Scott Payne (retired undercover FBI Agent)

Summary

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard: Episode Summary featuring Scott Payne (Retired Undercover FBI Agent)

Release Date: May 28, 2025

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Introduction

In the milestone 900th episode of "Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard," hosts Dax Shepard and Monica Padman engage in a profound and gripping conversation with Scott Payne, a retired undercover FBI special agent. This episode delves deep into Scott's extensive career in law enforcement, his undercover operations within notorious biker gangs, and his experiences infiltrating extremist white supremacist groups. Through candid discussions, Scott shares harrowing stories, critical insights, and reflections on combating domestic terrorism and extremism.

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Scott Payne’s Law Enforcement Journey

Early Career and Education

Scott Payne's path to becoming one of the most renowned undercover FBI agents began early. Raised in Greenville, South Carolina, Scott pursued a degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in Psychology. Despite academic excellence—graduating from college with a 3.8 GPA and making the dean's list while playing NCAA football—Scott faced racial barriers in his hometown.

Quote:

"[...] I came out of college with a 3.8 average. My last two years on the dean's list playing NCAA football. But in South Carolina at that time, for whatever reason, four different departments told me I did really, really well. They would love to have me, but they weren't hiring black guys."
(Timestamp: 14:08)

Police Work and Transition to FBI

Scott's perseverance led him to the Greenville County Sheriff's Office, where he served as a uniform patrol officer for three years before advancing to vice and narcotics investigator roles. His dedication and skill set eventually opened the door to the FBI, where he attended Quantico and was assigned to high-stakes cases early in his tenure, including during the tumultuous period surrounding 9/11.

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Undercover Operations with Biker Gangs

Infiltrating the Outlaws Motorcycle Club

One of Scott’s most significant undercover assignments was infiltrating the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, one of the "Big Four" biker gangs in the United States, alongside the Hells Angels, Bandidos, and Pagans.

Quote:

"Bikers are the closest relationship I built with a possible target on any case I've ever done."
(Timestamp: 28:24)

Gaining Trust and Conducting Operations

Scott meticulously cultivated his cover as a high-ranking member involved in illicit activities such as carjacking and drug trafficking. His approach involved performing seemingly legitimate tasks to earn the trust of the Outlaws, allowing him to gather crucial evidence and execute successful takedowns.

Notable Incident: The Goat Sacrifice

One of the most intense moments Scott recounts is an attempt by the Outlaws to sacrifice a goat during a ritualistic ceremony. Wired to stealthily record the operation, Scott describes the fear and adrenaline he experienced when the crew attempted to carry out the sacrifice, only to realize the breach in his cover.

Quote:

"I was holding the goat's head, giving the sig how, holding the base flag. [...] It was a verbal sigh. Yeah. Because my insides are saying, it's over. He misses it."
(Timestamp: 47:07)

Despite the high tension, Scott managed to maintain his composure, allowing law enforcement to intervene effectively and resulting in the dismantling of the gang with multiple arrests.

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Infiltrating White Supremacist and Accelerationist Groups

Expanding Mission to Combat Extremism

Beyond biker gangs, Scott expanded his undercover efforts to infiltrate neo-Nazi and accelerationist groups, which advocate for societal collapse to accelerate white supremacist agendas.

Quote:

"Accelerationism goes like this. They do not believe that there is a political solution to save the white race. They believe that society is going to collapse on its own or from man-made events. And they want to speed that up through guerrilla warfare tactics."
(Timestamp: 56:10)

Challenging Ideologies and Risking Personal Safety

Scott describes the intense indoctrination sessions where extremist ideologies were deeply ingrained, including gruesome rituals and violent plans intended to incite racial wars. His ability to blend in and extract actionable intelligence was pivotal in preventing potential mass atrocities.

Notable Encounter: Ritualistic Violence

During a critical operation, Scott narrates an encounter where the group attempted to sacrifice a goat as part of their twisted rituals. The event was not only a test of his undercover persona but also a moment that underscored the brutality and fanaticism of these groups.

Quote:

"We were all still in the circle. [...] It's a verbal sigh. Yeah. Because my insides are saying, it's over. He misses it."
(Timestamp: 47:07)

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Reflections on Undercover Work and Personal Impact

Emotional and Psychological Toll

Scott openly discusses the emotional challenges of undercover work, including the moral dilemmas of building relationships with targets and the psychological strain of maintaining his cover in life-threatening situations.

Quote:

"You need to be able to figure out how you can rationalize that in your mind and it not have an adverse impact on your psyche. And it's not always easy."
(Timestamp: 29:38)

Balancing Personal Life and Career

Despite the dangers, Scott emphasizes the importance of maintaining personal connections and support systems, such as his family and mentoring relationships within the FBI, which provided him resilience and perspective throughout his career.

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Books and Media Contributions

"Code Name Pal Horse: How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis"

Scott Payne co-authored his memoir with Michelle Shepard, detailing his undercover missions and providing an insider's look into the strategies and sacrifices involved in combating domestic extremism.

Podcast Feature: "White Hot Hate"

Scott also appeared on the Canadian broadcast podcast "White Hot Hate," particularly in its second season titled "Pal Horse," where he further elaborates on his experiences and the intricacies of undercover investigations.

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Concluding Insights

Scott Payne's testimony offers a rare and unfiltered glimpse into the perilous world of undercover law enforcement. His relentless pursuit of justice against some of the most dangerous and ideologically driven groups in America highlights the complexities and necessities of such operations. Through his stories, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the human and ethical dimensions of fighting against extremism and preserving societal safety.

Final Quote:

"You have to stay vigilant. You hope that people out there conceal their intentions, but if you see something, say something."
(Timestamp: 85:28)

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For those interested in a detailed exploration of undercover operations and the battle against domestic terrorism, Scott Payne's experiences provide invaluable insights and underscore the importance of unwavering dedication in law enforcement.

Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondri in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dan shepherd and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

[Scott Payne]

Woo.

[Dax Shepard]

Monica.

[Monica Padman]

900.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm so delighted to announce this episode. 900 because I'm a bad exaggerator. As you know, I'm actually, no, I'm not even a bad exaggerator. I'm an exaggerator. And it doesn't even make sense because it's a marginal exaggeration. The other day I was listening to our show and we had a guest and we were talking about Sedaris. And I said, oh, yeah, he's been on six times. And as I was listening, I was like, I know he's been on five times. Why would I have said six? Six isn't better than five.

[Monica Padman]

This is a good thing to know about yourself.

[Dax Shepard]

So I'm a 20% exaggerator, but I've been saying where, like, oh, well, I've done 850 of these or whatever.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

But it actually is 900.

[Monica Padman]

900 today.

[Dax Shepard]

So I'm going to start saying a thousand now.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, God. Well, you know, we do not get to say that until we've really done it. That's a huge mark.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a commitment. I'll make it public. Okay, now let me ask you this. This guest who I was like, couldn't say yes to fast enough?

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Were you a little bit like, oh, I don't know.

[Monica Padman]

Yep. Of course.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure. This episode is fudgeing. Riveting.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Oh, my God, it is so good. Yeah. We started the episode and I was like, oh, boy. Oh, I don't. And then I was so in. It's so fascinating.

[Dax Shepard]

Your heart. I think your heart rate. Had you been wearing a monitor, I do think your heart rate would have hit 130 at one point.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. This. It felt like listening to Armchair Anonymous where we're getting like, these crazy stories. It was so good. He's so cool.

[Dax Shepard]

And who is he? Scott Payne. Scott Payne is a retired FBI special agent who spent 28 years in law enforcement investigating cases against drug trafficking organizations, human human traffickers, outlaw motorcycle clubs, gangs, public corruption, and domestic terrorists. He hated this when I said it, but everywhere you read about him, he is definitely the second or tied with the most famous undercover FBI agent of all time with Donnie Brosco. Famous Donnie Roscoe. His book is called Code Name Pal Horse How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis. And there's also a podcast that he was on that led to the book which is also great. It's Canadian broadcast production called White Hot Hate and the second season is called Pal Horse on which he participates quite a bit. This was unbelievable.

[Monica Padman]

So good.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, please enjoy. Scott Payne we are supported by Ring. With Ring you can be there from anywhere with doorbells and cameras that help you see more to exciting features that help you know more to the app that lets you connect more See more at the front door, up high and down low with battery doorbells, head to toe video capture it all all day and all night with 24. 7 recording and get smarter alerts that know the difference between a person and a package right in the Ring app. Now I relied on these Ring photos.

[Monica Padman]

Quite a bit for our unfortunate violation.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, it was so good to have all that.

[Monica Padman]

It's also it just brings peace of mind to know you can check it anytime.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Monica Padman]

And you know, I'm now lifting heavy weights. Weights.

[Dax Shepard]

You've even got some heavy dumbbells.

[Monica Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Monica Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Monica Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Scott Payne]

Nice lot, by the way.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, thank you.

[Scott Payne]

It's so funny because I live in Hill country or even if you're down in South Carolina around Charleston, it's just trees and greens so you don't even know what's on the other side of that hedge. You turn the corner and you're like, oh, my gosh, it's like four malls and everything else. That's what I picture here because you see a fence and you don't know and you go. And you go, oh, man, you got a nice sized lot. It's good.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I'm from Michigan and I grew up in a hillbilly area outside of Detroit. And so, yeah, having a big yard is everything.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You're in South Carolina?

[Scott Payne]

No, I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you're in Knoxville. And they built a fucking racetrack between Knoxville and Nashville, right?

[Scott Payne]

Yes, those are my friends.

[Dax Shepard]

What's it called?

[Scott Payne]

It's called Flat Rock. I was there. It wasn't the grand opening, but we went out there, so I've helped Red Bull racing a lot. My friends are really connected with a nitro circuit, so we went out there when it was just dirt, but it's a big deal. The owner got jammed up on a hit and run. Oh. Recently. Yeah. Leaving the scene drunk.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I mean, you only run if you're drunk.

[Scott Payne]

I think I hit something. Well, should we stop?

[Monica Padman]

Should we do a little double check?

[Dax Shepard]

Should we find maybe a little reverse maybe?

[Scott Payne]

Not a reverse. Maybe just pause. Let me get out. Look.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so you're from those South Carolina.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, born and raised in South Carolina.

[Dax Shepard]

And did you not want to retire there?

[Scott Payne]

No. Because when you get a chance to transfer in the FBI, you go to the headquarters division. I don't know what the RAs out of LA are, but let's just say you're in Tennessee. Yeah, it was Knoxville's headquarters city. But out of Knoxville you've got Chattanooga as a resident agency. They're satellite offices. We had one at Oak Ridge for a while. We got Johnson City. So Columbia and South Carolina is the headquarters city. I was raised in the upstate and I also lived and played ball and bounced down in Charleston. So for me, I either want mountains or I want the beach. I don't want the center of South Carolina because no offense to anybody who loves it there, but we call it the armpit of South Carolina because that's the hottest point.

[Dax Shepard]

You should call it the crotch if you've got, like, mountains.

[Scott Payne]

The tank.

[Dax Shepard]

The tank of South Carolina. That's got some charm to it.

[Scott Payne]

It's where University of South Carolina is at. But I didn't really care about going back to Greenville, even though I love it. That's where I grew up.

[Dax Shepard]

You were out of Knoxville Office for a lot of your work and then built a life and a house and bought property there, I assume.

[Scott Payne]

Yes, I was a cop in Greenville, South Carolina. Last two years I was a vice narcotics investigator. I get hired by the FBI. My first office is New York City.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh wow.

[Scott Payne]

I'm at 26 fed. And I was still assigned there when 911 happened. It's just the day of 911 I was undercover in San Antonio, Texas.

[Dax Shepard]

What age was that?

[Scott Payne]

I came in the Bureau at 28. So 29, 30.

[Dax Shepard]

In high school you're working for your dad, you're playing football, you're lifting weights, you're a musician, Right. You're into guitar. So you have your first taste of undercover work in high school. I think it's a good story. Well, I like it because there's a noble cause behind it.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. In the book process, I had to dive deep. You're getting asked these questions. At first it's just, hey, I'm going to tell you my blocks of instruction, the things I teach. This is what I've learned. Here's mistakes I made. Let's try to spread knowledge. I'm still trying to learn. But then you dive into, well, let's talk about you growing up. And then somewhere in that process, whether it was my co writer or the literary agents, they were like, what do you think's your first undercover? And I was like, the thing that's popping in my head is high school. My first two years of high school, my vice principal, Lloyd Walker, short stature, black guy, kind of balding, very similar looking like Mr. Jefferson Sky. Same suit. I don't know what it was. I felt like he did not like me. I felt like he rode my tail. But then again, I was a loudmouth teenage kid boy with testosterone, wearing sleeveless shirts and fingerless gloves and things you're not supposed to do.

[Dax Shepard]

Any dude wearing weightlifter gloves in high school, we gotta keep our eye on him.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's just be realistic.

[Scott Payne]

Throwing a spike bracelet or two.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we need to just be aware of what we.

[Scott Payne]

Roller quarters, some brass knuckles, which I don't even know what. You're carrying that.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh yeah.

[Scott Payne]

Butterfly knives.

[Dax Shepard]

Butterfly knives, Ninja stars, Slapjack.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, I still got one. So I felt like he was riding my tail. And then I was in a band called Shade of Green. We had a talent show. But my maturity was very, very low experience wise because I don't been playing cake parties. So if you're up there doing Pretty Woman or Hot for Teacher and you grab your crotch a LA Michael Jackson or something like that. You get a huge roar. Everybody's drunk. It's 80s. So now we're playing at a talent show where people are coming to see their kids play the violin, do magic tricks, karate tricks, some baton, I hope, some baton gospel stuff. And here we come out. I'm grabbing my crotch way more than I thought I was. Clearly, I was nervous. I knew I did it when I said hi for teacher, but apparently I was doing it. I didn't know I did. So they closed the curtain on us. It's very tvish. The curtain closes and they're trying to cut the power. And me and the bass player still stick our heads out. And they shut it off. The principal was Ms. Workman. She came out and my mother was there. My mother's a rock star. I'm her baby boy.

[Dax Shepard]

Only child, too.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, only child. We're out there in the foyer, and everybody's like, oh, man, that was awesome. And here comes Ms. Workman, and she's like, I'm gonna expel you. And she looks at my mom and she goes, you're his mother? She says, yes. She goes, did you see what your son did on stage? And my mom was like, yes, it was awesome.

[Dax Shepard]

He's a star.

[Monica Padman]

I love it.

[Scott Payne]

And I'm like, that's my mom. But I gotta find another school. So fast forward to, like, Monday. I get called in the vice principal's office, Mr. Walker. And I know it's the walk of shame. You're never called in there for anything good. At least in my experience. All right? So I go in there and he's like, we need to talk about what happened. I'm already protesting. I'm like, I know people said I did this, but I didn't do it that bad. This is bs. You're always on my back, whatever I'm saying. Because I'm a young idiot. He had a VCR tape for the listeners. They used to be VCR tapes. But he pops in the VCR tape and I'm watching it, and I'm going.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you've seen it? Really, for the first time.

[Scott Payne]

I'm like, that's intervention. I'm looking at it going, oh, my God. That's what I look like.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Scott Payne]

Why did I even take my hand off? I could have just left it there the whole time. And I look at him and I go, that's bad. I'm so sorry. And then I started talking about, like. Think about, like, Michael Jackson and these groups. And I said, they grabbed their crotch all the time before you know it, we were cutting jokes and laughing. I don't know if that was the catalyst, but after that it was like we were buddies or as close as you could be. Vice principal and a student. And then we get to the part in the book where he calls me into his office one day and he says, hey, man, did you hear about what happened to me? And I was like, yes, I did. Because I could drive past his house a lot. It was near my neighborhood. It wasn't like somebody took toilet paper and rolled his trees. They keyed his car, they spray painted his car. Spray painted his car. N word was on inward. Yeah, it was bad racial slurs.

[Dax Shepard]

It was like the horror story you hear.

[Scott Payne]

We're talking South Carolina in the 80s. In the 80s, you know, it takes a while to get out of that culture. And in some places, you still aren't out of it. You get out there in the rural areas and you're like. But he saw something in me. Through this process, I finally realized it's just me connecting to people. It's not blending in because I don't look like I'm a Beta Club member. But in the 80s, you had a smoking area. I could go in there and hang out. I was a jock. I could hang out with all the jocks. I could hang out with musicians. Yeah, the burnouts, potheads. I could hang out with her. Does that mean I smoked up back then? Yes. Yeah. That's how I hung out with him. I was even on the Beta Club. That was a weird fit. But he must have seen something. And he asked me if I'd be willing to help him try to figure out who did this, because he pretty sure it's somebody from the school that has a beef with him. And I said, absolutely, man. That's wrong, what they did. Some people may want to call it snitching or whatever. No, I'm doing the right thing. I'm fighting the good fight, even at a young age. So I start working crowds, Something simple like running the gym. Hey, man. Hell, yeah. How's it going? Yeah, shooting the bull. Hey, man, did you hear about what happened to Mr. Walker? Yeah, man, that's crazy. I did that in every circle. And not like, suspicious, I don't think. But there was one dude. We'd start talking and, man, his whole body language. You gotta go by the baseline, right? If you're always looking up when you answer, it doesn't mean you're lying. That's your baseline, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Scott Payne]

But if you never do it, and now I'm seeing different things. It's usually cause you're thinking and you're trying to make up something. This dude did the Homer Simpson.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you get super aware of everything you're doing. You have a level of self consciousness all of a sudden.

[Scott Payne]

And you do the back away sink into the shrubs. And I noticed that. I don't think they ever pinned it on him. But this part isn't in the book. I know that that kid slashed the tires on my car. We were at a night event. It might have been another talent show. But I came out and my cutlet supreme was flat and I was very angry.

[Dax Shepard]

And when you told the principal, he was like, yeah, that's who.

[Scott Payne]

I think they probably called him in and questioned him. But it was clear if he didn't do it, he definitely had something to do. Right. Mr. Walker was like, yep. I just recently. Whatever he did, maybe that kid got two weeks of after school suspension or something. But he had just gotten in trouble, Right? Most likely it was him and some friends outside of our high school. But my tires got slashed and I was pretty sure it was him. And then one day in school, I went after him. I waited for class to start. I went down to his classroom and I opened the door and I started busting through desks, knocking people out of the way, going at him. He ran into. There was a room in the back of that classroom where they did like the newspaper, which is where his girlfriend worked. And of course I got sent to the principal's office.

[Dax Shepard]

And he was lenient.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, Mr. Walker, he goes, now listen, I'm gonna have to yell instead of emerging next time. I'm telling you, Scott, don't you ever do that again and you'll be expelled. Let's get you out of the way. That's cool. So that's kind of when I started think connecting with people. Not that I'm necessarily deceiving them, but I'm trying to find out information.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so you go away to college, you end up majoring in psychology. You get a degree in psychology.

[Scott Payne]

I majored in criminal justice. Minored in psychology.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Scott Payne]

I could have had a double major. Two more classes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, Monica had a double major. Beat her to the punch.

[Scott Payne]

Well, if I went back for six hours. I just needed two classes.

[Monica Padman]

You should, you should go back.

[Scott Payne]

Oh really? Just roll in the class at Charleston Silva.

[Monica Padman]

You probably could.

[Dax Shepard]

So you end up getting a job as a police officer?

[Scott Payne]

Yes. At first I couldn't. I came out of college with a 38 average. My last two years on the dean's list playing NCAA football. But in South Carolina at that time, for whatever reason, four different departments told me I did really, really well. They would love to have me, but they weren't hiring black guys. And I said, that would have been nice to know before I graduated.

[Dax Shepard]

So how did you end up?

[Scott Payne]

I kept applying. I was already bouncing at gentlemen's clubs. I'm using air quotes. Sorry if I'm offending you, but you.

[Monica Padman]

Can be honest here.

[Scott Payne]

There are no gentlemen in those clubs. And ne I back then, it's funny.

[Dax Shepard]

You bring that up. I was just watching a documentary. You know, it's a story. This guy who had seen a guy beating the out of his girlfriend on the side of the road, then called the cops. That guy ended up having killed the woman. But in his statement to the cop, because they're now playing the audio on the documentary, he goes, well, the gentleman was hitting the girl. And I was like, no, I think you got that right. The piece of was hitting the woman.

[Scott Payne]

And where would the gentleman be? In the open.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so how long are you there? And when at that job do you start dabbling in undercover stuff?

[Scott Payne]

I graduate college, I can't get a job. I was actually overqualified to be a mall cop. They wouldn't hire me. So I took a job as a security officer for two months maybe. And then I said, I can't do it. I'm going back to bouncing. I went to a large country club in North Charleston. We had a law enforcement presence there. We all got certified in pressure points and control tactics by the state of South Carolina through law enforcement. So now I'm starting to get more exposed and I knew I wanted to to be a cop. And I get hired by Greenville County Sheriff's office. So I go back home and I'm uniform patrol for three years. And then my last two years I was able to become a vice and narcotics investigator. And that's when I now go back to Columbia to the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy. I get certified in undercover techniques.

[Dax Shepard]

How long is that program?

[Scott Payne]

That was just a one week school.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, really?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What are they telling you in there? Seems like a lot to learn in a week.

[Scott Payne]

It is a lot of role playing.

[Dax Shepard]

How to commit to your story, that kind of stuff.

[Scott Payne]

I don't even remember there if we really focused on backstory or not. That came in the FBI because. Because once I got back to the narcotics unit, if I was doing the undercovers, it's not deep undercover. I'm making A couple of buys and we're doing jump outs. Or I may be hopping in a car with a source also.

[Dax Shepard]

How hard is it when you're in the town that you work in?

[Scott Payne]

Very hard.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I'd imagine.

[Monica Padman]

How do people know you?

[Scott Payne]

That is a huge issue on the state and local level. Because if I'm in Greenville county, let's just say you get threatened. Greenville county, number one, doesn't have it in their budget. Number two, they're not going to spend money to move me outside of the county. I work for Greenville County. How many ways can I shave my facial hair? Cutting my hair on my head if I have any. It's very thin now I'm hanging on to what I got.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm in a battle myself.

[Scott Payne]

Oh man. Hourly I'll be at CPI stem cells next week in Tijuana. And I think I'm gonna get them to shoot something in my head, see if it does anything. So I start getting that bug. First thing I did was they rolled me down to a drug corner in a high trafficking drug area. And here I am at probably 270 pounds. I do not look like I smoke crack. And I'm going down there to ask for a 20 because it was a $20 for a crack rock. I was so scared. I was scared on multip because number one I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of the gurus that are training me. Number two, I'm just scared because I don't know what the hell.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

I go down there and they're like all you gotta do is roll up and they're gonna rush your car and you just tell em you want a 20. So they come up and I crack the window cause I'm so scared, I put the 20 through the window like it's a vending machine. And he's like what you want? Yelling at me and I'm like a. I'm like a 20, you know. He takes the 20 and then he yells at me to roll the window down cause he can't hand me the dope through the window. So I started getting that buzz and I started learning. But to the question you asked, I hope it's changed. Now I still teach at narcotics officers associations and conferences. I need to ask this question, the next one. But you come in as a fresh face. So as a fresh face you can go buy on the corners, hop in with the source. But after a while, that's your county or your city, you go to court. Before long everybody knows. But now you have the wisdom, and you can make great cases in that unit. But a lot of times, they'll kick you out to bring in a fresh face. But that fresh face has no experience working this stuff. So you got to have some kind of. Of transition or oversight. Once I got in the FBI and I learned about the undercover program, you get certified and we can go anywhere.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. So how do you end up at the FBI? Because I want to get into some of these cases.

[Scott Payne]

I remember sitting with my sergeant on the surveillance. He was a Southern Command narcotic. Sergeant Kellett, former marine. Fu Manchu. Looked like a bulldog. Built like a bulldog. I think he even had a bulldog on his arm.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure, he was committed.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe he went to Georgia.

[Scott Payne]

Maybe. Hey, Big Red.

[Monica Padman]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

Roll tide. No Roll tide.

[Monica Padman]

He always tries to. I always cut it.

[Scott Payne]

We can throw in the Tennessee balls and throw in a gator.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no.

[Scott Payne]

Now we'll be all throwing down.

[Dax Shepard]

Roll tie is usually sufficient to get her pissed off.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, I know, right? Bam. I'm sitting with him one day, and he says, hey, my nickname at that point was kingpin. He goes, kingpin. If I was your age, I had a degree and I was single, man. I'd apply with the FBI, and I'd put New York as my first office. And I was like, what in the hell's wrong? Like, you kidding me? Really? I only thought the FBI worked like bank robberies. I didn't know they worked drugs. And I started doing research, and I applied with them first because I was told they were the hardest to get hired by. Back then. I never got a chance to fill out DEAs or the Marshalls or anybody else. So it just kept going. I would pass phase one, and then it's lie detectors and physical fitness. And then you pass phase two, and then you get a slot as a new agent in Quantico.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Scott Payne]

So I go to Quantico. It's 98. I leave the sheriff's office.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you married yet or anything?

[Scott Payne]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

You have nothing tying you down?

[Scott Payne]

Got a bass handle in the truck.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Okay.

[Scott Payne]

I found out two months in that I was going to New York City. I started meeting NYPD cops. They're like, what do you drive? I go stick shift. Standard cab, 4x4 truck with a shotgun rack. And I got a Bassett. I'm like, oh, you're not coming up here with that. I get him. Yeah, I am. So I lived right on the river in Jersey. I was just north of the Empire State Building. Back then. I smoked cigarettes, and every night at midnight, I'd be out there letting my dog out, smoking a cigarette, and watch the lights cut off on the top.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the view.

[Scott Payne]

It's very surreal. So I start working there, and then I land this classified case and I get approved to be the undercover. After about 30 to 90 days, I became the primary, which means now I'm there full time. They ended up writing me in for a specialty transfer because we didn't know how long this undercover was going to go on. And that's how I got down to McAllen, Texas. Once that was over, then I got a slot in the undercover school.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so over the years, you've been in over a dozen of these long term, deep undercover situations. Probably my greatest interest up until I was probably 30 was outlaw biker gangs. I was obsessed with the Hell's Angels. I've read so many books about them. And you went undercover with the Outlaws?

[Scott Payne]

Yep. I'm right there with you. I read them all, too.

[Dax Shepard]

Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Hunter S. Thompson, one.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so the Outlaws, for people who don't know that's real as it gets, it's the Hells Angels and the Outlaws. And those two have always been embroiled in probably the biggest war.

[Scott Payne]

There's a large four, but they're at the top. Well, the Vargo, it usually goes Hells Angels, Outlaws, maybe Pagans after that. And I'm trying to remember, I think Mongols are small.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, Mongols, Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

I'm sorry. Bandidos are huge. It's probably Hells Angels, Outlaws, Bandidos, Pagans.

[Dax Shepard]

But nearly every time you read about a shootout at a casino, shootout at Bike Week, the Outlaws are involved.

[Scott Payne]

Could be.

[Dax Shepard]

They're for real.

[Scott Payne]

I will say it depends on the chapter, but yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, that's fair of you. Belushi brought one of his Hell's Angels friends out on stage during when they say good night. Oh, he also had Fear. Come on. Belushi did a lot of weird, but he got the band Fear to play. He also brought out Hell's Angels. He was on an elevator going up in 30 Rock, and two outlaws got in the elevator with him. And so we don't want to see that on TV again. That's like one of his stories.

[Scott Payne]

That makes sense.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so tell me that.

[Scott Payne]

Respect that.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me that. Because my understanding of is you got a probie for like a year in most of these clubs, right?

[Scott Payne]

Usually the bylaws would say six months, but because of law enforcement infiltration, I've heard Of some say you got to be a hangaround for two years before you can even prospect or probate. And then that's going to be a year process. So now you've got three years in it before you're even wearing a patch.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So how.

[Scott Payne]

It was a different thought process because I am not knocking anybody who's gained a patch. My ego wanted to patch. Of course, I would love to have that cut hanging. But here's what I can tell you. There have been hundreds of law enforcement officers who have patched into biker clubs. 1% are biker clubs. And a lot of times the cases didn't work because you got to do.

[Dax Shepard]

Enough shit to be in.

[Monica Padman]

What's it mean?

[Dax Shepard]

What's what mean?

[Monica Padman]

The patch.

[Dax Shepard]

So if you want to join the Hell's Angels, you're going to be a probie for at least a year. You go on all the camping trips like a rookie. Yeah. You get. You get your ass kicked.

[Scott Payne]

You do all the shit work, hazing.

[Dax Shepard]

And at the end of this experience, they will vote you in or out. If they vote you out, they keep your bike and your shit and they tell you to get the fuck out of town. If they invite you in, you get the patch. And once you put the patch on, if I'm at a bar and I want to fight at Hell's Angels, I have to say, please take your jacket off, because if I don't and I try to fight a guy with the patch on, I'm fighting the whole club. Those are the rules. I don't know why I'm saying all this.

[Scott Payne]

You're a. If you go far back in all the writings I've read, just like you've read 70s, 80s, you see that kind of stuff. But the patch is your cut. So you're going to have a top rocker and that's going to say Outlaws MC or Hell's Angels mc. And then the middle piece is going to be the death head for Hells Angels. Or it's going to be Charlie for the Outlaws, which is two cross pistons and a skull. They refer to the skull as Charlie. Then you have your bottom rocker. That bottom rocker is generally your state. So that's when you start getting into stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Territory wise, it's not your chapter, it's your state.

[Scott Payne]

State. Like Boston. Boston was weird because Boston and south of Boston was outlaw territory. North of Boston was Hells Angels territory.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Scott Payne]

So you get in big areas like that. Or Florida. Florida has.

[Dax Shepard]

California's a mess.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, it's a big state. I mean, and it's a great riding state with great weather. Also a good three way for drugs and criminal activity.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, a lot of meth out here. Supported all those groups.

[Scott Payne]

Not saying they all do it, just saying.

[Dax Shepard]

So how did you get ingratiated?

[Scott Payne]

What I ended up doing, and trust me, in the case, there were multiple chances to patch. I was pleaded by certain members to, hey, man, just get a P.O. box up here. You come in here, man. You patch. This is me in the clubhouse on recording with the doors locked. And I'm like, I'm very humbled by that. That means so much to me. I said, but why would I subject myself to six months of bullshit? I'm now gonna be sleeping. I'm gonna go around with my fanny pack with the go kit, which usually includes condoms, tampons, cigarettes, lighters, knives, drugs.

[Dax Shepard]

Everything they don't want to carry.

[Scott Payne]

You calling me at three in the morning to haze me, to tell me to change the oil on your bike or go wash your bike. And then I stand on this side of the bar serving you guys all weekend, not being able to drink. And then when I do drink, I got to pay for it when I'm sitting here drinking for free right now. And they were like, wait, what? I said, listen, I'm not trying to piss you off. This is what we did. I came up with a legend. The team agreed. I'm a site survey specialist, parlaying off of my landscaping background. I travel the country for investors, looking at property to buy. That's my legit reason for being there. Then I start seeing their criminal activity. And then I let them see me doing some criminal activity. And they believed that I was a high ranking member of an international theft ring based out of McAllen, Texas. And I moved stolen goods to Mexico to the cartel to trade for whatever, even if it's just money. But everything I was doing was factually based. They could have looked it up. I was working with Texas Department of Public Safety. I was working with border patrol. I knew how much dirty law enforcement officers were being paid. 5 to 15 grand to let a car go through. Everything I did was factual. And then they were making money off of me. So we were getting everything we needed for the case really quick.

[Dax Shepard]

How are you doing? Because this is one of my questions later.

[Scott Payne]

But we're here.

[Dax Shepard]

You clearly have to do illegal shit to earn their confidence. How is that sorted?

[Scott Payne]

I can't say a lot because of tradecraft. There's still undercovers out there trying to do this. There are ways that I can partake in criminal activity. Well, let's just use what we did. They started reporting vehicles stolen. So you're going to get your insurance money. Now you got to get rid of the vehicle. You sell it to me at a stolen price and you believe that I'm taking them south to Mexico and they believe that I'm doing criminal activity with them.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, because you are making shit disappear.

[Scott Payne]

But then it becomes I got your trust now you've carjacked a vehicle. Vehicle. Now you're just stealing F350s off of a lot. So then they call me and they go hey Tex. Which is what they called me. Not very original. I'm from Texas. They're like I got a redneck accent. Text, hey, we got this hot car man. We got to get rid of it. We just jacked this dude at gunpoint. We almost killed him. All right, I got it man. I'll get rid of it. That's how it all started playing.

[Dax Shepard]

What was the results of that case?

[Scott Payne]

The Taunton chapter was pretty much disbanded and 12 to 15 went to jail.

[Dax Shepard]

How long were you in that one?

[Scott Payne]

Two years. One.

[Dax Shepard]

Now this is a weird question but I feel like there must be an answer.

[Scott Payne]

I'm a weird guy.

[Dax Shepard]

You did biker gangs. You did a sheriff's department. You did a bunch of white nationalist stuff. Kkk. And this one's got to be the most fun.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah right.

[Dax Shepard]

You got.

[Scott Payne]

I thought about it for a second.

[Monica Padman]

Well I hope it wasn't the white nationalist.

[Dax Shepard]

Well going to get to that. Why would you hug the had to sit through is maddening. When I'm reading about these dum dums you got to listen to talk about their conspiracy. I mean that sounds maddening to me at least the outlaws I'm into this and I would be more afraid to have on my back having messed with the outlaws than I would be these weird cell white nationalist things because outlaws. You have tears. You have 60 year old, 70 year old. This is going to live on.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Is that a little more scary the.

[Scott Payne]

Way I usually answer questions Kind of around that same realm as this. Look, in law enforcement it's what you do. Let's go back to the county or the city. You. How many arrests have you made in a year? They're already out of jail. Are you not running into them at the grocery store? Are you not running at them at Target? So for me personally, my best defense has always been a good offense. If I see you and I'm like hey, holy cow man, how are you doing? Yeah, I've seen you in Forever. Man, you on the up and up. How's the family? Things going? Good.

[Monica Padman]

Do you ever feel guilty?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You had to have become friends in that two years with some folks.

[Scott Payne]

There are a lot of people out there who know, know, and I cover it well in the book. That Scott town. It is the closest relationship I built with a possible target on any case I've ever done.

[Dax Shepard]

Scott is tied as the most famous FBI agent of all time with. Yeah. With the Donnie Brosco undercover. Okay, well, you're not gonna say.

[Monica Padman]

You're not gonna take the.

[Dax Shepard]

Joe Stone is the very famous. He was Donnie Brasco. And I think that movie did an incredible job of the heartbreak of having gained someone's trust who may love you and you love them. Them.

[Scott Payne]

I play a clip from that movie when I'm teaching just undercover stuff. And it's the one where he's in the car and he's saying, if you're a rat. And he takes the pistol and he goes, I'm the biggest mutt in the history of Mafia. I play that because that's when I get into the point of saying, what is undercover? What do you think it is? And I've asked some people. I mean, I'll ask you. When you hear undercover, what does it mean to you?

[Dax Shepard]

Gaining trust.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Some trick with the ultimate goal of holding them accountable for something that's very good.

[Scott Payne]

Usually I'll get, like, lying or you're playing a character, you're acting. I'm building relationships that I'm going to betray. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And you know that going in, that's so hard.

[Scott Payne]

And you need to be able to figure out how you can rationalize that in your mind and it not have an adverse impact on your psyche. And it's not always easy. And I'm human. I've done the training. I've been through the training. I've put on the training. I've got mentors, peers, people that I've been blessed to mentor. But I've made plenty of mistakes.

[Dax Shepard]

You think you can compartmentalize, and you can for periods, and then all of a sudden, the door's open. You're sitting somewhere, and the compartment comes open. I mean, this is what, like, juggling being an addict is like, literally, Saturday didn't happen. We're erasing that from the books. And three months later, all of a sudden, you're immersed in that Saturday.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. And this book again, you gotta dive deep. All the interviews I've been doing, it's emotionally exhausting, I'm sure. I bet.

[Dax Shepard]

But there's a lot of stuff you'd prefer not to think about again.

[Scott Payne]

It's not so much that. Because goes, I am a talker. I think the Lord put me here to feel silence with noise. When it's quiet. When it's quiet, I'm like anything. Why is it so quiet?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. One time, Dax and I were at the airport and he was talking so much, and then he finally stopped and he said, what else can I talk about? I was like, oh, my God, we can't go five minutes?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. No. Well, I pass the baton to you, but somebody better be talking. Yeah, it's tough.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, hold on. Then there's something interesting there, because one, there's just. You are who you are. You kind of come out a certain way, for sure. But then also there's your childhood. And so mine was, if I can control the temperature in this room, I can predict where it's going. I'll feel safer if I have a role in what the temperature in this room is.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[Dax Shepard]

And so dad had pretty bad depression.

[Scott Payne]

That's actually what brought me to psychology.

[Monica Padman]

That makes sense.

[Dax Shepard]

But I gotta imagine as. As a young kid whose parents are getting divorced and both are struggling. Your dad's really struggling. If you can set the tone in that room, that's preferred.

[Scott Payne]

I've never heard it put that way. That is a great way to say it, and I'm probably going to permanently borrow it from this point forward. But, yeah, that's kind of what you're doing now. I want to be clear, because some people are haters, might be like, well, if you look every case you've arrested, everybody. You set everything up. That's not what I mean by controlling the room. If you are committing criminal acts and you're predicated, I'm not coming up to you not knowing you and going, hey, I know you're broke. I'll give you 40 grand if you carry this kilo across the street. That's entrapment.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. You can't do that. Yes.

[Scott Payne]

But when I tell you, they go, where are you from? And I go, mcallen, Texas. Right on the border. No. How much can you get a kilo of cocaine for? That's the next sentence out of your head.

[Dax Shepard]

And I go, yeah, well, as a.

[Scott Payne]

Matter of fact, now that you ask.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, but, yeah, I. I think some element of it is looking for safety in all the many ways that means.

[Scott Payne]

Well, think of it this way. And I permanently borrowed this term from a buddy of mine, Terry Rankhorn. Phenomenal undercover. He's retired as well too. Helped certify me, actually. But he says, look, we're playing chess. People think I'm just out there gifted, gabbing and I'm drinking. I'm flying first. I'm doing whatever. No, man, it's a chess game. We are trying to stay four moves ahead. You're reading the room and it still doesn't work all the time. That's how I ended up in a basement at gunpoint.

[Dax Shepard]

Please tell Monica that's I'm scared.

[Scott Payne]

I was too.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess that's a universal fear.

[Scott Payne]

Being in the basement with a guy. Wow.

[Monica Padman]

Wait. Yeah. How'd that happen?

[Scott Payne]

As I say, a lot of times when I'm teaching, I go, I would much rather have heard that story about somebody else and go, man, that sucks. Than to be standing there naked going, this sucks.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Claude, the AI assistant. That just feels different, you know? We're curious about the old artificial intelligence here on the pod.

[Monica Padman]

We are curious.

[Dax Shepard]

And we always want to give our armchairs the if, you know, you know, tips.

[Monica Padman]

We sure do.

[Dax Shepard]

So they need to meet our new pal, Claude. While other AIs sound like robots, Claude just gets it with the emotional intelligence. Whether I'm researching gas or refining my latest meal plan to get Brad Pitt's abs or looking for the best dating advice to give Monica, Claude is the fact checker in your pocket while you're in the armchair.

[Monica Padman]

Well, that's exciting for us. I like having an extra companion.

[Dax Shepard]

Welcome to the team, Claude. You can try Claude for free [e-mail]. that's C-L-A-U-D-E.com. we are supported by Vital Proteins. Vital Proteins is the most popular brand of collagen peptides in the US For a reason. Reason. They're the experts. It's simple to add to your routine and it has four benefits all in one. Helping to support hair, skin, nails, bones and joints. These are all things that I really am in a battle to keep healthy.

[Monica Padman]

Me too. And this is the kind of peptide I can get behind. Yeah, you love this. Tasty.

[Dax Shepard]

Very. By adding one serving of vital proteins collagen peptides daily, you can help support your hair, skin, nail, bone and joint health. It's an easy life hack that will have you feeling and moving your best. Get 20% off by going to vitalproteins.com and entering promo code DAX at checkout. That's vitalproteins.com promo code DAX for 20% off. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. We are supported by Apple TV plus presenting the hit limited series Presumed Innocent, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Nega. Hailing from David e. Kelly and J.J. abrams, starring Gyllenhaal in the lead role of Chief Deputy Prosecutor Rusty Savage, Presumed Innocent explores a horrific murder that upends the Chicago prosecutor prosecuting attorney's office when one of its own is suspected of the crime. The series delves into obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.

[Monica Padman]

I loved this show and I started.

[Dax Shepard]

It per your recommendation and I love it too. Critics rave about the fantastic ensemble and say Presumed Innocent is brilliant, undeniably compelling and TV at its highest quality. Now streaming on Apple TV. [e-mail] we are supported by Brooks Running. If you're a runner, you've definitely heard about Brooks. They're a reliable, high quality brand known in the running community for being the best in the biz. Brooks gifted both of us pairs of the Glycerin 22 sneakers and man, I love mine.

[Monica Padman]

Really comfortable.

[Dax Shepard]

Got the right pair of shoes, can make all the difference when it comes to getting out and working out. I'm doing some my sprints in them.

[Monica Padman]

Huh?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, just total comfort on my knees.

[Monica Padman]

Also, great design.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, very stylish. The Glycerin 22 is for anyone whose feet crave a cushioned experience. The wide platform plus the tuned heel and forefoot help your foot land and transition from heel to toe smoothly and steadily. Okay, this is smart engineering. Listen to this. The sole of these shoes has a next gen nitrogen infused foam with larger cells in the heel to provide plush landings. And then there are smaller cells in the forefoot to invite responsive toe offs. That's a fancy way of saying saying they thought of everything here and these shoes perform great and feel even better. So whether you're running, hitting the gym, or just want to feel maximum comfort and stability as you live your active lifestyle, give Brooks a try. Learn [e-mail].

[Scott Payne]

So I told you a little bit of backstory with the Outlaws. They've carjacked stuff we've now covered dope deals. The case team's up on wiretaps, which is not like TV by the way. You don't go, I need to be on this phone in five minutes. No, we're talking like 80 page affidavits, weeks and weeks, not months of prep. Anyway, all that stuff was happening. So now we're at a point in the case, a year and a half in. And these are my friends. Scott town's a great friend. Brian della Vega, clothesline is a good friend.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you're going to kids birthday parties, I imagine.

[Scott Payne]

Joe dogs is the president of the taunton chapter that time and he's a friend. And everything after that kind of trickles down. But we are now to the point. They've been hounding me about d. We've laid out breadcrumbs. They have now seen my truck drivers come on multiple occasions to pick up stolen equipment, take it somewhere. They think we're taking it to Mexico. We're actually taking it to a warehouse somewhere. And we decide as a case team. United States attorney's office, all of us. Okay, now's the time they've been asking about it. We've got the predication this, that and the other. So let's lay out my story was that yes, I did used to be involved in a dub game because they know I have cartel contacts and they know that the reason I never got cut out as a green, the white guy, is because I'm the one with the contacts at the port of entry and the checkpoints. So without me, you can't get your stuff through. That was my story. So I laid breadcrumbs and let them know that yes, I did used to be in the dope game, but some of my people were getting popped. Heat was getting close. I pulled shocks. Then we laid it out that my contacts reached out to me because they wanted to take dope into Canada, but their contacts up there had fell through. And essentially we're going to do a drug exchange from one truck to another truck. We did have 40 kilos of real cocaine. We had a thousand pounds of real weed. And this is 2007. Now, can you imagine? Do you think there's a SWAT team overseeing this? Do you think there's snipers on the roof? Yes, because we cannot let 40 kilos walk. We cannot get ripped if the bad guys decide to go even more bad and say 40 kilos. Let's a look. Take, take it.

[Monica Padman]

Well, how are they getting it?

[Dax Shepard]

The government seizing all this money. So they have warehouses. They have these burns down in Texas.

[Monica Padman]

That the government owns.

[Dax Shepard]

It's heartbreaking. Imagine watching them shoveling Cartier watches into a box.

[Scott Payne]

To each their own. Look at this contraband being burnt. True. We'll save one sample. We're going to do the deal and the U.S. attorney's office, of course, we want to gather as much evidence as we can of who's going to be helping and get the recordings and all that stuff. So I go to the clubhouse the night before the deal. A weird exchange happens at the beginning between me and Joe Dogs because he's the one that told me to come. And then I get there and they're still having church. And for the listeners that don't know, especially in your one percenter clubs, there's usually a mandatory meeting once a week, and they refer to that as church.

[Dax Shepard]

It's kind of a cute rebrand.

[Monica Padman]

It's cute.

[Scott Payne]

It's still going on. And I'm like, well, why'd you even tell me to come? So I go get something to eat, come back, and then I go in. Well, what I don't know is that because we have upped the ante to do this big deal, it made it all the way to the top, to the national president, who was Milwaukee Jack at that point of the Outlaws. And he sends it back down. Wait a minute. Why does this deal happen? Who is this guy? Has he really been checked? I find out again later on that Clothesline and others were like, yeah, I mean, we've done like eight jobs with this guy. Carjacking, stolen vehicle here, moving this here. None of us are in bracelets meaning handcuffs. Yeah, we think he's good. Doesn't matter. Do what you do. So I didn't know that. And I show up to the clubhouse wired to the hilt because I'm trying to get evidence.

[Monica Padman]

That's what we do.

[Dax Shepard]

So you have a little camera somewhere on you?

[Scott Payne]

Somewhere. I've got video and audio, and then I have a backup audio, and then I have a transmitter.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no.

[Dax Shepard]

Hey, now I'm out. I like hanging out and maybe doing drugs.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. Well, here's the thing. So we're talking again. 2007. Ish. Just think of how much technology has changed between now and then.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, sure.

[Scott Payne]

I mean, look. Look how small.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, just think, now everyone's carrying a phone. That thing can just be recorded.

[Monica Padman]

You could probably do it with icons.

[Scott Payne]

They're just insane stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

The fucking glasses.

[Monica Padman]

I don't want to give anyone any ideas, but I'm just saying.

[Scott Payne]

Well, people think generally we can do more than we can anyway because of tv. But technology is way better now. So let's just say I had technology of 2007, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no.

[Scott Payne]

So I go into the clubhouse and I'm cracking jokes, but what I don't see is when I'm cracking jokes, if I'm leaning this way and I'm looking down the bar and I'm doing my normal shtick, and I'm cracking country ass jokes in my accent, and everybody's like, we're all laughing. High five. And when I would turn my head, they would go complete stone face because they know what they're doing. Their whole meeting was about bringing me in, checking I didn't pick up on it, and there was a false alarm. They took me down into the basement. But I'll just get to the part they carried me down. Clothesline, who's supposed to be my second closest friend, says, yo, Tex, you got. And I said, yeah. He walks me through this door that I've never been in, even though I've been in that clubhouse I don't know how many times, it's the only door I hadn't been through. And it leads into a very tight stairwell down into a. If I call it a basement, that's being generous because I couldn't stand up straight.

[Dax Shepard]

It's more of a crawl space.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. And I could touch the wall probably on both sides. I see rope. I see that they have both brandished their pistols. One outlaw follows me, and he stands on the steps with his pistol, and he's walking. And Clothesline proceeds to tell me there's a lot of shit going on, and it's my job to take care of my brothers because I want you to write down your full name, date of birth, Social Security, everything. And I need you to take all your clothes off. I need to check you for a wire.

[Monica Padman]

I hate this.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, me too.

[Monica Padman]

And there's no one in a van across the street.

[Scott Payne]

We'll get to that.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

But really quick. Also, you have to be playing the game in your head where you're like, okay, so I'm not wired. I am the guy. What's my reaction?

[Scott Payne]

I would love to say yes to that answer, but I was shitting Goldberg. I was having an adrenaline dump. It's the fight or flight or freeze.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Mid brain is in charge.

[Scott Payne]

And then you are hopefully doing what you've trained or rehearsed in your head. And that's what I did. If I had not seen me do these things on the video, I would have never known I did them. But just like I can show you, cops and military first responders and shootouts, they have no idea how many rounds they shot. They have no idea that they did a magazine exchange behind effective cover. They just do It. Because they've trained it so much and it's instinctive. So in the undercover world, okay, now I'm down there, I'm trying to write my name down. If you've ever been through a traumatic incident, whether it's a car or whatever, everything just slows down. And your auditory exclusion, everything's going whoosh. What I'm hearing is like, scott, I need.

[Dax Shepard]

I've even had sight get minimal.

[Scott Payne]

So that happens. You're getting the tunnel vision. Yeah. And everything's time dilation. It's in clicks. It's like in frames, right? You go click, click, click. You can hear and feel your heart beating through your entire body. Palms are sweaty. I'm starting an Eminem song here.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Scott Payne]

I'm trying to talk and I'm trying to write my name and I forgot my middle name. I've been this dude forever. I know, I know. I'm Scott Calloway. But because of the stress, I don't even know. And I was blessed enough to put this training on to some Navy SEALs. And one of the SEALs caught it and he said, man, if you look, your hand's not even shaking the entire time. You're trying to remember your name. And I'm like, well, my insides were shaking.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Payne]

And I yell back, I'm like, and what else do you. You need? I don't even know. I do it. And he's like, what? I go, my name and what else? It didn't sound that clear, though, because I'm crapping myself. It sounds like, what else do you need? My name. What else? I'm not even enunciating. He yells up and I hear, what do you need for that website? So I'm like, okay, they're going to Google search me. There was a. Who's a rat dot com. There was things like that. And I go, okay, I'm cool with that. Then I remember my initials were SAC because that is the head of an FBI office. And I thought that was funny because I know I'd never be one. So I made my initials a little humor for myself. But I remember Scott Andrew Calloway. So I write that down. I take all my other upper clothing off. I probably was layered because it was cold. I take my boots off. I pull my underwear and jeans down to my ankles. So from ankle up, I'm naked and it was cold.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure. And you were scared. Wasn't your best showing, is my guess.

[Scott Payne]

I'm not attracted to you. I feel like I'm possibly getting ready to Die in the terms of a Seinfeld episode. That was a whole different level of shrinkage. Oh, my God. We're dealing with a woman. I thought he was an FBI agent. So woman. I know. I don't care what I look like right now. I just want to get out of here, you know? So I take all my clothes off, and he checks everything. I'm trying to talk. I know. Clothesline for a year and a half. At this point, even though my words aren't saying it, my face is saying, tell me I'm okay. And his face back to me is kind of like, look, it's just business. However, he doesn't know that I'm an FBI agent undercover who's wired to the Hill.

[Monica Padman]

He's probably like, don't be that worried.

[Scott Payne]

You're going to get through this. And these are his words exactly. I think they even quoted it in the press release after the takedown. He said, trust me, if somebody accused me of being a fed, I'd probably smash them in the effing mouth. And I said, I'm not happy. And he said, I wouldn't be either. And I tell them, you guys asked for this. I did not come to you. You came to me. If nobody wants to do, nobody has to do. Those are my exact words. Not as clear as that because I'm.

[Dax Shepard]

Crapping my pants and all the gear's in your clothes. Somehow, some.

[Scott Payne]

Yes. Some tradecraft. I won't say where, you can't say.

[Monica Padman]

But you aren't exposed currently. They're not seeing anything.

[Scott Payne]

They're not seeing. Yeah, correct. I think I'm done. And then I'm pulling my pants back up. I'm putting my boots back on, and then he grabs a particular piece of clothing. And when he grabs it, I'm like. When he grabs it, he goes, hey, I'm not going to find anything here. I don't want to. Right? Like some naked pictures of my old lady. And he goes. And my laugh is like, you know, yeah, yeah. And I even say, I now. I'm sitting here up against the wall, my head tilted, and I'm watching him take this piece of clothing and go through it. We call this kneading. He's kneading it with his hands, and he's feeling it. I'll just say this. Technology wise, in 2007, had he grabbed that part of that clothing, he would have felt something. And he gets close, and he even looks directly at a camera and misses it when he's doing that. I have no idea how to do it. But you can hear clear on the record recording me watch him. And I go.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

It's a verbal sigh. Yeah. Because my insides are saying, it's over. He misses it. He hands it back to me, and I go right into business. But it's just nervous chatter. Joking. Even though I'm a jokester anyway, it's definitely a self defense mechanism. I feel like I can't breathe. PTSD's kicking in, and people ask all the time, hey, man, what would you have said if you had found it? And I remember it like it was yesterday. My first response probably would have been something funny if he would have said, what is this? I might have said, I don't know, some naked pictures of your old lady to try to buy me some time. Sort of laugh it off. The only other response I had is the gig is up. I'm an undercover FBI agent and I can walk out of here and we can see each other in court, or all hell's going to break loose. And here's the kicker. That would have been a bluff on my part. Cause up until that point, to my knowledge, my cover team, for whatever reason, thick walls, bad equipment, they could never hear me in that clubhouse. What?

[Monica Padman]

But you didn't know that. That.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, I did.

[Dax Shepard]

You would just have to be betting on the notion that they're gonna assume they're watching.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, currently.

[Dax Shepard]

And if you don't come out now, they've got a fed murder.

[Scott Payne]

You always try to plan contingencies, contingency plan, A, B, C, D. Four or five moves ahead. But he didn't find it. He hands it back to me. And that night, my adrenaline dump just turns into anger. I end up going out with Joe Dogs in Scott Toown. And luckily, they didn't take it personally or anything, but I took it personal. And I shouldn't have because I'm just undercover. But I was pissed. Now that adrenaline, Adrenaline's coming down. I'm like, you know what? Tomorrow, if y' all do show up, I'm stripping you naked in the parking lot. How's that? Come prepared. It's gonna be chilly.

[Monica Padman]

That's good, because that's what you would have done if you weren't undercover.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it's also hard to know you're just modeling these scenarios. I'm mirroring what's annoying about some of these docs you watch where the cops come and they're like, he wasn't acting like someone whose wife just died. Like, how the. Do you know how someone acts on their wife? Like, that's bullshit. That's what you saw on tv. That's what you thought of in your nobody knows what anybody does until it's happening.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, that's the same thing I would have done at Scott Payne. Who do you think you are, taking me into a damn basement? Even though they were right, I wasn't undercover.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, yeah, you didn't have the moral.

[Monica Padman]

High grounds, but that's what we all do. We justify things to ourselves. Even if we know we're wrong, we can find a way.

[Scott Payne]

There's some crazy things about that story. There's great training principles to everything that was going on. Because what I found out when I hand off my equipment that night is that they did hear everything. The main case team was an FBI agent named Tim. He was a good buddy of mine. We actually went through the academy together as new agents, and we were really close friends through that whole process. He helped me find my apartment in New York City. So Tim's now the case agent. Two task force officers, Sergeant Higginbottom with the Massachusetts State Troopers, and Detective Joe Cummings out of Brockton pd That was the main case team. We had a DEA counterpart, Nancy Morelli, but that was pretty much it. You might get some bodies here and there, but everybody trickles off. It's just. That's the core team. That night, starting the shift, it was Higgy and. And that first interaction that happened between me and Joe, dogs at the door, they were like, something's not right. And they pulled in a place to where they could hear me, and they were listening to everything. They radioed back to everybody else that was starting the shift in Boston and said, they got Scott in the basement. They're stripping him, and he's wired to what I was told is everybody's hauling tail with blue lights and sirens down the highway to get to me. They listened to me, even though they could clearly hear. I was scared because they knew my basement line. They were waiting for something to break. Bad. They knew the insides of that clubhouse because they'd been there on law enforcement activity. They knew how fortified the door was. It was dead bolted. I think it was a steel frame. They definitely had welded metal hooks and a steel bar across the door. So it's heavily fortified. Their plan was they suited up, vested up, got their gear, and they were going to drive the van into the cinder block wall beside the door to breach around the door versus the the door. But they listen to me, and I make it out. The other thing, that if I get personal, because I'm Very transparent. And I always say my life's an open book. And literally it now is an open book at that point in my marriage. Our youngest daughter was around one, so three and one years old. I got two daughters and I'd bought my wife a burner phone, which is common these days, but back then they didn't call them burner phones. But I'm basically buying a phone that I pay by the minute, comes back to nothing because I don't want to call her phone from an undercover phone. You don't want to call an FBI phone from an undercover phone. That's terrible operational security. So I bought her that. On that Outlaws case, I would call her every night. I don't care if it was four in the morning, seven in the morning, I'd be like, hey, babe, I'm half lit. I'm driving home. Just want you know, I'm good. I'll call you after I wake up. Sometimes we talk. Usually it was okay, honey. Love you. Love you too. That night when I called her, the first thing she said was, is, are you okay? And I said, yes. Why?

[Dax Shepard]

Barely.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. And she said, at such and such time. I was in McAllen driving with the girls in the car. She said, I got this overwhelming feeling and I pulled over on the side of the road and I started praying for you. So I matched it up. That's when I was in the basement getting stripped. Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

The spidey senses were traveling across the universe.

[Scott Payne]

Holy spirit. In my world, I was in Boston. Look on a map. Boston to McAllen as a long way away from each other. She felt it.

[Dax Shepard]

I believe that.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. It was insane. That's just one of the many things.

[Dax Shepard]

That happen on the gnarliest. If you had to give one a number one man.

[Scott Payne]

There's been several. I did joke with her after this book and doing these interviews and stuff, I go, I feel like I need to have a couple more life threatening experiences. I'm running out of stories. She's like, no. And I'm like, all right, fine.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that was fucking incredible. People are going to have to buy the book to hear about the kkk. The one I do want to talk about, though. So you wrote this book with Michelle Shepard.

[Scott Payne]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And she's got an incredible podcast. I really urge people to listen to it. It's great. Season two is you.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. The original one was six episodes. White hot hate that covered the group, the base. That's before we ever met. She didn't know me, but I heard it because people were sen it to Me.

[Dax Shepard]

And she kept hearing him in all this court testimony, but just not knowing who this name was.

[Scott Payne]

So when I retire and then I get the chance to be interviewed by Rolling Stone, Ashley Mack and her crew back in Canada were like, oh my gosh, this is him.

[Dax Shepard]

This is the guy we've been listening to. And she thought she was going to do one episode of season two with Scott. That's what she was shooting for, as people do with you.

[Scott Payne]

We got six episodes called White Hot Hate Agent Pale Horse. But I will say it plays like a documentary.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so well produced. Cbc, that's Canadian.

[Scott Payne]

Yep. Canada broadcast Communique. I don't know how.

[Dax Shepard]

I said they do a damn good job. It's a really good podcast.

[Scott Payne]

They actually interview Higgy, this task force officer who was sitting outside and observed me and he said, hey man, what can I say? I said, you tell him the truth. I know my experience, but I want to hear yours. And it was surreal to hear him.

[Dax Shepard]

He's basically the guy that just heard there's inbound nukes. Do I hit? Deploy nukes? That's really what's happened. Do I blow up this two years? What a fucking decision to have to make.

[Scott Payne]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Because many times he has to be your friend. Fuck this case and fuck these guys. We're going in right now. I don't get give a. Yep.

[Monica Padman]

But it could have also backfired because if they heard sirens, as if they could have just killed.

[Scott Payne]

You could have a lot of people ask, what do you think would have happened? I'm like, I don't know. If you ask them now, they'd be like, oh, nothing. We found out that's a normal MO from them. We found out from other people who were victims. Females they brought down into that same crawl space and held a knife to their throat and threatened to kill them.

[Dax Shepard]

People have been killed in that crawl space for sure.

[Scott Payne]

Probably. I don't know. Who knows?

[Dax Shepard]

Don't sue me, outlaw.

[Scott Payne]

I didn't see plastic on the floor. I did look for that. Anyway, I'm sorry to get off on a tangent back on the Outlaws, but explain the base. Sure. And this is big teaching stuff now because even in law enforcement, when people hear white supremacy, they might know Aryan Nation, they might know KKK for sure because it's been around for so long. But that's not this. They're neo Nazis, so they want Hitler's Germany back. They want the white race on top. The rundown goes like this. The Garden of Eden, the story in the beginning of the Bible. Adam and Eve. You got one tree, you can't eat the fruit from the fruit of the bed tree. Eve is tempted by the serpent, AKA Satan. She takes a bite of the fruit, she gets Adam to take a bite of the fruit and we're sinners. From then on Christian identity takes it and says same story. But the fruit of the forbidden tree is a sexual act and the serpent is actually a man of color, AKA Satan. And they have that sexual act and she gets pregnant with Cain. Once Cain is born, they consider that the mud race, non white mud race all the way down. But Adam and Eve did procreate and that's Abel and that's the pure white race.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean twisted. This is what he's got to sit when I talk about him sitting around having to listen to these guys tell him how the world works. How maddening that would be for me.

[Scott Payne]

Pour me another drink.

[Dax Shepard]

I'd way rather have a lot of scary outlaw biker experiences.

[Monica Padman]

How old is that theory? Cuz it sounds like they stole it from Harry Potter.

[Scott Payne]

No, it's older. As far as I know. The real push came with Reverend Butler and he was the leader of the Aryan Nation. And that was back when the Red Ray fair and all these days they wore their uniform. It was Church of Jesus Christ, Christian. But they take it and twist it. Much like a lot of your newer age accelerationists. Which I'll talk about here in just a second. They're taking paganism and they're switching it. I've got plenty of close friends that are pagans. They have the pagan belief. I mean you see I got Viking stuff all over my arm.

[Dax Shepard]

The real and Norse.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, and so was Hitler. But they take that and twist it. They're not doing a traditional pagan blot, they're doing harm. Horrific white supremacy stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, but it has changed. When I was a kid and I was in the punk scene, there were skinhead Nazis. Yep, they all look the same. But it's not that now. It's these fucking schlubby nerdy.

[Scott Payne]

Could be it's evolved. There was a whole movement called and it's still out there, it's called entryism. And that's where you see clean cut white guys, no tattoos, suits and ties. But they're acting like they're trying to infiltrate government.

[Dax Shepard]

There's like proud boy type stuff.

[Scott Payne]

Proud boy just like to beat people up. Proud boys, not white supremacy. Proud boys are anti guns government pro gun. And they like to fight. I've done a lot of militia cases. I didn't Put in the book because I didn't know if they were still going. I didn't want to jeopardize anything, nor would the FBI have approved it anyway. So accelerationism goes like this. They do not believe that there is a political solution to save the white race. They believe that society is going to collapse on its own or from man made events. And they want to speed that up through like guerrilla warfare tactics like poison a water system, derail a train, take out a power grid, start killing anti fascist belief people, start killing lefties and definitely killing Jewish people and ridding the world of non whites.

[Dax Shepard]

Good luck to finding that.

[Scott Payne]

But yes, Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. By the way, a lot of these white supremacy groups I was in, there was no 23 and me being done.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Scott Payne]

Because I wouldn't Big easy.

[Dax Shepard]

What was the dude's name?

[Scott Payne]

Big siege.

[Dax Shepard]

And his name's Yousef something. As it turns out.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. I mean that's curious.

[Scott Payne]

He didn't tell everybody his name was Yousef.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God.

[Scott Payne]

But acceleration, they don't like any government. It's almost like dark white supremacy meets militia. Anti government. Because we're out there training with machine guns. Well, submachine guns, not fully automatic, and pistols. Doing firearms and tactics. Training hand to hand combat, how to live off the land to prepare for what they were calling the boogaloo. Not exactly the same Boogaloo that's in the militia movement, but close. Boogaloo is basically D day. It's the start of the race war and they are building kits to do that. A lot of them didn't have jobs. I have read some responses. Is like my kid had a job. Yeah, he worked on and off for you. And he hated it. He told me for seven months he hated it. He didn't have an arsenal. He only had one gun. That's bs. He had plenty of guns. I was with him when he sold them on arms list to other people and bought other guns. But let's not just talk about the guns. Let's talking about plate carriers.

[Dax Shepard]

What are plate carriers?

[Scott Payne]

So it's your bulletproof vest but the plate carrier, the plate stops. Right. So they're ordering cry precision plate carriers. It's the same thing FBI SWAT's wearing.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God.

[Scott Payne]

And I'm like, that's some expensive shit. Literally. I could have taken my FBI rig that I'm going out to make an arrest on and just take the FBI stuff off and I would have walked in there and it had been the same stuff. A lot of them Were wearing the gun belts, everything. So they're preparing for D Day, and there's not a lot of forethought or afterthought, as you kind of commented on. So we take over a region of the Appalachian Mountains, while another section of the base has taken over a region of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, while another region of the base has taken over Pacific Northwest property. And we're going to create our own ethnostate because clearly, if we make it all white, everything going to run smoothly.

[Dax Shepard]

Obviously, when you're sitting around talking to these guys, you ever go like, so who's going to do all the work, all this work that none of the white people do?

[Scott Payne]

Who's doing all that? I'll tell you what I did. My sense of humor I've got to have. So I'm like, so we're neo Nazis. Hell yeah, man. Hell yeah. So we want Hitler's Germany. Yeah, man. It's basically socialism because we're getting everything for free. I didn't word it that way. But what I do is at the end of it, I go, so who's going to to be Hitler? And the faces go blank. And I'm like, you hadn't thought that far. Who's it going to be? It can only be one. Just to mess with it.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure, sure.

[Scott Payne]

Because there was belief systems. I've listened to them go on for hours about concave Earth, Hitler still alive, and hollow Earth with. It's not a Garthin. There's something else. I just start tuning it out.

[Monica Padman]

How do you learn the lingo?

[Scott Payne]

Well, sometimes I let them teach me. Let that ego roll. Let's say you're questioning me and you're pressuring me. Well, where do you live? What are you doing in Texas with a New Jersey driver's license? What are you. And I'm like, man, what are you doing writing a book? I don't know. I just met you.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Scott Payne]

Look, I mean, you seem like you're a nice gal, but I'm not to invite you over tea and crumbus just yet. But then I just turn it. What's that bar on your collar mean? Oh, that means I'm a lieutenant. I thought you said you only been here for like a year. Yeah. You made lieutenant in a year. How that dude's talking for the next two hours. Yeah, well, let me tell you about how it done when I come in.

[Monica Padman]

And just let him.

[Scott Payne]

I'm a talker and I know that. So in order for me to be better at my job as an undercover I've got to shut the F up or else I'm talking over you giving us evidence. The base was huge on recruiting. A lot of these accelerationist groups are huge on recruiting, and they do it by flyering or stickering or postering. It's like we go down the street and on the way back, one spraying the glue, you're slapping it on there and it'll be like, join the base. Save your race. Save your race. Join the base. It'll have a picture of a swastika and like a SS and then a helmet and maybe like a skull face. And then there'll be a QR code. You scan that QR code, it takes you straight to a bit shoot site. And it's a recruitment video of us. And I'm in a lot of them. Like us doing the trainings in Georgia, or it might be training up in Bad Axe, Michigan. And it's a gun shooting and music playing and running to recruit.

[Dax Shepard]

Like the Al Qaeda videos.

[Scott Payne]

Yes. And here's what's funny. The base in Arabic is Al Qaeda. Wow. When I was being interviewed to join the group, they laid out their ideology. And that's when I learned the whole accelerationist view. Huge on. They call it siege culture. There's a book out there called Siege don't go outlawed. Yeah. Don't go. Try a bite. James Mason wrote the book. It's a lot of interviews and articles just shoved together. But this dude idolized Charles Manson. He's interviewed him several times because Manson.

[Dax Shepard]

Ultimately thought there would be a race war as well, and he was trying to accelerate that.

[Scott Payne]

Y and that's where you start seeing the ideology of acceleration as don't do Charlottesville. Don't go out there and stand on the corner with picket signs screaming, number one, you're making yourself a mark. Number two, you're not doing anything. Let's go behind the scenes. Let's start mowing this down. Let's start killing people. Let's do this to cause the collapse of society and chaos.

[Dax Shepard]

Terrorist principles. Let's get an oversized reaction to something we do.

[Scott Payne]

Kill 100, scare thousands. Kill thousands, scare millions. Yeah, but if you looked at Al Qaeda, it was three to five man sales. I've got a country accent. CLL sales. They wanted three to five man sales all over the world. Ready for that phone call. So as I'm being coached by the leader and creator of the base, he says, we want three to five man cells all over the world waiting. And I mean, we had members from Norway, South Africa, Australia, the uk, Canada. You just keep going.

[Dax Shepard]

These heroes, these heroes are the ones in New Zealand of the Saints. All these assholes. 27 at Walmart, nine at a Moss.

[Scott Payne]

The massacres. It's an active shooter, but it's an active shooter with the ideology of setting off the race war. It's the Saint leaderboard. Usually in the tactical world, we never say their names.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, good, because we don't.

[Scott Payne]

Want to give them credit. The Christ Church shooter, he's not the one that did the Norway shooting is at the top. It's like 77 and 0. And then you get Christ Church is this and O. And then you get down to the Tree of Life.

[Monica Padman]

So sick.

[Scott Payne]

The Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh. Then you get Charleston.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you see that? These are all related. It gets quite scary.

[Monica Padman]

Very.

[Dax Shepard]

If you're viewing them as individual acts of crazy people, you're kind of like, how do we account for crazy people around the world? But when you see, no, these are all related. This is a syndicate.

[Scott Payne]

And then it says at the bottom, what are you going to do to make. Make the board stop it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download thumbtack.

[Scott Payne]

Today at 24, I lost my narrative, or rather it was stolen from me.

[Monica Padman]

And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and politics.

[Scott Payne]

I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours.

[Monica Padman]

Something you put possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. So I think listeners can expect me to be chatting with folks both recognizable.

[Scott Payne]

And unrecognizable names about the way that.

[Monica Padman]

People have navigated roads to triumph.

[Scott Payne]

My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming and feel like they filled their tank up, they connected.

[Monica Padman]

With the people that I'm talking to, and leave with maybe some some nuggets that help them feel a little more hopeful. Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad free right now by joining Wondery.

[Scott Payne]

Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. While I was infiltrating these groups, I've watched an active shooter event happen. And the kid only got one shot off and then his gun jammed. And the ridicule that you read on Telegram and these dark channels, Discord 4chan, 8chan, 12chan, you name it. Wire 3, whatever else is out there now, they are blasting them. What an idiot. He didn't know how to handle his weapon. He could have killed so many more people. Now, see, in America though, you can blast that. That's the first amendment protective speech. You can say, I hate any racial slur you want. You can say, I hope any racial slurp eyes. That's not against the law. That's where our work, my peers, mentors people I've mentored. First responders on that front line have to stay vigilant. So let's just say you make it into one of those groups and you're looking at thousands and thousands of the most vile posts you can think of.

[Dax Shepard]

You're trying to figure out who's serious.

[Scott Payne]

Or not, who's going to pull the trigger.

[Dax Shepard]

How on, how do you do that? Delineate.

[Scott Payne]

You just got to stay vigilant. You hope that people out there cliche. But if you see something, say something.

[Dax Shepard]

You know what this reminded me of a little bit, in a weird way is domestic abusers. They beat their wife twice, you know, statistically, okay, well, eight times more likely this guy's going to kill her. When you're in law enforcement and you're just watching the pattern and you're trying to figure out, okay, he's on the road, when are we allowed to intervene? We have to wait till she gets killed.

[Scott Payne]

I know a lot of times people that will want to argue against law enforcement. It'll be like, oh, why are you pulling me over? Why aren't you working murders? Well, there's an old theory called the broken window theory. And as we start, start small. If you're a disorderly walking down the street drunk and I lock you up for disorderly, maybe I stopped you from getting behind the wheel of a car and killing somebody in the dui, right? Maybe I stopped you from going home and murdering your wife or having that 15th.

[Dax Shepard]

This is in Malcolm Gladwell's book. This is cracking down on jumping turnstiles on the subway. This is cleaning up graffiti.

[Scott Payne]

You take away the opportunity because you never know what's going to happen and all that stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

And look, I'm in the middle of all this, but when your environment Is sending you signals that no one's looking. People act differently.

[Scott Payne]

Another friend, an acquaintance of mine, he's actually a great instructor, speaker, former law enforcement in London, uk. We were having this conversation. It's like, man, why is there more of this stuff happening? We can dive down rabbit holes and stuff and conspiracy theories, but I've been around guns my whole life. It's not that. And then Jerry Ratcliffe, he says, Scott, with his cool accent, he says, we have to take away the opportunity. And I go, whoa. I do remember even going back to working a side job as a cop at a fun park where they got putt putt and go karts and video games. If you saw kids congregating on the side in the shady area, not spending money, you go bust them up. They're coming up with something nefarious to do. Otherwise they wouldn't be over there in the shadow, you know, and you just go over there and go, hey, how's it going? What are you doing? Hey, man, you guys should go. Rather get just busted up.

[Dax Shepard]

You're being observed. Yeah, okay, so you do get embedded in that group. And this Canadian who gets outed in Canada, Canada goes on the run, he gets outed.

[Scott Payne]

Common term is doxed D O xxed, which basically means out. And this is the huge battle between far left and far right. I infiltrated the far right. So I say we. Not that I don't have the belief system, but I'm in there with them. Yeah, when we're doing these videos, we're double checking. Hey, pale horse, you can see your tattoo. Oh, man, my bad. I pull the sleeve down or I go cut black socks just so I can cover up that because the sleeves too short. Hey, your ponytail's hanging out. Hide that. Because they're so afraid of getting doxed and being out. What the far left is really good at is once you are doxed, they will show up at your house, they will protest at your work.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, antifa started showing up.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, they're good with that. And they get funding for it. I'm not going to dive down that rabbit hole on this one either. But they don't have money, but they're being paid by somebody because they're getting arrested in five different states for the same damn thing. And they don't live in any of them. Hate begets hate. It goes back and forth.

[Dax Shepard]

I for an eye never resolved, right?

[Scott Payne]

So I'm in the group, I'm gaining their trust and I'm learning more. And we as the FBI are learning.

[Dax Shepard]

More do you have to fake your skill set? This is what I was thinking.

[Scott Payne]

I did.

[Dax Shepard]

Because he's a marksman, he can't show up in the training thing. I'm imagining you would be shining a light on yourself if you were as good as you are.

[Scott Payne]

Well, and we don't want to lead anything, right? Am I in the KKK and I'll bring a black person to the rally.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, right.

[Scott Payne]

Look at what I found.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

Did I just start that and lead it? That'd be very bad. But with them I was just a country guy, former biker, former skinhead. And yeah, I've shot, but I would throw. I would let them tell me, God.

[Dax Shepard]

Receiving instruction from these dumb, dumb.

[Scott Payne]

Well, it was good instruction though.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Scott Payne]

A 19 year old kid led. I mean it wasn't the best, but I walked away from that first meet and training. I was like, this is not good. Yeah, where did you get the training? Because you didn't go in the military, you're only 19. Internet gaming God, video games, they are realistic. No, they are, they're realistic. Gary, hop on there and cut your microphone on. So let year old kid telling you to clear the hard corner.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

And handing your butt to you. And then his dad took him to a range and he practiced and practiced and got quicker and quicker and he was probably on the Internet looking at a lot of stuff. But I was happy to see some safety because I was really concerned with that. When we first started shooting, I stood at the back.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, this scenario with the goat. Yeah, you could have been killed there.

[Scott Payne]

So this is what happens. I've done a couple of blots. The first pagan blot I did was actually pretty legit because the guy that led it, even though he was a member of the base, was also an asatra guy and it was more legit. And I got to ask a lot of questions about it because I'm learning. Just like when they're teaching me tactics, I'll go, what'd you call this again? Slicing the pie. Oh, okay. So when I'm slicing the pot now I'm using the verbiage you gave me. Yeah, yeah, we do a couple of those. And on those blots, I mean they would take wood and carve runes and swastikas and other hate symbols and you cut yourself and bleed on it and set that on fire. And we pray to our gods until the fire goes out.

[Monica Padman]

It's so weird. It feels like it's such a hodgepodge of things.

[Scott Payne]

It's very Viking.

[Dax Shepard]

It reeks of searching for master masculinity and validation.

[Scott Payne]

You're 100. From my experience, you're spot on.

[Dax Shepard]

They haven't earned it through a job and a career. They haven't earned it through a marriage and protecting their children.

[Scott Payne]

They're outcasts. They have been bullied. They can't get a partner.

[Dax Shepard]

This is the only way in their mind at least, that they're going to.

[Scott Payne]

Achieve that masculine group that'll accept you. So we do those blots and we're doing training and I'm hearing all the crazy ideology. Other than the Canadian who ran once he got doxxed. He absconded illegally in the United States. We were looking for him hard. There's a case, agent Rasheed out of Baltimore and a U.S. attorney, Thomas Windham. And they were phenomenal. The stuff they did, tracking phones and finding stuff. They were able to figure out that they knew he was in the country. I was helping them. And then Seattle had the main case and they were working the poop out of it, too. But there were divisions all over the United States working this stuff. Because if there's a member living in your area when the la's got to open the kids case. On it. Now we get to the point to where we find the Canadian. He is actually down at the farm. I pull up there for a weekend training or something. I'm counting the cars. I know whose cars are what, but I'm counting the heads under the awning of the barn. And I'm like, there's an extra person there. And I go walking up and bushy red hair and beard by this point. But as soon as he starts talking, I'm like, that's a Canadian accent. And then he introduces himself. I didn't miss a beat. I hugged him and said, welcome to the United States, brother.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

And then we start training. And now you're getting into more crazy ideology. Like when the boogaloo happens and I'm talking about crying while you're saying it, I'm going to have to shoot my dad in the back of the head. And I'll do it. Because they're saying, why? Because in their belief system, stupid Mike, obviously, when the boogaloo happens and D Day starts, if you are not fascist, that automatically makes you anti fascist.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Scott Payne]

And the penalty is death.

[Monica Padman]

Even if you're. You're white.

[Scott Payne]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You just keep raising the purity test. The fundamentalists are on a trajectory to outdo one another's fundamental. There is no you're home safe you're white, you're this. They keep moving the goal posts.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

All these movements.

[Scott Payne]

So I will say this is a whole nother thing. But just to tie it into current time, whether you love Trump, hate Trump, whatever. This kid that just killed, I think it was his dad and stepmom or mom and stepdad. He just killed, killed him. And he was on his way to apparently do an assassination attempt. Well, the first reports to start coming out show that he's reading the ideology I was just telling you about. And it mentions 09A. 09A is order of nine angles. That is a. Let me say it this way. From what I found. Working it, infiltrating it, working it as a case agent, developing sources who were in and all around it. If you scratch the surface long enough at an accelerationist group, somewhere in there you're going to find an 09Amember. Or there's some other groups that are very similar. It is a extremely, extremely dark, satanic white supremacy group. Still, same thing. Believe in the collapse of the society, but they are huge on rape, sexual abuse and pedophilia.

[Dax Shepard]

It was as dark as you can get.

[Monica Padman]

The sentence of their big on rape.

[Scott Payne]

And pedophilia is like, yeah, case happened very fast paced.

[Dax Shepard]

Eight months you were there seven, I.

[Scott Payne]

Think, but it was 24 seven. And as I said, it kept growing and growing. And the more people that we identified, it got to one point where once a month we would get all case teams on phone call. There's over 100 people on the call. So we do this Halloween hate camp in 2019. I show up and a guy named Eisen is going to be leading the block. Younger kid, clearly didn't know his paganism stuff very well. And again, they're twisting it. So I led hand to hand combat training that day. And this wicked cold front came in the first one of the year. So you have not been acclimated. You're freezing your tail off. I go to charge, charge my phone. I fall asleep because the heat's on, you know, I'm like, toast. I'm defrosted. And then I wake up to pounding on my wind a pale horse. Pale horse. Man, you got to get up. Where do you see this? Where do you see? I'm like, what is it? They go, do you hear us talking about the goat? I'm like, huh? And they're like, we got it. So I get out and they have gone not that far down the damn road to a place that only had like three goats. Jump the fence, steal the goat almost get caught. It could be a ram. Ram, go. It's very close. It has horns. I walk out there, and one of the members who went by the name Dema is holding the goat in the back of one of the other members. Can't go back's truck, and it's pooping everywhere. And Dima says. He goes, man, this thing's shitting all over the place. And I said, well, hell, I would be, too. Exactly. A bunch of Neanderthals and flickhorn camo and balaclavas with machine guns just jumped in my backyard and jerked me out.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not a surprise birthday party.

[Scott Payne]

Right now I'm watching Eisen work this goat. He's praying to it. He's talking to it. He's showing it love. And I walk up to and I say, is it bad that I feel sorry for the goat? And he said, don't let the goat hear you say that. And I'm like, okay. And he said, this goat needs to know it's loved. It's being sacrificed to Odin. It's going to Valhalla. This is a good thing for the goat. We are showing it love, and we're sacrificing it to Valhalla. And I remember thinking, I don't think that's what the goat's thinking.

[Dax Shepard]

Might not know about Valhalla.

[Monica Padman]

So I don't know if he's heard of it.

[Scott Payne]

I go over to my listening device. You're out. You should have a cover team. So if I'm out four days straight on the farm, they're going to be pulling shifts and rotating because you got to have a quick response.

[Monica Padman]

To which.

[Scott Payne]

How quick can you respond to me on 100 acre farm? If the crap's going to hit the fan, avenge my death. Unless I'm still hanging on when you get there, or everybody's dead and I'm standing there when you get there. Yeah, I go to my listening device. I'm running through my head as a senior investigator, as a senior FBI agent, as an undercover coordinator, knowing all the policies. Policies and all the red tape I'm running through my head. I'm going, do I need approval for this? Did we do this? I lean in and I go, listen, if you guys can hear me. I said, I'm pretty sure we're getting ready to go down here and sacrifice this goat at this ritual. I know they stole the goat, but is it a misdemeanor? If any of you do not want me to do this and you want me to stop it or pull chalks, I need to know. Send me a sign. And I sat there and I waited, and I got nothing. No phone phone calls. And I said, okay, Valhalla it is. I guess we're going to Valhalla. We go deep into the woods to the holy site where we've done stuff before, and that's when they go to sacrifice the goat. Aizen does a speech about, we're starting the wild hunt. So in Norse mythology, the wild hunt essentially is Odin and a bunch of other gods go out in the middle of the night and just slay all their enemies. But in the twisted ideology of the white supremacy. Except it was going to be the start of the wild hunt, which basically meant cleansing the planet of anti fashion non white Jews. So Eisen goes to kill. We're in a circle around the goat. Everybody's kind of on their knees. I'm not sure how I ended up at the back of the goat, but that's where I was at. And he has a machete type thing. He does his speech. We're starting this. This is the wild hunt. This is going to Valhalla. He even named the goat Gar G A R, short for Garfield, which was his machine middle name and also the first name of his grandfather. Oh, so we've got a connection to this goat. Now he goes to kill it. And for whatever reason, I don't know if the blade was dull, I don't know if this back strap was thick.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's just add it's his first time ever trying to do this.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. But he brought it with force. He come down. Wham. And I'm holding it, and it was just a thud. And all you hear is the goat go, you know? And I'm like, oh, damn. And I'm like, this is going to get bad so fast. And somebody said, do it again. And somebody's like, the neck's too thick. Somebody says, anybody got a gun? Well, we weren't supposed to bring any weapons, but the one guy who was least qualified to be handling a firearm had it, hands it to Eisen. So Eisen chambers around, points to the goat's head, and then turns away.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Scott Payne]

And we're all still in the circle. So that's when the instructor comes out. You hear it clear on the accordion, like, whoa, whoa, man. Hey, what are you doing? I said, look at what you're shooting at, man. We're in a circle. So he comes up to it. Boom. Even on the recording, you can hear the goat hit the ground. It kicks for several minutes. I tell A. And I say, man, why don't you put another bullet in it? I think it might still be alive. No, I'm pretty sure it's dead. I said, for the love of the goat, we're trying to make this a peaceful thing. Yeah, For G. For G. Let's put this thing up the Valhalla, peacefully. So they put another one in it. And then somebody even says, oh, now it's definitely dead. So you think you're done? No. Now they slice the throat of the goat. They fill up a cup with his blood. We're all in a circle. And Aizen brought acid. Of course, I did not partake in the acid. Maybe a couple others didn't partake to help with the shaman, which is to kind of get you in the spirit world. Or get high, let's call it. Like it? Yeah. I'm going to like Young guns.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm in the spirit world.

[Scott Payne]

But as we're going around, I'm holding the flashlight for Aizen. Aizen's tearing off a tab, putting it in the mouth of the base member, and then they're chasing with the blood of the ghost. So we keep doing that all the way around, around. And it gets to me. And now it's my turn. And by this time, I look down at the cup and it's all coagulated. It's clotty.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

So gnarly.

[Monica Padman]

This is horrific.

[Scott Payne]

And I'm looking at it and I'm going, man, I really don't want to turn this shit up.

[Dax Shepard]

You'd be shocked at some of the things I would do instead of drink that.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, right. I'm thinking the same thing.

[Monica Padman]

I would have to take the acid.

[Scott Payne]

I know, but I look and I said, I think Pestilence gave me an out. Because I'm like. I'm looking and it's just chunky, and I just don't want it bouncing off my lips or whatever.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, this is horrible.

[Scott Payne]

Horrible. So I stick my finger deep into the blood, pull it out, suck all the blood off my finger. And then they commenced to cutting the whole head of the goat off. And we carried it around for the next four days. There's all kinds of photo ops, there's videos. It made it all over. It was on BBC News, everything. I was holding the goat's head, giving the sig how, holding the base flag. Of course, the next day was completely shot because they were still high on acid. But we went back to training, and that Saturday night we did more filming. We Went back to the whole holy site and set a bonfire. We're burning holy Bibles, we're burning American flags while everybody's screaming, f your Jewish God. Death to America. You see, you got to understand, if you hate the far right. I'm not saying extreme right, like white supremacy. I'm just saying politically, it's like, oh, well, this white supremacist. These people don't like anybody.

[Dax Shepard]

That was my thought when I watched, and I'm not conflating this group with these people, but when I was watching the Capital Six, Right, Riots.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm looking at this crowd, you'd be tempted to think there's some kind of monolith ideology there. There's not. Read that sign. That's in contradiction to that sign. There's so much hodgepodge shit. Their ideology is not the thing that actually is uniting them or making them similar.

[Scott Payne]

Correct. Were there people there with some nefarious plans?

[Dax Shepard]

For sure, for sure. But I just think the thread was. I've been excluded from this system, so I hate this system. So to put a pin on this, this did end with 11 arrests.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. After that, that weekend, I gained more trust and they started including me on what we found out were numerous murder plots. The Canadian went back up to the Baltimore, Delaware area and was with a cell up there. I was good friends with both of those cells. The cell up there thought that the Second Amendment gun rights rally that was going to be In January of 2020, they thought that might be the kickoff to the Boogaloo, maybe fire some shots. Militia people think it's somebody else. Cops think it's somebody else. And that could be the kickoff. And if you could see some of the stuff they were spewing, the conversations they were having, like, let's go break out the Charleston shooter. Let's go break out the Saints. Let's start shooting cops. I got a thermal scope. Cop stops the car at night, we pop them. What do you get? Automatically, you get another gun and bullets. You get a bulletproof vest. You might get a radio. It's just crazy stuff. So we uncovered all that. The timeline was crunching, and we were able to successfully take the down everything.

[Dax Shepard]

That was incredible. You gave us so much time. I had a couple just really rapid fire questions, just your kind of opinion about some stuff. So have the numbers increased or decreased over the last five decades? If so, how do you explain the growth or the shrinkage? It seems like it's growing. Is it the Internet? Is it the political climate? Is it unemployment? Is it Direct young dudes. What would we attribute this to? And has it increased?

[Scott Payne]

It ebbs and flows and sometimes it is political. So like when Obama was in for eight years, your militia started growing again because they were worried about their gun rights. And then when Trump came in it kind of died down because they weren't worried about it. And then it kind of ebbs and flows. The white supremacy thing, the quickest way for me to answer it on an extremist level is what I've been talking about is far right extremism, white supremacist supremacy. There's some malicious stuff in there too. Anti government because I infiltrated it. But I've got mentors, peers and people I've mentored that are working the other side. And radical jihadist or black separatists or far left. There's a lot of people being radicalized online and especially with AI these days. So go back to what I said. From what I saw, this isn't the be all, end all. Every situation is different. A case by case basis. But I saw a lot of somebody who's an outcast cast, has a hard time belonging, can't get a partner, probably been bullied and they want to belong. And then they dive on these phones at night and they go down these rabbit holes of hate. I don't know if Gab's still in or not, but you could go to Gab and go to a group that's called 14 Words that is White Supremacy. They're referring to the 14 word coined by David Lane, synonymous through white supremacy. Or you could hop on whites only. I wonder what you're going to find there. And they will take some really stories and they will do propaganda videos to suck you in. And then you start meeting like minded people. And I'm telling you the stuff that they blast is vile. And I know people that are working the other side and it's the same thing. So it goes kind of back to see something, say something. I understand parents having blinders on because that's their kid and they don't want to believe it. But you think it's a phase when your kid barely has a job or hardly ever has one father of one.

[Dax Shepard]

Of these base guys. I was getting so frustrated listening him talk. He's like, you know, he went through a lot of phases. And she asks what was it? You know, it was some Nazi stuff.

[Scott Payne]

It's denial. That guy came down and drank with us and the apple doesn't fall far. He's dropping N words and this, that and the other And I get it. He loves his son, he loves his daughter. That's cool. But your son has the skull of Gar, which has now been cleaned with swastikas and other white supremacy stuff and runes on it. And on one side of the skull is Meyen Kampf, Hitler's book, and on the other side of the thing is Siege by James Mason. That's not the A phase. When you've got grown men showing up all the time and training on your 100 acres wearing Flector and camouflage because that's the German pattern. Drinking Jagermeister because that's German. And you hear what they're saying. It's tough, but go ahead. That was a long answer.

[Monica Padman]

No, that was important. That's good. When you say, say something, can you be specific? Report it to the police?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. That's what your Joint Terrorism Task Forces are out there for. That's what your local cops are there for on Joint Terrorism Task Force. Because that's when I ended my career on. I was a criminal guy for the majority of my career. But that's where that call comes in and a lead is typed up. Some of them are, crazy. Lady says she was kidnapped by isis and they replaced her eyes with alligator eyes. And you're like, what, I gotta go find this person now and interview her. How do you do that interview? Hey, Dax, can you look at me? But you can do that. And then they'll get a lead and maybe just going out there and knocking on the door saying, hey, a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world right now, but somebody's reported that you're putting some radical stuff out there. I just want to make sure you're not really planning on hurting anybody.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe that scares them.

[Scott Payne]

Maybe. Or maybe it gives me an opportunity to have them call me if they see something crazy. In the book, I talk about that guy in the cave. It was other white supremacists that reported that guy because he was so radical. They're like, hey, man, I'm a white supremacist, but this dude, he's really crazy. This dude wants to shoot up a synagogue.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah. I knew you would probably have felt very close friendships with some of these people, and that. That would be heartbreaking. Did you feel bad for. For these guys?

[Scott Payne]

Some of them.

[Dax Shepard]

I think we grew up in an era, too, where I saw kids get destroyed. They came in as just kids showing up to school and they got destroyed. That's heartbreaking to me. It worked out for me and didn't for some. And I'M not saying I like what their solution to it is, but I also see so much of this is born out of just a horrendous experience.

[Scott Payne]

On the stuff I'm 100% believer in, I don't have to believe I've seen it. Product of your environment kind of thing. I bond with a lot of these people and it's not far from what I grew up around. Or it's exactly what I grew up around. Or it could have been my relative.

[Dax Shepard]

Imagine looking at some of these guys and going like, oh yeah, you're a thousand hugs shy of being here.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. Or second chance or a fifth chance or a 20th chance.

[Dax Shepard]

No one's winning the whole thing.

[Scott Payne]

I can give you one that wants second chances.

[Monica Padman]

Oh yeah, let's hear it.

[Scott Payne]

Love a success story. It's sad. There hadn't been a lot in my 28 year career. You always hear people when they're getting arrested and they're getting ready to do their time. They're like, man, I'm never doing this again. I said, remember, remember where you're at. Also, let's be real. What do you plan on doing when you get out? I'm gonna cut hair. My uncle was a barber. It's a great profession. But I want you to understand something. A barber salary is not going to allow you to walk into the Dodge dealership, pay cash for a brand new Challenger with your own custom made rims on it. So be prepared, but do that. Success stories, they are out there and I have even in retirement, let the U.S. attorney's office know I didn't have to, but I'm like, hey, I've talked to this, this person. We got put in contact with each other. I helped put this person in jail for their sentencing hearing. I'm going to do a letter for them, a character letter. But I wanted to let you know so you're not blindsided. They're like, man, thank you so much. I said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to type it, I'm going to send it to you. You let me know if you have any heartburn with it and we'll discuss. And then I do a character reference letter. And they only got probation even through my church small groups. Some of my best friends were meth dealers and they had to go do time. But hey man, I'm here for you. As long as you're doing the right thing, I'll do whatever can to help you.

[Dax Shepard]

To some degree. You most certainly have developed some acute spidey senses where I'm sure you can kind of tell who's capable of that second chance.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah. And empathy, Amy. You must have an abundance of it.

[Dax Shepard]

And it's an incredible book. Code name Pal Horse, How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis with Michelle. Also, the podcast is fantastic. This has been radical.

[Scott Payne]

Scott, I appreciate you having me on.

[Dax Shepard]

This is incredible. All right, be well, brother.

[Scott Payne]

All right, peace.

[Dax Shepard]

I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong. I know this doesn't interest you, but it continues to wow me and I'm going to keep telling you. Okay, well, first of all, when's the last time you bought a pound of ground beef?

[Monica Padman]

It's been a minute, but you can.

[Dax Shepard]

Visualize in your head about how big that is.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it's smallish.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I would say it's like this big. It's like the size of a small shoe. You don't like that? You don't like that?

[Monica Padman]

I think it's. Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, here's my point.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think a pound of ground beef is a significant size.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And I weighed myself last night before bed.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God, Dax, I can't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you got to. Cuz I listened to about astrology in the pit yesterday.

[Monica Padman]

You love astrology.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't love astrology.

[Monica Padman]

You have it tattooed on your face, body.

[Dax Shepard]

So 205.2 last night.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Many peepees in the night.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Very big deposit this morning. 198.8. So I lose 7 pounds in 12 hours. 10 hours.

[Monica Padman]

That's a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

Picture 7 pounds of ground.

[Monica Padman]

I don't want to.

[Dax Shepard]

That's what you must picture to be impressed by. By this.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, where does it go? Like. Well, I know where it goes. It goes in the turlet. But no, just picture seven pounds of ground beef on that table. And. And then I go, I'm going to lose that tonight.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe it's more than just the pee and the poop.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, I don't.

[Monica Padman]

Air.

[Dax Shepard]

Air is not very heavy, but how much is air? How much is air? Oh, I want to tell this. I saw a very cool video. I'm mad I didn't send it to anyone because you know, the only way. This is how I save videos. Really? In my mind, I see a video I like on Instagram and I send it to someone.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, sure.

[Dax Shepard]

And then a month later I'm like, all right, I remember I sent it that. Because how else would you find it?

[Monica Padman]

Well, you can save them, but. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you can. I don't know how to do that. I'll start doing that.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. It was Richard Feynman. And you know, people love. All smart people are obsessed with Richard Feynman.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like consistently. It's every smart person's favorite smart person.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

He's a physicist and he worked on the Manhattan Project. He could tackle anything. He was just so cute, curious and fun. So I watched this video of him and he said, you know, have you ever sat and looked at a tree and wondered, where does the structure come from? I think it's normal to assume all of that comes out of the ground like the building blocks for a tree. And this huge tree trunk and all the leaves, it's like coming out of the ground. And he said, in fact, that is not where it comes from. The tree is built from the air because the air has carbon dioxide in it. And the tree, with the help of the sun, it breaks that apart.

[Monica Padman]

Wait, the tree?

[Dax Shepard]

The tree and the leaves.

[Monica Padman]

I thought the tree didn't exist yet.

[Dax Shepard]

No little sapling comes up from where a seed.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, so you're saying. Okay, you're saying there's a seed.

[Dax Shepard]

There's a seed, then there's a. A sapling.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Then everything that grows above that 100 foot redwood that's not coming from the ground.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, I see what you're saying. I thought you meant like, I thought you were getting very heady and like, where do things come from?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it is a little heady, but in it. But it's not metaphysical. So the air is full of carbon dioxide. The tree, with the help of the sun, it breaks apart the carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen releases oxygen. We break breathe the oxygen. It uses that carbon to construct the wood, the tree. So the whole structure of it is just taken out of the air by.

[Monica Padman]

The tree by car.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's all car, it's all carbon.

[Monica Padman]

Trees are all carbon.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, as. Yeah, as are we. We're like carbon life forms.

[Monica Padman]

But I mean, how do they. How does the wood. It's like, how does it create the texture of wood?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's how it assembles the carbon that it pulls out of the. Of the air. It assembles it into that shape.

[Monica Padman]

Who told it to do that?

[Scott Payne]

You're not.

[Dax Shepard]

You gotta let me get to the punchline of it.

[Monica Padman]

Sorry.

[Dax Shepard]

So that right there is mind blowing. I think I've always looked at trees and thought all that wood came out of the ground somehow. And he said, sure. There's some minerals and stuff that are coming out of the ground. And then the other thing that's coming out of the ground is the water. Trees are made up a lot of water. Yes, he said, but the water doesn't come from the ground either. The water comes from there.

[Monica Padman]

Sure. Well, that's true.

[Dax Shepard]

So the structure of the tree and the. The water all comes from the air. Yeah, he said. And then when you cut this tree down and you cut it into logs and you put it in the fire and you add fire to it, what it starts doing is rejoining the oxygen and the carbon, and that's the flames you're seeing. And you can think about. The flames you're seeing are really just the flames from the sun that have transferred into the flames of this fire. It's all the same. Same energy.

[Monica Padman]

It's pretty rad, isn't is? Really interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And I'm like, I'm so impressed someone figured out why the tree. You might just go, yeah, they're there. I'm not going to overthink it.

[Monica Padman]

That's what most people do. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I think that's what everyone does. Except for Feynman. That's magic. It just comes out of the air.

[Monica Padman]

All that structure, the root system, the water's in the air, but it's also in the. It, like, comes down to the ground.

[Dax Shepard]

It starts in the air, it's created in the air.

[Monica Padman]

It comes down to the ground and.

[Dax Shepard]

Then comes down to the ground to the ground.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, Groot knows all about this.

[Dax Shepard]

Groot is the living proof of this process. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I saw him recently.

[Dax Shepard]

You saw him after you found out about the big.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, and I gave him a squeeze.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you?

[Monica Padman]

He was wearing pajamas.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. He has so many cute pajama outfits. I'm so. He has. He has. He has a. A safari outfit.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He's got every kind of look.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Like what most people think about their American Girl doll. Like, when you buy it, you do. You, like, buy all the beds and the things and the accoutrement. That's what Groot has.

[Dax Shepard]

I like hers, though, because it's more scrappy. There's no. Like, they don't make these clothes for him. So she's, like, aggregating all these from different sources.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, me, too. Me, too.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Really?

[Scott Payne]

And we.

[Dax Shepard]

When we were in Hawaii, we went into a store, and I told them they could each get one thing. And I meant candy. Like, they could have one candy item. And then Delta decided to trade her Candy option for. She found a tiny outfit that was supposed to go on some other creature. And then she's like, I think those will fit perfectly on Groot. So we left with an outfit instead of candy. I had been saying I'm jealous of my own kids. Like, I wish I had their childhood. But I think I want to be ultimately Delta's child. I think if she has a child, that child is going to be fretted over.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I hope not too much.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, we don't want to spoil them. Spare the rod, spoil the child.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Or Munch Hous. Fine line. Really fine line.

[Dax Shepard]

But I've already established she doesn't want attention for it. Like Moonchild would have been. She would have come up to me and said, you know Groot is disabled.

[Monica Padman]

Right. You're right.

[Dax Shepard]

She's known he's disabled forever. And I just stumbled upon that.

[Monica Padman]

She is going to be such a good mom. She's very loving and attentive and thoughtful. Yeah. She's making me a scarf right now.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, she is. And she wanted to know how long you wanted it.

[Monica Padman]

It's so good. It's so well constructed. She's knitting it from scratch. And I. I was looking at it, and I thought that this little baby I used to hold, her little Min made this. I can't make this.

[Dax Shepard]

Me neither.

[Monica Padman]

She can. That little baby made that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. They start doing things you can't do, and it's really something.

[Monica Padman]

It's so overwhelming.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know. I'm in a bit of a crisis state. I mentioned it on the last fact check, and then some pediatrician said, yes, you got to stop talking about your kids. Now, I'm not going to take that to too much credit. Like, just because you're a pediatrician, you have no actual.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not a psychological. But what's seared into my brain is that I know Howard at one point stopped, and his daughters ended up being very upset at him. I think that he would talk about them.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And so now I tell my kids what I say. So it's not like there's any secrecy going on. That's kind of how I've been telling myself. But all to say, yes, I probably need to stop.

[Scott Payne]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I was like, what do I. I don't have anything else in life to talk about virtually.

[Monica Padman]

I think our best conversation.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Are.

[Dax Shepard]

Are debates.

[Monica Padman]

Conversation. Yeah. They're not just the. I mean, stories are fun. I love a story.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You have a lot of good ones.

[Monica Padman]

But they're There to spark a conversation.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Between us.

[Dax Shepard]

I just, you know, there's My free time is what I'm gonna draw on.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Anything that's gonna happen to me. Like, I went to my. I didn't go to Monster Jam by myself, you know, I took my kids.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And you didn't take Groot and lose him. She did.

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. And so I was just sitting in bed, I think, last night, going like, I don't think I have a life. A life if they're not a part of the conversation that I have almost nothing to talk about. And I guess it's pretty standard for parents.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I'm sure. I had this the other day when I was watching you so much you, by the way. I got to the measles section that was referred to in the Laura Ingram.

[Dax Shepard]

Congratulations. Congratulations.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. And I had spent the day watching TV and working. And then the next day, I. I realized I hadn't spoken to anyone the day before.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you went a whole day without talking?

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Ah.

[Monica Padman]

And it was.

[Dax Shepard]

Feel good or bad?

[Monica Padman]

It felt. The realization felt bad. I don't know why.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

The experience didn't feel bad. I didn't even notice. Also because I have so much chatter in my head. I never really feel alone. Yeah. Yeah. I never feel alone. Do you think that's normal?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I mean, I'm almost never not thinking of something.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Unless I'm meditating. And in truth, only for half a second. Six minutes of the 20.

[Monica Padman]

You can do six minutes a row.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I can have six minute chunks where it's like I have no thoughts.

[Monica Padman]

I can't do that many.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so hard.

[Monica Padman]

It's like 30 seconds max for me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I meditated in the evening. You're supposed to meditate for my meditation. Tm. You're supposed to do morning and then evening before dinner while your stomach's still empty. And I don't do the nighttime one, but I did do it a couple times recently. And I did realize. I almost wonder if I'm prioritizing the wrong one. Because in the evening, my brain isn't nearly as rambunctious. It's like when I wake up, I just have a flurry of like, this is what you gotta do and this is what happened yesterday. Blah, blah. Evaluate my whole life this morning. In the evening, I'm kind of like, yeah, whatever we did, we're alive.

[Monica Padman]

We did it.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I can get in an evening meditation. I can get sometimes like 15 of the 20 minutes. Minutes are just blissful. No thoughts, interesting.

[Monica Padman]

But then. But you don't need it as bad.

[Dax Shepard]

I should do it though, because I. What I want is that 15 minutes of bliss. It is really euphoric.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

When I get it.

[Monica Padman]

Nice. Okay, great.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And then I wonder, is it just helping like the fact that I do it every morning? And is it, you know, is my overall common live wireness diminished a little bit?

[Monica Padman]

I think you're mellowing going out, huh?

[Dax Shepard]

Losing my vitality.

[Monica Padman]

Losing your will to live.

[Dax Shepard]

That's kind of happening. So Chris and I went for two days to this conference up north and I danced. Sure, I love to dance.

[Monica Padman]

You love it.

[Dax Shepard]

But I'm a little out of shape dancing, as it turns out. So I was jumping a lot in my dancing. It was Snoop Dogg.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Snoop D O, double G. And so I was dancing, I was jumping, I was jumping. It was fun. Probably danced for like an hour. Went back to the hotel room and I was walking barefoot in the bathroom in my gnarly comb over toes. They were like, uh, you can't do. You can't jump anymore for a half hour.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

My foot was like, oh, no, we can't do this. It was, it was gnarled up.

[Monica Padman]

Then you made, did it make you sad?

[Dax Shepard]

I know, yeah. I was just like, are we at the end of the day, you know, these things are gonna start popping up. Can't dance like I used to dance.

[Monica Padman]

I have been having a lot of thoughts about life and age.

[Dax Shepard]

We had a 30 year old guest on yesterday. Like, did that do anything to you?

[Monica Padman]

No, I don't imagine her. I don't think of her as 30. As 30. And I don't think of me as 37.

[Dax Shepard]

There we go. That helps. So you're both 35.

[Monica Padman]

I feel like we're both like 34ish. You know, in that zone. She might be, she might be like 32. And I'm 34.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Sometimes I'll get. I mean, I guess it's like the meditation. Sometimes I'll just get minutes. Brief, brief minutes of. I think what our. This sounds braggy. Enlightenment.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Like I can, I can hit it for a second where I really.

[Dax Shepard]

You feel content in that piece.

[Monica Padman]

But I understand, I really deeply understand that nothing matters, huh?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

In the rest of life. I can tell, you know, I can tell myself and I can understand it intellectually and I can try to live a life that reflects that. But there are times, times where I am like embody. I feel it. That really the purpose is to love. I wish I could choose to have that more. But it's also overwhelming. It's a really over after. It's an overwhelming feeling to really understand that we're all. None of this matters. None of anything we're doing. And I don't know. I don't mean, like, obviously helping people is great and.

[Dax Shepard]

And feeding yourself is imperative.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I don't. It's hard to explain. Obviously, that's why.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, when I. I kind of like tried to get really specific about what's going on in my meditation, when it works and when I realized is. And this is not novel or proprietary. Everyone knows this, but the racket is either thinking about the. The past or thinking about the future.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

And really the. The absence of thoughts is just being in the moment you're in.

[Monica Padman]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

Because there's really nothing to think about in the moment you're in. That's what's crazy, is like, you're constantly preparing for what's coming or you're processing what already happened. But in the second to second moment, you don't really need to do. There's nothing to do or to be afraid of because there's no. Nothing's attacking you. Or like.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

It's just being. I know this is fundamental, but it was just very clear to me. It's like, oh, really? The goal isn't even not thinking. It's just if I'm not in the future and I'm not in the past, I won't be thinking.

[Monica Padman]

It's like how you. How we don't know if you're seeing the same colors I'm seeing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I want to know if other people have this, like, con. Constant. There's no time at all that I'm awake, that there isn't a conversation happening or a monologue happening. And I. I assume that's everyone. I just assume that's how humans are.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But I read a statistic about this that people don't.

[Dax Shepard]

I won't know the right number, but I want to say it was something like low, but like 20% of people don't have that.

[Monica Padman]

I want to try it. Like, I wish there was a way to try it for a day.

[Dax Shepard]

GLP1. I'm sure it'll fix that too.

[Monica Padman]

I am very curious about the GLP1s.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Because of so many people we've had on that are saying it could be this, it could be different. Yeah. But no, it's obvious. It works for weight loss and it's helping so many, many people. That's proven at this point. But these other things like dementia, addiction, potentially addiction. Potential. Yeah. There's all these potential benefits, reducing of inflammation and I like kind of want to try it, but I don't want to not eat food.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't have an opinion whether you should or shouldn't. All I'll just at is it's dose dependent.

[Monica Padman]

Right. But even I know like you can.

[Dax Shepard]

Be on a little or a lot. You could have zero compulsion to eat food or you could have some. It's variable.

[Monica Padman]

Well, I know. But I know people who are on like basically the tiniest dose.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And they. Their eating habits are completely different. And I don't. I have a lot of issues, but I don't have food chatter.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right.

[Monica Padman]

As well. One.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

So my worry a little bit is like I just won't. I just won't eat.

[Scott Payne]

Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

And then also you, I would say more than others needs to consider the muscle loss aspect of it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah. But I have been doing my farmers.

[Dax Shepard]

Farmer carries on the way to get my wine.

[Monica Padman]

Well, don't make it like that. You should be proud of me.

[Dax Shepard]

I am. I'm very proud of you. Also. It's my job to tease you.

[Monica Padman]

I know. And I haven't been doing them this.

[Dax Shepard]

Week because if I can't talk about my daughters and I can't tease you, I really.

[Monica Padman]

We need to wrap it up actually. Maybe we should comment on this episode because Dax will read the comments if you want us to debate about something specific.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Monica Padman]

It's kind of fun, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And then you can look and see if there's anything worth us having a debate about.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. I do have a sort of update is.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

So the person I was speaking about who went to Saturday Night Live. Who went to Saturday Night Live.

[Dax Shepard]

You're in love with.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. Apparently a lot of people are in love with this person and I didn't know that.

[Dax Shepard]

You didn't.

[Monica Padman]

You didn't. You didn't knew.

[Dax Shepard]

I assumed a mean. He was cast for a reason. Yes. I think he's broadly appealing.

[Monica Padman]

Well, yeah, but like you feel a.

[Dax Shepard]

Little bummed that other people.

[Monica Padman]

You know what I old. It's so old for me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But it's like, oh, well then that's gone. Like if other people.

[Dax Shepard]

I. I would argue you already knew that and that's why he's there.

[Monica Padman]

Why? No.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Why?

[Dax Shepard]

You know, I think it's a continuation of the, the, the quarterback.

[Monica Padman]

In my opinion, this person is not.

[Dax Shepard]

That he's not the archetype of a Quarterback. The, the quarterbacks now aren't the quarterbacks. They're Timothy Chalamet.

[Monica Padman]

Chalamet.

[Dax Shepard]

There's. So you say there's a bunch of people that are at the peak of the pinup world and they're not that anymore. And this guy is in the. That group. He's a very sought after. That person doesn't cast her love interest willy nilly.

[Monica Padman]

I think I actually kind of zoned in on this person because I didn't think that I was like, I think I found like a gem.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh. Huh.

[Monica Padman]

And people aren't, aren't going to overlook him because he doesn't look like Brad Pitt.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

But I, I find him so attractive.

[Dax Shepard]

Brad Pitt.

[Monica Padman]

Turns out, I guess everyone does. But no, I, I didn't do that.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think you consciously did that.

[Scott Payne]

What?

[Monica Padman]

No one's even been talking about him until recently.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I think he's a very, very high value target.

[Monica Padman]

Well, just because he's a famous person.

[Dax Shepard]

No, for all the reasons he was in that movie. Being sexy and being appealing.

[Monica Padman]

Well, obviously I'm going to be attracted to someone who's appealing.

[Dax Shepard]

And an accident that he was chosen to play that.

[Monica Padman]

I'm right about this, that he has not been on people's radar until recently.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

And now he's kind of blowing up.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

And now people are like, oh, I love him. I was like, I've always loved him.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. For at least for a long time.

[Monica Padman]

No, like a really long time. And now he has all these options available in, I guess in your head. He's always had all these options available.

[Dax Shepard]

He has. And that's not me saying you shouldn't like the person because there's too much competition. That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. But the illusion that you were the only one that liked him is. Is, Is bonkers. That part I think, is bonkers. Should you pursue him? Are you capable of landing him? Yes. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying he was always a high value target.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, but you're saying I picked him because I knew I couldn't have him, which is getting complicated.

[Dax Shepard]

Yet you're telling me you can't have him because now everyone likes him.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And you're saying I picked him.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, that's your reality. Your reality is now I can't have him because everyone thinks he's hot. That's the one. You just introduced me. So that's the reality you believe in.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm arguing your subconscious always knew that.

[Monica Padman]

Because I know the feeling in my body when two things happen. One person told me, like, yeah, I think he's the person everyone can get on board with. And I was like, oh, I was really surprised to hear that. And then, like, soon after that, another person was like, oh, my God, yeah, the ladies love him. And I was like, what? And the feeling in my body during both of those conversations was of heartbreak and of disbelief and of despair.

[Dax Shepard]

But I think you intuitively know that any male that's the lead in a sexual movie, you know the reality of that. You know that that's a movie star that's been picked for that.

[Monica Padman]

But it's more. He's. He, he is becoming one. He wasn't at that time. No one was talking about them. They were talking about another person in the movie.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's. That's great.

[Monica Padman]

Uhhuh.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't think you just across the board can say anyone that's a lead of a movie making out with a hot person probably has an appeal everyone agreed on.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, obviously. And I'm not saying that.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. And so you do know that.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So your subconscious knows that this is an attractive person because they wouldn't have put him in the role.

[Monica Padman]

Sure, I know he's an attractive person.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. But in your conscious mind, you thought you were seeing something no one else saw.

[Monica Padman]

I thought I was early in on a person.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

Where I was like, oh, oh, this guy is really, really has something.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I guess you're saying the casting.

[Dax Shepard]

Director also, and the filmmaker and the co star all thought that too.

[Monica Padman]

Well, I don't know. We don't know about the co star. I don't want to speak for.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, the co star definitely was in charge of who got cast in that.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know what to say. I just, I, I. You think it was.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you see the point I'm making, though, that like, you, you had two things happening at once? One is, you know the reality of casting someone in a movie like that?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I know. You're making it about something, something so specific. Like I. Yes. I know that probably only an attractive person, a likable person would get that role, but I didn't. You know, people were like, oh, like.

[Dax Shepard]

You thought they missed them.

[Monica Padman]

I, I don't. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I guess they didn't. But also I, in my own circles, like, I know about people being talked about.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I don't hear this person's name come up a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

Until now, it's really taken off. And I. Like when I imagined being at snl.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't think, oh, I. I'd be too scared to talk to him or he's too good for me right now. I do.

[Dax Shepard]

And that sucks because you've acknowledged there would be a lot of competition for this guy. In your mind, you've accepted that he has a lot of options.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And so. And in your mind, then this is where the baggage comes in. If there's a lot of competition, I can't have it.

[Monica Padman]

If he has choices, he's. I'm not going to be the pick.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I feel that way.

[Dax Shepard]

But you must acknowledge this very arbitrary thing happened that changed your mind, which is you were gonna be as appealing to him as you're gonna be to him, period. That's it.

[Monica Padman]

Well, if I'm the only option.

[Dax Shepard]

You heard other people like him. So you, like, reverse engineered what now? He would think that changed how he would think about you. Well, that's the hiccup in your thinking.

[Monica Padman]

No, I want to talk to you. I want to be real.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

We've had. There. We've had this. This has happened in some way before. Sort of. Ish. There was somebody on this show.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

That showed some interest, got my phone number. Then there was radio silence.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

There was ghosting.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And you said to me, well, yeah, this person is at the point in their career where they're getting a lot of options.

[Dax Shepard]

What I think is the most important part, which is you said, well, he didn't actually like me. And I said, well, no, it doesn't mean that he didn't actually. He actually liked you. He asked for your phone number and he liked you. And then he got to New York and there was someone else there that he also liked. That was my. That the whole point of that was to stop your train of thought that he. No, he. I told you he didn't like me. And I was saying that's not proof that he didn't like you. He wouldn't ask for your phone number if he didn't. He didn't like you. He liked you. And he met five other people in the next two weeks that he also liked.

[Monica Padman]

Right. So then if that there are options, I'm not getting picked.

[Dax Shepard]

No. If you're in front of guy at Saturday Night Live party and he was going to be attracted to you, he'd be attracted to you. Now, are you going to go with him everywhere and make sure no one else is. He's not Meeting anyone else, are you going to lock up in a relationship or you know, like what's going to happen happen to confront the reality of this person's life. But just the core thing, does someone like you or not is really independent? I think of whether or not a lot of people like them.

[Monica Padman]

Well, more than do they like you. It's are you an, are you an.

[Dax Shepard]

Option for them or is anybody an option for them? Like for the previous guest we were talking about, I said nobody's an option for him. He's not settling down right now.

[Monica Padman]

Right. But I don't think you ghost someone completely who you even want to like kind of hang out with. If you want to kind of hang out with them, you got to keep them on the a little bit. Well, I guess that's that.

[Dax Shepard]

Here's where you and I are different. So I meet Kate Hudson. Kate Hudson has every single option. I think she's just broken up with Owen Wilson. I think she's just, she dates professional baseball players after me.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

I go into it going, she has every option in the world. She's going to have a lot of distractions. She is. The competition is fierce and she'll like me.

[Monica Padman]

Right, but she'll like me or she'll want to be with me. These are different things. Like she'll like me at a dinner. She'll like chit chatting with me or she will want me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, she'll want me.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Well, that's different than.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's right. That's the big difference, I think, between your and I's approach.

[Monica Padman]

But that's also different between this previous guest, what you're saying. Like, yeah, he liked you but he didn't want to be with you.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean you need access to somebody, clearly.

[Monica Padman]

What do you mean?

[Dax Shepard]

You need access. You have to be in front of the person you're sure that you can make like you. You have to have access to them.

[Monica Padman]

Well, we did.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You, I think you, when you find out that the other person, that everyone likes them, you then say, well, I can't have them. And I go, yes, here's the reality of their life and I can have them. I can go get them. I just want to, I want to determine who I'm pursuing by how many other people. And it sounds like you're saying you've made it, that that would be a, a factor in whether or not you pursued somebody.

[Monica Padman]

Well, it feels like I'm setting myself up for failure.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Yeah. I think that is your fear and then where. Where you and I differ in our approach to life is great. I'll fail. I won't have her. I still don't have her. So there's nothing. I'm risking nothing by trying and failing.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They'll be in the same position I'm already in.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like for whatever reason, when I do that math, that emboldens me to go. Like, there's nothing at risk.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, so much of the way we operate is based on our experience. You've been validated many times.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Which obviously makes you feel like.

[Dax Shepard]

And I've gone after a ton of girls that rejected me. And it's just like acting. I want to act. I don't care how many times you reject me. I'm gonna keep trying until I can act.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

You go into it knowing, oh, I'm gonna fail 99 of the time.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But I want the thing so bad.

[Monica Padman]

Always deal with the rejection. That makes sense. Sense. All right, well, let's transition into some facts.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Some facts for Scott Payne.

[Dax Shepard]

Number one, he's a stud.

[Monica Padman]

He's so cool. What a cool skin. Scary life.

[Dax Shepard]

It's. It's rare I hear someone's whole career. And I think. Yeah, I would also really liked that. That sounds so up my alley. You're acting.

[Monica Padman]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

You're having to meet groups of people and get them to like you. Get them to trust you. You have to be good at moving in different kinds of.

[Monica Padman]

You know, you say in the episode. And I think it's right. Like I don't think your tolerance over the stupidity. Yeah. There's a. You have to listen to a lot of crazy shit almost exclusively. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

These organizations are not the Winners club. They're like a. They're the Losers club.

[Monica Padman]

No. AA. Are people trying to be better.

[Scott Payne]

But we.

[Dax Shepard]

We call it the losers.

[Monica Padman]

I know. But I don't lovingly that way.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But to have to listen to these bozo conspiracy theorists who are racist. Like the things they believe.

[Monica Padman]

I know. Oh, it would be so. That is just so disturbing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I'd also hate to see someone kill a goat in front of me.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, well, let's start with that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

The difference between a goat and a ram is a ram.

[Dax Shepard]

A boy goat.

[Monica Padman]

A ram is a male sheep. While a goat is a separate species of animal also often kept on farms. They are distinguished by their physical characteristics such as the shape of their horns, tail and general body. Body structure.

[Dax Shepard]

What's a male goat called? It's not called a ram. I think it's like bull and cow. You know how these names. They're gendered names, but they are. They transcend species borders.

[Monica Padman]

But a ram is a sheep.

[Dax Shepard]

But a bull moose. A bull cow. A bull elephant. They call a lot of female animals cows.

[Monica Padman]

No, a male goat is a buck. A. Or billy goat.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, a buck or a billy goat buck. Also a male name.

[Monica Padman]

Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Deer.

[Monica Padman]

Females are called does or nanny goats. And baby goats are called kids.

[Dax Shepard]

You know the thing I've noticed goats do that sheep don't tend to do. They love getting on tall rocks.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, that's.

[Dax Shepard]

Or they stand. I've had friends who have had pet goats, and they just stand on top of their. Like a dog house that they're. They sleep in. They just are up there. They want to be as high as they can be. Maybe to see predators come in.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it kind of creeps me out.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, like that. I think that's a fun. Fun part of them.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

They're very agile.

[Monica Padman]

Rams are larger than goats.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Some breeds of sheeps and goats can look similar, so tail shape can help differentiate them. Male goats can have stronger, more noticeable odor than male sheep. Both male and female goats have beards.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I'm sorry, ladies.

[Monica Padman]

They like it.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, Aaron had a sheep at his was. Dad had a farm, and they had one of all these animals, which is silly. Like, they weren't in the farming business. No one was going to reproduce.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

But they had a sheep, they had a goose, they had a duck, they had a pig, and I've told you this. And a turkey, and they'd all walk in a line all day long.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dax Shepard]

And the goose would be in back yelling at all of them.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

But the sheep, they just love to hit things with their head. They just do it over and over again. So what the sheep would do is if you set the wheelbarrow up. You know how the wheelbarrow has, like, the long poles that come out that you're holding?

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

It would just run as fast as it can into the end of that handle and knock over the wheelbarrow, and then we'd set it back up, and he would do it again and again, and he loved it.

[Monica Padman]

It is so male. Like, I'm going to run into this stick.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, they got to do it to get some ass.

[Monica Padman]

No, no.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, they do.

[Monica Padman]

That's how they get ass attractive.

[Dax Shepard]

For sheep it is.

[Monica Padman]

The women sheep love it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. That's how they compete for dominance. And then he gets the sheep. God, they love it. Those sheep are so horny when they see some ramming, some head on head collision. Oh, God, I hope Chris doesn't know about it. Cte.

[Monica Padman]

Cte.

[Dax Shepard]

They don't get cte.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, they do. All these sheeps have cte. It's no wonder they don't. What does CBC stand for? Canada Broadcasting Corporation.

[Dax Shepard]

That means zero. Zero sense.

[Monica Padman]

Sorry. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

What do you mean?

[Dax Shepard]

It's cbc. How can the C stand for Incorporation?

[Monica Padman]

No, Corporation.

[Dax Shepard]

Corporation. I thought you said incorporation.

[Monica Padman]

No. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, Broadcasting Corporation. Because it's not. You said Broadcasting Corporation.

[Monica Padman]

I said whatever.

[Dax Shepard]

You didn't hit the G. The ing.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Did that sound at all like incorporation?

[Monica Padman]

Okay, sure. I'll give you that. The four large biker gangs. He got it right. It is. The Big four refers to the Hell's Angels, the Outlaws, the Bandidos and the Pagans. He got that right.

[Dax Shepard]

Good job.

[Monica Padman]

He knows his stuff. Okay. He said the owner of Flat Rock got in trouble. In some trouble. Oh yeah, Hit and run. Yeah, that sounds Harley. Rusty Biddle.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh my God. They threw in a third great name.

[Monica Padman]

He was using a neighborhood road as a cut through to avoid traffic.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I don't want to hear the rest because I can imagine you got hit in a neighborhood.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, we won't keep reading. That reminds me of this ignorance.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, ignorance is bliss. But it does remind me of one of my favorite. I think you should leave sketches. The baby pageant.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God.

[Dax Shepard]

And the bad boy, Bart Harley Jarvis. And they go, you, Bart Harley Jarvis. They hate that baby.

[Monica Padman]

They hate it. Hating a baby is such a funny idea.

[Dax Shepard]

A woman runs on stage with a knife to kill Bart Harley Jarvis.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God. So funny. I'm gonna see A Friendship this weekend. I can't wait.

[Dax Shepard]

At Vista.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

I'm excited.

[Dax Shepard]

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I went and saw Sinner yesterday. Or Sinners. Saw it. Sinner Or Sinners?

[Monica Padman]

Sinners.

[Dax Shepard]

I think sinners. In IMAX at CityWalk by myself.

[Scott Payne]

Wow.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. An adventure. How was it?

[Dax Shepard]

It's awesome. It's really awesome.

[Monica Padman]

I really want to see it.

[Dax Shepard]

There's a sequence in there where they're kind of incorporating all these different black music traditions and it's like you're in it. It's a of ton time period movie set in like I want to say 1932 or something.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And I don't want to give anything away, but it's just like the way it's all blended together and the Power of it and recognizing, like, this through line that exists through all this music and this human experience that all these people have shared. It's crazy powerful. Like, I was goosebumps all over my body.

[Monica Padman]

I want to see it.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I just had this deep curiosity. I wanted to ask the guy. The theater was mostly black folks, and there was a dude next to me, and I was just. I got kind of curious, like. Like, I'm looking at that a. I can feel it and sense it, and I've experienced it in. In so that I've experienced that music, and it's made me feel ways. And then I was so curious, like, does this young guy feel a connection to that, or is he on the outside of it as I am? Because it's, like, historic and it's from another period, and I'm sure he feels.

[Monica Padman]

A connection to it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I just was wondering, like, I wanted. I wanted to talk to him about that. I wanted to know, like, what is the experience? My hunch is, you. You can. That's all in your epigenome. I think that's all in their body in some way.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, I think so.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was just. I was very happy for everyone in the movie theater. I'm really happy that this director has the power that he has and that he could tell this story in this way that was just so undeniably authentic and rich.

[Monica Padman]

That's how I felt at the Beyonce concert. Cowboy Gift Carter is a look on America and what it really means to be a country person. And it's really deep when you start thinking about it that way and you're looking around at this. I mean, obviously, that's a very. It's a diverse audience, but a lot of black people who are. Who. Yeah, it's in. It is in their body to connect to these things. She is saying.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And for her to be shining so bright as an example is so powerful and beautiful.

[Dax Shepard]

And then.

[Monica Padman]

And I was also like, fuck. You know, it's just so hard to, like, look around at the beauty and the joy and think, like, these people were enslaved.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Like, it is.

[Dax Shepard]

And the music was always the reprieve. Like, I took a jazz history class in college, and it was like those. All those blue notes and the things that were developed in the Cotton field as an escape, I know, from this horrific life is like. It is deeper than chords. There's something wild going on that has carried through way beyond.

[Monica Padman]

It's still there. Yeah, I know. It's a. It's. It's a beautiful thing Well, I think that is it.

[Dax Shepard]

That's it. A sinners review. And Cowboy Carter, I loved him.

[Monica Padman]

I loved him.

[Dax Shepard]

He was so. He had a sweet.

[Monica Padman]

He did.

[Dax Shepard]

And an openness and an ownership of his point of view all at the same time.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, right. Yeah. Oh, and if I think we talked about this on a previous fact check where I was talking about Malcolm Gladwell's return to the broken windows theory from Tipping Point that comes up in this episode. Scott Payne. So, you know, piece it all together.

[Dax Shepard]

Put it, stitch it together.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, stitch it.

[Dax Shepard]

All right.

[Scott Payne]

Love you.

[Dax Shepard]

Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short [e-mail] survey.