Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Scott Payne (retired undercover FBI Agent)

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Scott Payne (Code Name Pale Horse, White Hot Hate) is a retired FBI Special Agent and author. Scott joins the Armchair Expert to discuss his first taste of undercover work in high school in South Carolina, how he caught the bug training as a fresh-face narcotics officer, and his long shot cold application to the FBI. Scott and Dax talk about his first undercover assignment in the Outlaws biker gang, the ins and outs of performing believable criminal activity, and navigating guilt around putting targets away whose trust he’d earned. Scott explains that the ultimate goal of undercover is accountability by building relationships you’re going to betray, infiltrating an insidious and violent accelerationist white supremacist cell, and a terribly fraught encounter with a goat.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus 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 Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Woo!

Monica! Woo, 900! 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. 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. This is a good thing to know about yourself. So I'm a 20% exaggerator, but I've been saying,

we're like, oh, well I've done 850 of these or whatever. But it actually is 900. 900 today. So I'm gonna start saying a thousand now. Oh God. No, we do not get to say that until we've really I'm gonna start saying a thousand now. Oh, gosh. Well, you know, we've done a thousand. No, we do not get to say that until we've really done it. That's a huge marker.

That's a commitment I'll make in public. Okay. Now let me ask you this. This guest, who I was, I couldn't say yes too fast enough. Yes. Were you a little bit like, oh, I don't know. Yep, of course.

Sure. This episode is fucking riveting. Yeah. Oh my God. It is so good. Yeah, sure. This episode is fucking riveting. Oh my God, it is so good. Yeah, we started the episode and I was like, oh boy, oh, I don't know. And then I was so in, it's so fascinating. What a life.

I think your heart rate, had you been wearing a monitor, I do think your heart rate would have hit 130 at one point. Yes, it felt like listening to Armchair Anonymous where we're getting like these crazy stories. It was so good, he's so cool. 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 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 Brosco. His book is called Code Name Pall 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 a 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. So good. Yes. Please enjoy Scott Payne. If you're like me, you're always craving on which he participates quite a bit. This was unbelievable. So good. Yes, please enjoy Scott Payne. If you're like me, you're always craving that specific comfort food your grandma makes, and I finally found it.

Nana's products just there, in the deli section at the grocery store. Samosas, toasties, and so much more, just like my Nana makes them. And you can tell from the taste that they're made with love. So good that, you know, I gotta go. I'm John Robbins and on my podcast I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, how do you cope? From confronting grief and mental health struggles to finding strength in failure Every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real

Whether you're looking for inspiration comfort or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments Join me on how Do You Cope? Follow now wherever you get your podcasts, or listen to episodes early and ad free on Wondery Plus. How Do You Cope is brought to you by Audible, who make it easy to embark on a wellness journey that fits your life, with thousands of audiobooks, guided meditations and motivational series. It's a nice lot, by the way. Oh, thank you. 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 green. So you don't even know what's on the other side

of that hedge. You turn the corner, 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 in and go, oh man, you got a nice size lot, that's good. 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. Yeah. You're in South Carolina? No, I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee. Oh, you're in Knoxville. And they built a fucking race track between Knoxville and Nashville, right? Yes, those are my friends.

What's it called? 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 the 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? I mean, you only run if you're drunk. I think I hit something. Well, should we stop and check?

Should we do a little double check? Should we find out? Maybe a little reverse? Maybe not a reverse. Maybe just pause. Let me get out and look. Oh my God. Okay, so you're from those South Carolina.

Yeah, born and raised in South Carolina. And did you not want to retire there? 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. It was Knoxville's headquarters city. But out of Knoxville, you've got Chattanooga as a resident agency, their satellite offices.

We had one at Oak Ridge for a while. we got Johnson City. So Columbia in 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 the 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 you should call it the crotch if you've got like mountains the tank that's got some charm to it it's where University of South Carolina's that but I didn't really care about going back to Greenville even though I love it that's where I grew up you were out of

Knoxville office for a lot of your work and then built a life in a house and bought property there I assume 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. Oh wow. I'm at 26 Fed and I was still assigned there when 9-11 happened.

It's just the day of 9-11, I was undercover in San Antonio, Texas. What age was that? I came in the Bureau at 28, so 29, 30. 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. Yeah, in the book process, I had to dive deep. You get asked these questions.

At first, it's just, hey, I'm going gonna 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 to like Mr. Jefferson. It's got the same suits. 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 loud mouth, teenage kid, boy with testosterone, wearing sleeveless shirts and fingerless gloves, things you're not supposed to do. Any dude wearing weight lififter gloves in high school, we gotta keep our eye on. Yeah.

Let's just be real. Throwing a spike bracelet or two. Yeah, we need to just be aware of where we're at. Or rolling quarters, brass knuckles, which I don't even know where you're carrying that. Oh yeah. Butterfly knives. Yeah, ninja stars.

Slapjack. 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. 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 hopper teacher, but apparently I was doing it. I didn't know I did. So they closed the curtain on us. It's very TV ish the curtain closes and they're trying to cut the power and meeting the bass player Shut it off. The principal was miss workman. She came out and my mother was there. My mother's a rock star I'm her baby boy. Yeah, only child to the only job We're out there in the foyer and everybody's like, oh man, that was awesome But here comes miss workman and she's like I'm gonna expel you and she looks at mama. 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 So fast forward to like Monday I I get called into Vice Principal's office, Mr. Walker. And I know, Mr. Walker, shame. You're never called in there for anything good, at least in my experience. 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 plops in the VCR tape and I'm watching it And I look at him and I go, that's bad. I'm so sorry. And then I started talking about like, think about 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. 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 house. And words were done. And words, yeah. And it was bad. Racial slurs. Yeah. It was like the horror story you hear. We're talking South Carolina in the 80s.

And 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. The burnout. Potheads. I could hang out with, does that mean I smoked dope back then?

Yes. Yeah. That's how I hung out with him. I was even on the beta club. So that was a weird fit, but he must've seen something. And he asked me if I'd be willing to help him try to figure out who did this.

Cause he's pretty sure somebody from the school 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, how's it going? Yeah, shooting the ball. Hey man, 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? Yes. But if you never do it, and now I'm seeing different things, it's usually because you're thinking

and you're trying to make up something. This dude did the Homer Simpson. Well you get super aware of everything you're doing. You have a level of self-consciousness all of a sudden. And you do the back away. Sinking to the shrubs. Yeah. 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 Cutlass Supreme was flat and I was very angry. And when you told the principal, he was like, yeah talent show, but I came out and my Cutlass Supreme was flat and I was very angry. And when you told the principal, he was like, yeah, that's who 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. Mr. Walker was like, yep, I just recently, whatever he did, maybe that kid got two weeks of afterschool suspension or something, but he had just gotten in trouble. 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.

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 a sense to the principal's office. And he was lenient. Yeah. Mr. Walker high-fiving him. He goes, now listen, I'm gonna have to yell and stuff.

Yeah, do it every day next time. I'm telling you, Scott, don't you ever do that again. It will be expelled. Let's get you out of here, that's cool. So that's kinda when I start thinking I'm connecting with people. Not that I'm necessarily deceiving them, but I'm trying to find out information.

Okay, so you go away to college, you end up majoring in psychology, you get a degree in psychology. I majored in criminal justice, minored in psychology. Oh, so you go away to college, you end up majoring in psychology, you get a degree in psychology. I majored in criminal justice minor in psychology. Oh, okay. I could have had a double major, two more classes. Okay, Monica had a double major, I beat her to the punch. I went back for six hours, I just needed two classes. You should go back now. Oh really? Just roll into class at Charleston Southern? You probably could. So you end up getting a job as a police officer. Yes, at first I couldn't. 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 white guys. And I said, that'd been nice to know before I graduated. So how did you end up? I kept applying.

I was already bouncing at gentlemen's clubs, I'm using air quotes, because sorry if I'm offending you, but. You can be honest here. There are no gentlemen in those clubs and neither was I back then. It's funny you bring that up. I was just watching a documentary,

this story of this guy who had seen a guy beating the shit 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 in 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 shit was hitting the woman. And where would the gentleman be?

Okay, so how long are you there and when at that job do you start dabbling in undercover stuff? 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 be a cop and I get hired by Greenville County Sheriff's Office. So I go back home and I'm uniformed patrolled

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. How long is that program? That was just a one week school.

Oh really? Yeah. What are they telling you in there? Seems like a lot to learn in a week. It is, a lot of role playing. How to commit to your story, that kind of stuff. I don't even remember there, if we really focused on backstory or not. That came in the FBI 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, how hard is it when you're in the town that you work in? Very hard. Yeah, I'd imagine.

Yeah, don't people know you? 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? Cut my hair on my head if I have any. It's very thin now. I'm hanging on to what I got. I'm in a battle myself. Hourly. I'll be at CPI stem cells next week, NT1, and I think I'm going to get on the chute side of my head. Oh man. Hourly. Yeah. I'll be at CPI Stem Cells next week, NTU on it,

and I think I'm gonna get on the chutes under 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 multiple fronts 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 I'm doing. Yeah, exactly. I go down there, and they're like,

all you got to do is roll up, and they're going to rush your car, and you're just telling them you want a 20. So they come up, and I crack the window because 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 so scared. I put the 20 through the window like it's a vending machine. And he's like, what you won't yell at me. And I'm like, I'm like a 20. He takes the 20 and then he yells at me to roll the window down because he can't hand me the dope through the window. So I started getting that bug and I started learning. But to the question you ask, I hope it's changed now. I still teach in narcotics officers associations and conferences.

I need to ask this question to the next one, but you come in as a fresh face. So as a fresh face, you can go by 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 transition or oversight. Once I got in the FBI and I learned about the undercover program, you get certified and we can go anywhere. Right. So how do you end up at the FBI? Cause I want to get into some of these cases. I remember sitting with my sergeant on the surveillance. He was a Southern command narcotics sergeant kill it, former Marine Fu Manchu, looked like a bulldog, built like a bulldog. I think he even had a bulldog on his arm. Sure, he was committed. Maybe he went to Georgia.

Maybe, hey! Big red. That's right. Roll Tide? No! Roll Tide. He always tries to do that. I always cut it.

We can throw in the Tennessee Vols and throw in the Gators. Oh no! Now we'll be all throwing down. Roll Tide's usually sufficient to get her pissed off. 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 with me? Like, you kidding me? Really, I only thought the FBI worked like bank robberies my first office. And I was like, what in the hell's wrong? I'm like, you kidding me? Really, I only thought the FBI worked like bank robberies. I didn't know they worked drugs and everything else.

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 marshals or anybody else. So it just kept going. I would pass phase one and then there's lie detectors and physical fitness.

Then you pass phase two and then you get a slot as a new agent In Quantico, so I go to Quantico. It's 98. I leave the sheriff's office Are you married yet or anything? No, you have nothing tying you down. Got a bass hand on the truck Okay, 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 four by four truck with a shotgun rack and I got a basset. I'm like, oh, you're not coming up here with that. I go, 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. That's the view. 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. 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 Hells Angels I've read so many books about them and you went undercover with the outlaws. Yeah, I'm right there with you

I read them all too three can keep a secret if two of them are dead Hunter S Thompson one. Yeah. 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. There's a large four but they're at the top. The Varga? It usually goes Hells Angels, Outlaws, maybe Pagans after that and I'm trying to remember I think Mongols are small. Mongols yeah. I'm sorry Banditos are huge. It's probably Hells Angels, Outlaws, Banditoslaws banditos pagans but nearly every time you read about a shootout at a casino shoot out at bike week the outlaws are involved could be there for

real I will say it depends on the chapter but yes okay that's fair of you Belushi brought one of his Hells Angels friends out on stage during when they say goodnight oh he also had fear come on Belushi did a lot of weird shit, but he got the band Fear to play. He also brought out Hells Angels. He was on an elevator going up in 30 Rock, and two outlaws got in the elevator with him,

and said we don't wanna see that on TV again. That's like one of his stories. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so tell me that. I respect that. Tell me that process. Gary.

Because my understanding of it is you got a Pro-B for like a year in most of these clubs, right? You do. Usually the bylaws would say six months, but because of law enforcement infiltration, I've heard of some say you got to be a hang around 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. Yeah.

So how? It was a different thought process because I am not knocking anybody who's gained a patch. My ego wanted the 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 gotta do enough shit to be in. What's it mean? What's what mean? The patch. So if you wanna join the Hells Angels, you're gonna be a probie for at least a year.

You go on all the camping trips. Like a rookie. Yeah, you get your ass kicked, you do all the shit work. Pasing. 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.

You're a pro. If you go far back in all the ridings, I've read, just like you've read, 70s, 80s, you see that kind of stuff, but the patches you're cut. So you're gonna have a top rocker, and that's gonna say Outlaws MC, or Hells Angels MC. And then the middle piece is gonna be the death head

for Hells Angels, or it's gonna 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 territory-wise. It's not your chapter, it's your state. State, like Boston.

Boston was weird, because Boston and south of Boston was outlaw territory. Boston and north of Boston was house angels territory. So you get in the big areas like that, or Florida. Florida has more locks. California's a mess. Yeah, it's a big state. I mean, it's a great riding state with great weather I'm also a good three-way for drugs and criminal activity Not saying they all do it

So, how did you get ingratiated? What I ended up doing and trust me the case, there were multiple chances to patch. I was pleaded by certain members today, man, just get a PO 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? Yeah. I'm not gonna be sleeping. I'm gonna go around with my fanny pack with the go kit, which usually includes condoms, tampons, cigarettes, lighters, knives, droplets, drugs.

Everything they don't want to carry. You callin' 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 gotta pay for it when I'm sitting here drinking for free right now.

And they were like, wait, and 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, five 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, how are you doing,

because this is one of my questions later, but we're here you clearly have to do a legal shit to earn their confidence How is that sorted? I can't say a lot because the tradecraft they're still under covers out there trying to do okay There are ways that I can partake in criminal activity Well, let's just use what we did they started reporting vehicle stolen So you're gonna 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.

Right. Because you are making shit disappear. But then it becomes, I got your trust. Now you've carjacked a vehicle. Now you're just stealing F-350s off of a lot. So then they call me and they go, hey, Tex, which is what they call me. Not very original, I'm from Texas. And They're like, I got a redneck accent. Tex, 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. What was the results of that case? The Taunton chapter was pretty much disbanded and 12 to 15 went to jail. How long were you in that one? Two years. That was my longest one. Now, this is a weird question, but I feel like there must be an answer.

I'm a weird guy. You did biker gangs, you did a sheriff's department, you did a bunch of white nationalist stuff, KKK. And this one's gotta be the most fun. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I thought about it for a second.

I'm like, yeah. Well, I hope it wasn't the white nationalists. Well, gonna get to that. Why would you hope that? I hope that would be a piece of fun. The shit Scott had to sit through is maddening. When I'm reading about these dumb-dums, you gotta 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 to have on my back having messed with the outlaws than I would be these weird cell white national things. Because how much you have tears, you have 60 year old, seven year old, this is gonna live on. Yeah. Is that a little more scary?

The 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 work in. 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? I'm seeing you in forever, man. You on the up and up. How's the family? Are things going good? Do you ever feel guilty? Yeah.

You had to have become friends in that two years with some folks. There are a lot of people out there who know, and I cover it well in the book, that Scott Town. It is the closest relationship I've built with a possible target on any case I've ever done. 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 it.

You're not gonna take the compliment. But Joe Pistone is the very famous, he was Donnie Brosco. 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. 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 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 the 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?

Gaining trust. Yeah, some trickery. With the ultimate goal of holding them accountable for something illegal. That's very good. Usually I'll get like lying or you're playing a character, you're acting. I'm building relationships that I'm gonna betray. Yeah.

Yeah. And you know that going in, that's so hard. 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 a mentor, but I've made plenty of mistakes. 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. 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.

But there's a lot of stuff you'd prefer not to think about again. Well, it's not so much that because I am a talker. I think the Lord put me here to feel silence with noise. That's what I think. When it's quiet, I'm like. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Anything?

Why is it so quiet in here? 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? And I was like, oh my God. We can't go five minutes? Yeah, no. Well, I'll pass the baton to you,

but somebody better be talking. Yeah, it's tough. 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. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so dad had pretty bad depression. That's actually what brought me to psychology. That makes sense. But I gotta imagine 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. I've never heard it put that way. That is a great way to say it and I'm probably gonna permanently borrow it. 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're 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. You can't do that. But when I tell you, they go, where are you from? And I go, McCallum, Texas, right on the border. No shit, how much can you get a kilo of cocaine for?

That's the next sentence out of your head. Yeah. Help. As a matter of fact. Now that you ask. Yeah. But yeah, I think some element of it is looking for safety in all the many ways that means. Well, think of it this way, and I've 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, oh, I'm just out there gift-a-gabbin' 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. Please tell Monica that. I'm scared. I was, too. I guess that's a universal fear. Being in the basement with a gun. Wow. Wait, yeah, how'd that happen?

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. And they'll be standing there naked going, this sucks. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert...if you dare. Michelin tires you can trust until May 30th. Receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard with purchase of four new Michelin passenger or light truck tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there.

TreadExperts.ca. At 24, I lost my narrative, or rather it was stolen from me. And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you 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 and unrecognizable names,

about the way that people have navigated roads to triumph. My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming and feel like they filled their tank up. They connected with the people that I'm talking to and leave with maybe 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 Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. ["Wonderful Music"] So I told you a little bit of the backstory with the outlaws. They have car jack stuff. We now have 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 towns a great friend Brian de la Vega clothesline is a good friend Yeah, you're going to kids birthday parties

Yeah, Joe dogs is the president of the taunt 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 though. We've laid out bread crumbs 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 dope game because they know I have cartel contacts

And they know that the reason I never got cut out as a gringo 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 lay 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 chocks 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 2007ish. 40 kilos. Oh my God. Yeah, now can you imagine? 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 they're snipers on the roof? Yes, because we cannot let 40 kilos walk Yeah, we cannot get ripped if the bad guys decide to go even more bad and say 40 kilos. Let's take it

Well, how are they getting it? The government sees all this cocaine. Oh, what's already been seized? So they have warehouses. They have these fucking burns down in Texas. Yeah. That the government owns. It's heartbreaking. Imagine watching them shovel incardiae watches

into a bonfire. That's not the same thing. How dare you? It is. How dare you? It is. To each their own. Look at this contraband being burned.

True. We'll save one sample. We're gonna do the deal. And the US Attorney's Office, of course, we wanna gather as much evidence as we can of who's gonna 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.

It's kind of a cute rebrand. It is cute. 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 has this deal happened? Who is this guy? Has he really been checked? I find out, again, later on, that Closeline and others

were like, yeah, I mean, we've done like eight jobs with this guy, car jacking, stolen vehicle here, moving this here. None of us are in bracelets, meaning handcuffs. 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.

That's what we do. So you have a little camera somewhere on you? Somewhere, I've got video and audio, and then I have a backup audio, and then I have a transmitter. Oh no. Hey. So stressful. Thank you, now I'm out. Somewhere I've got video and audio and then I have a backup audio and then I have a transmitter. Oh, no No, no, no, I like hanging out and maybe doing drugs We're talking again 2007 ish just think of how much technology has changed between oh, yeah

I mean look how small I mean just think now everyone's carrying a phone that thing can just be recorded You could probably do it with eye contact Yeah, I don't want to give anyone any ideas Generally we can do more than we can anyway because the TV but technology is way better now Yeah, so let's just say I had technology of 2007. Yeah 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 stick and 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, ha ha ha, 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. 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 a minute 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. It's more of a crawl space.

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 watching 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 because I need 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 because I need to check you for a wire. Mmm. I hate this. Yeah, me too. And there's no one in a van across the street?

We'll get to that. Okay. 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? I would love to say yes to that answer, but I was shitting gold.

Yeah! I was having an adrenaline dump. It's the fight or flight or freeze. Yeah, mid-brain is in charge. 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. 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 wreck or whatever, everything just slows down and your auditory exclusion, everything's going whoosh. What I'm hearing is like, Scott, I need you. I've even had sight get minimal. So that happens, you're getting the tunnel vision, 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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. Oh my God.

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. Yeah. And I yelled back, I'm like, and what else do you need?

I don't even know I do it. And he's like, what? I got 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 and 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 gonna Google search me. There was a whoserap.com, there was things like that. And I go, okay, I'm gonna cool with that. Then I remember my initials were SAC, cause that is the head of an FBI office. And I thought that was funny, cause I know I'd never be one.

So I made my initials SAC. Little humor for myself. But I remember Scott Andrew Calloway. So I write that down. I take all my 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 sure and you were scared 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. It's a woman. I know. I don't care what I look like right now. I just want to get out of here. So I take all my clothes off and he checks everything. I'm trying to talk.

I know clothes lines 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. He's probably like, don't be that worried.

Well, no, he tells me. And these are his words exactly. I think they even quoted 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 him, you guys asked for this. I did not come to you, you came to me. If nobody wants to do shit, nobody has to do shit. Those are my exact words. Not as clear as that, because I'm crapping my pants. And all the gear's in your clothes somehow. Some yes, some no. Tradecraft, I won't say where or how.

You can't say, but you are exposed currently. They're not seeing it. They're not seeing it, 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, oh.

When he grabs it, he goes, hey, I'm not gonna find anything here I don't want to, right? Like some naked pictures of my old lady, and he goes, ha ha ha, and my laugh is like, ha ha ha. You know? And I even say, I hope not. 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 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. I do it, but you can hear clear on the recording me watching him and I go I have no idea I'd do it, but you can hear clear on the recording me watching him and I go Yeah, it's a verbal sigh yeah because my insides are saying it's over

Yeah, yeah, 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 is kicking 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 you old lady

to try to buy me some time or to 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 gonna 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 but you didn't know that? Yeah, I did you would just have to be betting on the notion that they're gonna assume

They're watching. Yeah, currently watching. And if you don't come out, now they've got a fed murder. 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 Dawgs and Scott Town. And luckily, they didn't take it personally or anything,

but I took it personally, and I shouldn't have, because I'm just undercover, but I was pissed. Now that 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. That's good, because that's what you would have done

if you weren't undercover. 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. It's like, how the fuck do you know how someone acts when they're white?

Like, that's bullshit. That's what you saw on TV. That's what you thought of in your head. Nobody knows what anybody does until it's happening. Yeah, that's the same thing I would have done if Scott Payne, who do you think you are taking me into a damn basement? Even though they were right, I wasn't undercover.

Right. Yeah, you didn't have the moral high ground. But that's what we all do. We justify things to ourselves. Even if we know we're wrong, we can find a way. 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 Joe. 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 baseline, 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 deadbolted. 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 door. But they listened to me, and I make it out. The other thing that I forget 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, going to the hotel. 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, you want to have a hotel. Just wanted you to know I'm good. I'll call you after I wake up. Sometimes we'd 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? Barely. And she said, in 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 mashed it up. It's when I was in the basement getting striped. Wow. The Spidey senses were traveling across the universe. Holy Spirit in my world. I was in Boston, look on the map, Boston to McAllen. That's a long way away from each other.

She felt it. Geez. I believe that. Yeah, it was insane. That's just one of the many things that happened on that case. Was that the gnarliest, if you had to give one a number one? Man, there's been several.

I did joke with her after this book and doing these interviews and stuff like that. I felt like I need to have a couple more life-threatening experiences. I'm running out of stories to tell. She's like, no. And I'm like, all right, alright. 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. Yes. And she's got an incredible podcast. I really urge people to listen to it. It's great. Season 2 is you. Yeah, the original one was six episodes, White Hot Hate, that covered the group The Base.

That's before we ever met met She didn't know me But I heard it because people were sending it to me and she kept hearing him in all this court testimony But just not knowing who this name was 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 This is the guy we've been listening to and she thought she was gonna do one episode of season two with Scott That's what she was shooting for fell in love as people do with you We got six episodes called white hot hate agent pale horse, but I will say it plays like a documentary. It's so well produced Yeah, CBC that's Canadian. Yep, Canada broadcasting

Communicate. Yeah, they do a damn good job. It's a really good podcast 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 them the truth. I know my experience, but I want to hear yours. It was surreal to hear him. 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. Yes.

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 give a fuck. Yeah, but it could have also backfired because if they heard sirens If they could have just killed you good half a lot of people asked 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. People have been killed in that crawl space for sure.

Probably, I don't know. Who knows? Don't sue me, outlaws. 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 forbidden 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. I mean, this is what he's gotta sit, when I talk about him sitting around having to listen to these guys tell him how the world works,

how fucking maddening that would be for me. Pour me another drink. I would rather have a lot of scary outlaw biker experiences. How old is that theory? Because it sounds like they stole it from Harry Potter. 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 those 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 a pagan belief. I mean, you see, I've got Viking stuff all over my arm. They're realin' Norse shit. Yeah, and so was Hitler. But they take that and twist it. They're not doing the traditional pagan blot. They're real in Norse shit. Yeah, and so was Hitler. But they take that and twist it. They're not doing the traditional pagan block. They're doing horrific white supremacy stuff. 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. 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. There's like Proud Boy-y type stuff? Hmm, Proud Boy just like to beat people up. Proud Boy's not white supremacy. Proud Boys are anti-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 for 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. Good luck defining that, but yes, continue. 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 there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I wouldn't pass that. Big Easy, what was the dude's name? Big Siege. And his name's Yousef something, as it turns out. Yousef Barazna, yeah. Okay, I mean, that, yeah. Because I wouldn't pass that. Big Easy, what was the dude's name? Big Siege. And his name's Yousef something as it turns out? Yousef Barazna, yeah. Okay. I mean, that's curious.

He didn't tell everybody his name was Yousef. Oh my God. But accelerationists, 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. It's 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. I have read some responses. It's 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 talk about plate carriers. What are plate carriers? So it's your bulletproof vest. Oh, oh, oh, huh. But the plate carrier, the plate stops rifle rounds. So they're ordering cry precision plate carriers? So it's your bulletproof vest, but the plate carrier, the plate stops rifle rounds.

So they're ordering cry precision plate carriers. It's the same thing FBI swats wear. Oh my god. 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 would have been the same stuff a lot of them are 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 gonna create our own ethno-state. Because clearly, if we make it all white, everything will run smoothly. Obviously. When you're sitting around talking to these guys, do you ever go like, so who's going to do all the work? All this work that none of the white people do. Who's doing all the work?

I'll tell you what I did. My sense of humor, I've got to have it. So I'm like, so we're neo-Nazis. Hell yeah, man. Hell yeah, man. 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 gonna be Hitler? And the faces go blank. And I'm like, getting thought that far? Who's it gonna be? It can only be one.

Just to mess with them. Sure, sure. Because there were belief systems. I've listened to them go on for hours about concave Earth, Hitler's still alive, and hollow Earth, with it's not a Garthans, there's something else. I just start tuning it out. How do you learn the lingo?

Well sometimes I let them teach me. Let that ego roll. Like 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 doing? I'm like man, what are you doing? Writing a book?

I don't know, y'all just met you. Right. Look, I mean you seem like you're a nice gal but I'm not ready to invite you ever to tea and crumbits 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'd only been here for like a year. Yeah, you made lieutenant in a year How that dude's talking for the next two hours? Well, let me tell you about how done when I come in and just let him 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 flowering or stickering or posturing.

It's like we go down the street and on the way back, one spray in 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 bitch 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-ass Michigan. And it's a gun shooting and music playing and running to recruit like the al-qaeda videos. 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, they call it siege culture.

There's a book out there called Siege, don't go buy it. Which has been outlawed. Yeah, don't go try to buy it. 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 ultimately thought there would be a race war as well, and he was trying to accelerate that. Yep, and that's where you start seeing the ideology of acceleration of them 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. Terrorist principles, let's get an oversized reaction to something we do. Kill a hundred, scare thousands. Kill thousands, scare millions. 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 got a country accent CLL. The sales, they wanted three to five men 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 men sales all over the world waiting. And I mean, we had members from Norway, South Africa, Australia, the UK, Canada. You just keep going. These heroes, these heroes are the ones in New Zealand. Saints.

Of the saints, all these assholes, 27 at Walmart, nine at a mosque. 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good.

Yeah, I think that's good. Because we don't want to give them credit. The Christchurch shooter, he's not at the top. The one that did the Norway shooting is at the top. It's like 77 and O. And then you get Christ Church is this and O. And then you get down to the Tree of Life. So sick.

The Tree of Life Massacre in Pittsburgh. Then you get Charleston. Do you see that these are all related? It gets quite scary. Very. 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. And then it says at the bottom, what are you going to do to make the board? Stop it. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. If you dare.

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, 3ma, 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 protected speech.

You can say, I hate any racial slur you want. You can say, I hope any racial slur dies. 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. You're trying to figure out who's serious or not. Yeah. Who's gonna pull the trigger How do you do that? Delineate you just got to stay vigilant. You hope that people out there at cliche But if you see something say something, 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 gonna 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? I know a lot of times people that'll wanna argue against law enforcement, they'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 it's we 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. Maybe I stopped you from going home and murdering your wife or having that 15th domestic beating. This is in Malcolm Gladwell's book. This is cracking down on jumping turnstiles on the subway. This is cleaning up graffiti. You take away the opportunity because you never know what's

gonna happen. And all that stuff, 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. 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 Radcliffe, 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 shadows. You know, and you just go up there and go, hey, how's it going? What are you doing? Hey man, you guys should go ride the, just bust it up. You're being observed. Yeah. Okay, so you do get embedded in that group

and this Canadian who gets outed in Canada goes on the run. He gets outed, common term is doxed. D-O-X-X-E-D, which basically means outed. 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. 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 doxxed and being out. What the far left is really good at is once you are doxxed, they will show up at your house, they will protest at your work. Well, Antifa started showing up. Yeah, they're good with that and they get funding for it. I'm not gonna 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. Yeah, I've heard I never is resolved.

Right, so I'm in the group, I'm gaining their trust, and I'm learning more. And we as the FBI are learning more. Do you have to fake your skillset? This is what I was thinking. I did. 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 at all this shit. Well, and we don't want to lead anything. Right. Am I in the KKK and I bring a black person to the rally? Right. With a red? Yeah, right.

Look at what I found. Yeah, exactly. 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, receiving instruction from these dumb-dumbs. Well, it was good instruction though. 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're so realistic. No, they are.

They're realistic. That's scary. Hop on there and cut your microphone. It's an 11-year-old kid telling you to clear the hard corner. Yeah. 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. Well this fucking scenario with the goat. Yeah, you could have been killed there 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 Asatru 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 pie, now I'm using the verbage you gave me. 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. It's so weird. It feels like it's such a hodgepodge of things. It's very Viking. It reeks of searching for masculinity and validation for masculinity.

You're 100%. From my experience, you're spot on. They haven't earned it through a job and a career. They haven't earned it through a marriage and protecting their children. They're outcasts. They have been bullied. They can't earned it through a job and a career. They haven't earned it through a marriage and protecting their children. They're outcasts They have been bullied. They can't get a partner This is the only way in their mind at least that they're gonna achieve that mask 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, Rashid, out of Baltimore and a US attorney, Thomas Wendell, man, 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 gotta open the 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 weekend training or something. I'm counting the cars, I know whose cars are what,

and I'm counting the heads under the awning of the barn and I'm like, there's an extra person there. And I I go walking up and as 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 And then we start training and now you're getting into more crazy ideology Like when the bookaloo happens and I'm talking about crying while you're saying it I'm gonna have to shoot my dad in the back of the head and I'll do it because they're saying if you,

because in their belief system, stupid mind. Obviously. When the boogaloo happens and D-Day starts, if you are not fascist, that automatically makes you anti-fascist and the penalty is death. Even if you're white? Oh yeah.

You just keep raising the purity test. The fundamentalists are on a trajectory to outdo one another's fundamentalist. There is no you're home safe, you're white, you're this. They keep moving the goalposts. All these movements. 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 him and he was on his way to apparently do a assassination attempt. Well, the first reports that start coming out show that he's reading the ideology

I was just telling you about, and it mentions O9A. O9A is Order of Nine Angles. That is a, let me say it this way, from what I've found working it, infiltrating it, working it as a case agent, developing sources that were in and all around it, if you scratch the surface long enough

at an accelerationist group somewhere in there, you're gonna find an O9A member, 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. It is as dark as you can get.

The sentence of they're big on rape and pedophilia is like. Yeah, case happened very fast-paced. Eight months you were there? Seven, I think. But it was 24-7. And as I said, it kept growing and growing. The more people that we identified, it got to one point where once a month

we would get all case teams on the 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 gonna 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 my phone. I fall asleep because the heat's on, you know. I'm like toast, I'm defrosting. And then I wake up to pounding on my window. Pell horse, Pell horse, man, you gotta get up.

Where do you see this? Where do you see this? I'm like, what is it? They go, do you hear us talking about the goat? I'm like, uh-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, jumped the fence, steal the goat, almost get caught, it could be a ram. Ram goat, it's very close, it had horns. I walk out there and one of the members who went by the name Dima 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. If a bunch of Neanderthals and flecktorn camo and balaclavas's with machine guns, just jumped in my backyard and jerked me out. It's not a surprise birthday party. Right, now I'm watching Eisen work this goat,

and he's praying to it, he's talking to it, he's showing it love, and I walk up 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. Might not know about Valhalla. I go over to my listening device when you're out you should have a cover team so if I'm out four days straight on the farm They're gonna be pulling shifts and rotating because you got to have a quick response Yeah, which how quick can you respond to me on a hundred acre farm if the crap's gonna 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 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 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 chocks, I need to know, send me a sign. And I sat there and I waited and I got nothing. No phone calls and I said, okay. Bahá'u'lláh it is. I guess we're going to Bahá'u'lláh. 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. Eisen 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 accelerationist, it was gonna be the start of the wild hunt

Which basically meant cleansing the planet of anti-fash non-white Jews So Isen goes to kill we're in the 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 is the wild hunt This is going to Valhalla. He even named the goat Gar, G-A-R, short for Garfield, which was his middle name, and also the first name of his grandfather. 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 his back strap was thick. Let's just add it's his first time ever trying to do this. 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, nah, you know, and I'm like, oh, damn.

And I'm like, this is gonna 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. Oh my God. And we're all still in the circle. So that's when the instructor comes out. You hear it clear on the recording, I'm 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 Isaiah, I said, 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. For gore. For gore. For gore. For gore. For gore and gore. Let's put this thing up to 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. Stop. We're all in a circle and Eisen 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 is. Yeah, I know. I'm going to like young guns. I'm in the spirit world or get high. That's called like a spirit world. I'm going to like young guns. I'm in the spirit world, man. But as we're going around, I'm holding the flashlight for Eisen. Eisen's tearing off a tab, putting it in the mouth of the base member,

and then they're chasing with the blood of the goat. So we keep doing that all the way 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 gets to me and now it's my turn and by this time I look down at the cup and it's all coagulated Gnarly this is horrific and I'm looking at it and I'm going man I really don't want to turn this shit up. You'd be shocked at some of the things I would do instead of drink that Yeah, right

I would have to take the acid But I look and I said I think pestilence gave me an out because I'm like I'm looking the same thing. I would have to take the acid. 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 lip. Oh, this is 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 goad 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 sick 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 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 gotta 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 supremacy, these people don't like anybody. That was my thought when I watched it, I'm not conflating this group with these people, but when I was watching the Capital Six riots,

I'm looking at this crowd. I'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's not the thing that actually is uniting them or making them similar.

Correct. Were there people there with some nefarious plans? 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.

Yeah. After 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 the sale up there I was good friends with both of those sales the sale 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 a 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 down everything. 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? And 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 directionless young dudes? What would we attribute this to? And has it increased? It ebbs and flows and sometimes it a political climate? Is it unemployment? Is it directionless young dudes? What would we attribute this to and has it increased? It ebbs and flows and sometimes it is political.

So like when Obama was in for eight years, your militias 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 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 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 jihadists, 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 to be all end all.

Every situation is different at case by case basis. But I saw a lot of somebody who's an outcast, 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 the 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 gonna find there. And they will take some real 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 of these base guys,

I was getting so frustrated listening to him talk. He's like, you know, he went through a lot of phases. And she asked, what was it? You know, it was some Nazi stuff. It's denial. That guy came down and drank with us and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. 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 Mayenkampf, Hitler's book, and on the other side of the thing is Siege by James Mason.

That's not a phase. When you've got grown men showing up all the time and training on your 100 acres, wearing Fleck-Tarn camouflage because that's the German pattern, drinking Jägermeister because that's German, and you hear what they're saying. It's tough, but go ahead, that was a long answer.

No, that was important. That's good. When you say say something, can you be specific? Report it. To the police. 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? Yeah, I got to go find this person down. 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 reported that you're putting some radical stuff out there. I just wanna make sure you're not really planning on hurting anybody. Maybe that scares them enough. Talk to them, 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 case, it was other white supremacists that reported them enough. 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 case, 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.

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 these guys? Some of them. 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 it didn't for some people. 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 on this planet. The life's tough.

I'm 100% believer in, I don't have to believe it, 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. Imagine looking at some of these guys and going like, oh yeah, you're a thousand hugs shy of being here.

Yeah, or a second chance, or a fifth chance, or a 20th chance. No one's winning the whole thing. I can give you one, though, on second chances. Oh yeah, let's hear it. Love a success story. It's sad that there hasn't been a lot in my 28-year career.

You always hear people, when they're getting arrested or they're getting ready to do their time, they're like, man, I'm never doing this again. I said, 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's salary is not gonna 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 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'll do a character reference letter And they only got probation even through my church small groups. Some of my best friends were meth dealers Yeah, and they had to go to do time But hey, man, I'm here for you as long as you're doing the right thing I'll do whatever I can to help you 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. Yeah. Yeah empathy. I mean you must have been abundance of it some acute spidey senses where I'm sure you can kind of tell who's capable of that second chance. Yeah. Yeah, empathy. I mean you must have an abundance of it. 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. I appreciate you having me on. Yeah, this is incredible. Alright, be well brother. Alright, peace. 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 gonna keep telling you. Okay. Well, first of all, when's the last time you bought a pound of ground beef? It's been a minute. but you can visualize in your head about how big that is. Yeah, right.

Well, I would say it's like this big. It's like the size of a small shoe. Um, You don't like that. You don't like that. I think it's sure Well, here's my point. Yeah, I think it's sure. Well, here's my point. Yeah. I think a pound of ground beef is a significant size. Okay. And I weighed myself last night before bed.

Oh boy, oh my God, Dax, I can't. Yeah, you got to. Because I listened to about astrology in the pit yesterday. You love astrology. I don't love astrology. You have it tattooed on your body. So, 205.2 last night. Okay.

Many peepees in the night. Okay. Very big deposit this morning, 198.8. So, I lose seven pounds in 12 hours, 10 hours. That's a lot. Picture seven pounds of ground beef. I don't want to. That's what you must picture to be impressed by this.

Okay, yeah. Like where does it go? Like, well, I know where it goes. It goes in the turlet. But just picture seven pounds of ground beef on that table and then I go, I'm gonna lose that tonight. Maybe it's more than just the pee and the poop. I mean, I don't.

Air. Air's not very heavy, but. How much is air? How much is air? Oh, I wanna 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. Yeah, sure. And then a month later I'm like, oh right, I save videos really in my mind. I see a video I like on Instagram and I send it to someone. And then a month later I'm like, all right, I remember I sent it to that. Cause how else would you find it? Well, you can save them, but yeah. Oh, you can?

I don't know how to do that. I'll start doing that. Okay. It was Richard Feynman. And you know, people love, all smart people are obsessed with Richard Feynman. Like consistently, it's every smart person's favorite smart person.

Okay. He's a physicist and he worked on the Manhattan Project. He could tackle anything. He was just so 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. With 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. Wait, the tree? The tree and the leaves. I thought the tree didn't exist yet. A little sapling comes up. From where? A seed. Okay, so you're saying, okay, you're saying there's a seed. There's a seed then there's a sapling

Then everything that grows above that a hundred foot redwood That's not coming from the ground. 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? 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 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 the tree. By car, so it's all carbon? It's all carbon. Trees are all carbon? Yeah, as are we, we're like carbon life forms. But I mean, how does the wood, like how does it create the texture of wood? Well, that's how it assembles the carbon

that it pulls out of the air. It assembles it into that shape. Who told it to do that? Oh, you're not. You gotta let me get to the punchline of it. Sorry. 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 the air. Sure. Well, that's coming out of the ground is the water. Trees are made up a lot of water. He said, but the water doesn't come from the ground either.

The water comes from the air. Well, that's true. So the structure of the tree and the water all comes from the air. 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 energy. It's pretty rad, isn't it? It is really interesting. 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 gonna overthink it. That's what most people do, yeah. Yeah, I think that's what everyone does, except for Feynman. That's magic. It just comes out of the air, all that structure. But like, the root system, the water's in the air,

but it's also in the, it like comes down to the air. Well, it starts in the air, it's created in the air. Then comes down to the ground, and then. And then comes down to the ground. I mean, Groot knows all about this. Groot is the living proof of this process, yeah. Yeah, I saw him recently. You saw him after you found out about the big.

Yeah, and I gave him a squeeze. Did you? He was wearing pajamas. Yeah, he has so many cute pajama outfits. I'm so, he has a, he has a, he has a safari outfit. Yeah. He's got every kind of look. 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. Yeah. And the accoutrement, That's what Groot has 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 Yeah, me too me too. Yeah, really and we 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

Uh-huh 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 wanna be ultimately Delta's child. I think if she has a child, that child is going to be fretted over. Yeah, I hope not too much. Oh, we don't want to spoil them. Spare the rod, spoil the child. Yeah, or Munchausen's.

Fine line. Really fine line. But I've already established she doesn't want attention for it, like Moon Chosens would have been, she would have come up to me and said, do you know, Gru's disabled. Right, you're right. She's known he's disabled forever

and I just stumbled upon that. She is gonna be such a good mom, she's very loving and. Attentive and thoughtful. Yeah, she's making me a scarf right now. Yeah, she is. Do you wanna know how long you wanted it? It's so good. It's so well constructed.

She's knitting it from scratch. And I was looking at it and I thought, that this little baby I used to hold, her little tiny hands, made this. I can't make this. Me neither. She can, that little baby made that. Yeah, they start doing things you can't do

and it's really something. That's so overwhelming. 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 gotta stop talking about your kids. Now, I'm not gonna take that to too much credit, like just because you're a pediatrician,

you have no actual, you're not a psychologist. 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. Yeah. And so, now I tell my kids what I say. Yeah.

So it's not like there's any secrecy going on. That's kinda how I've been telling myself. But all to say, yes, I probably need to stop. Okay. And then I was like, I don't have anything else in life to talk about virtually. I think our best conversations are... Debates.

Conversation, yeah. They're not just the... I mean, stories are fun. I love a story. Yeah, you have a lot of good ones. I have some good ones. But they're there to spark a conversation between us. I just, you know, my free time is what I'm gonna draw on. Yeah.

Anything that's gonna happen to me. Like I went to, I didn't go to Monster Jam by myself. You know, I took my kids. Yeah, and you didn't take Groot, ain't gonna lose him, she did. 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, 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. 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 Ingraham book.

Congratulations. Yes. And I had spent the day watching TV and working, and then the next day I realized I hadn't spoken to anyone the day before. Oh, you went a whole day without talking? Yes. Ah.

And it was really- Does it feel good or bad? It felt, the realization felt bad, I don't know why. Yeah. The experience didn't feel bad, I didn't even notice. Also because I have so much chatter in my head, I never really know. Feel alone. Yeah, yeah, I never feel alone. Do you think that's normal?

Yeah, I mean, I'm almost never not thinking of something. Yeah. Unless I'm meditating. And in truth, only for. Half a second. Six minutes of the 20. You can do six minutes in a row? Yeah, I can have six minute chunks

where it's like I have no thoughts. I can't do that many. It's so hard. It's like 30 seconds max for me. 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, I'm not, 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 and what happened

yesterday, value weight my whole life this morning. In the evening, I'm kinda like, yeah, whatever, we did, we're alive, we did it. And then I can get, and in evening meditation, I can get sometimes like in evening meditation I can get sometimes like 15 of the 20 minutes are just blissful no thoughts. Interesting, but then, but you don't need it as bad.

I should do it though, because what I want is that 15 minutes of bliss. It is really euphoric when I get it. Nice, okay, great. 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. I think you're mellowing out. Uh-huh, losing my vitality. Losing your will to live. That's kinda happening. So, Chris and I went for two days to this conference up north and I danced. Sure. I loved to dance.

You love it. 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. Okay. 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-uh, you can't jump anymore for a half hour. My foot was like, oh no, we can't do this. It was gnarled up. And you made, did it make you sad? No, yeah, I was just like, are no, we can't do this. It was gnarled up. And you made it make you sad.

No, yeah, I was just like, are we at the end of, you know, these things are gonna start popping up. Can't dance like I used to dance. I have been having a lot of thoughts about life and age. We had a 30 year old guest on yesterday. Like, did that do anything to you? 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. There we go, that helps. So you're both 35. I feel like we're both 34-ish, in that zone. She might be 32 and I'm 34. like 34-ish, you know, in that zone. She might be like 32 and I'm 34.

Okay. 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 are, this sounds braggy, enlightenment. Okay. I can hit it for a second where I really. You feel content in that piece.

But I understand, I really deeply understand that nothing matters. Uh-huh, yeah. In the rest of life, 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 where I am like embodied. I feel it That really the purpose is

is to Love mm-hmm. 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 mean, like obviously, helping people is great and...

Pete Slauson Feeding yourself is imperative. Beth Dombkowski Yeah. Yeah. I don't, it's hard to explain, obviously. That's why. Pete Slauson 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 past or thinking about the future. Yes, exactly.

And really the absence of thoughts is just being in the moment you're in. Yep. Because there's really nothing to think about in the moment you're in. That's what's crazy. It's 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 shit. There's nothing to do or to be afraid of because nothing's attacking you. 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. It's like how you, how we don't know if you're seeing the same colors I'm seeing. Yeah. I wanna know if other people have this, like, constant, there's no time at all that I'm awake that there isn't a conversation happening or a monologue happening.

And I assume that's everyone, I just assume that's how humans are. Yeah. But I guess you don't know. I read a statistic about this. That people don't. I won't know the right number, but I wanna say it was something like,

low, but like 20% of people don't have that. I wanna try it. Like I wish there was a way to try it for a day. GLP-1, I'm sure it'll fix that too. I am very curious about the GLP-1s. Yeah. Because of so many people we've had on that are saying it could be good for this.

It could be good for this. Yeah, but it's obvious it works for weight loss and it's helping so 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. I don't have an opinion whether you should or shouldn't. All I'll just add is it's dose dependent. Right, but even, I know people. Like you can be on a little or a lot. You could have zero compulsion to eat food

or you could have some, it's variable. Well, I know, but I know people who are on like basically the tiniest dose. Yeah. 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 as one. So my worry a little bit is like,

I just won't eat. Sure. And then also you, I would say, more than others needs to consider the muscle loss aspect of it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I have been doing my farmer's house. Farmer Carrie's on the way to get my wine.

Well, don't make it like that. You should be proud of me. I am, I'm very proud of you. Also, it's my job to tease you. I know. And I haven't been doing them this week. Because if I can't talk about my daughters and I can't tease you,

I really need to wrap it up actually maybe we should Comment on this episode Mm-hmm because Dax will read the comments if you want us to debate about something specific And then you can look and see if there's anything worth us having a debate about. Yeah. Okay, I do have a sort of update-ish. Okay. So the person I was speaking about who...

Went to Saturday Night Live. Who went to Saturday Night Live. Who you're in love with. Yes. Apparently, a lot of people are in love with this person. Yeah. And I didn't know that. You didn't.

You didn't, you knew? I assumed to me, he was cast for a reason. Yes, I think he's broadly appealing. Well, yeah, but like. You feel a little bummed that other people also appreciate him. You know what I feel? It's so old, it's so old for me. But it's like, oh well, then that's gone.

Like if other people like him. I would argue you already knew that and that's why he's there. Why? No. Yeah. Why? You don't think I was.

I think it's a continuation of the quarterback. In my opinion, this person is not that. He's not the archetype of a quarterback. The quarterbacks now aren't the quarterbacks. They're Timothee Chalamet. Chalamet. 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 that group. He's a very sought after, that person doesn't cast her love interest willy nilly. 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. Oh, uh-huh.

And people aren't gonna overlook him because he doesn't look like Brad Pitt, right? But I I find him so attractive Brad turns out I guess everyone does but no I Didn't do that. I don't think you consciously did that what no one's even been talking about him until recently Yeah, I think he's a very, very high value target. Well, just because he's a famous person? No, for all the reasons he was in that movie, being sexy and being appealing. Well, obviously I'm going to be attracted

to someone who's appealing and sexy. Yes, but it's not an accident that he was chosen to play that. I'm right about this, that he has not been on people's radar until recently. Okay. And now he's kind of blowing up. Right. And now people are like, oh, I love him. I'm like, I've always loved him.

Yeah, for at least 10 months. For a long time, no, like a really long time. And now he has all these options available. I guess in your head, he's always had all these options available. 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 how I feel. That's not what I'm saying, but the illusion that you were the only one that liked him 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. Okay, but you're saying I picked him because I knew I couldn't have him. Which then this is getting complicated. Yet you're telling me you couldn't have him. Which then this is getting complicated. Yeah, you're telling me you can't have him because now everyone likes him. Yeah, and you're saying that's why I picked him.

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. Right. And I'm arguing your subconscious always knew that. 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. But I think you intuitively know that any male and of disbelief and of despair. 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. But it's more, 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. Yeah, that's great. You don't think you just across the board could say anyone that's a lead of a movie making out with a hot person probably has an appeal everyone agreed on? Yes, obviously, and I'm not saying that. Right, I know, and so you do know that.

Yes. Yeah. So your subconscious knows that this is an attractive person because they wouldn't have put him in the role. Sure, I know he's an attractive person. Yes, but in your conscious mind, you thought you were seeing something no one else saw. I thought I was early in on a person. Right.

Where I was like, oh, oh, this guy really has something. Yeah. And I guess you're saying the casting director also thought that. And the filmmaker and the costar all thought that too. Well, I don't know, we don't know about the costar. I don't wanna speak for her. Well, the costar definitely was in charge of who got also thought that. And the filmmaker and the co-star all thought that too. Well, I don't know, we don't know about the co-star. I don't wanna speak for her. Well, the co-star definitely was in charge of who got cast in that.

I don't know what to say. I just, you think it was. Do you see the point I'm making though? That like you had two things happening at once. One is you know the reality of casting someone in a movie like that. Yeah, I know. You're making it about something so specific. Like, 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, ooh, like. You thought they missed them. I don't, yes. Yeah. And I guess they didn't. but also I in my own circles, like I know about people being talked about. Yeah.

And I don't hear this person's name come up a lot. Right. Until now. It's really taken off. And I, like when I imagined being at SNL, Yeah. And I, like when I imagined being at SNL, I didn't think, oh, I'd be too scared to talk to him or he's too good for me.

Right. Now I do. 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 be a lot of competition for this guy. In your mind, you've accepted that he has a lot of options. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. 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. If he has choices, he's, I'm not gonna be the pick. Right. Yeah, I feel that way. 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. Well, if I'm the only option. 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, look. That's the hiccup in your thinking. No, I wanna talk he would think about you. Well, look. That's the hiccup in your thinking. No, I wanna talk to you, I wanna be real. Okay. We've had, we've had this, this has happened in some way before, sort of, ish. There was somebody on this show.

Yeah. That showed some interest, got my phone number, then there was ghosting. Radio silence. Yeah, yeah. There was ghosting. Yeah. And you said to me, well, yeah,

this person is at the point in their career where they're getting a lot of options. 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, 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 like you. He liked you and he met five other people in the next two weeks that he also liked. Right, so then if there are options,

I'm not getting picked. No, if you're in front of guy at Saturday Night Live party and he was gonna be attracted to you, he'd be attracted to you. Now, are you gonna go with him everywhere and make sure no one else is, he's not meeting anyone else? Are you gonna lock up in a relationship?

Or, you know, like what's gonna 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. Well, more than do they like you, are you an 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. Right, but I don't think you ghost someone completely who you even wanna like kinda hang out with. If you wanna kinda hang out with them, you gotta keep them on the hook a little bit. Well, I guess that's that.

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 dates professional baseball players after me. I go into it going, she has every option in the world. She's gonna have a lot of distractions. She has, the competition is fierce.

And she'll like me. 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. Yeah, she'll want me.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that's the different than. Yeah, she'll want me. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's the difference. So to me, yeah, that's right. That's the big difference, I think, between you and I's approach in the past. But that's also different between this previous guest, what you're saying.

Like, yeah, he liked you, but he didn't wanna be with you. Yeah, I mean, you need access to somebody, clearly. What do you mean? 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.

Well, we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think 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 wanna determine who I'm pursuing

by how many other people like them. And it sounds like you're saying you've made it, that that would be a factor in whether or not you pursued somebody. Well, it feels like I'm setting myself up for failure. Right. Yeah, I think that is your fear. And then 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 I'm risking nothing by trying and failing. Yeah. Oh, they'll be in the same position I'm already in. Yeah. Like I, whatever, for whatever reason, when I do that math, that emboldens me

to go like, there's nothing at risk. I mean, so much of the way we operate is based on our experience. Mm-hmm. You've been validated many times. Yeah. Which obviously makes you feel like... And I've gone after a ton of girls that rejected me.

And it's just like acting. I wanna act. I don't care how many times you reject me. I'm gonna keep trying until I can act. Right. You go into it knowing, oh, I'm gonna fail 99% of the time. Yeah. But I want the thing so bad. Always deal with the... into it knowing, oh, I'm gonna fail 99% of the time.

But I want the thing so bad. Always deal with the- Projection. That makes sense. All right, well, let's transition into some facts. Okay, great. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. armchair expert, if you dare.

Okay, some facts for Scott Payne. Number one, he's a stud. He's so cool. What a cool, scary life. 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. Yep.

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, you know. You say in the episode, and I think it's right, like, I don't think your tolerance. Oh, for the stupidity.

Yeah, you have to listen to a lot of crazy shit. Almost exclusively. Yeah. These organizations are not the winners club. They're like AA, they're the losers club. No, AA are people trying to be better. But we call it the losers club. I know, but I don't think it's that way.

Yeah, but to have to listen to these bozo conspiracy theorists who are racist, like the things they believe. I know. Oh, it would be. That is just so disturbing. Yeah. I'd also hate to see someone kill a goat in front of me.

Okay, well, let's start with that. Okay. The difference between a goat and a ram. Is a ram a boy goat? 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 structure. 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 transcend species borders. But a ram is a sheep.

But a bull moose, a bull cow, a bull elephant, they call a lot of female animals cows. No, a male goat is a buck or a billy goat. Oh, a buck or a billy goat. Buck, also a male name. Sure. Deer. Females are called does or nanny goats

and baby goats are called kids. You know the thing I've noticed goats do that sheep don't tend to do? They love getting on tall rocks. 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 they see predators come in. Yeah, it kind of creeps me out. You know, like that. I think that's a fun part of them. Okay. They're very agile. Rams are larger than goats. Okay.

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. Oh, I'm sorry, ladies. They like it. You know, Aaron had a sheep at his,

well, his dad had a farm. And he had one of all these animals, which is silly. Like they weren't in the farming business. No one's gonna reproduce. Right. 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. Oh my gosh. And the goose would be in back, going grunt grunt gr, yelling at all of them. Oh, wow. 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 holes that come out that you're holding? Yes. 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.

It is so male. Like, I'm gonna run into this stick. Well, they gotta do it to get some ass. No. Yeah, they do. That's how they get ass. That's not attractive. For sheep it is. The women sheep love it.

Yes, that's how they compete for dominance. And then he gets the sheep. The women sheep love it. Yes, that's how they compete for dominance and then he gets the sheep. God. They love it. The 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.

CTE. They don't get CTE. Yes they do. All these sheeps have CTE. It's no wonder. They don't. WhatTE. Oh, yes they do. All these sheeps have CTE, it's no wonder. They don't. What does CBC stand for? Canada Broadcasting Corporation.

That makes zero sense. Sorry, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Yeah. What do you mean? It's CBC. How can the C stand for incorporation? No, corporation. Corporation, I thought you said incorporation.

No, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Oh, I thought you said incorporation. No, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Oh, Broadcasting Corporation. Cause you said Broadcasting Corporation. No, I didn't, I said what it was. You didn't hit the G, the ing. Oh my God. Yeah. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

That sounded all like incorporation? Okay, sure, I'll give you that. The four large biker gangs, he got it right. It is, the Big Four refers to the Hells Angels, the Outlaws, the Banditos, and the Pagans. He got that right. Good job. He knows his stuff.

Okay, he said the owner of Flat Rock got in some trouble. Oh yeah. Hit and run. Yeah, that sounds. Harley Rusty Biddle. Oh my God, they threw another, third great name. He was using a neighborhood road as a cut through to avoid traffic.

Oh, I don't wanna hear the rest because I can imagine you got hit in a neighborhood. Okay, we won't keep reading. That reminds me of this- We'll choose ignorance. Yeah, ignorance is bliss. But it does remind me of one of my favorite, I think you should leave sketches. The baby pageant.

Oh my God. And the bad boy Bart Harley Jarvis. And they go, fuck you Bart Harley Jarvis. They hate that baby. They hate it. And hating a baby is such a funny idea. And a woman runs on stage with a knife to kill Bart Harley Jarvis.

Oh my God, so funny. I'm gonna see a friendship this weekend. I can't wait. At Vista? Yes. Yes. I'm excited. Ding, ding, ding.

Yeah. I went and saw Sinner yesterday. Are Sinners? You saw it? Sinner or Sinners? Sinners, I think. Sinners in IMAX at CityWalk by myself. Wow. Yeah.

An adventure. Uh-huh. How was it? It's awesome. It's really awesome. Yeah, I really wanna see it. 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 time period movie. It's set in like, I wanna say 1932 or something. And I don't wanna 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.

Yeah, yeah. It's crazy powerful. Like I was goosebumps all over my body. Oh, I wanna see it. 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,

I'm looking at that, A, I can feel it and sense it, and I've experienced it, and 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? Cause it's like historic and it's from another period. I'm sure he feels a connection to it. Yeah, I just was wondering, like I wanted to talk to him about that. I wanted to know like, what is the experience? My hunch is you can, that's all in your epigenome. I think that's all in their body in some way.

Yes, I think so. 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. That's how I felt at the Beyonce concert. Cowboy 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 it's a diverse audience, but a lot of black people who, yeah, it is in their body to connect to these things she is saying. And for her to be shining so bright as an example, it's so powerful and beautiful.

And then, 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. Yes. Like it is so. 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 from this horrific life, it's like, it is deeper than chords. There's something wild going on that has carried through way beyond. It's still there. Yeah.

I know, it's a beautiful thing. Well, I think that is it. That's it. A Sinners review and a Cowboy Carter. That's it, for stop them. I loved him. I loved him. He had a sweetness.

He did. And an openness and an ownership of his point of view all at the same time. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Oh? 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. Put it, stitch it together. Yeah, stitch it.. Yeah, stitch it. All right, love you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining

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