And she said, why don't you have a goldfish in a bowl? I was like, that's a good idea. Damn. When did, uh, when in the journey did he come? Was he born? Day one. Day one. And he's, he's come a long way too.

• 1:02:04Speaker 05

  He, he's definitely had some face work done over the years. I guess the success. He's got a good botox guy, cause he was janky. And, and his voice changed a little bit over time. But we kind of settled into our rhythm.

• 1:02:18Shawn Ryan?

  Very cool.

• 1:02:18Speaker 05

  I hope people don't get sick of it because, you know, in rewatching my episodes to just refresh myself to come in here, which is so hard to do, I'm watching, like, I've been doing the same thing for like four years, the same format, the same... So I hope it continues to resonate.

• 1:02:35Shawn Ryan?

  It works, though.

• 1:02:36Speaker 05

  I try to let it evolve in small ways, production value and music and sound and all of that, but it's still basically the same format.

• 1:02:44Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I think, um, I'm with you. I'm always looking for ways to improve the show, bring it to the next level. And I got to the point where we're just chasing our tails. It was, well, let's redo the thumbnails. Let's, let's do this. Let's change the intro. Let's do, let's take this out. Let's put this in. And it just got to the point where I was like, man, this is, these are small, minute moves. And, I mean, we did just upgrade to the new studio, third guest here, but, um...

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  This is bananas, by the way.

• 1:03:19Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  You should do a backstage tour of this facility.

• 1:03:23Shawn Ryan?

  I probably will, eventually.

• 1:03:25Speaker 05

  It's pretty crazy.

• 1:03:26Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, but what I did, you know, is, is when I realized, all right, we're chasing our tail here. The show is great. It's got great visuals and I set it up that way from the very beginning. And, um, and so what I did is, is I started refocusing that energy into building new things. Because I mean, I think we're, I'm definitely a creative. You seem like a creative as well. And so I just took the, I didn't know where to put my creativity. And so I started, I started focusing on these businesses, you know, that we're gonna launch before the end of the year. And that, those have become my new creative

• 1:04:09Shawn Ryan?

  outlet because I just, it just got to the point, I was like, I don't know how to improve what I have. And I love what I have, but it's, it's, it's not feeding that creative outlet that I, that I, that I need and crave. And so I refocused that into these other businesses and, and the design of the studio and the shooting range and all, everything that we have here, it was, that was my creative outlet for about a year, uh, building this and making the best experience for the guests, for myself, for my team. And then, once that was designed, then I started moving into the business stuff, and that's my new creative outlet.

• 1:04:48Speaker 05

  Do you think that focusing on the minutia like you did, because I've gone through that, do you think that was trying to assuage your anxiety at the time?

• 1:04:56Shawn Ryan?

  Probably.

• 1:04:57Speaker 05

  Because it is for me.

• 1:04:59Shawn Ryan?

  We, myself, my team, we run a thousand miles an hour, all the time.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  Everyone here is amazing, and really friendly, but it's, I was talking about this with Jeremy, who's incredible, what a find. It's a tight ship here. Like, you're hitting your marks, and go take the photo, and do all this stuff. There's a system in place. As family-oriented and as fun as it is, I mean, it's super fun. Shooting Winchester is a highlight of my month, but you're very organized here. People compliment me on my studio when they come by, they're like, "I've never seen anything like this." And I'm in here like, "Oh my goodness, I'm doing everything wrong. I've got so much more to do."

• 1:05:44Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, you are doing everything right.

• 1:05:46Speaker 05

  If you saw my studio, you'd be like, "Yeah, grab a clipboard, we got some work, you know, like you helping with my grip, you can help me with my lighting as well."

• 1:05:55Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, right on. But, well, let's move in, I want to talk about the moon landing. That was the first, so my editor, who you met, Darren, knows all about this stuff, and he's the one that got me interested in it. And so, I started looking things up on the internet, and came across you, and I was like, "This is by far the best explanation I've ever heard." It's all in there, at least I think it's all in there. And so, I want to dive in there. What got you interested in the moon landing?

• 1:06:33Speaker 05

  That was an episode that people just demanded. I didn't want to do it, because everyone's done the moon landing. And are you talking about the Stanley Kubrick one? Because I've done a few moon videos. I think I have a whole compilation.

• 1:06:45Shawn Ryan?

  I probably watched all of them, but I know the Stanley Kubrick thing was in there, how the shadows don't align, but let's go into it. I want to hear all of it.

• 1:06:54Speaker 05

  So I debunked a lot of that moon landing stuff. A lot of that episode is based on Bart Sabrell's Bart Sabril had a documentary quite a while ago, maybe 20 years. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, I think is the name of it. And if you're into the moon stuff, that's the documentary to watch. And Bart's someone who I trade email with, who I told him, as soon as I'm ready, I gotta have you in here. Because he knows everything about it. But I debunked a lot of his stuff in the documentary. But I couldn't debunk all of it. There was some weird things about, you know, when you see the astronauts and it looks like there's wires, you know, reflections off the wires.

• 1:07:39Speaker 05

  It's hard to explain that. I tried to, I said, you know, the way that that piece of equipment is, it could be this. But I agree, it looks weird. And the way the astronauts fall doesn't look natural. But it's 1/6 gravity, it could be weird. You know, I try to be open-minded to all of it. It's an episode that still confounds me. I go back and forth, depending on who I talk to, about whether it really happened. And I think the percentage of Americans who don't believe that we went to the moon is just rising every year. I hope I have nothing to do with that.

• 1:08:23Speaker 05

  I'm sure you have something to do with that. But, you know, they lost the tapes, all the original tapes of the moon landing. What you watch when Neil Armstrong climbs off the lem, One Small Step for Man, that's not a direct feed from anything that was projected on a wall in NASA and the networks put, aimed their camera at the wall to get like this projection. And the networks were like, hey, can we just get the direct feed? Because that would be a lot better. And they're like, no, no, this is, we're gonna do it this way. And then they lost all those tapes, they lost the telemetry. And when asked, why don't we go back?

• 1:09:05Speaker 05

  NASA said, well, we can't replicate that technology, it's too difficult. Yeah, isn't there like some, some...

• 1:09:14Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know what you call it. We can't get past a certain point supposedly. They said they

• 1:09:18Speaker 05

  Van Allen Radiation

• 1:09:19Shawn Ryan?

  I think it was your episode. They're like, "We lost the technology." It's like you, you lost the technology to get us to the moon. You just happened to lose it?

• 1:09:28Speaker 05

  Nobody wrote

• 1:09:29Shawn Ryan?

  Where did it go?

• 1:09:30Speaker 05

  They just lost it. Um, you might be talking about the Van Allen Radiation Belt.

• 1:09:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's it.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  Right, which is high velocity particles and it's this, this energetic field that surrounds the earth and is very dangerous. And if you're aware of something called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it's this part of our geometric, uh, geomagnetic field that is just, it's burning a hole through it. If you, if you look at it on, on like an electromagnetic map, it's just a big hole. It's getting bigger and now it's starting to branch off into a second one and nobody knows why that's happening. And geomagnetism and the pole shifts and all that, I can go down that rabbit hole too because all that stuff terrifies me.

• 1:10:14Shawn Ryan?

  Do it.

• 1:10:14Speaker 05

  Solar radiation and the grid going down, all that stuff terrifies me. Um, so the Van Allen Radiation Belts that you have NASA astronauts saying, "Oh, we think we found a way now that we can get out of, you know, high earth orbit, that we can finally get past the Van Allen Radiation Belts." It's like, we already did that, man, didn't we? Didn't we do that 17 times or whatever? But they forgot. They didn't, they lost it. Can't replicate it.

• 1:10:44Shawn Ryan?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:10:45Speaker 05

  I don't buy it.

• 1:10:46Shawn Ryan?

  I don't buy it either.

• 1:10:47Speaker 05

  So just let us know what's going on.

• 1:10:50Shawn Ryan?

  On top of that was, there was a space race or a race to the moon between us and Russia during the Cold War, right?

• 1:10:55Speaker 05

  There was, and Russia was first to everything. We were behind on everything. Russia has first, Sputnik goes up, Sputnik 2 goes, so first MAMME satellite in orbit, first man in orbit, first animal in orbit, first woman in orbit, first spacewalk, first geostationary satellites. All first, first, first, first, first. And we're falling behind and you can hear JFK giving speeches.

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  You know, and they're pressing him on it and like the Saturn program's not going well and the rockets are blowing up on the launch pads and he's, he's saying like, no matter how much money we throw at it, we're gonna be second, we're gonna be second. You can hear him talking about it. And then suddenly, 1969, we're, we're there. We surpass all of it. We surpass all of the Soviets' accomplishments and we go and we land on the moon.

• 1:11:46Speaker 05

  Okay. Okay. It, it seemed like we took a great leap forward there. But there's really no explanation for it.

• 1:11:55Shawn Ryan?

  Did we? Yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 05

  Well, where do you stand on it?

• 1:11:59Shawn Ryan?

  I'm like you. I go back and forth. I'm, I mean, I wonder what I would think had we not been through COVID and all these other things, Epstein and all these other things that keep coming out that destroy any trust in any government institution there is.

• 1:12:20Speaker 05

  Every, every COVID conspiracy that I talked about just came true. But, you know, to me, it was always obvious. And the big problem with that is, and you were vocal as well, and I was very nervous about my opinions on COVID, but I hope that I didn't just get lucky. You know, those of us that were doubting and those that thought it was just kind of a power grab, I hope we didn't just get lucky because when the next pandemic comes and they want to do lockdowns, Americans are not gonna do it. Even, you know, even like the middle of the road people are gonna be like, I can't do that again. I can't put my kids on Zoom again. I'm not doing it. And if it's a real pandemic like the Spanish flu or something, we're gonna be in trouble.

• 1:13:03Shawn Ryan?

  Or Ebola.

• 1:13:04Speaker 05

  Or Ebola.

• 1:13:05Shawn Ryan?

  Something, something serious. Man.

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  So that's, that's chickens coming home to roost when you're so secret, when there's such a lack of transparency, when it's so corrupt. You know, I understand that there needs to be some secrecy. Yeah, I attack FBI, CIA, and NSA all the time. But I still want them there. I still want them to have the tools that they need to do their jobs. I want America to be the most powerful country on the planet. I want us to have the best military in the world. I just don't want us to use it that often. But overall, I want transparency in what we're doing. And we don't have any of that.

• 1:13:37Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-mm. Not one bit.

• 1:13:39Speaker 05

  So then there's gonna be no trust.

• 1:13:43Shawn Ryan?

  Now, if those things hadn't have happened, you know, it's interesting because I don't, I don't know how much that affected my, my psyche. You know what I mean? And, and, and now, now it's like, anything, it gets to the point where it's like, anything that is put out, it's like, you know, that's a distraction, that's bullshit, that didn't happen, there's no way, that definitely happened and you're saying it didn't, Epstein, you know, and, and, and, you know, and then, and then the, I mean, shit, it, half of Trump's, it appeared to me, there was a lot of chatter

• 1:14:25Shawn Ryan?

  about releasing the Epstein files and all this other shit, and then we get in there and it's like, everybody's beating the same damn drum, oh no, look over here, oh, Russiagate, and it's like, right, right, because we're, we're diving into Russiagate when the entire American population, both the right and the left, are screaming, release the Epstein files, but, let's, let's concentrate on this.

• 1:14:49Speaker 05

  On Russiagate, right.

• 1:14:50Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let's concentrate on this, right?

• 1:14:53Speaker 05

  And, when we're not, for two years I've been saying this, and I get a lot of heat from it, we're not gonna get the list, there's no list, we're not gonna get it, it's, everyone wants to talk about, that it's some, it's some sex trafficking ring, that's part of it, it's a blackmail operation, it's a money washing operation for, for the intelligence community, to connect the dots doesn't take any effort at all, to, you know, I never talk about Mossad on my show, because I'm not stupid, but, you can connect, you can connect all these agencies, all this, just follow the money, somehow Epstein is connected to Iran -Contra, you know, just follow the money.

• 1:15:30Shawn Ryan?

  How's he connected to Iran-Contra?

• 1:15:32Speaker 05

  When he was, I think he was an advisor for Adnan Khashoggi, back in the eighties, who was like, it's like an arms dealer slash asset, you know, wealthy family slash, could move a lot of weapons around and a lot of cash around, and I'm gonna get a lot of things wrong today, so, my job is not to get everything right, my job is to get you thinking and go find out. So they needed to get cash and weapons. We need to get weapons to Iran, which is illegal. Congress told them, no, no, no. They passed the law, law, law, and they just did it anyway. And we gotta get cash to the Congress.

• 1:16:11Speaker 05

  And we have to do it without Congress knowing, which isn't an ideal way to run a democracy. But so you need middlemen. And Khashoggi is known as a middleman for the IC, and Epstein seems to be. And it's not like I'm the first to talk about this. You know, I've heard people who've met him, you know, people like Eric Weinstein, who I like, tells his story about meeting Epstein and walked out of there feeling like, I don't think he's ever said it publicly, that he felt like Epstein was part of the IC, but he said he felt like he was a manufactured personality.

• 1:16:54Speaker 05

  And he kind of hinted at there was someone kind of pulling his strings, kind of creating this facade.

• 1:17:02Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:17:03Speaker 05

  Because he was a guy who had no, I don't think he had a college degree, and he ends up teaching math at age 20 at a wealthy school, and just suddenly skyrockets through the finance game. It doesn't add up. So we're not gonna learn, because it would wreck all kinds of things.

• 1:17:21Shawn Ryan?

  No matter, they botched this so bad, where they had all the influencer types up at the White House at the very beginning, holding up the binders, "Oh, we got it."

• 1:17:31Speaker 05

  I don't know whose idea that was, but that was such a disservice.

• 1:17:34Shawn Ryan?

  What were they thinking? I mean, and then, you know, and then the distractions and diversions that have come up since, it's like, you guys have botched this so bad, no matter what comes out, unless it is aligned with the wildest conspiracy you've ever heard of, nobody's gonna believe it.

• 1:17:54Speaker 05

  Not gonna believe it.

• 1:17:55Shawn Ryan?

  Nobody's gonna believe it.

• 1:17:56Speaker 05

  There was no tape, but then there was a tape, or then there was a tape, but only Bill Barr saw the tape. Bill Barr's father, of course, is involved with Epstein and Ghislaine.

• 1:18:05Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, go figure.

• 1:18:06Speaker 05

  Go figure. But now there is a tape, but there's some minutes missing, which is a story we hear over and over, right? There's always minutes missing, always the minutes are missing. So, I don't know. So now we're at the point where we don't trust anybody. And I don't follow it close enough. Like, I talk about political issues a lot, but I'm not ideological. So.

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  Just a quick sidetrack. So I get attacked quite a bit for being far left and far right. And, you know, being ideological. And I keep saying, I'm political, but I'm not ideological. Politics to me is governments and how they interact with society. That's what I'm interested in. So I did this experiment. I, the three major AI platforms, so Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, and OpenAI ChatGPT. I sent the same question in. Analyze all the Y files episodes, everything that A.J. Gantil has ever said publicly on every podcast, everything he's ever written, it's been published. Analyze all that and tell me, is he coming at these issues from the left or the right? All the AI platforms, and if you're listening to

• 1:19:12Speaker 05

  this, you do it yourself, says there is no left or right bias in anything that I'm saying. I'm focused on truth, facts, research. I'm clearly anti-government, pro-transparency, anti-corruption. And that is where I come from. So when I talk about Epstein, I'm going to get attacked from, from different sides. I don't know where, is it a left-right issue? To me, it's, it's not. It's a transparency corruption issue. You shouldn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican, which, which are fake now, anyway. So I don't know. I could be saying controversial things today to one side or the other. I just don't know which side until I get home.

• 1:19:51Speaker 06

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:20:20Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:20:37Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze in there, that's what?

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 1:20:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's a, the media has a big say in that. You know, I got, I got painted as this ultra-right mega podcaster. And I'm not, I'm very middle of the road. And so I had to, I had to work my way out of that and, and we're doing it. But, but yeah, you know, America's just become so tribalized, man. And it goes back to critical thinking. Nobody seems to have the, the, the fortitude to, to critical think anymore. And so it's, i- i- i- if you say anything against one party or another, no matter whether it's, if it's true, I mean, in it, in everything that we do,

• 1:21:35Shawn Ryan?

  which we try to, you know, our best to bring truth. And it's like, man, like, you're not listening. You're not listening. Like, this is a fault of this specific party. And you have wrapped your entire identity up into this shit. And you're not fucking listening.

• 1:21:56Speaker 05

  That's the problem is when you, when your identity is your ideology, now you have a problem. Now you've created a bubble and you've got to protect that. So you can't, you can't hear anything that goes against your identity. Your identity is, is the party? That's a bad situation.

• 1:22:14Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:14Speaker 05

  Now, I say to my audience, if you're on the left and you think the right is the problem, or you're, you're on the right and you think the left is the problem, you're the problem. Cause that is all theater. This is just to keep us spinning our wheels. We should, instead of worrying about party politics, because the establishment on the Republicans and the establishment Democrats want the same thing anyway. You know, they want big government, war and all of that stuff. But most of us don't want that stuff. Most of us are kind of in the middle of things. I, I don't identify with either party. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm pro troops, pro military, but anti-war.

• 1:22:49Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:50Speaker 05

  You know, I'm pro cop, very pro law enforcement, but I think we need, we need reform. So I, I don't think, I'm not unusual. I don't think those are controversial things. Pro-choice, pro-life, that's, that's between you and God. I'm not involved in that. You know, I'm very libertarian and all those things. And I, I think we need to get away from the tribalism and start to look at individual issues and individual people and call out the corruption when we see it. I don't know how many politicians you've interviewed, but in, you know, my career, I worked as a contractor in the engineering side in politics for almost 20 years, from local villages all the way up to having clients in Congress.

• 1:23:33Speaker 05

  And met all these politicians, famous ones, name brand clients. These are just people. They're flawed, they're ambitious, can't really be trusted, but they're all the same. And we've worked with both parties. And you'd have these meetings with Republicans and Democrats, it's just the same person. They just want to get reelected. They're gonna say whatever they gotta say to the base, get reelected. And I just feel like it's a smokescreen.

• 1:24:01Shawn Ryan?

  WWE wrestling.

• 1:24:03Speaker 05

  That's what it is.

• 1:24:04Shawn Ryan?

  That's what it is.

• 1:24:05Speaker 05

  What it is. And it's such a shame, because our system does not encourage the best and brightest to get involved. I'd never run for office. You said they tried to recruit you?

• 1:24:16Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:24:17Speaker 05

  No. You've got a wife and kids.

• 1:24:19Shawn Ryan?

  I think that's how they control you. I think that's also why we're seeing a lot of young, weak people get into office, is because they're propped up and they know they're gonna be very easy to control.

• 1:24:35Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:24:36Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I think. And it's, it's, just through doing this, I see how easy it could be to fall into certain traps, take a favor from somebody that seems like, "Oh, I just wanna, I just wanna help you." Like, what are you, my fucking parent? No. I know what this is. You're gonna do this, and then six months later, you're gonna ask me, you're gonna start asking me for favors and dangle that shit in front of my face. No, not doing it.

• 1:25:02Speaker 05

  Right. And if you don't do it, we'll just primer you, or smear you, or nowadays, we'll just lock you up. We'll just raid your wife's underwear drawer. We'll just, we'll just turn the FBI on you.

• 1:25:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. Yep.

• 1:25:17Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about, I want to talk about the hollow moon.

• 1:25:20Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:25:20Shawn Ryan?

  Is the moon hollow? I have not dug into this. I had a side conversation with Randall Carlson once, and he's the one that brought it up. I have not seen this episode of yours.

• 1:25:31Speaker 05

  It's a fun one. That was, uh, Gino, my brother, said, "You gotta do this one." And I was like, "Hollow moon? That is nonsense." And then I'm researching the episode and, and I just start to realize that there's a lot of weird stuff about the moon. By the time I was done with the episode, I was convinced that it was hollow. But, um, there's a lot of weird things that have happened with the moon. Like, first of all, the moon is too big to be here. It's just too big. We've never found another system in our solar system or any other that has this giant moon right next to us like this. This is totally unique. We haven't found a moon that has such a perfect orbit like this. That also, it same side faces us all the way.

• 1:26:15Speaker 05

  We're a snowflake with this. Totally unique. So that's strange.

• 1:26:21Shawn Ryan?

  No shit, I didn't realize that.

• 1:26:23Speaker 05

  No, we haven't found it anywhere.

• 1:26:24Shawn Ryan?

  We have the only moon that we know of that doesn't rotate?

• 1:26:28Speaker 05

  No, there are a few moons that are tightly locked like that.

• 1:26:30Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:26:31Speaker 05

  But it's rare. But when you stack up all these coincidences, it starts to paint a picture like the moon is weird.

• 1:26:41Speaker 05

  You know, a lot of people will point to the fact that the moon, during the eclipse is like the perfect size to block out the sun. Because it's like a 400 to 1 ratio. That's fair, but the moon at one point was a lot closer to the earth and it's drifting away. So at some point, it's not going to be perfect anymore.

• 1:27:01Speaker 05

  But the moon, um, the far side is, the crust is different, older and much thicker, and fewer impacts are on the far side that are on the near side. When you think it would be the opposite, because that's kind of like should be grabbing things as they come in, but instead, there's not as many impacts on that side.

• 1:27:22Speaker 05

  During one of the Apollo missions, as a test, a seismic test, they crashed one of the rockets into the moon just to take readings, seismograph readings, to see what was going on there. And the phrase is, "The moon rang like a bell for over an hour." So if you set off seismic charges here to measure sound waves that go through the Earth, as they go through the Earth, they slow down. As they go through all this dense matter and then through the mantle and the core, like it just slows down. The moon, they don't do that. The sound waves sped up and started to bounce all around in there and started to reverberate for a long time. And no one could really explain that.

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  Now, the prevailing theory, the mainstream theory, is that the moon is a lot less dense than the Earth because it was created from the Earth's crust and the upper mantle, which is less dense, which is why the moon is less dense. So the interior has maybe some hollow spaces or it's just a less, it's not quite as dense, that's why. Okay, but the sound waves bounced around for a long time. There was a long time. This is true. This is true. What hit it again? It was, they dropped one of the rocket boosters. They just crashed in there. But they did seismograph readings in subsequent missions there, where they actually drop in explosives, controlled explosives, and they just take the readings

• 1:28:51Speaker 05

  and see what happens to the sound waves. It's a normal scientific thing to do. I think they were just surprised. There's been a couple of NASA scientists who've even said, "It would make a lot more sense that the moon wasn't here than the fact that it is." Because there's so many strange things about it. And we see light on the moon all the time. They're called...

• 1:29:16Speaker 05

  It's a transient lunar phenomenon. We just see these like just light flashes on the moon all the time. And if you have binoculars, you can even see this. In one of the moon craters, I think it's the Aristarchus crater, there's this blue glowing light that just appears from time to time and then goes away, and then it appears again. They call it the blue gem. What? And you can see it. So what's causing the light up there? Well, mainstream scientists will say, well, you're seeing flashes because the moon's, it's a lot like glass, it's very glassy and reflective, so you're seeing that. But we'll see light just like go across. You'll just see lights zip across. And then what's the blue light in that, in that same crater that we've been seeing since 17th century?

• 1:29:59Speaker 05

  It's Aristarchus or Aristarchus crater, I think is how you say it. Blue light, what is that? And now they're seeing, just very recently, like this year, these swirls of light and gases happening on the moon, different places. They don't understand it. There was one point where the moon doesn't really have an atmosphere. It has a tiny one, doesn't really have one. But for a little while it did. There was just all this water vapor in the air on the moon that came from somewhere and then just disappeared. So I don't know what that is. And then you've had people who have seen pictures, like I've talked about Carl Wolf, who was US Air Force, and he was like a technician. He, basically the level is a copy repairman.

• 1:30:41Speaker 05

  And he's called in to fix some imaging equipment at NASA or, or Air Force, wherever. And he walks in there, and he's like an airman. And he sees another young guy, and he's like, oh, Carl, you gotta see this. And Carl looks, he's like, what am I looking at? He's like, this is the backside of the moon. There's like cities there and stuff. There's mushroom shaped things and towers and highways and all this stuff. Carl's like, this is amazing, I can't believe it. And Carl said he went home, he told his wife, and he said, he was watching the news, waiting for this to show up on the news, but it never did. And you could see those photos allegedly, and I used them in one of my episodes. And that looks like, it looks like a civilization on, on the far side of the moon.

• 1:31:24Speaker 05

  Carl unfortunately was met with an untimely death. He got hit by a car when he was riding his bike. So we don't know much more from Carl. But he was part of the, um, the 2000 So much.

• 1:31:38Shawn Ryan?

  This is crazy.

• 1:31:39Speaker 05

  So much. When I did the killer patents episode, I ended it with all the, like, the free energy inventors that...

• 1:31:46Shawn Ryan?

  Like the hydrogen car guy?

• 1:31:48Speaker 05

  He got, he said he was poisoned. He'd said his, to his, he is having, he's having like lunch with investors to like finally take his, his car ran on water. This is Stanley Meyer. And, uh, he's not feeling well and he runs outside, he's like throwing up in the street and his, his brother was his partner and, and his brother's, "What's going on?" He's like, "I was poisoned." And then he dies and that was the end of it. No more water car. Um, then we just have this kid who created plastilene. He like took plastic and created fuel out of it and then he disappeared for a little while. I think he's back. Um, so it could be a conspiracy, but I'm gonna look into him. But a lot of these inventors, my favorite one is Sparky Sweet, who's worth looking into. Cause he has video of all, all this stuff like in his workshop.

• 1:32:34Speaker 05

  And you see, he's got, he's got volt meters and stuff and all this energy's created and he takes his camera around. He's like, "Look, nothing is plugged in. Nothing is plugged in." And it caught the attention of someone in, in, in military somewhere. Who said, "I'm gonna, I wanna be your partner and we'll take this wide or whatever." And he worked with this guy for a while and then at some point, black van shows up, couple of guys in suits have a conversation with Sparky and his wife. They go away and then he has a heart attack. And that's, that's really the end of it. Now, all his, all his research was taken, everything was seized, cause, and that's, that's how it works.

• 1:33:08Shawn Ryan?

  But that's what happened with Nikola Tesla too, right? Did they, they seized all of like eighty boxes of research?

• 1:33:14Speaker 05

  So when he died, when he, he died, the, um, it wasn't the FBI at the time, although the FBI was there. It was like the, the office of, of alien, alien property or something. Whatever agencies in charge of foreigners. He died and within hours, they were in his room. This is at the New Yorker Hotel. And they seized eighty boxes of his research, all, all kind of research plans. And...

• 1:33:43Speaker 05

  Because it's national security. And they held on to it for months and months. And they finally returned his property to his nephew. But 20 boxes were missing. So in those boxes, allegedly, and this falls under Project Nick, is Tesla's research into direct energy weapons, to DWs, which was very hot with military at the time, with DARPA and all of that. We still don't know what's happened to those boxes. But we do know that they were researching things based on Tesla's research. And the formula, the sort of the architecture for the HARP project up in Alaska,

• 1:34:27Speaker 05

  a lot of that comes from Tesla's research. And it took me quite a while to connect the dots. But you will find Tesla's missing work suddenly shows up in patents from this guy somewhere in Alaska. I forget his name. And out of the blue, he lands a contract with the DOD for a lot of money. And they build a facility in Fairbanks, Alaska. And it's just an array of antennas in a small building. And it cost a fortune. Like, where'd the money go? Cost a fortune. And what it does is it ionizes and creates plasma in the atmosphere.

• 1:35:11Speaker 05

  And they say, we use this to test the atmosphere. But it could also be used for all kinds of processes. What Tesla wanted to do was create free energy by exciting the ionosphere. That was what he was doing with Warren Cliff Tower. But he needed funding to do that. And he couldn't get any funding. JP Morgan was his patron. And he told JP Morgan, I need, do you see it in his letter? I need a sum of money. He needed like $200,000 to get this project going. And JP Morgan said, well, you're building wireless communication. What do you need all this money for? And Tesla's like, no, no, no. Wireless communication, I got that. We're going to do wireless energy. We're going to do wireless free energy

• 1:35:55Speaker 05

  for everyone on the planet can just tap into this and just get free electricity. And JP Morgan says, well, how do you put a meter on that? JP Morgan, JP Morgan owned copper mines that made copper wire. He owned rubber farms all over the world that made insulation for the wire. He owned lumber mills and forests that created poles for wire. He owned coal factories. He owned machine shops that created generators for electricity. And he owned railroads that brought all this stuff around the country. Free energy shuts that whole business down. We don't need any of that. Carnegie, we don't need any of that. The Mellon family, we don't need you guys anymore. It's just free. Imagine what the world would be like if energy was just free.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  That's the golden age. Yeah, we're not gonna live to see it. Nope, nope. Wow, wow. I think I went off on a few tangents, but... Have you ever looked into the Flat Earth stuff? I have. I'm not a Flat Earther. Me neither. You know, I don't even wanna do an episode on it because to me, it's so ridiculous. But people do request it. And me calling it ridiculous, I'm gonna get a lot of hate for it, but... But I can handle the hate from the Flat Earthers. That's fine. But I do like the theory. Like, on YouTube, you're not gonna find much Flat Earth stuff. That is suppressed. But if you go land on Rumble and search Flat Earth... Why do you think they suppress it? Uh...

• 1:37:25Speaker 05

  There's some stuff we'd have to talk about off-air. But there are subjects that YouTube will just not allow you to discuss. So, you know, I can't say specifically because I made a promise to someone to not tell. But if you look at a couple of my demonetized videos, you'll see that they're kind of soft, softball. Like, why is this demonetized? Go look at those. Those are no-no topics that I didn't know until it was too long. I was like, why is this demonetized? Like, I can't talk about that. I'm like... Everything's true in here. I debunked most of it. I can't even talk about it at all. True or not. So Flat Earth, they don't like that one.

• 1:38:07Speaker 05

  But if you go on Rumble and spend like two, three, four hours just watching those videos, you'll walk away like, oh, it could be.

• 1:38:14Shawn Ryan?

  There's some compelling stuff.

• 1:38:15Speaker 05

  Good stuff.

• 1:38:16Shawn Ryan?

  There is some compelling arguments.

• 1:38:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:19Shawn Ryan?

  I will say that.

• 1:38:19Speaker 05

  The Antarctica wall. He's got a point.

• 1:38:22Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, damn. What do you think? So back to Nikola Tesla. What do you think about the pyramids?

• 1:38:28Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:38:28Shawn Ryan?

  What were they?

• 1:38:30Speaker 05

  So gun to my head, I, I think they were used to generate energy. I think there's a lot of evidence for it. You know, for people interested in it, uh, they can look into Christopher Dunn's work who's done, he's done the research, definitive research on the pyramid power plant theory. Tesla was fascinated by the pyramids, not so much for energy, but for, um, how they were constructed, how they constructed to true north and all of that. He was fascinated by the engineering of it. But his free energy device, a lot of that engineering can be seen in the pyramid. So Warden Cliff Tower was his facility on Long Island, which is big, just a big tower. It looks like a water tower, but it's built over an aquifer. And what Tesla was trying to do was use,

• 1:39:14Speaker 05

  the water creates this deep resonant sound that resonates with the earth's natural frequency. Everything has a resonant frequency. The earth, this chair, our bodies, everything does. And if you can come into harmony with that frequency, it will expand, it will amplify. And there's been research that certain wavelengths broadcast at the Great Pyramid will amplify that electromagnetic energy. It's around 200 meters, I think. So Tesla is fascinated with that engineering. But the pyramid power plant theory is a lot like Tesla's technology. The, the Giza Plateau, there is an aquifer under there. There's a lot of water under there.

• 1:39:58Speaker 05

  And that water would create this resonant frequency. And they found copper rods that go down there that would help bring up some, some of the electricity or however it worked.

• 1:40:10Speaker 05

  Then in the pyramid, at the various chambers, there's residue of certain chemicals that when combined, create a lot of hydrogen, like a lot of, like the violent reaction of hydrogen. So coming down from the queen's chamber and then, I might be, I forget the other chamber. But they're built in a way so they come down to use gravity and you support these chemicals down, creates this hydrogen reaction, which we know creates, there's residue of these chemicals there. I'm not, this is not a conspiracy theory. The hydrogen expands, comes up through the gallery, which is this, sort of this big hallway that goes up to the king's chamber. And they discovered that in the grand gallery, there used to be these wooden posts or some kind of wooden,

• 1:40:55Speaker 05

  sort of flat wooden things. And those were, those would create sound. It's called a helmholtz resonator. Like when you blow across a bottle, it goes, whoo. That air is a helmholtz resonator. So this hydrogen would come up through the chamber. These things would resonate with sound, the F sharp chord specifically. And that would cause it to build up more and more and more. The hydrogen expands. This chamber is built out of rose granite, which is an unusual type of granite because it's densely made of quartz. And when you compress quartz, it creates electricity. It's called piezoelectricity. And if you have a lot of quartz, you can create a lot of electricity. There's been experiments done where if it's a mountain of quartz, it creates something like 10 million volts, like creates a lot of power.

• 1:41:40Speaker 05

  So you've got this, you've got the hydrogen expanding, creating this electricity. It's ionizing the air, amplifying it more. You've got the sound coming through, amplifying it more. And then you've got this, this hole leading into the king's chamber that's 4.8 inches by 8.4 inches, which is the perfect size for a hydrogen atoms microwave to just fit through as a waveguide. Comes up into the king's chamber. And the king's chamber has these pillars and on top of it, a bunch of stones that are stacked. Everything is really smooth, except the top is really rough. And forever, they thought that this was, they called this the relieving stones, that these would relieve the pressure of the pyramids.

• 1:42:25Speaker 05

  But they're not connected to anything, so there's no pressure there. But what they found is that...

• 1:42:33Speaker 05

  This creates music, creates this chord. And what the theory is, is it's rough on top because they would chip away at it and tune it until it was just about right. And that's why it's smooth on the bottom and rough on the top. And if you had, so you've got all this energy, so how do we get it out? Well, when the pyramids were new, or intact, the interior is made out of a certain type of limestone that electricity can move around in. The exterior is made out of a different kind of limestone called toura limestone, which is quarried from far, far away and brought in. Way down the Nile, right? Way down, hundreds of miles away.

• 1:43:18Speaker 05

  You'll hear Zahi Was talk about the limestone on the pyramid, but he never talks about the toura limestone or the rose granite. So there's all these different, why not just build the whole thing out of the same rocks that are right here? Bringing the toura limestone to Giza is like bringing the 100-ton blocks up the coast of Florida. It's like that far. But it's a special type of limestone that's very low in magnesium, it's a great insulator. So you've got this electricity, and then you've got sort of this conductor, and then you've got another insulator. And that's called a dielectric, and that creates even more power. And if you had a gold capstone on top, which is a great conductor, you can force that energy up through the capstone and up into the ionosphere.

• 1:44:02Speaker 05

  And that's what Nikola Tesla is trying to do. It's the same technology. Where I get stuck is, I love all of that, I buy it, but we don't see any evidence of what they did with the power. So the people who are really into it will say, "Well, the obelisks at one time also had metal capstones, so they would be receivers." Okay, but still, what did they do with it? There's no computers, there's no light bulbs, the ancient Egyptians didn't work with glass, so what did they do with it?

• 1:44:33Speaker 05

  My guess is, the Egyptians didn't build any of this. Is, the reason that we don't see any evidence of what the Egyptians did with power is because they didn't use it for power. I think the Egyptians just found it. And they said, "Wow, this is crazy. This gods must have made this." And it just became, sort of this, you know, religious type of structure. It's not, it's supposed to be the tomb for a kufu, but no mummy's ever been found in a pyramid. Never found any of that.

• 1:45:01Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:45:02Speaker 05

  No. Egyptologists will say, "Well, they were robbed. Mummies were there, but they were taken out." Alright, well, there's no evidence of any of that. But there is evidence of zinc chloride at one side, and hydrochloric acid on another side, and sulfuric acid here, and there's an inch of salt that would, up and down this chamber, that would be the result of a chemical reaction. There's evidence of an explosion at some point. All this stuff you can look up. You don't have to believe what I'm saying. I'm not trying to convince anybody, I'm just saying these things are true, and I'm just connecting the dots for my entertainment, but you can go look at them, and make your up your own mind.

• 1:45:39Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. So you think they found them?

• 1:45:42Speaker 05

  I think they found them. I think they were there for a long time.

• 1:45:44Shawn Ryan?

  So what do you think that was? Previous civilizations?

• 1:45:47Speaker 05

  Previous civilizations? I'm not an alien guy.

• 1:45:50Shawn Ryan?

  You're not an alien guy?

• 1:45:52Speaker 05

  Not really, because I can't wrap my mind around crossing the distances of space. They're so, so far. We can't, space is so big that the human mind can't even, we can't comprehend it.

• 1:46:06Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:07Speaker 05

  You know, like, so we've got this comet, 3I Atlas, just zipping into the solar system now. It's the fastest object we've ever found. It's like 135,000 miles an hour. We've never seen a comet move this fast. It's still gonna take six months to get through. So, if things are, it's that big. So I can't get my mind around aliens, what, wormholes, folding space, it's, I can't get my mind around it. Something's going on. I've seen, I've seen videos. Most, you know, I don't believe the, I don't believe the whistleblowers. I don't believe anyone from Air Force Intelligence. I don't believe any of that. And if you have a book out, I don't believe what you're saying. If you're cleared by the DOD. I definitely don't.

• 1:46:52Speaker 05

  I definitely don't. If you still have clearance and you're still a contractor and you're still working with DOD, I can't, you're not a whistleblower. You're doing PR. So with all due respect, I don't believe you guys. Matthew Brown, I think his last name is Brown. He's kind of a compelling whistleblower because he doesn't go over the top. He just says, "I found evidence of, you know, something going on in space." And that's really all he says. So as far as ancient civilizations, you know, I don't go as far as like Graham Hancock might go, where this ancient advanced civilization, I don't want to put words in his mouth because I'm a huge admirer, huge fan. I've made at least 10 videos based around

• 1:47:34Speaker 05

  his research. But, um, but in geologic time, the earth, the surface of the earth just turns itself inside and out every few million years. So the earth we're standing on now just wasn't here 10 million years ago. There's only a couple of places on the planet that still have exposed rock that's 4 billion years old. There's only, it's, I think, Jack Hill in Australia and then somewhere in Canada, like West Canada. Everything else is pretty new. So if there was a civilization, it's very easy for it just to get folded into just the tectonic activity of the earth. And perhaps the pyramids survived that. When

• 1:48:15Speaker 05

  we see the, the pictures of the discovery of the Sphinx, it was buried. No, they didn't just walk up and see a Sphinx there. They just saw like the top of a head and they're like, "What's this?" And they dug all that out. And then on there, we see evidence of high volume, high pressure water flow and water erosion. It's kind of hard to discount that now, which they did for years. It's hard to discount it. When you look at Robert Shuck's work and some, and Randall Carlson's work, it's, to me, it's not debatable. It's, it's right there.

• 1:48:47Shawn Ryan?

  Well, also on Easter Island.

• 1:48:48Speaker 05

  Easter Island is-

• 1:48:49Shawn Ryan?

  There's those, there's those heads that-

• 1:48:51Speaker 05

  The Moai heads. People don't realize, those heads have bodies. So, you see all these heads sticking up. They have, they have bodies. So, first of all, Easter Island is in the middle of nowhere. If you look at it on Google Earth, good luck, you'll never find it. You have to, you have to type it in and then pull back and see how in the middle of nowhere this place is. So you've got these statues that are, I don't know, 80 tons or whatever. So either, there's a thousand of them on the island. So either-

• 1:49:23Shawn Ryan?

  There's a thousand of them?

• 1:49:25Speaker 05

  So either they dug these holes and dropped in a giant statue and then filled it in, or the statues were there and then the earth came over and filled on top of it. I don't know. You know, I'm not, there's a lot of mud flood conspiracy theorists, I'm not one of those. But if those statues are really old, the earth has changed quite a bit in that time. I don't know why they're buried, nobody does. And at one point, Easter Island had 25,000 people living on it. It's a whole society and it's only, you know, a few square miles, tiny little triangle.

• 1:49:59Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I did not realize that. I'd love to go there sometime. You know, but aren't all these Stonehenge, the pyramids, Machu Picchu, Easter Island, I know there's more that I'm not, that I can't remember right now, but aren't all these things like on, they're like a perfect line, right?

• 1:50:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's the ley line theory, that there are these lines of energy that go around the earth. And where these points, where these lines intersect are high energy points and that's where these ancient sites are. And they're pretty close, but when you look at the ley line maps, you can make it look like anything. I've seen ley line maps that look like just, are, just lines everywhere. Like you can make, you can make anything fit. So I'm not, I'm totally convinced on the ley line.

• 1:50:49Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha. About that and in touch with it, but it's, it's just, have you looked into Stonehenge at all?

• 1:50:56Speaker 05

  A little bit.

• 1:50:57Shawn Ryan?

  What's going on there? What do you think that is?

• 1:51:00Speaker 05

  Uh, I really just think it was, it wasn't Druids.

• 1:51:05Speaker 05

  It was definitely in ancient culture, but they had pretty advanced engineering. And that whole compound is really big. Like, it's more than just the stones that we see. It's a whole perimeter. And then there's another site not too far from it that's even bigger. But there's not really stones there anymore. But this was a giant compound. But these stones line up so well with equinoxes that it shows that there's some type of advanced engineering. And it doesn't sound that impressive until you realize that when you ask someone what an equinox is, kind of what I was taught was it's when the day and night are the same length. That's an equinox. But that's not what it is. That's an equal lux.

• 1:51:50Speaker 05

  That when day and night are equal is different for everybody on the planet, depending on where you are. An equinox is when the sun is perfectly over the equator around the Earth. So whoever built Stonehenge were lining up the stones to match when the sun was perfectly over the equator. But they're not supposed to know about the equator. So how did they do that? Man. So if you get into the numerology of the pyramids, it's the same thing. If you take the height of the pyramid and multiply it by 43,200, it turns out to be the polar radius of the Earth. And then take the perimeter and multiply it by 43,200, and it becomes the circumference of the Earth.

• 1:52:30Speaker 05

  It's very easy to dismiss that, but I find it interesting. A lot of coincidences are just that. But in those, there's some interesting threads to pull. And that's what I do, is I just pull the threads. And I lay it out like this. I tell it as excited as I am, because I'm fascinated. I'm not saying I believe hardly any of it. I'm just giving you what I've found.

• 1:52:56Shawn Ryan?

  You've looked into remote viewing too.

• 1:52:58Speaker 05

  Very much.

• 1:52:59Shawn Ryan?

  I wasn't planning on going here, but it, so I dove into remote viewing and then Joe McMonigal, Angela Ford, uh, Colonel John Alexander. Who am I missing? Skip Atwater, I've had, uh, Edwin May, had them all on, cause I, I, so.

• 1:53:20Speaker 05

  These are big names.

• 1:53:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, backstory. I was telling you about my friend, uh, and the road rage incident, right? And we had contracted, you know, we were contracting at the agency together and I remember way after we got, we got really close after, after we were there. And, uh, he had mentioned that he had seen remote viewers show up at station in one of the countries that we were at.

• 1:53:47Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 1:53:48Shawn Ryan?

  And I was like, what the fuck is a remote viewer?

• 1:53:50Speaker 05

  What year is this?

• 1:53:51Shawn Ryan?

  This was probably somewhere in between 2010 and 2015.

• 1:53:58Speaker 05

  Oh, so Stargate has already, has been shut down 20 years.

• 1:54:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, yep, long time after. And so we started having these chats and he was kind of schooling me up on what they are. And I was like, are you sure? And he's like, yes. I'm a hundred percent sure. He's not a conspiracy guy. So I started diving into it and I had, first guy I had on was, uh, actually this guy Sean Webb, who introduced me to Joe McMonigal. Sean had gone through the Monroe Institute and was telling, he was like my first guy that, that was telling me how it worked and the hemisink and all this and the envelopes and.

• 1:54:35Speaker 05

  Army, Army Military Intelligence went through that whole program.

• 1:54:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:39Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:54:40Shawn Ryan?

  I'm very familiar with it at this point. But you did, I think it was you, I, I think I used one of your episodes for my research, actually. And Joe had remote viewed, um.

• 1:54:55Shawn Ryan?

  Some type of extraterrestrial type facility in Alaska. Was that your, was that your episode?

• 1:55:02Speaker 05

  It's probably Pat Price. Pat Price saw under Mount Hayes.

• 1:55:07Shawn Ryan?

  That's it. That's it.

• 1:55:10Speaker 05

  Mount, Mother Ethan Hayes, he likes to call it. Uh, Pat Price is, he's the most believable remote viewer to me. He fascinates me. But, uh, but the origi, but the OGs are, are Joe McMonigal, Ingo Swan, and Pat Price. We're like, those are, those are like the original guys from, from SRI. Um, which is Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff ran that program, uh, who were probably gettable. I'd like to see Hal on your show.

• 1:55:36Shawn Ryan?

  I'd love to get Hal on my show.

• 1:55:38Speaker 05

  Yep. He, he was very entertaining on Rogan, but I also made the point that Hal Puthoff has been connected to disinformation. So you gotta take everything with a grain of salt.

• 1:55:49Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:55:51Speaker 05

  Remote viewing, I think there might be something to it. Most of it I think is nonsense. Most of it I think is like strip mall psychic stuff. Joe McMonigal definitely saw some things. And you sat here with him. He's a no nonsense guy. And I think he kinda downplays it, but this is a war hero, you know? And he was, he was a rock star in Vietnam and he, I think he has a near-death experience and then he has these abilities. And he's definitely found some things. I think he was the one who found the, the Soviet sub.

• 1:56:21Shawn Ryan?

  That's him.

• 1:56:22Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:56:22Shawn Ryan?

  That was the first big thing.

• 1:56:24Speaker 05

  Right. But, uh, but Pat Price was so, um, Pat Price was a, he was a retired like police chief from Burbank, California. And he was known in the department of just being good at solving crimes. And he, you know, he just kinda knew where the body was, or he knew where this, this guy was or that. And he, he just thought like he was just, his hunches were strong. So he retired and had a little bit more time to just kinda relax and focus on his talent. And he just started to actually see that he had an ability.

• 1:56:58Speaker 05

  So he was, Pat Price's, he saw in the Soviet Union, giant crane on railroad tracks that you would never even just make up. But he saw that and then it was verified with, you know, with spy plane, spy plane, that they saw that, that that was real with Pat Price. So he had so many of those that CIA just pulled him in. They just, they pulled him out of SRI. He really wasn't looking to do that. So he goes over there and he, he's dead pretty soon after. He's, you know, he bumps into somebody in the lobby of a hotel in Las Vegas. He feels a pinch on his arm, goes up to his room, calls his wife and he's, he's dead

• 1:57:42Speaker 05

  by morning. But Pat Price, remote viewed into Mount Hayes, saw a joint alien US military operation inside the mountain and he put the files together. And I think from there, he gave the files to Hal, who then gave them to Skip. I could have the timeline wrong, but it's something like that. Like Pat didn't pursue it. He, he gave it over to the people he trusted. And I don't know if they had anyone who can go and follow up with what Pat saw, because he was really talented. But SRI taught, taught a lot of people to do it.

• 1:58:23Speaker 05

  You know, they had a secretary there that they were like, let's just teach her to do it and see if she can do it. And she like found a Soviet plane that went down in the Congo, like within two miles of accuracy. It's such a weird story. So, you know, with someone like Joe, if he's going to do 20,000 viewings, he's going to get some right and he's, but most of his stuff is wrong. So we tend to cherry pick the good stuff. It doesn't discount it completely.

• 1:58:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's what Edwin May told me. He said, I think he said, and I can't remember the number, but I think, I think it may have been around 40%. He says, he said, yeah, you know, he's like, none of this can be, it has to be proven for it to be like a win. And because we were talking about the pyramids on Mars that Joe had remote viewed and he's like. He was like, Joe was only right, I'm not correct on this. It's, it's maybe lower, maybe a little, it's probably lower if it's not this number. But he said, Joe was only right 40% of the time.

• 1:59:30Speaker 05

  That's a lot.

• 1:59:31Shawn Ryan?

  Can't prove it, then it's, you cannot take it as fact.

• 1:59:37Speaker 05

  Right. He said he saw all those tall beings on Mars.

• 1:59:41Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:59:41Speaker 05

  But he didn't know what he was remote viewing. He just got coordinates.

• 1:59:44Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:59:45Speaker 05

  And then they opened the envelope and it's Mars, 1 million B.C.

• 1:59:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:49Speaker 05

  Which is a great story, but it's hard to verify that.

• 1:59:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:53Speaker 05

  But Ingo Swann's another one who remote viewed the moon and saw aliens up there. And he said, aliens are not our friends. So he went up, up to the far side. He said, yeah, there are bases up there. They're watching us. They're all over it.

• 2:00:05Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's crazy to think about, isn't it?

• 2:00:09Shawn Ryan?

  But, all right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to hit Patriot Act.

• 2:00:15Speaker 05

  Oof, here we go.

• 2:00:17Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 2:00:21Speaker 06

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• 2:00:55Speaker 06

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 2:01:32Shawn Ryan?

  All right, AJ, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to dive into the Patriot Act. So I know you just came out with a video on this. I purposely have not watched it because I just wanted to. I wanted this to be 100% organic. So, but it's something that I've been interested in. It seems to be resurfacing right now with AI and all this other stuff. So in fact, I better grab a sesh for this one.

• 2:01:56Speaker 05

  Same.

• 2:01:58Shawn Ryan?

  But what got you interested in the topic? How to pop up on your radar? Because it's been going on for a long time.

• 2:02:04Speaker 05

  It's been going on for a while. It popped up on my radar for when I was doing an episode about 33 Thomas Street, which is the Long Lines Building.

• 2:02:15Speaker 05

  But the

• 2:02:15Shawn Ryan?

  The what building?

• 2:02:16Speaker 05

  The Long Lines Building. It's the AT&T Long Lines Building, 33 Thomas Street, New York. Codename Titan Point. And it, New Yorkers will know this building. It's the weirdest building you'll ever see. It has no windows, just has exhaust fence. It's no lights. So when, when it's nighttime in the city, you've got all the lights on the skyline and you've just got this void for 33 Thomas. It's a very strange building and all you hear is the exhaust.

• 2:02:46Speaker 05

  And the lobby is, looks normal until you get up kind of close and it's like, wow, there's a lot of security here. And you can't get in there. So it's codename Titan Point, which we learned from the Edward Snowden documents. And it turned out that this is one of the facilities, one of, one of several, but this is a big one, that was capturing all of our phone calls. You know, they talk about, well, it's just metadata. But that's, metadata is enough because metadata includes who you're calling, what time, where they are, your location. So you could be totally tracked and it helps them create that network, which the Patriot Act allows, where if you're a person of interest,

• 2:03:30Speaker 05

  anyone you communicate with is automatically a person of interest. And it just is a geometric progression. So when I was doing that episode, I was really just wanted to cover the weird building and, you know, what NSA was doing there, capturing the records.

• 2:03:47Speaker 05

  And it just started to get emotional because whenever I can, I just play James Clapper line in Congress, you know, whenever I can, when he's asked, "So, can you confirm that NSA's not capturing millions or hundreds of millions of Americans' records?" And he says, "No, sir, we're not intentionally," or something like that. And then later, he says, "Well, I told the most truthful, you know, least truthful, whatever it was, and then eventually had to apologize because the Snowden documents revealed they're capturing everything. So, it's not just metadata. They were doing whole capture of phone calls, all kinds of stuff.

• 2:04:31Speaker 05

  NSA was embedded inside of Google and Yahoo and Microsoft so that everything on like your Google Drive was accessible. If you look at the PowerPoint, the engineers are so excited, they have like emojis and smiley faces, like, "We got it, we finally got into Google." So, that was probably the first episode that got me really thinking, okay, every so often, I'm going to do a government corruption, government transparency episode. Try to make it fun, but the point is, you know, do not trust them. They are constantly lying to us. And there's no regard to the Constitution at all. Now, the Patriot Act, for me, it's

• 2:05:14Speaker 05

  kind of weird because I'm a New Yorker. I was there for 9/11. It's very emotional for New Yorkers that were there, still, still, very emotional. You know, I had a friend who was a fireman there as part of cleanup, and he was a broken man after that, just completely broken. And my brother had friends in one of the towers that came down. So, it's close to us. So, I remember I was all in with whatever we got to do to get these guys. Patriot Act, let's do it. But...

• 2:05:51Speaker 05

  We kind of expanded the government's powers a lot there. And it seemed like it happened pretty quickly. So you've got 9/11, and the Patriot Act is signed, I think, like October 16th or 20th. Like, it was like four, six weeks that they got this giant bill together. So either they had some really smart lawyers, or this was kind of hanging around. Like, and here's an opportunity to do it. And that leads into the 9/11 conspiracy, which kind of makes sense, which I don't go into on my show.

• 2:06:22Speaker 05

  Why don't you go into that? Because it's a taboo topic, and it's emotionally charged. And the bad guys are, you know, the bad guys are the government. And we just, if we learn that 9/11 really was an inside job, I don't know how that doesn't really challenge your patriotism. Now, I consider myself a patriot. I love my country. I just, I don't like the people that run it. Now, I like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I really like those. And I'm very libertarian, borderline anarchist, in a political sense.

• 2:07:02Speaker 05

  Not like craziness, meaning like, I don't think we need much government for anything. Keep us safe abroad. Domestically, keep it local. That's kind of how I feel. I think the federal government's way too involved in our lives in every different level. I'm with you. But the Patriot Act violates the First Amendment in a few different ways. You know, free speech is gone. So if you, if you, if you say anything that's considered dangerous or explosive, suddenly you're on a list. And then you can be gag-ordered. So that's prior restraint. You can't do that. Then you've got the Fourth Amendment violations, where illegal search and seizure,

• 2:07:47Speaker 05

  you can't search through Americans without probable clause. You just can't. But the Patriot Act says you no longer need probable clause. You just need to be relevant. So if you're relevant to an investigation, then we don't need a warrant. We can just look into your files. And this gets renewed time and time again. So it's not a left-right Democrat-Republican. They just keep, these are sunset clauses that keep getting re-signed. I forget the numbers offhand, but 215 is certainly one of them.

• 2:08:19Speaker 05

  And the Patriot Act is mostly used for finding drug dealers. It's not really used for terrorism. It never, never really was. We don't really know if it's ever stopped anything. And then, you know, the IC and the government will say, "Well, you don't, you don't know because we can't tell you, but we, we stopped this or that." Well, but did you though? At some point, you have to tell us if it worked because we need to decide if we still want to do this because you're encroaching on a First Amendment right, our Fourth, our Fifth Amendment, due process, habeas corpus. And I thought this was just supposed to be for like foreign agents. But now if an American is on the phone with someone who's a, who's a foreign national,

• 2:09:03Speaker 05

  now this American is wrapped up in the Patriot Act. When what should happen is as soon as, as soon as who's ever surveil foreigners all you want, I don't care. Leave my, leave my citizens alone. So as soon as you find out, well, all right, this person of interest is on the phone with an American, well, then, then it stops. Now you have to bring this out of the Patriot Act and put it into our legal system and have a judge look at it and all of that. Not a FISA court rubber stamp where FISA is like 99.97% just get yes, go whatever you gotta do. That's, that's another violation of separation of powers. You have no oversight. It just seems like, it doesn't seem like it's what it is.

• 2:09:48Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it's interesting too, because if they were doing that with all the, just one aspect, you know, all the mass shootings that are happening, if they were really surveilling everybody, don't you think those people maybe have had some type of communication or, or, I mean, it's, it's, it's been proven, right? There's been things on Facebook, there's been things on Instagram. If they're on there, they're definitely in text messagings and voice calls and all of that stuff. Unless they want that stuff to happen, maybe they do. Maybe, maybe, who knows? Maybe they use it against the Second Amendment.

• 2:10:30Speaker 05

  Well, let's, rather than even speculate, let's look at an actual case where

• 2:10:36Speaker 05

  At some point, I don't remember when, during the Biden administration, remember you had all these parents that were protesting about whatever trans issues or whatever they were? I'm not interested in that. Believe what you want to believe on that issue, that's none of my business. What I care about is, the administration worked with a group to write a letter to the president to designate these Americans as potential domestic terrorists and use the Patriot Act to surveil them and gather records on them and look into them. That's, we can't have that. I don't know why there was an outrage over that. These are Americans from the jump, so Patriot Act shouldn't apply. But it does, and no one really challenges it.

• 2:11:20Speaker 05

  I don't think anyone even really talks about this that much. I'd never heard about it. You know, it all goes back to Snowden because they lied and lied and lied, and then the Snowden documents were, it was just such a bombshell. But not only are they collecting all this stuff, I mean, all of us, all, you know, every single one of us, but they were in our files, they can read our email, they can, you know, our search history, everything about us. Where, if you, you know, if I'm charged with something and you use the Patriot Act against me, my first thing would be like, well, it's all inadmissible. I'm an American citizen, I have Fourth Amendment right, you didn't have probable cause, let me see the warrant, let me see the affidavit, what judge did you use?

• 2:12:05Speaker 05

  Well, we used the FISA judge. Well, the FISA reviews are done in complete secrecy, there's no transparency, no one can, you can't sit in on those, you know, you can't wander into the courtroom like you can in most towns here and just watch proceedings, it's all secret. It's just, you've got Richard Nixon, who turns the intelligence community, foreign and domestic, against his political enemies. That's bad. So then, we review that, then you have the Church Committee, and out of that, you've get the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is FISA. What was the Church Committee? That was... Reviewing all what like CIA and FBI was doing. Okay.

• 2:12:49Speaker 05

  All the bad stuff kind of came to light during the church committee. And that made Congress realize, oh, there's, they're using FBI and to actually go after political enemies. We can't have that. So we'll have FISA, which will review these. But then FISA starts to get abused. And then when the Patriot Act comes along in 2001, it supercharges FISA. And now everything is just rubber stamped. And we don't know really what they're doing with it. We just know they renew it. And whether it's Trump or Biden or Obama, this, the sign with the pen and there's applause and America's going to be safe. And I don't know if there's any evidence of that. You know, out of that time, we got the TSA.

• 2:13:34Speaker 05

  I think the TSA is just, is just in the way. I think in 2015, they sent, they were called red teams to test TSA. See, like secret shop them. And they did, they created mock weapons and mock explosives. Take a guess what percentage got through? Oh, man. 95. Are you serious? 95% got through. So then they tried it again in 2017. 95% of the weapons got through? Guns, bombs, all of it. You know, so we have a shoe bomber that is ridiculous. So now we all taking off our shoes. Then we have someone who's going to make a bomb with liquid that's not going to work. But now we can't bring, you know, shampoo. So I've got my wife emptying her purse because the shampoo is over the ounces.

• 2:14:19Speaker 05

  Are you crazy? And, you know, you're basically assaulting a grandma. Is that, that's really who we're worried about? Where, you know, I'm small government libertarian. I say, get rid of all of that and let the airlines handle their own security. They do it more efficiently. And if the airline's not doing it well, no one will fly on it and they'll go away. And then you wouldn't have to wait on these lines with this ineffective agency. Now, after the, the red teams filed their report, TSA kind of.

• 2:14:51Speaker 05

  Tried to do a better job and then they were tested again two years later and I think 60% got through. It was the majority. Wow. So it's ineffective. TSA has never stopped a terrorist, never once. There's zero times. Terrorism is stopped locally by local law enforcement and with federal intervention long before they get to the airport. That's where it happens. People can say I'm wrong, but the data is the data. If they were stopping terrorists all the time, then great, then let's keep doing it. But if it's just a bloated bureaucracy that's making us miserable, I hate going to the airport because of this. It's the worst part of it, is doing it, and it's so ineffectual. So I don't know why it's still there.

• 2:15:36Speaker 05

  I don't know why we had to create the Department of Homeland Security and take 22 agencies and lump them together with all this overlap. And now you've got, I mean, still, this is 25 years, there's still turf wars and it's my jurisdiction, no, it's mine, it's my color, no, it's mine. I don't know why we needed to create another bureaucracy that's $100 billion a year, it's got a quarter million employees. We had the FBI, we had immigration, we had the Border Patrol, we had all the agencies already. Now you put them under a cabinet position and it's all this overlap. And I don't think it's necessary, it's not efficient, and I don't think it's keeping us safer. Now, I could be wrong, I don't know. I want us to take the right steps to keep us safe.

• 2:16:21Speaker 05

  Like I said, I want people in law enforcement, in the military, to have the best tools to do whatever needs to be done, to be absolutely vicious with our enemies. But Americans are not really the enemies. And there needs to be some oversight and transparency because we don't know what any of these agencies are doing. And we see just recently that the FBI was used for political purposes again.

• 2:16:51Speaker 05

  So I brought up a couple of cases where it was Democrats using it, but remember, this all comes out of Nixon and Republicans using it. And would President Trump use these agencies to help him? Well, he's doing it now. Maybe it's justified. Maybe it's not.

• 2:17:08Shawn Ryan?

  How's he doing it now?

• 2:17:10Speaker 05

  I think with him, it's a lot of getting even because they, you know, they really, what they did to him was just so unprecedented with a former president to all, all, charge him with, what, 97 felonies to try and take him off the ballot in 25 states. I mean, this, that, to try to ruin him financially and personally and go through his wife's underwear and, you know, drag him through the courts in Georgia and try to make him go broke. So anybody is gonna, if you get back in power, if it was me, it'd be the same thing. Well, I'm gonna do everything legally, but now comes around, goes around. And that's not really the way it should be.

• 2:17:55Speaker 05

  These agencies should be completely agnostic. Like, no, sir, we can't do that. We're not going after the former president and no, President Trump, we're not going after these people. We don't do that. We, we follow crimes. Let's have them do that.

• 2:18:09Shawn Ryan?

  You know what's interesting is the Patriot Act, I mean, it was set in place for terrorism, correct? And so, you know, we were talking about off camera about, you know, the Taliban funding and all this stuff, and I have a lot of contacts, you know, that are former agency types, former intel types. And one in particular, Sarah Adams, one of the best targeters to ever come out of CIA. And she has broken on the show several times that there are a minimum of a thousand terrorist cells within our country. And, you know, how they communicate, so we have the Patriot Act, right?

• 2:18:54Shawn Ryan?

  It's all basically tech-based. People think that these terrorists are dumb because they live in cave, you know, they live in caves, they live in mud huts, they wear, you know, sandals, very, very, it's almost like prehistoric time period when you go there.

• 2:19:13Shawn Ryan?

  So they have completely, they don't communicate through tech at all anymore. And so what she says, and other intelligence professionals have said, is that within these terrorist cells, the only way that they communicate with their HQ, which is in Afghanistan, is through couriers. So there's no texts, there's no emails, there's no voice calls, none of them know where each other are at. So even, even if you were able to find out where one of the cells are at, you could not interrogate them to find out where the other cells are. They're all completely independent of each other.

• 2:19:56Speaker 05

  Apartmentalization.

• 2:19:57Shawn Ryan?

  And they only use couriers, which means they fly a guy in, they brief them, they debrief, the information goes back to HQ in Afghanistan. So it would be impossible to break down the entire network. I can't think of, I don't even know where you would start.

• 2:20:18Speaker 05

  I don't know how you would either. I mean, it wasn't that how Osama Bin Laden was finally found, was through his couriers, right? It wasn't through intercepting any intelligence through wires. It was, it was through human, following this guy around, he's going to this, to this palace. So I, I think all, all you're doing there is, you're forcing them to learn tradecraft and just get better at tradecraft, because they can do that.

• 2:20:45Shawn Ryan?

  They pivot.

• 2:20:46Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:48Shawn Ryan?

  What is the Patriot Act turning into?

• 2:20:50Speaker 05

  I, I just, I think it's just turned into a, a political tool at this point. You know, the, going after the parents was, was really a, a, really a big red flag, because the Patriot Act was specifically in that letter. Like, you should use the Patriot Act to go after these people. And I didn't think any of those parents looked like political or domestic terrorists to me.

• 2:21:14Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:21:15Speaker 05

  Um, maybe that's my bias, but...

• 2:21:17Shawn Ryan?

  What parents?

• 2:21:18Speaker 05

  There was a lot of parents protesting during, during the, the trans controversy and in the protesting...

• 2:21:25Shawn Ryan?

  In the schools?

• 2:21:26Speaker 05

  In the schools. And...

• 2:21:30Speaker 05

  Part of the administration at that time wanted to label them domestic terrorists and put them under surveillance. And then, once they become, um, relevant is the word in the act. Once they become relevant to an investigation, then you don't have to, then the Bill of Rights is gone. Then they can just go into your bank account, see what's going on there, your businesses, all of that, and just, and just compile a file on you. You know, it's like that old Soviet saying, like, "Well, show me the man and I'll show you the crime." And that's just not how it's supposed to be done. And I don't think it makes us safer. But again, there's, I'm kind of blackpilled on it because once you have that power, you don't want to give it up.

• 2:22:14Speaker 05

  If I was in charge, I wouldn't want to give it up either. Now, I would, I would, I would hope that if I was in that position, I would do the right thing, but I don't know. You know, I'm as flawed as anybody else. But when, you know, when Clapper's caught, I don't know when you left, was Brennan, did you leave before Brennan? 2015. Brennan was 2015. I think we might see, I think we might see some indictments for some of these people. And for everyone screaming left and right, look, these are people on both sides that are, that are going to get caught up in this. But I think we're going to see some indictments. Why do you think that? Because they did it. You know, they did it.

• 2:22:58Speaker 05

  Um, you know, the Russia collusion thing, they did it, the Steele dossier, they did it, they did it, they did it. So, so Clapper lies to Congress and, and we find out he's violating all of our rights. His, you know, I think he was DNI at the time. And instead of going to prison, he becomes a contributor on CNN or MSNBC. I don't know why he didn't go to prison. I don't know why these, I don't know why none of these people go to, face any ramifications at all. How about just a, just a misdemeanor? Just, just, just show me that we don't live in a two-tiered, three-tiered system, where it seems like if I did any of this stuff, I'd go to jail forever. They can't show you. But if you're in the swamp. We do live in that.

• 2:23:42Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. So I can't. I have no solutions. All I have is complaints. Man.

• 2:23:53Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think they do with all the information?

• 2:23:55Speaker 05

  Most of it I don't think they do anything with, but you know, if it turns up that... Like, do you think that you're of interest to someone, somewhere, right?

• 2:24:08Shawn Ryan?

  I know I am.

• 2:24:09Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 2:24:10Shawn Ryan?

  So... So bad.

• 2:24:14Speaker 05

  Everything you do is collected, right? There's probably, there's probably two or three collections officers that are just dedicated to what you do. Why? Why?

• 2:24:25Shawn Ryan?

  Because...

• 2:24:28Shawn Ryan?

  Man, this sounds weird to say, and these are not my words, but because we have an impact on the consciousness of the US.

• 2:24:36Speaker 05

  That's not, that, that's dangerous. They do not want, they want to control the impact. They can't have independent voices controlling the conversation.

• 2:24:46Shawn Ryan?

  They've got a lot of them now.

• 2:24:49Speaker 05

  You know, I, I hope that we're past that point of inflection where the independent voices are more powerful. I think they are. I think, I thi- I think they are.

• 2:24:59Shawn Ryan?

  They definitely are.

• 2:25:00Speaker 05

  I get more views on a video than all cable news channels combined. So do you. The number of views that you get is, is all of cable combined. There's no one, there's, there's no power there anymore, and they don't like that.

• 2:25:16Speaker 05

  But, um, it's not like we've rested it away. It's, people just started talking, and Americans just wanna listen to different voices.

• 2:25:29Speaker 05

  And I think we need more of that, on every part of the political spectrum.

• 2:25:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I thi- I think the media is over.

• 2:25:41Shawn Ryan?

  I do too. I think it will die with the baby boomer generation.

• 2:25:44Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:25:45Shawn Ryan?

  I think it's done. And I see certain people that I think are injected into the, the YouTube podcast stratosphere that...

• 2:25:58Shawn Ryan?

  They try to create narratives, but it's tricky. You know, you could have somebody in here. And I think I've had one or two not realizing it until afterwards. But, you know, how it works is.

• 2:26:19Speaker 05

  Wait a second. You feel like people have come in here to try to push a narrative?

• 2:26:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:25Speaker 05

  Did you sniff it out?

• 2:26:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:30Speaker 05

  Like while it was happening, you were like, wait a minute.

• 2:26:32Shawn Ryan?

  There's been, I've had interviews that I never released.

• 2:26:36Speaker 05

  I didn't know that.

• 2:26:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, one of, I've had a couple, not very many. But, um, you know, when I was asking you about, do you, do you feel that you take on a tremendous responsibility? I, I feel that I have a great responsibility when I'm diving into corruption, exposing something, exposing evil, whatever it may be. I, I, you know, you have to fucking be careful with that because, you know, people base decisions off what is said in here. And I remember one specific example, I had a guy come on and he was talking about a lot of COVID stuff.

• 2:27:17Shawn Ryan?

  And I told you at breakfast, I don't like diving into COVID because everybody was talking about it. I don't really have anything new to bring to the table.

• 2:27:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:27:26Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and there's a couple, um, there's, January 6th is another one. I don't really feel, there's so many people on that that I don't feel that I, I, I don't bring anything to the table that hasn't already been said. Also, I mean, with that specific event, J6, I mean, I think everybody was wrong.

• 2:27:49Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:27:49Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, if you thought it was a great idea.

• 2:27:52Speaker 05

  It's not a great idea.

• 2:27:53Shawn Ryan?

  To storm the fucking Capitol. Um, I don't even know, you know what I mean? I don't even know where to begin, like not a good idea. And on the other side, you know, when, when.

• 2:28:07Shawn Ryan?

  He asked, you know, for, for National Guard and was denied. I mean.

• 2:28:11Speaker 05

  No one talks about that.

• 2:28:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. That was, there's, there's a whole nother, that's wrong, you know, and so I don't, I don't think there's any good that came from either side on that. I think that entire event was, uh, was a black eye on, on America. But

• 2:28:35Shawn Ryan?

  and now I forgot where I was going with this because we

• 2:28:37Speaker 05

  We're talking about people coming in here with an agenda.

• 2:28:40Shawn Ryan?

  And so how it works, I mean, you could have somebody sit in here for eight hours,

• 2:28:48Shawn Ryan?

  four hours, five, whatever.

• 2:28:52Shawn Ryan?

  They may only have one specific sentence in that five hour interview that they want this person to say, and it's going to be a banger. And the other thing that could happen is they will,

• 2:29:10Shawn Ryan?

  they will

• 2:29:14Shawn Ryan?

  predict information that's going to come out in days, weeks, in a month, in a couple of months, and they'll make these predictions about what's going to happen, who did what, you know, whatever.

• 2:29:30Shawn Ryan?

  And they already know, it's not a prediction, it's, it's, or maybe it didn't happen, but that's what's going to play out in mainstream media. And these people will come in and they will make these predictions. And some of these guys and girls will go,

• 2:29:48Shawn Ryan?

  they do the circuit, they go on every podcast, right? They go on all the podcasts. And they'll text you like, oh, I said this on your podcast. I said this was going to happen. We should do this again. And it's like, you've must have been on 20 fucking podcasts in the past month and you remember.

• 2:30:10Shawn Ryan?

  Exactly what you said on my podcast? I don't remember what the hell I said yesterday. But you're here to remind me that you predicted this on my fucking show. And now you want to come on again. And then another one, and then another one. And it's like, I see what's happening here.

• 2:30:29Speaker 05

  You can't give an example, right?

• 2:30:31Shawn Ryan?

  What's that?

• 2:30:32Speaker 05

  You can't give an example.

• 2:30:32Shawn Ryan?

  I don't want to, I don't want to drop names because I can't be certain, just like you were doing earlier.

• 2:30:38Speaker 05

  Not a name, an idea.

• 2:30:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't, I mean, that would give it away.

• 2:30:43Speaker 05

  Fair enough.

• 2:30:44Shawn Ryan?

  So, so I don't, because if that person didn't do that, then I destroy.

• 2:30:49Speaker 05

  Not pressing.

• 2:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? And, and so I, I, I really try to only talk about things. If I'm gonna articulate it, I want it to be true. You know, to the best of my knowledge, and I don't, this is, this is, this is an inclination. This is a feeling, knowing how things work.

• 2:31:11Shawn Ryan?

  Contracted for intelligence agencies at a very low level, but you know, it wasn't like the, you don't get access to everything and be like, oh, I got a TS clearance now so I can just dive into whatever I want. No, there's, that's not how it works. And so this, the stuff that I knew was very, um, it was very localized to exactly what I was a part of overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq, those Middle East type stuff. But when I, when, but I'm quick and I see how it works and I've seen how it works in other countries. And so when I start picking up on it, I'm like, no, no, you're not coming back on. No way.

• 2:31:54Shawn Ryan?

  Too many predictions came true. There's no way you could have known that. And there's no way out of the 20 podcasts you just did in the past month that you remember exactly what the fuck you talked about on my show. This is, this smells weird, so not doing it again. And, you know, I'm with the, in, in.

• 2:32:16Shawn Ryan?

  So that's kind of, that's the point. That's the point. It doesn't, it doesn't mean the whole duration of, of the interview is the message that's trying to be sent. It could be one sentence, or it could just be, let's establish this guy's credibility so that all the podcasts want the breaking news, right? And so I'm in, I mean, I'm slow, but I'm in tune, you know, and, and I kind of, I know how things work to a certain extent. Not very much, but I can pick up on things. And, um, and the other thing that people are really good at is manipulating

• 2:32:57Shawn Ryan?

  information. Politicians are amazing at it. You know, statistics only goes so far. There's all kinds of sets of statistics that may be true, but there's nuance behind it. And so with the COVID thing, I was interviewing this guy and he kept telling, saying, hey, COVID was developed in a lab, University of North Carolina. It was patented before COVID ever came out. And it was this long interview all about COVID, COVID vaccine, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And I was, I took the vaccine. I didn't want to take the vaccine, but my, my son was being born right at that time period. And I was, I was like, well, I've done a lot

• 2:33:42Shawn Ryan?

  of drugs in my life. How bad could this be? And, and if those didn't kill me, and I've seen a lot of combat, and I've done a lot of dangerous shit, right? And if none of that killed me, then this stupid little vaccine isn't going to kill me either. And it hasn't. And I don't have any heart problems, at least not yet. I don't have any other weird, you know, I, I don't have any of this, the, the, the, whatever. So anyways, this guy was going on about the COVID vaccine, how it was developed, University of North Carolina had a play in it, and that it was patented pre-COVID. But every time he would say, the, it was COVID-19, COVID-19, COVID-19, when he would say, the

• 2:34:25Shawn Ryan?

  vaccine was patented, he would say, the SARS vaccine was patented pre-COVID. Well, you know, if you look, there's like,

• 2:34:37Shawn Ryan?

  A hundred strands of COVID.

• 2:34:39Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:34:39Shawn Ryan?

  That have been around for a long, long time.

• 2:34:42Speaker 05

  Coronavirus is a lot of things.

• 2:34:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. And so when he kept saying SARS, and I didn't pick up on it right off the bat. It wasn't until after the interview and I started, I called, uh, you know, Darren in there. And I was like, we can't release it. And he's like, this is so good. This is so good. It's so corrupt. And I'm like, he kept saying the SARS vaccine. Why didn't he say the COVID-19 vaccine? Because he's not technically lying.

• 2:35:09Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:35:09Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure there were a lot of SARS vaccines that were patented pre-COVID. But he never did say that the COVID-19 vaccine was patented pre-COVID. He would switch it to SARS. So I wouldn't release it because, you know, while, while I am, I'm not anti-vax. I don't like the COVID vax. Took it because I wanted to see my son born and I was worried that the hospital was going to come out with some, you know what I mean? Some weird rule that you had to show your vaccine card or something. And, and the doctor was pushing it too. But, but, um, so I took it and because I'm, I didn't, I was like,

• 2:35:52Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not missing that for anything. I don't care. But

• 2:36:00Shawn Ryan?

  when you put something like that out, then people start to make, they use that in their, their decision-making process. And I don't want to be the guy that's, that's, that's putting out false information or platforming somebody that's putting out that kind of information that's going to dictate how somebody makes a decision on whether they're going to get the vaccine or not. I mean,

• 2:36:22Shawn Ryan?

  it is what it is. It wasn't the numbers that were reported, you know, but people were dying from it.

• 2:36:27Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:36:28Shawn Ryan?

  And I don't want somebody to die because they didn't take.

• 2:36:33Shawn Ryan?

  Something that may have, probably not. I mean, I got COVID right after I took the fucking vaccine.

• 2:36:39Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 2:36:40Shawn Ryan?

  They couldn't even figure out how to test for it. It's like, well, let's take another one. Well, this one's non conclusive.

• 2:36:45Speaker 05

  Therapeutic.

• 2:36:46Shawn Ryan?

  But, but I wouldn't put it out because I didn't, I was like, I can't have people making decisions off something that I'm not certain about. I mean, we talk, you know, we talk about aliens, we talk about conspiracies, but that's fun shit to think about. Doesn't really matter, you know? Okay. So if it is true, it's not going to affect your decision-making process throughout the day. You're not going to make life-changing decisions based off of whether there was aliens or there isn't aliens, or they remote viewed alien bases in fucking Alaskan mountains, or if there's aliens on the moon. Like, cool. If they're there, they're there. And if they're not, they're not. Doesn't really like, it might affect me, but there's no decision that I can make that's going to change the outcome of that.

• 2:37:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:37:30Shawn Ryan?

  And so I'm very particular about if I, if I talk about a subject like that, I'm very particular on,

• 2:37:39Shawn Ryan?

  on who I get and what's being put out. And

• 2:37:44Shawn Ryan?

  there's been others. I did one on the World Economic Forum. I was like this, and the guy couldn't even tell me what the the, uh, World Economic Forum was. I'm like, yeah, but what is it? And he's like, well, the Google Chrome sign is a 666. And I'm like, okay. That's another subject. What is the World Economic Forum? Is it a business? Is it, what is it? What kind of entity is it? Do you know? Well, this did, if you look at the Bible, it says this. And I'm like, don't be, don't be out here quoting scripture in the middle of this interview. I'm asking about the World Economic Forum.

• 2:38:19Speaker 05

  Was he a part of it? Was he a member of?

• 2:38:21Shawn Ryan?

  No, no, no. He was, he was in a group that.

• 2:38:30Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of wild things came out of and I'll tell you, I'll tell you more about it after the interview, but, but I, I just, I cut it. I was like, this is bullshit. Like you're just trying to fucking get notoriety and fame and whatever the hell you're pushing. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't even make any damn sense. So let's just cut this right now. Get the fuck out of here.

• 2:38:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:38:52Shawn Ryan?

  You know, so I mean, the disinformation agents are everywhere and, and, and also, I mean, I don't, I think a lot of people don't even realize that they are disinformation agents. It just, you know, they get, they get fed some bullshit from the government. And then they start talking about it and they wrap their whole identity around it and it becomes their, it becomes their identity.

• 2:39:13Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, we have Operation Mockingbird that's, that really happened. We've got 400 people in news, in major news networks that are just mouthpieces for intelligence. And you had journalists that are actually operatives. Their cover was just, I'm a journalist. You had journalists introducing politicians overseas and you had, you had journalists that were essentially bagmen for, for the agency overseas. Or they would say, you can use my hotel room for that meeting. So that's not a hundred years ago. That's 30 years ago. And I don't think it ever really ended. I think that's why this is a, this platform is a problem.

• 2:39:56Speaker 05

  Because you can have that interview, you can smell something that smells funny and you can say, Darren, let's cut it. But MSNBC doesn't do that. They just, they read it. And it's just out there. So, and you see all the media say the same thing. Fox, they say, all say the same stuff. There's no one saying, you know what? That didn't feel right. Let's cut it. But you can do that here. That's, that's a problem.

• 2:40:18Shawn Ryan?

  We don't cut much. The only time I'll cut something is, you know, we get a lot of military guys that were on high profile missions and stuff like that. And sometimes it's, it's in the moment, it can be hard to know, like, is this still classified? Should it be talking about this? Am I giving up tactics? And so sometimes guys will call in and they'll be like, hey, Can we just cut like that one sliver? I said somebody's name, that person is still in, or you know what I mean? And I don't want to blow their cover, stuff like that. I did it with the Sam Shoemate interview where we talked about the Tesla bomber at Trump Hotel in Vegas. You know, we had, actually, um, that guy was on a mission where in Afghanistan,

• 2:41:03Shawn Ryan?

  the, um, the, uh, the bomber, he was a Green Beret, he was on a mission where they blew up a bunch of, uh, a big poppy farm and killed a lot of people, a lot of innocent people. And, and, and was it the UN or NATO did an investigation on it? I was like, is this shit real? So we looked it up and sure as shit, there was a UN or a NATO report, I can't remember, on it. And it did actually happen. And one of the DEA operatives reached out to me and was like, I was on that. My name was in that email. Could you please black it out because I'm still undercover and I'm doing different stuff? And if that comes out, then I'm screwed.

• 2:41:43Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:41:43Shawn Ryan?

  And I was like, yep, we'll black the name out. Like, I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna compromise US intel guys or DEA or military that are, that are still active because, I mean, they're doing them.

• 2:41:56Speaker 05

  They don't have an agenda, they're just doing a job.

• 2:41:59Shawn Ryan?

  But, so I'll take stuff like that out, but I don't, I won't take, and then, and we, we just had somebody actually that, that, um,

• 2:42:08Shawn Ryan?

  had somewhat of a relationship with Epstein. And they wanted that pulled out. And I was like, that's like the whole interview. I can't pull that.

• 2:42:18Speaker 05

  You said no?

• 2:42:19Shawn Ryan?

  I said, it's in there, or we're not kicking it out the door.

• 2:42:23Speaker 05

  Okay. Well, you gave him the option.

• 2:42:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And, uh, they're like, okay, okay, put it out. And I was like, alright.

• 2:42:29Speaker 05

  Look at that one. I have to watch that one.

• 2:42:31Shawn Ryan?

  It's not out.

• 2:42:32Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 2:42:33Shawn Ryan?

  They said, put it, they're like, okay, fine, put it out. And then they're like, nah, nah, nah, just take this. And I was like, just fuck that. We're not dealing with this shit. Like, you come in here, you know what this is. Be ready to do it, or don't come. And, um, and so, but that's, that's kind of how I deal with it. But that's, that's how it works, man. That's how it works. It could be one sentence in a several hour long interview, and that's the snippet. That's what they want to inject into the consciousness of the people.

• 2:43:05Speaker 05

  Do you think that changes from administration to administration? Or you think it's? Operating, I don't want to say shadow government, but it seems like that goes on no matter who's in the White House.

• 2:43:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't think any of these people are good. I don't think they are good people at their core. And I think this just continues to happen. The agendas change, but the tactics don't.

• 2:43:32Speaker 05

  You think they think they're good?

• 2:43:36Shawn Ryan?

  I think that they fall into traps and they don't see a way out. And then they just get sucked in.

• 2:43:45Speaker 05

  I can, I can see that, I can understand that.

• 2:43:47Shawn Ryan?

  I think some of them maybe start out, I think there are good ones in there. The only politicians that I really trust is Eli Crane out of Arizona and Tim Burchett out of Knoxville, Tennessee. Those are the only ones that I 99.9% think are good human beings and cannot be swayed.

• 2:44:14Speaker 05

  And those two have been stonewalled by intelligence.

• 2:44:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, yep. Even when I got approached about running, you know, I called a couple of people, two of the, both of those guys, I called and I was like, I want to have an impact. I've been approached about running. What do you think? And they're like, don't do it. And Eli, for an example, he's like, I can't get on any of these fucking committees. He's like, they won't put me on any of these committees because I won't play ball.

• 2:44:48Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:44:49Shawn Ryan?

  And he goes, if you can't get into the committees, you're just a beat suit in a chair. You have no impact. And, and they're, and on top of that, they said, what you're doing now has way more impact than you ever could have if you were to get into office. So I decided I'm not doing it. And then dive into it more, I do. I think that's how they're controlled and being, you know, going like at the beginning, when we were talking about the entertainment industry, which I hate. You know, it's, it's, you start to see like, they want you to talk about this subject. They want you to talk about that subject. They don't want you to talk to this person. And it's like, your job is to fucking get me business,

• 2:45:33Shawn Ryan?

  not talk about who I talk to or what I talk about. Go get business. Don't fucking interfere with my show.

• 2:45:42Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:45:43Shawn Ryan?

  And, and so I got rid of all of them. And I start to see it again, you know, like I said, with, with politicians, you know, you come in here. I think we share, you know, the, at the beginning, some of the ones that I brought on, I, I, and a lot of these people weren't even, they weren't even on the radar to get picked up at the administration. You know, so I didn't, I didn't know. I didn't even know their aspirations. I did, they were just good guests to get. But, you know, now that I've created this network within politics, it's,

• 2:46:22Shawn Ryan?

  they try to manipulate me.

• 2:46:23Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 2:46:24Shawn Ryan?

  And it's, it can be hard to get a phone call from somebody very powerful that wants you to do something. And I just ghost them now. In fact, I'm getting ready, I, I had told you, I get so paranoid about it that I, it sent me down this rabbit hole. I had to find the black phone that can't be traced. I found it. You know, and, but it's going to be a big step to be untraceable. A really big step to be untraceable.

• 2:46:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:46:51Shawn Ryan?

  If you don't have a phone number, that's, that's how you do it.

• 2:46:56Speaker 05

  If you don't have a phone number, I think Patriot Act would find you relevant for investigation.

• 2:47:01Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm gonna try it. So, but, um, and then, you know, we're developing, uh, the, the phone's very expensive and it's, and so anyways, we're developing an app that's more consumer friendly. That doesn't have all the features that the phone has, but it's enough. And, um, to make you invisible.

• 2:47:24Speaker 05

  I would like to learn more about that at some point.

• 2:47:26Shawn Ryan?

  I'll tell you about it offline.

• 2:47:27Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:47:28Shawn Ryan?

  It's, I, I can't go too far into it quite yet.

• 2:47:31Speaker 05

  They don't want that app coming out.

• 2:47:32Shawn Ryan?

  But, but it's happening. We're doing it. And, um, and, but, but I think what happens is that they, they fall into these traps, not realizing they're a trap. That's where I was going in the entertainment industry. There's also traps. There's these favors. I did this for you. You didn't do that. You didn't do shit for me. I could have connected with that person on my own.

• 2:47:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:47:56Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't fucking need you. Go get business. And, but it becomes this favor brokering thing.

• 2:48:04Shawn Ryan?

  And what I see, you know, and this is very recent, is I see how miniscule the favors are. And it's like, this person helped me do this, so you shouldn't talk to this person about this. And it's like, that person was just doing their fucking job, man. That's not a favor. That's their job.

• 2:48:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:48:25Shawn Ryan?

  Is to get your ass in there. That's not a favor. And so if the favors start at that miniscule of a, of a level, then what happens when the big favors start coming up like Epstein protecting your friends? You know, shit like all the corruption that we see happening and, and I think they get so wrapped up in these favors and they get trapped and then it gets more evil and more evil and more evil and they don't stay way out. And they get addicted to power, really addicted to power. And they are controlled through favors, blackmail, shit like that.

• 2:49:06Speaker 05

  Don't do favors. I never ask favors. It's teasing Jeremy about it, offering all kinds of great stuff, contacts, whatever. I said, I don't ask favors because when I do, I really need it. But I don't ask favors.

• 2:49:18Shawn Ryan?

  That and those favors, yeah. I don't ask for favors either.

• 2:49:24Speaker 05

  But when you do, it's like, oh, he really needs a hand here.

• 2:49:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 2:49:30Speaker 05

  Have you seen, um, guests you've had on on other shows that you released and realized you got burned?

• 2:49:38Shawn Ryan?

  How so? What do you mean?

• 2:49:39Speaker 05

  Meaning like, you let an episode go out and this person shows up on another show or two and you're like, ah, god damn it, they got me.

• 2:49:47Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean they got me?

• 2:49:48Speaker 05

  That they got that one line out.

• 2:49:51Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm. No.

• 2:49:52Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:49:53Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I don't really watch any other shows.

• 2:49:55Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:49:55Shawn Ryan?

  So I, like I said, I get all of my information through this. Not all of it, but the maj- I, I, I scroll enough to get interest in certain subjects. You're, I'm not fucking around. You're the only, you are the only, you, the Y-Files is the only YouTube channel that I watch on a consistent basis.

• 2:50:18Shawn Ryan?

  But I don't do it. And also, I don't want to take somebody else's creativity. You know, because when you start to watch all this other stuff, it's like, oh, I should be doing that. I don't want that. I want everything here to be organically generated. The set, everything, you know, and it's my creation. It's what me and my team have come up with, not, we need to be more like this guy, or we need to be more like this guy. So, no, I haven't seen, I haven't seen a one liner, you know, that, and it would be impossible to pick out, because a lot of times they're talking about the same shit. But, but, um, so, no, it's just, it's just,

• 2:51:03Shawn Ryan?

  it's just a thought that'll, that'll hit me like a bolt of lightning, all of a sudden, and it's like, that was a mistake.

• 2:51:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:51:14Shawn Ryan?

  But you couldn't have known. You couldn't have known it was a mistake at the time.

• 2:51:19Speaker 05

  Especially if they're really good at it.

• 2:51:21Shawn Ryan?

  It's in retrospect that you see it.

• 2:51:23Speaker 05

  This is a very strange position that you're in. I don't envy it.

• 2:51:28Shawn Ryan?

  It's tough. It's a lot of stress and anxiety.

• 2:51:31Speaker 05

  I bet. You know, just with the things I do is, is stress enough, but this is serious, what you do here. I'm just an entertainer. At least that's, you know, I just talk to a fish is my line.

• 2:51:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, well, you're kicking a lot of rocks over. That can be dangerous.

• 2:51:46Speaker 05

  There's a lot of centipedes under there.

• 2:51:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 2:51:48Speaker 05

  I try not to, I name names if I don't have to. You know, I, I mention Clapper because that infuriates me. But, um, I try not to criticize anyone who's like around. I'm not looking to make enemies. I'm not looking to embarrass anybody or out anybody.

• 2:52:04Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:52:05Speaker 05

  Um, you know, when I talk about the, the conspiracies and the alien stuff, the only names I really name are like, the guys who say they were in the Marines and they did this thing, like stolen valor is, I'm, I'm wired to not like that. So I'll just name your names. But otherwise, nah, I just not looking to make waves.

• 2:52:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've had a couple of stolen valor guys on. In fact, one of them, the army is investigating that person on stolen valor. And if it comes out, I'm waiting for the official investigation to run, but if it comes out, then I'll.

• 2:52:43Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, have to make some kind of a statement or something, but.

• 2:52:47Speaker 05

  Cause you released that episode?

• 2:52:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but that person's been around for a long time. I got a lot of flack af- um, afterwards, this person came on. And then all these other people started diving into his background. And it's caused a lot of, it's been a huge pain in my ass, but I, I can't, I mean, I can't verify, you know, somebody's service account.

• 2:53:16Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:53:17Shawn Ryan?

  That would take months, maybe years, you know, to, to track everybody down that was there. And, I mean, it makes me sick that somebody would do that, but, you know, my argument, I got approached by somebody. My argument was, well, you know, I see you coming at me and you're fucking blaming me for platforming this person. How would I have known that? And, you know, but, so it's great, you wanna hold me accountable. Why don't you hold the fucking US Army accountable?

• 2:53:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:53:49Shawn Ryan?

  That would be the right thing to do because I'm just a podcaster. This person is still in and.

• 2:54:00Shawn Ryan?

  So don't you think that the US Army should be held accountable for sending a guy out and spreading bullshit? Fucking stolen valor lies? I've never thought of that. Maybe you should fucking think about that.

• 2:54:13Speaker 05

  He was sent out by the army?

• 2:54:15Shawn Ryan?

  He wasn't sent out by the army, but he's still in.

• 2:54:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's.

• 2:54:22Shawn Ryan?

  But, they took that, you know, suggestion that I did and they got in touch with whoever at the army. And now the army has actually opened an investigation on this person.

• 2:54:31Speaker 05

  Well, good.

• 2:54:32Shawn Ryan?

  So, yeah, but.

• 2:54:35Speaker 05

  I, I, people think maybe we, and certainly you, should be doing more background than we do. And it's like, um. I get things wrong all the time and I just try to be as honest as possible like I'm not an expert on any of this. No, I didn't look into this person's background since the beginning. So yeah, that whole thing was bullshit. You know, I'm sorry. I'm just trying to trying to entertain.

• 2:55:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:01Speaker 05

  You can't track down all of these people and their entire background, which is never getting anything done.

• 2:55:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. And back to my previous point, you know, whether stolen valor or not, very likely is, I mean, that's not affecting somebody's decision making.

• 2:55:20Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:55:21Shawn Ryan?

  So it's a, you know, fictional novel that you're listening to instead of, you know, actual events that happen. Now, it does really fucking piss me off because if he did that, that takes away from every other, you know, heroic icon that sat across from me in that chair and that's disgusting. But, you know, but did it affect somebody's decision making throughout the day? No, it didn't.

• 2:55:49Speaker 05

  And I don't think your audience, your audience forgives you. They understand.

• 2:55:55Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:55:55Speaker 05

  I would, I would guess.

• 2:55:56Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:55:58Speaker 05

  Mine does for the most part, the good ones.

• 2:56:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, me too. Me too.

• 2:56:02Speaker 05

  If I get something wrong, I just say it.

• 2:56:04Shawn Ryan?

  The loudest motherfucker in the room is always the biggest shitbag.

• 2:56:07Speaker 05

  That's right. So it's just the, the problem is I tend to gravitate toward the negativity bias. You know, I'll ignore 99 compliments and then the one guy who's screaming at me for the thing I got wrong and the stupid thing I said, that's what I focus on. It ruins my day. It's like I, this guy's name is like Joe below 69. What do I even care?

• 2:56:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:28Speaker 05

  But I can't help it.

• 2:56:30Shawn Ryan?

  Probably a bot anyways.

• 2:56:31Speaker 05

  Probably a bot.

• 2:56:34Speaker 07

  It's me, the.

• 2:56:38Speaker 07

  We don't need the jingle twice. Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights and rental cars.

• 2:56:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Fine. No one deals more deals than. Please stop. Touche.

• 2:57:02Speaker 07

  Priceline.

• 2:57:03Shawn Ryan?

  But let's, let's, let's dive into the Giants.

• 2:57:07Speaker 05

  Okay, go lighten it up. Patriot. You see, I get all, I get all cagey with Patriot Act, but Giants would be fine.

• 2:57:15Speaker 05

  Giants are fun. And where do you want to start? The beginning?

• 2:57:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:18Speaker 05

  Giants are in every culture's history. Every culture's got giants mentioned. Ancient Indian Vedas, Native Americans, Island of Malta,

• 2:57:32Speaker 05

  East Asian, every culture has giants. And the Bible, of course. Epic of Gilgamesh. So giants show up all through our culture. And whenever I see that, you know, a lot of what I do is just pattern recognition. Like, I wasn't even really a flood myth guy until I started doing my show. And it's like, this flood story keeps showing up over and over, no matter what I'm talking about. The flood myth shows up, and it's always showing up at the same time as like, the end of the younger Dryas, like these things, it's just the same pattern over and over. Maybe it's a coincidence, but if, if one culture has a story about a flood, then they have a story. If two cultures have it, it could be a coincidence.

• 2:58:16Speaker 05

  But if you get 40 or 300, then maybe there's something to it. Maybe it really happened. So, um, so I'm pretty sure that flood happened. Now, as for giants,

• 2:58:27Speaker 05

  giants is tricky because we don't have any hard evidence, but we have a lot of circumstantial evidence. Where, um,

• 2:58:36Speaker 05

  the most recent would probably be late 19th century, early 20th, where you just have these discoveries all over America, over a thousand of them. Of these amateur archaeologists finding giant bones. And, um, the story is always the same. Is this, this guy's, he's, you know, he's digging, he's like desecrating in Native American burial mound. Finds these giant bones, calls the Smithsonian. They come over, they investigate, they take the bones, they go back, and then it disappears. Like, that happens over and over through these stories, is the Smithsonian conspiracy's always involved.

• 2:59:17Speaker 05

  But, um.

• 2:59:19Shawn Ryan?

  So are you saying the Smithsonian hides evidence of giants?

• 2:59:23Speaker 05

  I'm saying that the conspiracy theory is that the Smithsonian hides evidence of a lot of things. The Smithsonian, of which I'm a huge fan of, like if I go to DC, I spend four days there. I love, I love the, like, the museum part. But what we don't see is all the, we don't see the, kind of, the dark underside of the Smithsonian. Like, when it was formed.

• 2:59:48Shawn Ryan?

  Like the Vatican.

• 2:59:50Speaker 05

  The Vatican. We can talk about that, too. The Smithsonian, I think the first director might have been John Wesley Powell, I could be fact-checked on that, who was, um, like, he spent a lot of time with Native Americans, he respected them, he saw them as very intelligent and resourceful. So they had, they were well-represented in the Smithsonian, but then he appointed, I forget the gentleman's name, but he was, he was like the chief ethnographer for the east, east Ohio, or something like that, some crazy title. And he gets into a position of power, and it turns out that he's,

• 3:00:29Speaker 05

  sees Native cultures as, Native Americans as not, as subhuman. They, he called them specimens. He would put, like, their body parts on display and stuff, look at these Native American specimens. So, there'd be all these discoveries of these amazing mounds, like the serpent mound in Ohio, and all the stuff, all around the country. And the Smithsonian would say, "There must have been another advanced race here, because Native Americans are just too, they're savages, they couldn't, never build this." And, and that, that became kind of embedded in the Smithsonian for a long, long time, is, um...

• 3:01:08Speaker 05

  Is this isolationist theory is what they called it where before it was called diffusionism, where diffusionism was cultures from all around the world interacted. But then the new regime came in and said, there's no way that Native Americans from the Mississippian culture could interact with the Mayas or the Incas. They just, they were too savage to do that, which is ridiculous. That's like, you know, saying that Carthage didn't have anything to do with Rome. You know, of course they did. And we've learned later that some of the biggest, most advanced cities in the world of the, of the ancient world were here in America. Like the, the city of Cahokia is, was a Mississippian culture.

• 3:01:52Speaker 05

  And it was bigger than London. It was bigger than Paris. It's like a big advanced civilization that just got kind of covered over. And so the Smithsonian just sort of had this worldview that they're just locked into it. And, and I think we see a lot of that with pseudoscience, pseudo archeology. If it doesn't fit the mainstream narrative, then it's, you're marginalized, you're censored. You know, again, Graham Hancock, when, when Ancient Apocalypse came out, he, it was called the dangerous, most dangerous series on Netflix. Because it was white supremacy and all this crazy stuff. White supremacy? Because he, if it's an advanced civilization that was here before us, the implication

• 3:02:37Speaker 05

  is that it was white. And he never says anything like that. He never says anything like that. He's married to a woman of color. So it's infuriating. Because he, he took a lot of heat for that show. I love that show. Of course. And you don't have to believe all of it. And I, I don't subscribe to everything he does, but I, I'm fascinated by the topics. And we can get back to giants in a second. I'm just trying to set up that there's, there are forces to, that want to keep certain things away from us.

• 3:03:06Speaker 05

  There's an initiative right now to have the Smithsonian catalog and make public everything they have there, which I don't think is going anywhere. Smithsonian gets very strange carve-outs of laws. There is a law passed not too long ago which required all museums to return anything that was of value to Native American cultures back to the tribes, especially if it was funeral, anything that had to do like funeral, whatever it's called, death rites or whatever, to return all that stuff. So this law's passed, the museums have to do all that, but specifically it says, line after line Smithsonian is exempt. Smithsonian doesn't count. Smithsonian doesn't have to do any of this.

• 3:03:51Speaker 05

  So they don't have to respond to any of it. So then we go back to Grand Canyon or the Giants, and we don't really know, it's hard to know what's true because there's over a thousand reports in newspapers of these findings. But the mainstream narrative is it was Giants were cool at the time, it was hoaxes, and it was just to make money. But it's just too many coincidences. And there's one, there's one giant story that's interesting because it overlaps several

• 3:04:36Speaker 05

  cultures, Native cultures, where you've got, in like the Mississippi Valley, these, they have these Indian myths about these giants that are, they're cannibals, so they're, you know, they're eating the people and they get driven west by the tribes, they unite and drive them west into like Nevada and California, and they end up at what's known as Lovelock Cave. And the Lovelock Cave Giants are famous giants, are the red-haired giants. So the story goes that they're, they're at, they're at war with all these tribes, and during the war, when, when, when, when the natives are falling, they're like eating them in the battlefield.

• 3:05:19Speaker 05

  So it unites the tribes and they drive them into Lovelock Cave, and they seal the cave and they set fire to the whole, the whole place.

• 3:05:28Speaker 05

  And an archaeologist goes in there and finds sandals that are like size 29 and these giant, just giant clothes that, like, I'm not making this part up, you can go see this. Like, why is there a sandal that's this size? That are all found in the cave. And bones and red hair.

• 3:05:51Speaker 05

  But, um, and all that stuff has been sent back and then it's just gone.

• 3:05:57Speaker 05

  And as, you know, as recently as just maybe like 20 years ago, at some point, someone discovered these giant coffins, giant coffins with lids on them. And they were sent to the Smithsonian.

• 3:06:10Shawn Ryan?

  Was there anything in the coffin?

• 3:06:12Speaker 05

  Not that I'm aware of, but they were, they were coffins and they were, they were big. And native cultures didn't do that. They didn't have coffins or bury their dead. At least none that I'm aware of. That was not part of their culture. So this was very strange. So those were sent to the Smithsonian. And then it kind of disappeared, but then not too long ago, someone picked up on the story and asked the Smithsonian about them. And they said, "We do have record of receiving that, but we don't know where they are." And that was kind of the end of it. And then a few years later, someone else got involved, I think it was John Tierney.

• 3:06:47Speaker 05

  John Tierney really went after Smithsonian hard. He wrote a book about, like, Smithsonian is the greatest cover-up. So it might have been Tierney that he said, "Okay, I know that you, you said you received these, you can't find them. I need you to find them." And they said, "Okay, we found them, but they're in a warehouse that's, it's got an asbestos problem, so we, no one could go in there." And he said, "Well, when can we go in there?" And they said, "About 10 years." That was, that was really the last of it. So the Smithsonian gets wrapped up in all these, these weird conspiracies. There's the, um, the Akombaro statues, which is very controversial, which is like 3,000 artifacts that show...

• 3:07:32Speaker 05

  Humans riding dinosaurs, they show Asians, Africans, you know, races that shouldn't be around there, that are carbon dated to 2,500 years ago, 3,500 years ago. And they're sent to Smithsonian, and Smithsonian said, "Yeah, these things are 30 years old, they're a hoax." But they were independently validated by other labs, saying, "No, these things are really, really old." Smithsonian's like, "No, it's a hoax." And then as time goes on, all those other labs become discredited, like, "Oh, their techniques weren't modern." And that's kind of where the Akkambar has ended up, as far as I know. Because I don't know if anyone really cares enough to follow up on stuff like that. I do.

• 3:08:15Speaker 05

  So I kind of want to know, like, what do you have down there? I think they have almost a billion artifacts that we can't see. And I just want to know what they are. So all those giant bones that were found, okay, I'm sure 99% of them are hoaxes. And maybe there's a half a percent that were mastodon bones that were misidentified. But what happened in Lovelock Cave? We know stuff was in there because there was a tribal leader, a woman, who became kind of a famous author. She had red hair woven into like, some of her, like, her traditional garb. And she said it's from the Lovelock Giants. Like, where did she get that red hair?

• 3:08:57Speaker 05

  So I'm not saying it's real, I'm just saying, I would like to know, what's the chain of custody there? So there's just a lot of those.

• 3:09:07Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, this all came from biblical stuff, though, correct?

• 3:09:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, the biblical giants, you don't see much of them in, like, in the canonical Bible. The Nephilim are mentioned once, and I could talk about them a little bit. But we learn more about giants when the Book of Enoch is discovered. And the Book of Enoch was...

• 3:09:32Speaker 05

  Discovered when, like an adventurer, I forget when it was, maybe 18th century, was looking for the source of the Nile River, which was kind of a big deal at the time. And he found it, and it was somewhere in Ethiopia. And he gets to know the locals there, and they're Ethiopian Jews that have been there for 3,000 years. So, he's friendly with them, they take him up to their, whatever you would call it, their church, and he sees this giant book, you know, what's, like a giant book, what's that? He said, "That's the Bible." He said, "Oh, it's a Bible?" They said, "No, no, that's the Bible." You know, the King James Bible, I don't know how many books it is, like 66 or something

• 3:10:15Speaker 05

  like that, where this had over 100 books. And in there were Book of Enoch, the Book of Giants, all this other stuff. So, you have Genesis that starts, you know, basically, "Let there be light." But in this Expanded Bible, you have all this stuff that happened before then. So, we know a little bit about Moses from the Bible, but if you read these other books, you learn all about Moses, and Enoch, and Methuselah, and these men are all related, you know, and going back this, like 10 or 12 generations from Adam, it's all in there. And this kind of ties in with the pseudo-Archaeology, and how mainstream wants you to stay in your lane.

• 3:10:59Speaker 05

  So, this book is discovered, and they've had this for thousands of years. There's the story of the Queen of Sheba, there's only a little bit about her in the main Bible, but this Expanded Bible has the Queen of Sheba going up to meet King Solomon, and she's fascinated by him, and they fall in love, and she gives him a child named Menelik, and that ties into the Ark of the Covenant and all that stuff. So, we have that one story, but it's kind of an outlier. It's Ethiopian Jews, which is kind of strange, but legitimate.

• 3:11:33Speaker 05

  But then, much later, the Dead Sea Scrolls are found. And then, among the thousands of parchment, are, there's the Book of Enoch. Copies and copies of it. And the Book of Giants. So, the story is that there's these sky gods. And this story, for people who know it, is going to track exactly with the Anunnaki. It's gonna track right with it. This Bible story's gonna track right with it. So you've got these sky gods. And they send watchers down to earth. And their job is to shepherd and guide humans, teach them animal husbandry and agriculture and all that stuff.

• 3:12:14Speaker 05

  But the watchers become corrupt and fascinated with human women. The hecklefish says, "Oh, that's not gonna end well." And it didn't. So, the watchers, who are probably angels, they interbreed with humans. And then their offspring are the Nephilim. And the Nephilim are these, they're giants. In some books, they're 350 feet tall. They're vicious, they're violent, they're cannibals. And these are the, you know, the unholy offspring of the angels and humans. Is it angels and humans, or demons and humans? You know, in the earlier books, or, and, what's the difference? Hmm.

• 3:12:59Speaker 05

  You know, I don't, I don't think the books really take a stance. Because the watchers are there with good intentions. But, you know, I think there's lessons in all of that, that, you know, anyone could be corrupted. Certainly Persian women are pretty enough. So, the giants now are, they're ravaging the world. And they're just making a mess of things. And that's when God decides, it's gotta stop. We gotta start over. And then he wipes it away with the flood. But the Book of Enoch expands on all of that and has him, has Enoch going up to heaven to speak to God. And, and that's, that's heresy to say.

• 3:13:44Speaker 05

  Because heaven's not supposed to be a place. Like, mortal man can't go to heaven, and certainly can't come back. But Enoch did. And he was specifically taken there. I think he was taken there by Uriel.

• 3:13:57Speaker 05

  And taken up there in a chariot of fire. And then Enoch is walking around heaven. But he's describing a place where he's seeing tall beings of light going about their business. And the walls are covered with, how he describes, emeralds that are just blinking lights on and off. And he talks about how he can see all of the earth. And he describes how, he can see how the winds are made. And I can see every lake and river on the earth. And when you think of heaven, you think of like, you know, clouds in the sky. But Enoch said that there is a roof, there's a ceiling. And everything is shiny.

• 3:14:40Speaker 05

  And what it sounds like he's describing is a spacecraft, if you read the book. Like, if you read the book through a modern lens, it's like, this guy is on a UFO. Is where Enoch is. So, he's up there and, and they take him all around the cosmos. And this is all in the book. He describes the solar system. And he's told the earth goes around the sun in 364 days. We weren't supposed to know any of that then, in the Book of Enoch. And then he's given a directive from God to go, go take this message down to the Nephilim and the watchers that, you know, if you don't get your shit together, it's gonna get bad down here. And they ignore the order.

• 3:15:23Speaker 05

  And that's when, that's when the flood comes. And then only one man is chosen to survive the flood. And that's Enoch's grandson, and that's Noah. And that's, that's where the Noah's ark story comes from. But it tracks pretty closely with the Anunnaki story and the cataclysm. And it tracks a little bit with the epic of Gilgamesh and Utnapishthim and the flood there. And a lot of these other stories.

• 3:15:49Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, that's fascinating.

• 3:15:51Speaker 05

  I think so.

• 3:15:52Shawn Ryan?

  Didn't the, didn't the Smithsonian cover up Adam and Eve or something?

• 3:16:00Speaker 05

  Are you talking about the Adam and Eve book?

• 3:16:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 3:16:02Speaker 05

  Oh, that's, that's a different one. That's, um, so that's a book, it was released in 1966 by Dr. Chan, Chan Thomas. And it's called The Story of Adam and Eve. And if, and that story, title sounds cute until you read it and you realize he's talking about really Adam and Eve. And the story about, the story is, it's this 278-page manuscript that is classified by the CIA. And they've removed 200 pages, there's only like 50 or 60 pages left, and half of those are blank. And the CIA says it's been sanitized. And the reason that the CIA was so interested in the Book of Adam and Eve is because it describes the end of the world. And Dr.

• 3:16:46Speaker 05

  Thomas, in the book, talks about pole shifts and what happens when the pole shift. Something happens to the inner core of the Earth, our electrical field gets thrown off, and when that happens, the pole shifts. And it's something that happens over and over and over again. And his pole shift is a 90-degree shift, so Antarctica goes to the equator, and the equator goes down south, like, it's violent. And as it's shifting, the atmosphere continues to rotate, you know, west to east. So that just, he describes in the book, just walls of water and this wind and debris just tearing across everything. Cities are reduced to waste.

• 3:17:30Speaker 05

  He says, "New York, Boston, Chicago, LA are nothing but memories. New York is at the bottom of the sea." And Antarctica is at the equator and becomes, you know, like a tropical land. And the story is the CIA wanted this suppressed because it would cause chaos and all of that. And that was a story that was recommended that I cover, and it was one that I got a lot of angry, people angry at me because I debunked all of it. I debunked the whole thing. That it was never 287 pages or whatever, it was just 50, 60 pages, and it was never classified. What happened was, and they said Chan Thomas was a fake name, but it's not, his name is Dr. Chauncey, Dr. Chauncey Powers.

• 3:18:16Speaker 05

  Chauncey Powers Thomas. And the book was never classified. What happened was, he was an engineer at McDonnell Douglas, working on anti-gravity and missile guidance and kind of some weird stuff like that. And his coworkers said he's very intelligent, but he's kind of eccentric. And what I believe happened, because I found the CIA file on him, is they've got the book, but there's also like People Magazine, and there's a shopping list, and there's these like random documents. And I think it was just, he's working on this like top-secret, top-secret stuff, he's wacky. They probably had just, an officer just keeping an eye on him. Like, we just keep a file on him, because he's on Johnny Carson, you know? This is a weird, this is a weird guy, you know?

• 3:19:01Speaker 05

  He's not supposed to do that kind of stuff. And then, um, and the book was never really classified. He updated it and updated it, it was never classified. Then later, he writes a book about, he updates it, he adds angels and UFOs and ESP into the book, it starts to get kind of wild. He writes another book about how, uh, to give natural childbirth, which I thought was strange.

• 3:19:26Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Where were you going with the Vatican?

• 3:19:28Speaker 05

  Uh, I wasn't going anywhere, we could talk about the Vatican.

• 3:19:31Shawn Ryan?

  I'd love to talk about the Vatican.

• 3:19:32Speaker 05

  Man, where do we start? Where do we start with the Vatican? The secret archives?

• 3:19:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What's in there?

• 3:19:42Speaker 05

  Uh, so many rumors about what's down there. The Vatican secret archives, they're down under the Vatican, they're called the Apostolic Archives, you can't go there. I mean, you can, you can, people can go to the Vatican archives. You have to, um, you have to get permission, there's like a 10 to 15-year wait, and you have to tell them what you, what you want to see before you go. So, and while you're there, you can't touch anything, someone will turn the pages for you and all of that, so it's, you kind of can't go there. But rumored to be down there is the Spear of Destiny, the, uh, the Ark of, the Covenant is supposed to be down there, the menorah.

• 3:20:15Shawn Ryan?

  What is the Spear of Destiny?

• 3:20:16Speaker 05

  That is the Spear of Destiny, or the Holy Lance, was with the Roman soldier pierced Christ when he was on the cross, that's the Spear of Destiny. That was something that Hitler was very interested in finding. Hitler was chasing these artifacts all over, all over the place. As soon as the Nazis conquered France, they started digging everywhere, like, um... The Charters Cathedral is where the ark was supposed to be. They were digging up everywhere looking for stuff. It's like Indiana Jones, who's got a lot of those things right. My favorite object that's supposed to be down there is called a chronovisor. And this is an object that lets you see through time. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. I don't think I have. So chrono means time, visor means see.

• 3:21:00Speaker 05

  So this is an object that you can see through time. It was invented by, his name is Pellegrino or Netti. Father Pellegrino or Netti was, he was a priest, but he was also a physicist. And he was like an expert at music. And he was working with, I think his supervisor's father, Father Jamelli. He's working at a university or something. And what they're doing is they're studying Gregorian chants and listening to records and cataloging things. And they're listening to one record and Father Jamelli says, "I recognize that voice." And they play it back and they're like, "Well, who's that?" And he's like, "That's my father." Like, "Well, what is he saying?"

• 3:21:39Speaker 05

  He's talking about leather and prices and, well, it turns out his father was like a shoemaker, like a cobbler. And he heard his father's voice selling somebody shoes. So they end up isolating these voices and come to the conclusion that all the objects around us are vibrating with an energy and picking up all the conversations. Everything we're saying is getting absorbed into everything around us. And that if you can tune into the right frequency, you can hear that. And if you can really zero in on it, you can see what's going on. And Father Ornetti gets together this group of rock star physicists led by Enrico Fermi,

• 3:22:21Speaker 05

  who worked on the Manhattan Project, you know, a heavy hitter, and nine or 10 others. And they build this device called the chronovisor. And Father Ornetti is, goes and he looks back at Mussolini's speeches. And then he goes back further and he's looking at, watching old Roman plays that no longer exist.

• 3:22:45Speaker 05

  And what really put it on the map was he took a picture of Christ's crucifixion and released it. And it's a wild photograph because it's Jesus Christ on the cross.

• 3:23:00Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:23:02Speaker 05

  And so he releases that to the public and it hits the newspapers, especially Italy, like crazy. I think this was the 60s. And it becomes a sensation. So I covered that story, but ended up finding out that the Christ in his photograph looks an awful lot like a Christ statue that was carved somewhat recently to that era that was in a cathedral in Spain. And it turned out that that's really what it was, was he had this photograph that he said he saw Christ, but it was just his photograph of the statue. And then he backtracked a little bit and he said, well, you know, this is really the

• 3:23:46Speaker 05

  photograph and the statue is based on this, but that's not what happened. So we don't... So the Cronovizer is just this legend, but according to the story, the Vatican releases a statement at some point that says that anyone who's caught trying to look or listen through time is excommunicated. And that's kind of how that story ends. I couldn't find any evidence of that.

• 3:24:12Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Man, I thought you were gonna... I thought you were going towards... I just watched this episode about this device. Actually, I saw it on... I can't remember if it was Graham Hancock or Builders of Ancient Mysteries or something, bam. And they found this device at the bottom of the ocean supposedly. You ruined it for me, AJ.

• 3:24:34Speaker 05

  Antichthon mechanism?

• 3:24:37Shawn Ryan?

  Is that the thing where they found it and it had like all these gears and none of the watchmaker? Like they had Hublot come out and they were the only ones that were able to replicate it? And it was supposedly like this, I don't know, 12,000 year old device or something? And it perfectly simulated the rotation of the solar system?

• 3:24:55Speaker 05

  Yes, and the stages of the moon and a lot of different things. It was like a mechanical almanac is what it was, that all these phases of the moon, but...

• 3:25:09Shawn Ryan?

  That wound up being bullshit, right?

• 3:25:11Speaker 05

  Not bullshit, it's, I mean, it's a real thing and the craftsmanship is amazing. What's most amazing is that it survived at the bottom of, of the sea for a thousand years, whatever. But as they recreated it, they learned that the technology to do this existed. Watchmakers, they can do this. It just, not a lot of that stuff survived because it's so delicate. But this was at the bottom of the sea. I, I think it's still fascinating.

• 3:25:42Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, even a thousand years ago, to be able to simulate that. So they did have that technology?

• 3:25:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, to, to make gears and do all that stuff, they did. If you look at, like Archimedes goes back even further than that and some of the technology he came up with was wild. I mean, the Archimedes screw is still, is still used as a way to like, get water to flow backwards because it goes up, up a screw. It's like a revolutionary thing. But he had, he, he was famous for creating all these crazy weapons. And one of his famous weapons was these giant mirrors that he used to, to burn the, the Roman fleet when they were sailing into, I think he was, I think he was from Sicily, was Archimedes.

• 3:26:28Speaker 05

  So, these ancient cultures, they're, they're just way more intelligent and, and than I think we give them credit for. You know, which goes back to, to the giants and the suppression and if it's not, doesn't fit what we know about Egypt, then it's wrong and you're an idiot. But our ancestors were, were pretty resourceful. They made some cool stuff.

• 3:26:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, no kidding. I mean, back to Stonehenge, Montapicchu, Easter Island, the pyramids, all that stuff, man, it's wild. It's like...

• 3:27:04Speaker 05

  The Baal back stone, they don't even know how they made that, but that's, you know, it's like.

• 3:27:09Shawn Ryan?

  What's the Baal back stone?

• 3:27:10Speaker 05

  That's in Lebanon, they just found a third one not too long ago. I think the biggest one is called the Stone of the Pregnant Woman. And it's massive. It's just, it's a big block and it's dramatic looking because it's kind of laying in the ground at an angle. You can only get a sense of the scope. If you see a person standing on it because they're like that tall. And they don't know how this was quarried. Because it's perfect. And it's, it's, it's the biggest megalith that we've ever found is this giant stone. They don't know what it was for, they don't know who built it or how they possibly could have done it. Then they found another stone.

• 3:27:47Speaker 05

  And there's these megalithic structures all over the area that are huge stones. They don't know how to put them in place and then they just found a third stone very recently. That I think is bigger than the other ones. Something like 20 million pounds, like unbelievable.

• 3:28:01Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. Man, you uncover some wild stuff too.

• 3:28:06Speaker 05

  It's all rabbit holes.

• 3:28:08Shawn Ryan?

  Man, it's cool. I love it. I remember watching this one. Where there's these holes in the ground and I think it's the Northwest, right?

• 3:28:17Speaker 05

  Mel's hole?

• 3:28:19Shawn Ryan?

  Is that what it is? Where this guy was like put fishing line down there, you could never find the bottom?

• 3:28:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's, um. That's Ellensburg, Washington. That's so, so, do you want me to tell you the story?

• 3:28:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but do you ever go see this stuff?

• 3:28:34Speaker 05

  No, not really.

• 3:28:35Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 3:28:39Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, if I debunk a story, why go see it?

• 3:28:42Shawn Ryan?

  Did you debunk that?

• 3:28:44Speaker 05

  How can I tell this, how can I tell you that I haven't told the story yet?

• 3:28:49Shawn Ryan?

  Let's hear it.

• 3:28:51Speaker 05

  Alright. Mel Waters buys his property in Ellensburg, like the Minastash Ridge in Washington in that area. And there's a hole on his property. And he sees that like all his neighbors are throwing all kinds of crap into the hole, like old washing machines and all kinds of stuff. They're just using it as a dump and so he starts doing the same thing, they're all just throwing stuff in the hole. And after a while he wonders, why does this not fill up? It's very strange.

• 3:29:21Speaker 05

  So he goes over there and he's just kind of, he can't see the bottom. He can't hear an echo. And he's out there investigating with his dog. And he's looking and he looks and his dog won't come close. Like his dog is like, will not come near the hole. And he looks up and birds are flying around it. Like no, nothing wants to come near this hole. So he wants to figure out how deep this thing goes. And he's a fisherman, so he puts fishing line down there. And he's got 5,000 feet and it doesn't hit bottom. He does another spool. He's got 10,000 feet. He ties lifesavers on the bottom of it to put it down there to see if they'll come dissolved. Maybe it's a well. 20,000 feet, 50,000. Till he hits about 16 miles of line down and he doesn't hit the bottom with it.

• 3:30:06Speaker 05

  So he.

• 3:30:08Shawn Ryan?

  16 miles of line.

• 3:30:10Speaker 05

  16 miles of line, so.

• 3:30:11Shawn Ryan?

  16 or 60?

• 3:30:13Speaker 05

  16.

• 3:30:14Shawn Ryan?

  Geez.

• 3:30:15Speaker 05

  Um, and he notices that his radios are acting weird. He's got, when he's out there working, he's listening to his radio, but, and when his radio's near the hole, he's picking up these strange things, like he's hearing old time music and which doesn't make sense. And then he tunes a little bit and he catches a baseball game. He listens to that for a minute and realizes it's a game from 30 years ago. So something is affecting like time around, around the hole. So at, at this point, he calls into Art Bell at Coast to Coast. I don't know if you remember Art Bell on that show.

• 3:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:30:52Speaker 05

  So he's telling Art the story about how, how weird this hole is. Uh, he talks about how one of his neighbors, his dog died and he threw the dog down the hole. And the next day, he sees his dog running through the, like through the woods with his collar on, but he won't come. It's like he acts like he doesn't know him. Like the hole is, the hole is doing weird stuff in the area. So he talks to Art Bell a little bit about it.

• 3:31:17Speaker 05

  And then Art is trying to get in touch with them and can't. And then finally does. And Mel Waters says, I wish I never called you. Says, so I talked to you. And he was out of town for that interview. He said, I got back into town. I couldn't get on my property. Said, there was heavy machinery there. There was military there. They wouldn't let me up. Some guy in plain clothes came down and said, can't come in here. Said, why? This is my property. Said, there was a plane crash. So we have to investigate it. There's no evidence of the plane crash. There's no news. And Mel starts to get kind of upset. It's my property, my land. And then the guy in plain clothes says, I'm not saying we will, but we could find a drug factory or something on this land.

• 3:32:02Speaker 05

  I'm just, you know, saying that that could happen if you want to press this. And Mel Waters said, you know, I'll go to the, I'll go to the, I'll go to the press. The guy's like, tell whoever you want. No one's going to believe you. And he gets run off his property. And you don't know if it's a hoax or not, but Art Bell talks to a news crew that goes to the property and they find evidence of tractor tracks in the mud and evidence that there was a, a military presence there along with machinery. And it's still all blocked off. Mel is eventually contacted by some intelligence and offered a deal. Two million dollars. You leave the country. You never come back.

• 3:32:45Speaker 05

  And you lease us the property, sell us the property. You just never come back. So Mel goes overseas for a while. And this story on Art Bell is 10 years that he checks in. So Mel is overseas. He's in Australia. And it's something like his niece is graduating. He wants to come back. He's not supposed to come back at all. But he decides to come back anyway. And he's taking a bus. He lands wherever and he's taking a bus. And there's some type, some type of issue where it breaks out of the bus. There's a fight or something. The bus pulls over and everyone gets off, but he's kind of, he's not allowed off. Like they're holding him back. They get everyone off. Couple of guys kind of grab him.

• 3:33:28Speaker 05

  He feels like a pinch and then he blacks out. And he wakes up 12 days later and he's in San Francisco in an alley. And he doesn't know what's happened for the last 12 days. And he tastes blood in his mouth and he starts. He realizes his back teeth are missing. Like, it's a crazy story. And he's telling all this to Art. And Art helps him, like, find a place to stay. And he says, "Art, I just got contacted from a native tribe and the people are called the Basque. I don't know if you know the Basque. They're, it's a region between like France and Spain.

• 3:34:13Speaker 05

  It's a little area that people call the Basque. It's, it's a small community, but it's very unique. So, a lot of Basques settled in Nevada in like the 19th century. So, this native tribe is working with the Basque and they call Mel and they want him to come out because they found another hole.

• 3:34:32Speaker 05

  Story gets weirder from here. So, he goes out to like consult with them about the hole. And that hole is different. Mel's hole was about nine feet, around nine feet wide with this stone retaining wall. This hole is nine feet, but it's, it's got this metal collar and it's metal all the way down as far as the eye can see. And it won't vibrate at all. Like, Mel drops a tool or something on it and it doesn't make a sound. It's very strange.

• 3:35:01Speaker 05

  So, they don't bother trying to find the bottom of it. They just start putting things down the hole to see what happens. They start by putting ice cubes down, just to see is it hot down there. So, they put these ice cubes down the hole. They pull the ice cubes up and now the ice cubes are hot. And they catch on fire. Like, they get transformed in the hole. Story gets weirder. And they do that for a while and they actually take ice and some of them are using it to heat their homes. It's, it's very weird. So, then they say, "Someone volunteers to go down the hole." And they're like, "No, no, you can't do that." But they're a shepherd colony, so they send a sheep down the hole in a crate. And they send it, and the sheep doesn't want to go.

• 3:35:46Speaker 05

  Animals don't like this thing. Birds fly around it. They don't, animals don't want to go. So, the sheep is freaking out. And they send the cage down at like 1,200 feet and it stops moving. And they pull it up and the sheep is dead, but it looks totally fine.

• 3:36:02Speaker 05

  So it's since it's a shepherd culture, they know how to butcher a sheep. So they said, we'll do an autopsy on it, we'll butcher it. So they butchered the sheep and the entire inside cavity of the sheep is gone. And inside is a giant tumor, just like just this disgusting huge tumor. And they cut the tumor open. And inside is what Mel described as a fetal seal, like the fetus of a seal with human eyes. And it's looking at them. And they kind of just set this seal looking thing out for a while. It's looking, it's, they're looking at each other for a couple of hours.

• 3:36:45Speaker 05

  And then it eventually kind of inches way back down into the hole. And once it does that,

• 3:36:54Speaker 05

  Mel, who had esophageal cancer, is now cancer free. Like everyone who was sick in the village is now healed. And the people there think this is some like divine thing that with this, with this, they call it a magic seal. And they believe that it's communicating with them through this radio and like some type of Morse code. They don't know if it's alien language or not.

• 3:37:22Speaker 05

  And he's telling Art that I've got pictures of this, I've got recordings of it. I've got all this stuff, photographs.

• 3:37:33Speaker 05

  And they, they finally set up a, you know, an interview to go over all the evidence. But, but Mel never shows and Art is never able to get a hold of him again. And that's kind of where the story ends. And, you know, it starts out like a really interesting story, but the theory, at least what I came up with was,

• 3:37:53Speaker 05

  The story just got so, I mean, I left out so many crazy details, because how much time do we have? That the story was getting so out of hand that I don't think he could keep up with the hoax anymore. And he's just like, "I can't. How do you top magic seal fetus that heals cancer?" So that was a story that I went into, just because I liked, you know, I'm a huge Art Bell fan, and that's a classic Art Bell story. That's, you know, that's one of the top ones. I wish it had a better ending, it's so anticlimactic. But, but it was such a fun journey, and it's just, it's so many opportunities for jokes in there and stuff. I have a t-shirt on the, it's one of the most popular shirts, it's, "I went to Mel's Hall, and all I got was this magic seal fetus." I wear it all the time.

• 3:38:38Speaker 05

  So was the hole there? So people have tried to find the hole, and a couple of people have said they found it. So I was doing some, some, some research. What was very strange was, the area where the hole was supposed to be, on Terra Server, which is like before Google Maps, was all blacked out, it was all like redacted, which is very strange. But later it does show up on Google Maps. So people's tried to, Mel gave a lot of information of, that you could probably find it. I found one place that was very compelling, because Mel said on his property, he had

• 3:39:20Speaker 05

  one building that was kind of falling down from snow, and I'm looking at the pictures of the property, and that building is there, and then right across the way is a hole that's nine feet wide with a stone retaining wall. And I looked at that, and I'm like, "No way." For a second there, I thought this was Mel's Hole. But it was investigated, it was just a well, and the property belongs to somebody. But that's one of those stories where I like debunked it, and then I found the pictures, and I was like, "No, damn."

• 3:39:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. Stuff's crazy, Ben. I don't know, it's the kind of stuff that I talk about and that's, you know, sometimes the stories just get weirder and weirder and then they just, they just fall down. That's, that's Mel's Hole. Just a crazy story with no strong ending. Damn. How do you find these? Well, that was easy to find because as, as an Art Bell fan, I can name like the top five episodes that are my favorites. You know, so Mel's Hole is one. Art Bell fans know that one, you know, they know that one in and out. I, that's why it's so popular. Art Bell fans don't know me, but they're like, oh, Mel's Hole, I want to hear about that.

• 3:40:30Speaker 05

  So I knew about that one already. You know, most of the other stuff, it's either sent in to me or it's my brother is into all the weird stuff, you know, he goes to the UFO conventions and hangs out with, with, you know, Thomas Jane and Bigfoot and talks about UFOs and stuff. He does all that crazy stuff. So he'll, he'll say, oh, you gotta, you gotta look into this, you gotta look into that. And I know if it sounds really stupid, that it's gonna be a good one.

• 3:40:56Speaker 05

  Have you looked into Bigfoot? Yeah, I looked into it. I looked into it. Um,

• 3:41:04Speaker 05

  you know, the, the, the famous part of Bigfoot is the Patterson film. It's, it looks pretty good. That's, it's the one I, that I think everyone's seen. You see the Bigfoot, he's kind of walking in the distance, it's kind of, and he looks back over his shoulder. That's, that's the Patterson film. It's pretty compelling. But almost every piece of Bigfoot evidence is, it's been hoaxed. Yeah. Sounds like the Loch Ness Monster. Loch Ness Monster also, I, I couldn't find any evidence of it. The famous photos, I debunked all of those. Yeah, didn't it, was it taken in a bathtub or something? One of those was. It was a bathtub, one was just a boat. People hated that one. But Bigfoot's fun because there's, there's native stories that go back a long time to talk about these, these giant creatures covered in hair, but they lived

• 3:41:49Speaker 05

  interdimensional. So it's like you're not gonna go find them because they can just phase into a different dimension. Yeah. Which is convenient, but... Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm not a Bigfoot guy. Those are called cryptids, which are these creatures that are like outside of, you know, cryptozoology. And I don't like cryptid stories. I do them because people like them. So I covered like all, all weird creatures, whether it's the Jersey Devil or Bigfoot or Chupacabra or all these creatures. I cover them because people like them. But there's, the evidence always sucks. And my show is not like...

• 3:42:24Speaker 05

  When I was starting the channel, looking at these topics, there were two types of channels. There were the ones that were all in, you know, Darren, right? Just everything's true. And it's like, "Yeah, but what about it?" It's like, "No, no, no." True. And then the other stories where you're just people telling these weird stories, but they're like snarky and sarcastic, like it's condescending. I don't want to name any YouTube creators, but you know who you are. And that annoys me because that's just making the story about you, about how smart you are, and I'm stupid because I think this is a cool story. So there was just that. So I said, "Well, why don't I tell the story and make it fun? And then if anyone wants to stick around for what I found, I'll do that." And most people don't.

• 3:43:07Shawn Ryan?

  You do a damn good job of it.

• 3:43:09Speaker 05

  As soon as I say, "But is it true?", I see the numbers go, everyone's like, "Nope, don't care."

• 3:43:15Speaker 05

  Don't care.

• 3:43:16Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. What, um, if I can ask, you don't have to answer this, but what do you, what do you, what do you have in mind up for the future?

• 3:43:26Speaker 05

  It's really just the conversation end of the, of the show. That's the next phase is to, the studio's built, it's called the basement, it looks great. It's like what you would imagine would be the basement underneath the Wi-Fi studio. It's kind of, kind of old school and, and musty. It's super fun, it's ready to go. All it's just waiting for is me to have the guts to book a couple of people and get to work.

• 3:43:51Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I hope you find it quick. I really do. I'm looking forward to that. I think that's gonna be awesome. Awesome. Well, AJ, man, I'm, I'm just so thankful that we connected. I loved this interview, it's one of my favorite.

• 3:44:07Speaker 05

  Well, thank you for letting me ramble.

• 3:44:09Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, hey, anytime. You want to come here and ramble?

• 3:44:13Speaker 05

  I'll just come here and shoot.

• 3:44:14Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, we could do that too. I got a lot more guns than the, than the Winchester lever action and the Sig, so.

• 3:44:21Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 3:44:22Shawn Ryan?

  Love to have you again. I would. And, uh, maybe at some point I can come check out the new studio.

• 3:44:28Speaker 05

  Please, anytime.

• 3:44:29Shawn Ryan?

  I would love that. Well, thank you, man.

• 3:44:31Speaker 05

  Good work. Seriously. My life work. Awesome.