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Shawn Ryan

Former Navy SEAL, CIA contractor, and host of the Shawn Ryan Show — one of the top podcasts in the world — who has become a major platform for consciousness research, remote viewing, UAP disclosure, and military/intelligence whistleblowers discussing "the other side."

Field	Details
Full Name	Shawn Ryan Palmisano
Known As	@ShawnRyan762
Born	Kansas City, Missouri
Location	United States
Role	Podcaster / Platform / Former Navy SEAL / CIA Contractor
Status	ACTIVE
Platform	Shawn Ryan Show (Spotify #2 October 2024, Top 10 overall 2024), YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Rumble
Current Affiliation	Vigilance Elite (founder/CEO), Shawn Ryan Show
Military Service	U.S. Navy SEAL (SEAL Teams 2 and 8), 14 years combined service as SEAL and CIA contractor, 20+ deployments to 14 areas of operations
Intelligence Work	CIA Global Response Staff (GRS), Counterterrorism Mission Center
Notable Works	Shawn Ryan Show podcast (170+ episodes), Vigilance Elite tactical training company
Category	Platform / Interviewer / Military-Intelligence Background

Assessment: STRONG EVIDENCE (Platform)

Shawn Ryan is not a consciousness researcher himself — he is the platform through which some of the most significant living participants in classified consciousness programs have told their stories to millions of people. His military and intelligence background (Navy SEAL, CIA contractor) gives him credibility with guests who would not appear on less serious shows, and his interviewing style — direct, respectful, genuinely curious — draws out operational details that other interviewers miss. The Shawn Ryan Show has become one of the primary vectors through which the public learns about remote viewing, Project Stargate, the Monroe Institute, the Gateway Process, near-death experiences, and the military's investigation of paranormal phenomena. His audience reach (Spotify #2 in October 2024, 4.9 stars) means that consciousness topics once confined to niche circles now reach millions of mainstream listeners.

Background

Shawn Ryan Palmisano grew up in Chillicothe, Missouri. His father was a military pharmacist. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 18 and graduated from BUD/S training, becoming a Navy SEAL assigned to SEAL Teams 2 and 8. He deployed to Haiti and Baghdad, where he guarded Iraqi politicians. Over 14 years of combined military and intelligence service, he completed more than 20 deployments to combat zones across 14 areas of operations.

After leaving the Navy in 2006, Ryan briefly entered real estate before becoming a contractor for the CIA's Global Response Staff (GRS) within the Counterterrorism Mission Center. He also worked with Blackwater.

Ryan founded Vigilance Elite, a tactical training company, and launched the Shawn Ryan Show podcast, which grew rapidly to become one of the most listened-to podcasts in the world. In October 2024, it ranked #2 on Spotify behind only The Joe Rogan Experience, and it finished 2024 as a top-10 Spotify podcast overall.

Current Situation

Ryan is actively producing episodes at a high pace and has increasingly dedicated airtime to consciousness, remote viewing, UAP phenomena, and "the other side." His military-intelligence background means he approaches these topics not as a believer or skeptic but as an operator assessing intelligence — a framing that resonates with his audience and attracts guests from the classified world who might otherwise stay silent.

The show has not faced the kind of suppression or deplatforming common to some alternative media, likely because Ryan's military credibility and professional production make him difficult to dismiss. His audience skews toward veterans, military families, law enforcement, and people interested in national security — demographics that tend to be skeptical of fringe claims, which makes his consciousness episodes particularly impactful.

Key Consciousness Episodes

The Shawn Ryan Show has produced a series of episodes that systematically map the landscape of classified consciousness research. Notable episodes include:

Remote Viewing & Project Stargate

#79 — Sean Webb: "CIA Funds Remote Viewing Program" (Part 1) (October 2023) — Webb, an author on consciousness and Monroe Institute expert, walked through the full history of remote viewing, the CIA's interest, and the story of Joe McMoneagle. Webb explained how the Monroe Institute invented the Gateway tapes and Gateway protocol that the government used for consciousness expansion experiments.
#95 — Joe McMoneagle: "CIA's Project Stargate" (February 2024) — Remote Viewer #001 himself appeared on the show. McMoneagle described his recruitment into intelligence operations during Vietnam, his 23 years of classified remote viewing work, and his assertion of having remote viewed Mars dating back one million years. This episode brought the most documented remote viewer in history to an audience of millions.
#122 — Edwin C. May: "Psychics in Space, Dream Telepathy and Remote Viewing Saturn" (July 2024) — May, the former Director of the CIA's Stargate Project, discussed ESP, psychokinesis, and survival after death. Ryan underwent a remote viewing aptitude assessment with May during the episode, demonstrating the practice firsthand.
#145 — Angela Ford: "Meet the Army Psychic Who Tracked Spies, Hostages and Fugitives" (November 2024) — Ford worked as a remote viewer in Project Stargate and now teaches remote viewing techniques at the Monroe Institute. She discussed consciousness as a natural human capacity, reincarnation, "karma groups" of souls bound together across lifetimes, and out-of-body experiences. Ford stated that she sees human bodies as vessels, with mechanisms in the brain allowing consciousness to leave.
#154 — Skip Atwater: "Bizarre Alien Encounter, Remote Viewing Mars and Psychic Operations" (January 2025) — Atwater served in counterintelligence during the Cold War and was instrumental in launching the U.S. Army's Stargate Project. After retiring, he became Research Director at the Monroe Institute. Atwater described encounters with entities displaying otherworldly abilities and his conviction of an interconnected, non-local reality and unified consciousness. His book Project 8200 presents original remote viewing transcripts of Pat Price's exploration of alleged UFO bases.

Military Paranormal Applications

#96 — Col. John Alexander: "Military Applications of the Paranormal" (February 2024) — Alexander, a former Army Special Forces Commander whose career inspired The Men Who Stare at Goats, shared firsthand experiences with remote viewing and psychokinesis studied by the U.S. Army. He presented his view that UFOs may be "ultra-terrestrial" or interdimensional rather than extraterrestrial — aligning with the interdimensional thesis documented in this project.

Near-Death Experiences & the Afterlife

#111 — John Burke: "What Happens When We Die?" (May 2024) — Burke, a former agnostic engineer turned NDE researcher, discussed common elements found across 1,000+ near-death experience cases: verifiable out-of-body observations, encounters with deceased loved ones, interactions with a loving divine presence, and consistent features across cultures.

UAP Contact & Consciousness

#165 — Chris Bledsoe: "The Episode We Never Censored" (February 2025) — Bledsoe reported a 2007 UFO experience that cured his Crohn's disease and led to a spiritual awakening. The episode documented how CIA, NASA, DIA, and Pentagon officials investigated Bledsoe's experiences, including medical testing and paranormal demonstrations for high-ranking officials. His brainwave patterns during orb encounters altered similarly to those of experienced meditators — suggesting a consciousness-based mechanism for UAP contact.

Why Shawn Ryan Matters to This Project

Ryan's significance is not as a theorist but as a force multiplier for consciousness disclosure. Before his show, most of these guests were confined to niche podcasts with audiences of thousands. Ryan brought them to an audience of millions — and critically, an audience predisposed to trust military and intelligence sources.

Key contributions:

Brought Remote Viewer #001 (Joe McMoneagle) to a mainstream audience — McMoneagle's 23 years of classified work reached millions through SRS #95
Gave the Monroe Institute and Gateway Process unprecedented visibility — Multiple episodes featuring Monroe-affiliated researchers (Webb, Ford, Atwater) systematically introduced Gateway concepts to a non-specialist audience
Demonstrated remote viewing live on air — Ryan's aptitude assessment with Edwin May showed the audience that remote viewing is a practice, not just a theory
Connected UAP phenomena to consciousness — Episodes like Bledsoe (#165) and Alexander (#96) framed UAP as a consciousness phenomenon, not just a hardware question
Established military credibility for consciousness topics — His personal background as a SEAL and CIA contractor makes these topics harder to dismiss

Key Quotes from Episodes

"The real world is the unseeing world where there's no time. I think we're in some matrix here where we experience time from the physical body." — Guest on the Shawn Ryan Show, discussing consciousness and dimensionality

"Consciousness is like a wireless internet, basically. All the information to every living thing is around us." — Guest on the Shawn Ryan Show, describing non-local consciousness

"I think our loved ones are on the other side cheering for us to get through to the other side." — Guest discussing near-death experiences and the afterlife on the Shawn Ryan Show

The Counterargument

Critics note that Ryan is an interviewer, not a scientist or researcher, and that his show format — long-form, one-on-one, conversational — can lack the adversarial questioning that would challenge extraordinary claims. Skeptics argue that:

Selection bias — Ryan invites guests who support paranormal and consciousness claims; the show rarely features scientific skeptics or debunkers
No peer review — Claims made on the show are presented as testimony, not subjected to scientific scrutiny
Entertainment vs. investigation — The podcast format prioritizes compelling stories over rigorous verification
Military credibility as appeal to authority — Ryan's SEAL/CIA background lends credibility by association but does not validate the claims of his guests
Audience priming — The show's audience is self-selected for interest in these topics, which may create an echo chamber

These are legitimate methodological criticisms. However, Ryan's contribution is not scientific — it is journalistic. He provides a platform for firsthand witnesses and program participants to tell their stories in their own words to a mass audience, which is a distinct and valuable function.

Robert Monroe — Multiple SRS guests (Webb, Ford, Atwater) are directly connected to Monroe's Institute and teach or research his methods
Joe McMoneagle — Remote Viewer #001 appeared on SRS #95, bringing his 23 years of classified work to Ryan's audience of millions
Jordan Crowder — Crowder's Conscious Observers podcast covers many of the same guests and topics; Crowder trained under McMoneagle, who appeared on Ryan's show; both platforms are democratizing access to Gateway and remote viewing knowledge
Gateway Consciousness Simulator — The Gateway Process and Monroe Institute framework are the throughline connecting many of Ryan's consciousness episodes (Webb #79, Ford #145, Atwater #154)
Jacques Vallee — Col. Alexander's interdimensional hypothesis (SRS #96) directly parallels Vallee's foundational work
Diana Pasulka — Academic researcher documenting UAP-as-religion; complements Ryan's practitioner-testimony approach from an institutional-academic angle
Grant Cameron — UAP-consciousness researcher whose work on contact modalities and managed disclosure parallels themes across multiple SRS episodes

Remote Viewing — Core topic across SRS episodes #79, #95, #122, #145, #154; Ryan underwent a live remote viewing assessment with Edwin May
Hemi-Sync / Binaural Beats — The Monroe Institute's audio technology discussed by Webb, Ford, and Atwater on the show as the mechanism enabling consciousness exploration
Focus Levels — The mapped states of consciousness (F10–F35+) referenced by Monroe-affiliated guests as the framework for navigating non-physical dimensions

Sources

This information was built by Grok and Claude AI research.

Assessment: STRONG EVIDENCE (Platform)​

Background​

Current Situation​

Key Consciousness Episodes​

Remote Viewing & Project Stargate​

Military Paranormal Applications​

Near-Death Experiences & the Afterlife​

UAP Contact & Consciousness​

Why Shawn Ryan Matters to This Project​

Key Quotes from Episodes​

The Counterargument​

Related Perspectives​

Related Concepts​

Other Coverage Worth Reading​

Sources​