Shawn Ryan is an American podcaster, former U.S. Navy SEAL and former CIA contractor who hosts The Shawn Ryan Show, a long-form interview program built mainly around military, intelligence and law-enforcement guests. Since 2023 the show has also given multi-hour interviews to UFO researchers, people who say they have had encounters, and veterans of the government's remote-viewing program, and clips from those episodes circulate widely on UFO social media.

Ryan was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1982 and grew up in Chillicothe, Missouri. He enlisted in the Navy at 18, completed SEAL training and served with SEAL Teams 2 and 8, with deployments that included Haiti and Baghdad. After leaving the Navy in 2006 he worked as a contractor with the CIA's Global Response Staff. In December 2015 he founded Vigilance Elite, a Florida company that trains law enforcement and civilians in weapons handling and tactics and that produces the podcast.

Most of the show's guests are combat and intelligence veterans, but it has also interviewed figures such as Donald Trump and Erik Prince, and it ranked among Spotify's ten most-listened podcasts in 2024. Its UFO episodes began in February 2023 with Steven Greer, who returned that July to discuss his allegations about black-budget programs and Lockheed's Skunk Works. Later guests included Brandon Fugal, owner of Skinwalker Ranch, in August 2023; Representative Tim Burchett on government UAP programs; retired Army colonel John Alexander and remote-viewing program veterans Joe McMoneagle and Skip Atwater; retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet; Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb; and religious-studies scholar Diana Walsh Pasulka.

Among the most recirculated is the February 2025 episode with Chris Bledsoe, titled "The Episode We Never Censored," in which the North Carolina man described the encounter he reports from 2007 and the religious meaning he gives his later experiences. Clips from that episode were reposted by UFO accounts throughout 2026, often with Bledsoe's statement that he now believes in Jesus Christ more fully than ever. In March 2026 an r/UFOs thread revisited a segment in which Bledsoe named Easter 2026 as the date of a world-changing event. In June 2026 Ryan gave the same format to the skeptical side, hosting cosmologist Brian Keating in an episode titled "The Alien Disclosure Nothingburger."

Ryan's part in the subject comes from the size of his audience and a format that gives each guest several uninterrupted hours. He attended the 2024 State of the Union as Burchett's guest, and in May 2026 he asked his followers on X for their take on "the recent UFO release," tagging Burchett and Joe Rogan. His interviews have brought the accounts of Greer, Bledsoe and the remote-viewing veterans to one of the largest podcast audiences in the United States, much of it drawn by the show's military and intelligence guests.