Richard Ryan takes you inside the surveillance economy — how Big Tech tracks your behavior, monetizes your attention, and shapes your decisions without your informed consent. Hosted by bestselling author Richard Ryan — whose book The Warrior's Garden won Grand Prize at the 2025 San Francisco Book Festival — this show gives you the insider's view of the algorithms, incentives, and design tactics driving the modern internet, and the practical tools to take back control.
Richard isn't a critic looking in from the outside. He's a software developer, media executive, and tech industry veteran with more than twenty years inside the machine. He built a YouTube app that hit the App Store four years before YouTube's own. He co-founded Black Rifle Coffee Company and helped grow it into a publicly traded company with a $1.7 billion valuation. He launched Rated Red with Verizon Media and Hearst, growing it to over one million organic subscribers in its first year. And as a content creator, he's generated more than twenty billion views and millions of followers across channels like FullMag — which means he understands exactly how the attention economy works, because he's operated at the highest level of it.
That perspective is what sets this podcast apart. Richard has spent his career studying machine learning, algorithmic design, and digital marketing — the systems that decide what you see, how long you scroll, and what your data is worth. Now he's using that knowledge to help you become a conscious consumer of digital content.
He's the author of The Warrior's Garden: Tools for Guarding Your Mind Against Big Tech. Literary Titan Award Winner, President's Book Award honoree and Grand Prize winner of the 2025 San Francisco Book Festival, The Warrior's Garden is the acclaimed guide to digital wellness, data privacy, and reclaiming your focus in a world engineered for distraction. Each episode extends that mission — through solo deep-dives and conversations with technologists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and creators on topics like:
The surveillance economy and how your personal data is collected, sold, and weaponized
Social media algorithms, addictive design, and the psychology of the endless scroll
Digital privacy, data brokers, and practical online security
Screen time, digital detox strategies, and mindful technology use
AI, machine learning, and the future of the attention economy
Entrepreneurship, media, and building brands in the creator economy
Mental health, focus, and raising families in the age of smartphones
This isn't a show about throwing your phone in a lake. It's about understanding the game well enough to stop being played — using technology with awareness and intention instead of being used by it.
If you listen to podcasts about technology, digital wellness, online privacy, startups, media, or personal development, [Podcast Name] with Richard Ryan belongs in your rotation.
New episodes weekly. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Learn more at warriorsgarden.com and follow Richard @richardryan.
