Scott Payne (retired undercover FBI Agent)

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/ http://www.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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Woo!

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Woo! 900.

• 0:09Dax Shepard?

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

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:32Dax Shepard?

  Why would I have said six? Six isn't better than five.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is a good thing to know about yourself.

• 0:38Dax Shepard?

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

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 0:45Dax Shepard?

  But it actually is 900.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  900 today.

• 0:48Dax Shepard?

  So I'm just saying a thousand now.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 0:51Dax Shepard?

  Well, you know, we've done a thousand.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  No, we do not get to say that until we've really done it. That's a huge mark.

• 0:55Dax Shepard?

  That's a commitment I'll make in public.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:57Dax Shepard?

  Now, let me ask you this. This guest, who I was like, couldn't say yes too fast enough.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Yep, of course.

• 1:07Dax Shepard?

  Sure. This episode is fucking riveting.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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.

• 1:23Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yes, this, it felt like listening to Armchair Anonymous where we're getting like these crazy stories.

• 1:33Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  It was so good. He's so cool.

• 1:36Dax Shepard?

  And who is he? Scott Payne. Scott Payne is a retired FBI special agent who spent 28 years in law enforcement investigating cases against drug trafficking organizations, human 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 Brasco, famous Donnie Brasco. His book is called Codename Pal Horse: How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis. And there's also a podcast that he was on that led to the book, which is also great.

• 2:15Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  So good.

• 2:31Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Please enjoy Scott Payne. We get support from Quince.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Okay. Can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts and Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself, because let's be honest, self gifting is a love language.

• 2:55Dax Shepard?

  Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14 karat gold and Italian leather, full on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  It's the dream. The cashmere sweater is starting at $60, down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.

• 3:22Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm going to tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California and I'm so excited and I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 3:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef grade cookware. That's an amazing thing they offer here and it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.

• 3:57Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from Gusto. So here's the thing about running a small business that nobody romanticizes. It's not the big idea that wears you down. It's the payroll, the tax filings, the wait, do I need workers comp for this stuff? That's the part that quietly eats away your whole afternoon, which is where Gusto comes in. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses.

• 4:42Dax Shepard?

  It's all in one, remote friendly and incredibly easy to use. So you can pay onboard and support your team from anywhere. They handle automatic tax filing, direct deposits, health benefits, 401k, all of it. And you get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price. No hidden fees, no surprises. If something tricky comes up, you've got direct access to certified HR experts who actually know what they're talking about. And they're ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026 and trusted by over 500,000 small businesses. That's not nothing. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/dax and get three months free when you run your first payroll.

• 5:23Dax Shepard?

  That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/dax. Again, that's gusto.com/dax.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Nice lot, by the way.

• 5:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, thank you.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  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 and you go, man, you got a nice sized lot. It's good.

• 6:05Dax Shepard?

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

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:12Dax Shepard?

  You're in South Carolina?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  No, I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee.

• 6:14Dax Shepard?

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

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yes, those are my friends.

• 6:20Dax Shepard?

  What's it called?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  It's called Flat Rock. I was there. It wasn't a grand opening, but we went out there. So I've helped Red Bull Racing a lot. My friends are really connected. With a nitro circuit. So we went out there when it was just dirt, but it's a big deal. The owner got jammed up on a hit and run.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 6:35Dax Shepard?

  Recently?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, leaving the scene.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 6:38Dax Shepard?

  I mean, you only run if you're drunk.

• 6:39Speaker 02

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

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Should we do a little double check?

• 6:44Dax Shepard?

  Should we find out?

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Maybe a little reverse? Maybe not a reverse. Maybe just pause? Let me get out and look.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 6:51Dax Shepard?

  OK, so you're from those South Carolina?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, born and raised in South Carolina.

• 6:55Dax Shepard?

  And did you not want to retire there?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  No, because when you get a chance to transfer in the FBI, you go to the headquarters division. I don't know what the RA's out of LA are, but let's just say you're in Tennessee.

• 7:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  It was Knoxville's headquarters city. But out of Knoxville, you've got Chattanooga as a resident agency. There's 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.

• 7:33Dax Shepard?

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

• 7:35Speaker 02

  The tank.

• 7:37Dax Shepard?

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

• 7:40Speaker 02

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

• 7:46Dax Shepard?

  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?

• 7:52Speaker 02

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

• 8:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 8:07Dax Shepard?

  What age was that?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  I came in the bureau at 28, so 29, 30.

• 8:12Dax Shepard?

  In high school, you're working for your dad, you're playing football, you're lifting weights, you're a musician, right? You're into guitar.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:19Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the book process, I had to dive deep. You're getting asked these questions. At first, it's just, hey, I'm 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 bald and very similar looking like Mr. Jefferson. It's kind of 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 and things you're not supposed to do.

• 9:11Dax Shepard?

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

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, let's just be realist.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Throwing a spiked bracelet or two.

• 9:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we need to just be aware of where he's at.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Rolling quarters, brass knuckles, which I don't even know where you're carrying that.

• 9:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Butterfly knives.

• 9:26Dax Shepard?

  Butterfly knives.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Ninja stars.

• 9:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, slapjack.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  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 keg 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 eighties. 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.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Some baton, I hope.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Some batons or 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 hot for 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 me and the bass player still stick our heads out. And they 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.

• 10:29Dax Shepard?

  Only child too.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, only child. We're out there in the foyer and everybody's like, oh, man, that was awesome. And here comes Miss Workman and she's like, I'm gonna expel you. And she looks at my mom, 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.

• 10:43Dax Shepard?

  He's a star.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  And I'm like, that's my mom. Got to find another school. So, fast forward to like Monday, I get called into Vice Principal's office, Mr. Walker. And I know, it's the walk of shame. You're never called in there for anything good, at least in my experience, right? So I go in there and he's like, we need to talk about what happened. I'm already protesting. I'm like, I know people said I did this, but I didn't do it that bad. This is BS. You're always on my back, whatever I'm saying, because I'm a young idiot. He had a VCR tape.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Uh oh.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  For the listeners, there used to be VCR tapes. But he plops in the VCR tape and I'm watching it and I'm going, oh.

• 11:20Dax Shepard?

  You've seen it really for the first time.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  I'm like, that's an intervention. And I'm looking at him going, oh my gosh.

• 11:25Dax Shepard?

  That's what I look like, okay.

• 11:26Speaker 02

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

• 12:06Dax Shepard?

  Inward, um, yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Racial slurs.

• 12:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. It was like the horror story you hear.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  We're talking South Carolina in the eighties. 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, huh. 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 eighties, 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.

• 12:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the burnouts.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Potheds. I could hang out with, does that mean I smoked that back then? Yes. That's how I hung out with them. I was even on the Beta Club. So that was a weird fit. But he must have seen something. And he asked me if I'd be willing to help him try to figure out who did this. Because he's pretty sure it's somebody from the school that has a beef with him. And I said, absolutely, man, that's wrong what they did. Some people may want to call it snitching or whatever. No, I'm doing the right thing. I'm fighting a good fight, even at a young age. So I start working crowds, something simple like wearing the gym. Hey, man, how's it going? Yeah, shooting the ball. I mean, man, you about what happened, 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, that doesn't mean you're lying.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  That's your baseline, right?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 13:30Dax Shepard?

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

• 13:35Speaker 02

  And you do the back away, sinking to the shrubs.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  You know? 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.

• 13:53Dax Shepard?

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

• 13:56Speaker 02

  They probably called him in and questioned him, but it was clear. If he didn't do it, he definitely had something to do with it. Mr. Walker was like, yep, I just recently, whatever he did. Maybe that kid got two weeks of after school suspension or something, but he had just gotten in trouble.

• 14:08Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  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 sent to the principal's office.

• 14:30Dax Shepard?

  And he was lenient.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Mr. Walker, he goes, now, listen, I'm gonna have to yell and stuff.

• 14:35Dax Shepard?

  Do it in your game next time.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Like, I'm telling you, Scott, don't you ever do that again. It will be expelled. That's cool. So that's kind of when I start thinking of connecting with people. Not that I'm necessarily deceiving them, but I'm trying to find out information.

• 14:48Dax Shepard?

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

• 14:52Speaker 02

  I majored in criminal justice, modern in psychology.

• 14:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  I could have had a double major, two more classes.

• 14:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Monica had a double major. I beat her to the punch.

• 15:00Speaker 02

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

• 15:02Speaker 01

  You should, you should go back now.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Just roll into class at Charleston Southern?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  You probably could.

• 15:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 15:10Speaker 02

  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."

• 15:30Dax Shepard?

  So how did you end up?

• 15:31Speaker 02

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

• 15:38Speaker 01

  You can be honest here.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  There are no gentlemen in those clubs, and neither was I back then.

• 15:42Dax Shepard?

  It's funny you bring that up. I was just watching a documentary. There's this story, 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 on the documentary, he goes, "Well, the gentleman was hitting the girl." And I was like, "No, I think you got that wrong. The piece of shit was hitting the woman."

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And where would the gentleman be?

• 16:09Dax Shepard?

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

• 16:15Speaker 02

  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 uniform patrol for three years. And then my last two years, I was able to become a vice 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.

• 16:58Dax Shepard?

  How long is that program?

• 16:59Speaker 02

  That was just a one-week school.

• 17:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:02Dax Shepard?

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

• 17:04Speaker 02

  It is. A lot of role-playing.

• 17:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 17:08Speaker 02

  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 jobs. Or I may be hopping in a car with a source.

• 17:22Dax Shepard?

  Also, how hard is it when you're in the town that you work in?

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Very hard.

• 17:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'd imagine.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Don't people know you?

• 17:27Speaker 02

  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 gonna spend money to move me outside of the county. I work for Greenville County. How many ways can I shave my facial hair? Cutting my hair on my head, if I have any. It's very thin now. I'm hanging on to what I got.

• 17:46Dax Shepard?

  I'm in a battle myself.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 17:48Dax Shepard?

  Hourly.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  I'll be at CPI stem cells next week in Tijuana. I think I'm gonna get on the chute 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.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  I go down there, then they're like, all you gotta do is roll up. They're gonna rush your car and you just tell 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.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  And he's like, what you want? Yelling at me and I'm like, a twen- 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 asked, I hope it's changed now. I still teach in narcotics officers associations and conferences. I need to ask this question the next one, but you come in as a fresh face. So as a fresh face, you can go 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 gotta have some kind of transition or oversight.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Once I got in the FBI and I learned about the undercover program, you get certified and we can go anywhere.

• 19:20Dax Shepard?

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

• 19:23Speaker 02

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

• 19:34Dax Shepard?

  Sure, he was committed.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Maybe he went to Georgia.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Maybe. Hey, big red.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 19:40Dax Shepard?

  Roll tide.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  No!

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Roll tide.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  He always tries to do that. I always cut it.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  We can throw in the Tennessee Vols and throw in like a Gators.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Now, now we'll be all thrown down.

• 19:51Dax Shepard?

  Roll tie is usually sufficient to get her pissed off.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, right?

• 19:57Speaker 02

  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 you? 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 it's lie detectors and physical fitness. Then you pass phase two and then you get a slot as a new agent in Quantico.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 20:34Speaker 02

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

• 20:38Dax Shepard?

  Are you married yet or anything?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:39Dax Shepard?

  You have nothing tying you down?

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Got a bass handle on the truck.

• 20:42Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  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 bass handle. 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.

• 21:06Dax Shepard?

  That's the view.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  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.

• 21:29Dax Shepard?

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

• 21:46Speaker 02

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

• 21:48Dax Shepard?

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

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:52Dax Shepard?

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

• 21:59Speaker 02

  There's a large four, but they're at the top.

• 22:01Dax Shepard?

  Well, the Vargo.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  It usually goes Hells Angels, Outlaws, maybe pagans after that. And I'm trying to remember, I think Mongols are small.

• 22:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Mongols, yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 02

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

• 22:13Dax Shepard?

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

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Could be, yes.

• 22:19Dax Shepard?

  They're for real.

• 22:20Speaker 02

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

• 22:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that's fair of you. Belushi brought one of his Hells Angels friends out on stage during when they say goodnight.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 22:29Dax Shepard?

  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 so we don't want to see that on TV again. That's like one of his stories.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  That makes sense.

• 22:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, so tell me that.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  I respect that.

• 22:46Dax Shepard?

  That, tell me that process. Because my understanding of it is you got a probie for like a year at most of these clubs, right?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  You do. Usually the bylaws would say six months. But because of law enforcement infiltration, I've heard of some say you gotta be a hang around for two years.

• 23:02Dax Shepard?

  Two years.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  You can even prospect or probate. And then that's gonna be a year process. So now you've got three years in it before you're even wearing a patch.

• 23:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so how?

• 23:10Speaker 02

  It was a different thought process because I am not knocking anybody who's gained a patch. My ego wanted a patch.

• 23:17Dax Shepard?

  Of course.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  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% of biker clubs, and a lot of times the cases didn't work.

• 23:30Dax Shepard?

  Cause you gotta do enough shit to be in.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  What's it mean?

• 23:32Dax Shepard?

  What's what mean?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  The patch.

• 23:34Dax Shepard?

  So if you want to join the Hells Angels.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:35Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna be a probie for at least a year. You go on all the camping trips.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Like a rookie?

• 23:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you get your ass kicked, you do all the shit work.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Hazing.

• 23:44Dax Shepard?

  And at the end of this experience, they will vote you in or out. If they vote you out, they keep your bike in 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 a Hells Angels, I have to say, please take your jacket off. Cause if I don't and I try to fight a guy with the patch on, I'm fighting. Whole club. Those are the rules. I don't know why I'm saying all this.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  If you go far back in all the writings I've read, just like you've read, seventies, eighties, you see that kind of stuff. But the patch is your 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 deathhead 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.

• 24:36Dax Shepard?

  It's not your chapter, it's your state?

• 24:38Speaker 02

  State, like Boston. Boston was weird because Boston and south of Boston was outlaw territory. Boston and north of Boston was Hells Angels territory.

• 24:46Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  So you get in the big areas like that or Florida. Florida has.

• 24:50Dax Shepard?

  Is a mess, right? California is a mess.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a big state. I mean, and it's a great riding state with great weather. And also a good throughway for drugs and criminal activity.

• 24:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, a lot of meth out here.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Not saying they all do it, but just saying.

• 25:04Dax Shepard?

  So how did you get ingratiated?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  What I ended up doing, and trust me, in the case, there were multiple chances to patch. I was pleaded by certain members to, hey, man, just get a P O. Box up here. You come in here, man, you patch. This is me in the clubhouse on recording with the doors locked. And I'm like, I'm very humbled by that. That means so much to me. I said, but why would I subject myself to six months of bullshit? I'm 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, rolettes, drugs.

• 25:39Dax Shepard?

  Everything they don't want to carry.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  You calling me at three in the morning to haze me to tell me to change the oil on your bike or go wash your bike. And then I stand on this side of the bar, serving you guys all weekend, not being able to drink. And then when I do drink, I 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.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 26:49Dax Shepard?

  Really quick, how are you doing? Cause this is one of my questions later, but we're here. You clearly have to do illegal shit to earn their confidence.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:57Dax Shepard?

  How is that sorted?

• 26:58Speaker 02

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

• 27:19Dax Shepard?

  Cause you are making shit disappear.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  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 called me and they go, hey, Tex, which is what they called 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.

• 27:42Dax Shepard?

  What was the results of that case?

• 27:43Speaker 02

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

• 27:48Dax Shepard?

  How long were you in that one?

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Two years. That's my longest one.

• 27:52Dax Shepard?

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

• 27:57Speaker 02

  I'm a weird guy.

• 27:58Dax Shepard?

  You did biker gangs, you did the sheriff's department, you did a bunch of white nationalist stuff, KKK. And this one's gotta be the most fun.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:08Dax Shepard?

  Right?

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:09Dax Shepard?

  You gotta.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  I thought about it for a second.

• 28:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Well, I hope it wasn't the white nationalists.

• 28:13Dax Shepard?

  Well, gonna get to that.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Why would you hope that?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I hope that wasn't fun.

• 28:17Dax Shepard?

  Scott had to sit through is maddening. When I'm reading about these dum-dums, you gotta listen to you talk about their conspiracy. I mean, that sounds maddening. At least the outlaws, I'm into this and I would be more afraid to have on my back having messed with the outlaws than I would be these weird cell white nationalists. Because outlaws, you have tears, you have 60-year-olds, 70-year-olds. This is gonna live on.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:39Dax Shepard?

  Is that a little more scary?

• 28:41Speaker 02

  The way I usually answer questions, kind of around that same realm is 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?

• 28:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  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?

• 29:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  I've seen you in forever, man. You on the up and up? How's the family? Everything's going good?

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Do you ever feel guilty?

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:10Dax Shepard?

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

• 29:13Speaker 02

  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.

• 29:24Dax Shepard?

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

• 29:32Speaker 01

  You're not gonna take the.

• 29:33Dax Shepard?

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

• 29:45Speaker 02

  I play a clip from that movie when I'm teaching just undercover stuff. And it's the one where he's in the car and he's saying, if you're a rat, and he takes the pistol and he goes, I'm the biggest mutt in the history of 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?

• 30:05Dax Shepard?

  Gaining trust.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, some trickery.

• 30:07Dax Shepard?

  With the ultimate goal of holding them accountable for something illegal.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  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.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know that going in. That's so hard.

• 30:22Speaker 02

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

• 30:41Dax Shepard?

  You think you can compartmentalize. And you can for periods. And then all of a sudden, the doors 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.

• 31:00Speaker 02

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

• 31:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 31:09Speaker 02

  It's not so much that because I am a talker. I think the Lord put me here to feel silence with noise.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  When it's quiet, I'm like.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  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?

• 31:32Speaker 02

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

• 31:40Dax Shepard?

  Well, hold on then, there's something interesting there. Cause 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.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

• 31:59Dax Shepard?

  And so Dad had pretty bad depression.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  That's actually what brought me to psychology.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 32:04Dax Shepard?

  But I got to 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.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Heard it put that way. That is a great way to say it. 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.

• 32:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:42Dax Shepard?

  You can't do that.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  But when I tell you, they go, where are you from? And I go, McAllen, 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.

• 32:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Well.

• 32:55Dax Shepard?

  As a matter of fact.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Now that you ask.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:58Dax Shepard?

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

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Well, think of it this way, and I permanently borrowed this term from a buddy of mine, Terry Rancorn, phenomenal undercover. He's retired as well, too. Help 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 of all, 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.

• 33:27Dax Shepard?

  Please tell Monica that.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  I'm scared.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  I was too.

• 33:31Dax Shepard?

  I guess what? That's a universal fear, being in a basement with a gun.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Wow. Wait, yeah, how'd that happen?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  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.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 33:54Dax Shepard?

  This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  What?

• 34:04Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect, the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it. No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a quarter pounder with cheese, a cowbell goes off and the grill master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern. So every single bite gets cheese and two pickles side by side. So you're never in a pickle desert.

• 34:48Dax Shepard?

  Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a quarter.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Me too. That's my order. It's a quarter pounder with cheese. I love it. I didn't know they put so much effort that they did a star formation. I should have known because you can taste it.

• 35:06Dax Shepard?

  You can taste it. Yeah. The love. Don't tell anyone this, but I'll put two of them back.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 35:12Dax Shepard?

  The quarter pounder with cheese with fries and a drink now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California and for delivery. Fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery. We get support from No Bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 35:41Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole no bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive Two. I like the Drive Two because it's a hybrid and I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 36:12Dax Shepard?

  Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.

• 36:22Dax Shepard?

  And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually. Supports someone's goals and routines and it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of the closet.

• 36:39Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Every family has that one holiday tradition nobody actually enjoys, but everyone keeps doing because stopping it would feel like a federal offense. For me, it was a specific meal situation that I will not name because my family listens. But at some point you have to ask yourself, am I doing this because I love it? Or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't?

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yes, and that question applies to so much more than the holidays. I think a lot of us carry these invisible rules about how we're supposed to spend the holidays. We're supposed to see what it's supposed to look like. And when you start unpacking that with a therapist, you realize half of your stress is coming from rules you didn't even write.

• 37:26Dax Shepard?

  This is where BetterHelp can be a great resource during the holidays. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences, which means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recs.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  I just love therapy. I've been avoiding it recently, or not avoiding it, but I was like, oh, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. I haven't canceled, canceled, canceled, but then I-

• 37:53Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, because then I had it this past weekend and I was like, oh my God, I'm just, thank God, thank God for her. Yeah.

• 38:01Dax Shepard?

  BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/dax. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash DAX. We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  I love matching pajamas. I'm literally going to be in coordinating sets with all my friends this holiday season. Because I got them, spoiler to my friends who are listening, the same Skims pajama set I've been living in. They are so soft and cozy and they look cute. So you can leave the house and go get a late night hot chocolate.

• 38:58Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Cozy.

• 39:00Dax Shepard?

  Hmm. It's so great how Skims has sets for everyone, too. Women's, men's, kids, even your pets. So nobody in your life has to be left out this year.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the organic cotton sleeve, long sleeve set.

• 39:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  It is so comfortable, very chic, too. The top is a button down, but very, very soft, easy to sleep in. But as I said before, you can multi-purpose this.

• 39:28Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  And look super cute.

• 39:30Dax Shepard?

  Hot chocolate runs. It's like the pajamas we grew up in, except without the scratchy polyester that made opening presents feel more like a hot yoga class that nobody signed up for.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  All the nostalgia, none of the discomfort. Shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select Armchair Expert in the dropdown menu that follows. If you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  So I told you a little bit of the backstory with the Outlaws. They have carjack stuff. We've now covered dope deals. The case team's up on wiretaps, which is not like TV, by the way. You don't go, I need to be on this phone in five minutes.

• 40:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  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 Delavega, Clothesline, is a good friend.

• 40:32Dax Shepard?

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

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Joe Dogs is the president of the Taunton Chapter at 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 dope. We've laid out breadcrumbs. They have now seen my truck drivers come on multiple occasions to pick up stolen equipment, take it somewhere. They think we're taking it to Mexico. We're actually taking it to a warehouse somewhere. And we decide as a case team. United States Attorney's Office, all of us, okay, now's the time. They've been asking about it. We've got the predication, this, that and the other. So let's lay out. My story was that, yes, I did used to be involved in a 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.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  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 2007.

• 41:47Dax Shepard?

  Forty kilos.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Now, can you imagine? Do you think there's a SWAT team overseeing this? Do you think there's snipers on the roof? Yes, because we cannot let 40 kilos walk. We cannot get ripped if the bad guys decide to go even more bad and say, 40 kilos, let's take it.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Well, how are they getting it?

• 42:06Dax Shepard?

  The government sees all this cocaine. So they have warehouses. They have these fucking burns down in Texas?

• 42:13Speaker 01

  That the government owns.

• 42:14Dax Shepard?

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

• 42:18Speaker 01

  That's not the same thing. How dare you?

• 42:21Speaker 02

  It is. To each their own. Look at this contraband being burnt. We'll save one sample. We're gonna do the deal. And the US Attorney's Office, of course, we want to 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. Cause 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 1%er clubs, there's usually a mandatory meeting once a week and they refer to that as church.

• 42:52Dax Shepard?

  It's kind of a cute rebrand.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  It is cute.

• 42:55Speaker 02

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

• 43:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  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 hill because I'm trying to get evidence. That's what we do.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:40Dax Shepard?

  So you have a little camera somewhere on you?

• 43:43Speaker 02

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

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 43:48Dax Shepard?

  Hey.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  So stressful.

• 43:50Dax Shepard?

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

• 43:53Speaker 02

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

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  I mean, look how small.

• 44:01Dax Shepard?

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

• 44:03Speaker 01

  You could probably do it with eye contact.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  There's insane stuff out there.

• 44:06Dax Shepard?

  Their fucking glasses.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  I don't want to give anyone any ideas.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  No. But I'm just saying, what people think generally, we can do more than we can anyway because of TV. But technology is way better now.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  So let's just say I had technology of 2007.

• 44:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  So I go into the clubhouse and I'm cracking jokes. But what I don't see is when I'm cracking jokes, if I'm leaning this way and I'm looking down the bar and I'm doing my normal shtick and I'm cracking country ass jokes in my accent and everybody's like, ha, ha, ha. We're all laughing, high fiving. When I would turn my head, they would go complete stone face.

• 44:38Dax Shepard?

  Ay.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Because they know what they're doing. Their whole meeting was about bringing me in and checking. I didn't pick up on it. And there was a false alarm. They took me down into the basement, but I'll just get to the part. They carried me down. Clothesline, who's supposed to be my second closest friend, says, yo, Tex, you got 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, just 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.

• 45:08Dax Shepard?

  It's more of a crawl space.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  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. I need to check you for a wire.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  I hate this.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too.

• 45:35Speaker 01

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

• 45:37Speaker 02

  We'll get to that.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:38Dax Shepard?

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

• 45:47Speaker 02

  I would love to say yes to that answer, but I was shitting go.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  I was having an adrenaline dump. It's the fight or flight or freak.

• 45:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, midbrain is in charge.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  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 in shootouts. They have no idea how many rounds they shot. They have no idea that they did a magazine exchange behind effective cover. They just do it because they've trained it so much and it's instinctive. So in the undercover world, okay, now I'm down there. I'm trying to write my name down. If you've ever been through a traumatic incident, whether it's a car wreck or whatever, everything just slows down. And your auditory exclusion, everything's going whoosh, whoosh. What I'm hearing is like, Scott, I need you.

• 46:32Dax Shepard?

  I've even had sight get minimal.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  So that happens. You're getting the tunnel vision.

• 46:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  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.

• 46:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  I'm trying to talk and I'm trying to write my name and I forgot my middle name. I've been this dude forever. I know, I know I'm Scott Calloway.

• 46:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  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 hands not even shaking the entire time you're trying to remember your name. And I'm like, well, my insides were shaking.

• 47:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  And I yell back, I'm like, and what else do you need? I don't even know I do it. And he's like, what? I go, my name and what else? It didn't sound that clear there 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 who's a rap dot com, there was things like that. And I go, okay, I'm cool with that. Then I remember my initials were SAC because that is the head of an FBI office. And I thought that was funny because I know I'd never be one.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  So I made my initials, I said, little humor for myself.

• 47:43Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  But I remember Scott Andrew Callaway. 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.

• 47:57Dax Shepard?

  Sure, and you were scared.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 47:58Dax Shepard?

  Wasn't your best showing is my guess.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  I'm not attracted to you. I feel like I'm possibly getting ready to die. In the terms of a Seinfeld episode, that was a whole different level of shrinkage.

• 48:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God, we're dealing with a woman. My body is an FBI agent, it's a woman.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  I know.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  I don't care what I look like right now. I just want to get out of here.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  So I take all my clothes off and he checks everything. I'm trying to talk. I know clothesline for a year and a half at this point. Even though my words aren't saying it, my face is saying, tell me I'm okay. And his face back to me is kind of like, look, it's just business. However, he doesn't know that I'm an FBI agent undercover who's wired to the hill.

• 48:39Speaker 01

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

• 48:41Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna get through this.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  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.

• 49:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Not as clear as that because I'm crapping my pants.

• 49:07Dax Shepard?

  And all the gear is in your clothes somehow?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Some yes, some no. Trade craft, I won't say where or how.

• 49:12Speaker 01

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

• 49:15Speaker 02

  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,

• 49:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  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. And he's feeling it. I'll just say this, technology wise in 2007, had he grabbed that part of that clothing, he would have felt something. And he gets close and he even looks directly at a camera and misses it. When he's doing that, I have no idea I do it, but you can hear clear on the recording, me watching and I go,

• 50:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  It's a verbal sigh.

• 50:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Because my insides are saying,

• 50:13Dax Shepard?

  It's over.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  It's over. Yeah.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  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 in and people ask all the time, hey, man, what would you have said if you had found it? And I remember it like it was yesterday. My first response probably would have been something funny. If he would have said, what is this? I might have said, I don't know, some naked pictures of your old lady to try to buy me some time 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 because up until that point, to my knowledge,

• 50:56Speaker 02

  my cover team, for whatever reason, thick walls, bad equipment, they could never hear me in that clubhouse.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  What? But you didn't know that?

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did.

• 51:04Dax Shepard?

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

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, currently.

• 51:10Dax Shepard?

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

• 51:12Speaker 02

  You always try to play in contingencies, contingency plan A, B, C, D, four or five moves ahead, but he didn't find it. He hands it back to me. And that night, my adrenaline dump just turns into anger. I end up going out with Joe Dogs 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.

• 51:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  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.

• 51:42Speaker 01

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

• 51:45Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's also hard to know. You're just modeling these scenarios.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  I'm mirroring.

• 51:49Dax Shepard?

  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 their wife? 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.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  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.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he didn't have the moral high ground.

• 52:13Speaker 01

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

• 52:18Speaker 02

  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 Higginsbottom 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.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  They were like, something's not right.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  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 cuz they knew my baseline. They were waiting for something to break bad. They knew the insides of that clubhouse cuz 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,

• 53:45Speaker 02

  and they were gonna 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.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  I'd be like, hey babe, I'm half lit. I'm driving home. Just wanted you to know I'm good. I'll call you after I wake up. Sometimes we talked. 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?

• 54:43Dax Shepard?

  Barely.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 02

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

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 54:58Dax Shepard?

  The spidey senses were traveling across the universe.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  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.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Geez.

• 55:09Dax Shepard?

  I believe that.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was insane. That's just one of the many things that happened on that case.

• 55:13Dax Shepard?

  Was that the gnarliest, if you had to give one a number one?

• 55:16Speaker 02

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

• 55:28Dax Shepard?

  Well, that was fucking incredible. People are gonna 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 Shepherd?

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the original one was six episodes, White Hot Hate, that covered the group, The Base. That's before we ever met. She didn't know me. But I heard it because people were sending it to me.

• 55:50Dax Shepard?

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

• 55:55Speaker 02

  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.

• 56:03Dax Shepard?

  The guy we've been listening to and she thought she was gonna do one episode of season two with Scott.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  That's what she was shooting for.

• 56:10Dax Shepard?

  As people do with you.

• 56:11Speaker 02

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

• 56:17Dax Shepard?

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

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Yep, Canada Broadcasting Communicate.

• 56:23Dax Shepard?

  They do a damn good job. It's a really good podcast.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  They actually interview Higgy, the 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.

• 56:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:47Dax Shepard?

  Cause many times he has to be his, your friend, fuck this case and fuck these guys. We're going in right now. I don't give a fuck.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:53Speaker 01

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

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Could have. 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.

• 57:12Dax Shepard?

  People have been killed in that crawl space for sure. Don't sue me outlaws.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  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.

• 57:21Dax Shepard?

  But explain the base.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  And she gets pregnant with Cain. Once Cain is born, they consider that the mud race, not. White mud race all the way down, but Adam and Eve did procreate and that's able and that's the pure white race.

• 58:20Dax Shepard?

  I mean.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Twisted.

• 58:22Dax Shepard?

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

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Pour me another drink.

• 58:30Dax Shepard?

  I have a lot of scary outlaw biker experiences.

• 58:34Speaker 01

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

• 58:38Speaker 02

  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 in all those days they wore their uniform. It was Church of Jesus Christ Christian, but they take 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.

• 59:03Dax Shepard?

  They're real in Norse.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  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.

• 59:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but it has changed. When I was a kid and I was in the punk scene, there were skinhead Nazis.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 59:16Dax Shepard?

  They all looked the same, but it's not that now. It's these fucking schlubby nerdy.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Could be.

• 59:22Dax Shepard?

  It's evolved.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 59:32Dax Shepard?

  There's like Proud Boy E types.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Hmm, Proud Boys just like to beat people up. Proud Boys 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 from man-made events, and they want to speed that up through like guerrilla warfare tactics like poison a water system, derail a train, take out a power grid, start killing anti-fascist belief people, start killing lefties and definitely killing Jewish people and rid the world of non-whites.

• 1:00:15Dax Shepard?

  Good luck to finding that, but yes.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

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

• 1:00:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Cause I wouldn't pass that.

• 1:00:25Dax Shepard?

  What was the dude's name?

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Big Siege.

• 1:00:26Dax Shepard?

  And his name's Yusef something as it turns out?

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  Barozna, yeah.

• 1:00:29Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I mean, that's curious.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  He didn't tell everybody his name was Yusef.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  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 all and all 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.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:01:23Dax Shepard?

  What are plate carriers?

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  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'd have been the same stuff a lot of them were wearing. The gun belts, everything. So they're preparing for D-Day. And there's not a lot of forethought or afterthought, as you kind of commented on. So we take over a region of the Appalachian Mountains, while another section of the base is taking over a region of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, while another region of the base is taking over Pacific Northwest property. And we're going to create our own FNO state. Because clearly, if we make it all white, everything will run smoothly.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Obviously.

• 1:02:08Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what I did, my sense of humor, I gotta have it.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Oh god.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  So I'm like, so we're neo-Nazis. Hell yeah, man, hell yeah, 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 going to be Hitler? And the faces go blank. And I'm like, getting thought that far? Who's it gonna be? There can only be one, just to mess with them.

• 1:02:36Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  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 Garthens. There's something else. I just start tuning it out.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  How do you learn the lingo?

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  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? And I'm like, man, what are you doing? Writing a book? I don't know. I just met you.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Look, I mean, you seem like you're a nice gal, but I'm not ready to invite you ever tea and crumbles 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've only been here for like a year. Yeah. You made lieutenant in a year? How? That dude's talking for the next two hours.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Well, let me tell you about how I done when I come in and just let them. 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.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Like us doing the trainings in Georgia or it might be training up in Bad Axe, Michigan. And it's a gun shooting and music playing and running to recruit.

• 1:04:05Dax Shepard?

  Like the Al Qaeda videos.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Yes. And here's what's funny. The base in Arabic is Al Qaeda.

• 1:04:10Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  When I was being interviewed to join the group, they laid out their ideology and that's when I learned the whole accelerationist view. Huge on, they call it siege culture. There's a book out there called Siege. Don't go buy it.

• 1:04:21Dax Shepard?

  Been outlawed.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:04:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, cause Manson ultimately thought there'd be a race war as well and he was trying to accelerate that.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Yep. And that's where you start seeing the ideology of accelerationism as, don't do Charlottesville. Don't go out there and stand on a corner with pickets on 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.

• 1:04:53Dax Shepard?

  As principles, let's get an oversized reaction to something we do.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Kill a hundred scare thousands.

• 1:04:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Kill thousands scare millions.

• 1:04:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  But if you looked at Al Qaeda, it was three to five man cells. I've got a country accent, C L L. Sales. They wanted three to five man cells all over the world, ready for that phone call. So as I'm being coached by the leader and creator of the base, he says, we want three to five man cells all over the world waiting. And I mean, we had members from Norway, South Africa, Australia, the UK, Canada, you just keep going.

• 1:05:26Dax Shepard?

  These heroes, these heroes are the ones in New Zealand of the saints, all these assholes, 27 at Walmart, nine at a mosque.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:05:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's good.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  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 Christchurch is this and O. And then you get down to the Tree of Life.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  So sick.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  The Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh, then you get Charleston.

• 1:05:59Dax Shepard?

  You see that these are all related, it gets quite scary.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Very.

• 1:06:03Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

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

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Stop.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:06:26Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Superhuman. Look, I love what I do. The conversations, the ideas, the creative stuff, but there's this whole other layer of work that eats my day alive. The inbox that never ends, docs I need to get through, threads I'm behind on. And by the time I've dealt with all that, the stuff I actually want to focus on gets whatever's left. What I needed was something that just works where I'm already working, not another tab to open, not another thing to set up. Superhuman Go from the makers of Grammarly is different. It's already right there inside your email, your docs, your browser. You don't go to it. It's already working alongside you. You're deep in a long thread, highlight it and it pulls the key points. About to send something important?

• 1:07:09Dax Shepard?

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• 1:07:53Dax Shepard?

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• 1:08:42Dax Shepard?

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• 1:09:25Dax Shepard?

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• 1:09:56Speaker 04

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• 1:10:35Speaker 04

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• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  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, Threema, 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. Yeah, I know. 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

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:11:51Dax Shepard?

  They're trying to figure out who's serious or not.

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Who's gonna pull the trigger.

• 1:11:54Dax Shepard?

  How on earth do you delineate?

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  You just gotta stay vigilant. You hope that people out there, cliche, but if you see something, say something.

• 1:12:01Dax Shepard?

  You know what this reminded me of a little bit in a weird way is domestic abusers. They beat their wife twice. You know statistically, okay, well, eight times more likely this guy's 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?

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. So a lot of times people that'll wanna argue against law enforcement, it'll be like, oh, why are you pulling me over? Why aren't you working murders? Well, there's an old theory called the broken window theory and 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.

• 1:12:38Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Maybe I stopped you from going home and murdering your wife or having that 15th domestic.

• 1:12:43Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  You take away the opportunity, cuz you never know what's gonna happen.

• 1:12:52Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:13:42Dax Shepard?

  In the shadows.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  You know, and you just go over there and go, hey, how's it going? What are you doing? Hey, man, you guys should go rather get just busted up.

• 1:13:47Dax Shepard?

  You're being observed.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you do get embedded in that group and this Canadian who gets outed in Canada goes on the run.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  When we're doing these videos, we're double checking, hey, pale horse, you can see your tattoo. Oh man, my bad, I pulled the sleeve down. Or I go cut black socks just so I can cover up that because the sleeve's too short. Hey, your ponytail's hanging out, hide that because they're so afraid of getting doxed and being outed. What the far left is really good at is once you are doxed, they will show up at your house. They will protest at your work.

• 1:14:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, Antifa started showing up.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

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

• 1:14:45Dax Shepard?

  Iver and I never is resolved.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:14:54Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  I did.

• 1:14:57Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Well, and we don't want to lead anything.

• 1:15:06Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Am I in the KKK and I bring a black person to the rally?

• 1:15:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  Look at what I found.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:15:23Dax Shepard?

  God, receiving instruction from these dumb-dumb.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  Well, it was good instruction though.

• 1:15:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  A nineteen-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.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  Where did you get the training? Because you didn't go in the military, you're only nineteen.

• 1:15:38Dax Shepard?

  Internet?

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  Gaming.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  God, video games.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  They're so realistic. No, they are, they're realistic.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Area.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  Hop on there and cut your microphone on. It's 11 year old kid telling you to clear the hard corner.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  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. Cause I was really concerned with that. When we first started shooting, I stood at the back.

• 1:16:01Dax Shepard?

  Well, this fucking scenario with the goat.

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04Dax Shepard?

  You could have been killed there.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  So this is what happens. I'd 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? Uh, slicing the pie. Oh, okay. So when I'm slicing the pie, now I'm using the verb that you gave me.

• 1:16:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  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. You cut yourself and bleed on it and set that on fire and we pray to our gods until the fire goes out.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

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

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  It's very Viking.

• 1:16:43Dax Shepard?

  It reeks of searching for masculinity and validation for masculinity.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  You're a hundred percent. From my experience, you're spot on.

• 1:16:50Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

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

• 1:16:58Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  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 Wyndham. And they were phenomenal. The stuff they did, tracking phones and finding stuff, they were able to figure out that they knew he was in the country. I was helping them and then Seattle had the main case and they were working the poop out of it too. But there were divisions all over the United States working this stuff. Because if there's a member living in your area, when the LA's got to open a case on it. Now we get to the point to where we find the Canadian. He is actually down at the farm.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  I pull up there for a 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. Extra person there and I go walking up and it's 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 book of Lou 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.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Because in their belief system.

• 1:18:21Dax Shepard?

  Be stupid, Monica.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Obviously.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  When the book of Lou happens and D day starts. If you are not fascist, that automatically makes you anti fascist. And the penalty is death.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  Even if you're white.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:35Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Dax Shepard?

  All these movements.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  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 an assassination attempt. Well, the first reports to start coming out showed that he's reading the ideology I was just telling you about. And it mentions O nine A. O nine A is Order of Nine Angles. That is a, let me say it this way. From what I found, working it, infiltrating it, working it as a case agent. Developing sources who are in and all around it. If you scratch the surface long enough at an accelerationist group, somewhere in there, you're gonna find an O nine A member. Or there's some other groups that are very similar.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  It is a extremely, extremely dark, satanic, white supremacy group. Still same thing, believe in a collapse of the society, but they are huge on rape. Sexual abuse and pedophilia.

• 1:19:47Dax Shepard?

  It was as dark as you can get.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  The sentence of they're big on rape and pedophilia is like.

• 1:19:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Case happened very fast paced.

• 1:19:55Dax Shepard?

  Eight months you were there?

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  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 going to be leading the block. Younger kid clearly didn't know his paganism stuff very well. And again, they're twisting it. So I led hand-to-hand combat training that day. And this wicked cold front came in. The first one of the year, so you have not been acclimated. You're freezing your tail off. I go to charge 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 horns, pell horns, man, you gotta get up. Where do you see this?

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  Where do you see that?" 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-backs 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."

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  If a bunch of Neanderthals and flecked torn camo and balaclavas with a machine gun just jumped in my backyard and jerked me out.

• 1:21:17Dax Shepard?

  It's not a surprise birthday party.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Right. Now I'm watching Eisen work this goat. He's praying to it. He's talking to it. He's showing it love. And I walk up 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're 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.

• 1:21:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, might not know about Valhalla.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

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

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  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 a farm, they're gonna be pulling shifts and rotating because you gotta have a quick response to them. Which how quick can you respond to me on a hundred acre farm? The crap's gonna hit the fan. Avenge my death. Is basically what it is. Unless I'm still hanging on when you get there. Or everybody's dead and I'm standing there when you get there. 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?

• 1:22:35Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:22:49Dax Shepard?

  Valhalla it is.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  I guess we're going to Valhalla. We go deep into the woods to the holy site where we've done stuff before. And that's when they go to sacrifice the goat. 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-fashion, non-white Jews. So Eisen goes to kill, we're in a circle around the goat. Everybody's kinda on their knees. I'm not sure how I ended up at the back of the goat, but that's where I was at. And he has a machete type thing. He does his speech, we're starting this, this is the wild hunt, this is going to Valhalla.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:23:50Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  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, meh, 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 next two things. 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.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Oh my.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  And we're all still in the circle. So that's when the instructor comes out. You hear it clear on the recording, 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 Eisen, I say, man, why don't you put another bullet in it? I think it might still be alive. No, I'm pretty sure it's dead. I said, for the love of the goat. We're trying to make this a peaceful thing.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  For gore.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, for gore.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  For gore and gore.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  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. We're all in a circle and Eisen brought acid. Of course, I did not partake in the acid. Maybe a couple of others didn't partake to help with the shaman, which is to kind of get you in the spirit world or get high.

• 1:25:12Dax Shepard?

  Let's call it like it is.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  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 the, 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 all coagulated. It's cloudy.

• 1:25:40Dax Shepard?

  So gnarly.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  This is horrific.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

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

• 1:25:46Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

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

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  I would have to take the acid.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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.

• 1:26:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, this is horrible.

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  So I stick my finger deep into the blood, pull it out, suck all the blood off my finger. And then they commenced to cutting the whole head of the goat off and we carried it around for the next four days. There's all kinds of photo ops, there's videos, it made it all over. It was on BBC news, everything, us holding the goat's head, giving the cig howl, holding the base flag. Of course, the next day was completely shocked 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 is screaming F your Jewish God, death to America. You see, you got to understand if you hate the far right, I'm not saying extreme right like white supremacists, I'm just saying politically.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  It's like, oh, well, this white supremacist, these people don't like anybody.

• 1:26:53Dax Shepard?

  That was my thought when I watched, and I'm not conflating this group with these people. But when I was watching the capital six riots.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:01Dax Shepard?

  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 is not the thing that actually is uniting them or making them similar.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  Correct. Were there people there with some nefarious plans?

• 1:27:20Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  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 a cell up there. I was good friends with both of those cells. The cell up there thought that the second amendment gun rights rally that was going to be in January of 2020. They thought that might be the kickoff to the boogaloo, maybe fire some shots. Militia people think it's somebody else, cops think it's somebody else, and that could be the kickoff. And if you could see some of the stuff they were spewing, the conversations they were having, like, let's go break out the Charleston shooter. Let's go break out the saints, let's start shooting cops. I got a thermal scope, cop stops a car at night, we pop them. What do you get automatically?

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:28:27Dax Shepard?

  That was incredible. You gave us so much time. I had a couple of 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?

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  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. 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.

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  This isn't the be all end all. Every situation is different, a case by case basis, but I saw a lot of somebody who's an outcast, 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.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:30:38Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  It's denial. That guy came down and drank with us and the apple doesn't fall far.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  He's dropping inwards 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 Mein Kampf, 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 hundred acres, wearing flecked 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.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  No, that was important. That's good. When you say say something, can you be specific?

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  Report it.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  To the police.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  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 what I ended my career on. I was a criminal guy for the majority of my career, but that's where that call comes in. And a lead is typed up. Some of them are crazy. Lady says she was kidnapped by ISIS and they replaced her eyes with alligator eyes. And you're like, what? I gotta go find this person down and interview him. 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 want to make sure you're not really planning on hurting anybody.

• 1:32:09Dax Shepard?

  Maybe that scares them out.

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  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 and they say, 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.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  He's really crazy.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  This dude wants to shoot up a synagogue.

• 1:32:26Dax Shepard?

  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?

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  Some of them.

• 1:32:38Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  The life's tough. I'm 100% believer in, I don't have to believe it, I've seen it, product of your environment, kinda 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.

• 1:33:09Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

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

• 1:33:20Dax Shepard?

  No one's winning the whole thing.

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  I can give you one, I want second chances.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, let's hear it.

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  Love a success story. It's sad, there hadn't been a lot in my 28 year career. You always hear people when they're getting arrested and they're getting ready to do their time, they're like, man, I'm never doing this again. I said, remember 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.

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  But do that. Success stories, they are out there. And I have, even in retirement, let the US 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 gonna 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 gonna do, I'm gonna type it, I'm gonna 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.

• 1:34:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:34:27Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, empathy. I mean, you must have an abundance of it.

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  I try.

• 1:34:40Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:34:50Speaker 02

  I appreciate you having me on.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:34:52Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  All right. Peace.

• 1:34:57Dax Shepard?

  I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong. I know this doesn't interest you, but it continues to wow me and I'm gonna keep telling you.

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:35:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, first of all, when's the last time you bought a pound of ground beef?

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  It's been a minute.

• 1:35:17Dax Shepard?

  But you can visualize in your head about how big that is.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's smallish.

• 1:35:22Dax Shepard?

  Well, I would say it's like this big. It's like the size of a small shoe.

• 1:35:29Dax Shepard?

  You don't like that. You don't like that.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  I think it's sure.

• 1:35:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, here's my point.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:35:40Dax Shepard?

  And I weighed myself last night before bed.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, Dex. I can't.

• 1:35:48Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  You love astrology.

• 1:35:53Dax Shepard?

  I don't love astrology.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  You have it tattooed on your body.

• 1:35:56Dax Shepard?

  So, 205.2 last night.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:00Dax Shepard?

  Many pee peas in the night. Very big deposit this morning. 198.8. So, I lose seven pounds in 12 hours, 10 hours.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 1:36:15Dax Shepard?

  Picture seven pounds of ground beef.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  I don't want to.

• 1:36:18Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:36:23Dax Shepard?

  Like, where does it go? Like, well, I know where it goes. It goes in the toilet, but

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:36:27Dax Shepard?

  Just picture seven pounds of ground beef on that table and, and then I go, I'm gonna lose that tonight.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

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

• 1:36:35Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I don't

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Air.

• 1:36:37Dax Shepard?

  Air's not very heavy, but

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  How much is air?

• 1:36:42Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:36:56Dax Shepard?

  And then a month later, I'm like, oh, right, I remember I sent it to them, because how else would you find it?

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  Well, you can save them, but yeah.

• 1:37:02Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:37:04Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Dax Shepard?

  Like consistently, it's every smart person's favorite smart person.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:37:18Dax Shepard?

  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. Cause the air has carbon dioxide in it. And the tree, with the help of the sun, it breaks that apart.

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  Wait, the tree?

• 1:38:01Dax Shepard?

  The tree and the leaves.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  I thought the tree didn't exist yet.

• 1:38:05Dax Shepard?

  Now a little sapling comes up.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  From where?

• 1:38:09Dax Shepard?

  A seed.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Okay, so you're saying, okay, you're saying there's a seed?

• 1:38:15Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:17Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:38:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, it is a little heady, 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.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  By car- so it's all carbon?

• 1:38:56Dax Shepard?

  It's all carbon.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  Trees are all carbon?

• 1:38:59Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

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

• 1:39:09Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  Who told it to do that?

• 1:39:17Dax Shepard?

  You're not, you gotta let me get to the punchline of this.

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 1:39:20Dax Shepard?

  So that right there is mind blowing. I think I've always looked at trees and thought, all that wood came out of the ground somehow. And he said, sure, there's some minerals and stuff that are coming out of the ground. And then the other thing that's coming out of the ground is the water. Trees are made up a lot of water.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:34Dax Shepard?

  He said, but the water doesn't come from the ground either. The water comes from the air.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Sure, well, that's true.

• 1:39:39Dax Shepard?

  So the structure of the tree and the water all comes from the air.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:43Dax Shepard?

  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?

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  It's interesting, it is really interesting.

• 1:40:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I'm like, I'm so impressed someone figured out why the tree, you just, you might just go, yeah, they're there, I'm not gonna overthink it.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  That's what most people do, yeah.

• 1:40:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think that's what everyone does.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Dax Shepard?

  Except for Feynman. That's magic. It just comes out of the air.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  But like, the root system, the water's in the air, but it's also in the, it like comes down to the, yeah.

• 1:40:34Dax Shepard?

  Starts in the air, it's created in the air.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  Comes down to the ground and then.

• 1:40:36Dax Shepard?

  And it comes down to the ground.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  I mean, Groot knows all about this.

• 1:40:41Dax Shepard?

  Groot is the living proof of this process, yeah.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw him recently.

• 1:40:47Dax Shepard?

  You saw him after you found out about the big?

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I gave him a squeeze.

• 1:40:51Dax Shepard?

  Did you?

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  He was wearing pajamas.

• 1:40:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he has so many cute pajama outfits. I'm so, he has, he has, um, he, he has a safari outfit.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01Dax Shepard?

  He's got every kind of look.

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, like what most people think about their American Girl doll. Like when you buy it, you do like buy all the beds and the things.

• 1:41:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Akutrima, that's what Groot has.

• 1:41:15Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too, me too.

• 1:41:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Really.

• 1:41:25Dax Shepard?

  And 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.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:41:34Dax Shepard?

  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, I'm jealous of my own kids. Like I wish I had their childhood.

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:41:53Dax Shepard?

  But I think I want to be ultimately Delta's child. I think if she has a child, that child is gonna be fretted over.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope not too much.

• 1:42:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, we don't want to spoil and spare the rod spoil the child?

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, or Munchausen's.

• 1:42:08Dax Shepard?

  Mmm.

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  Fine line. Really fine line.

• 1:42:13Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Right, you're right.

• 1:42:24Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  She is gonna be such a good mom. She's very loving and.

• 1:42:31Dax Shepard?

  Attentive and thoughtful.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's making me a scarf right now.

• 1:42:35Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

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

• 1:42:58Dax Shepard?

  Me neither.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  She can, that little baby made that.

• 1:43:02Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  It's so overwhelming.

• 1:43:09Dax Shepard?

  I don't know, I'm at 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.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 1:43:23Dax Shepard?

  You're not a psychologist.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:43:24Dax Shepard?

  But what's 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, with that he would talk about them.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:36Dax Shepard?

  And so now I tell my kids what I say.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:48Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  I think our best conversations.

• 1:43:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Are are.

• 1:43:58Dax Shepard?

  Debates.

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

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

• 1:44:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you have a lot of good ones.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  But they're there to spark a conversation.

• 1:44:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  Between us.

• 1:44:10Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:14Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

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

• 1:44:25Dax Shepard?

  That's right. And so I was just sitting in bed, I think, last night going like, I don't think I have.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  A life.

• 1:44:31Dax Shepard?

  A life. Uh, if they're not a part of the conversation, then I have almost nothing to talk about. And I guess it's a free standard for parents.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure. I had this the other day, um, 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.

• 1:44:50Dax Shepard?

  Congratulations.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

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

• 1:45:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you went a whole day without talking?

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:45:06Dax Shepard?

  Ah.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  And it was really.

• 1:45:08Dax Shepard?

  Good or bad?

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Um, it felt, the realization felt bad. I don't know why.

• 1:45:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Um, the experience didn't feel bad. I didn't even notice.

• 1:45:17Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Also, because I have so much chatter in my head, I never really.

• 1:45:22Dax Shepard?

  Feel alone.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I never feel alone. Do you think that's normal?

• 1:45:28Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:33Dax Shepard?

  Unless I'm meditating and in truth, only for.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  Half a second.

• 1:45:38Dax Shepard?

  Six minutes of the 20.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  You can do six minutes in a row.

• 1:45:43Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  I can't do that many.

• 1:45:49Dax Shepard?

  It's so hard.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  It's like thirty seconds max for me.

• 1:45:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I meditated in the evening. You're supposed to meditate for my meditation TM. You're supposed to do morning and then evening before dinner while your stomach's still empty. And I don't do the nighttime one, but I did do it a couple of 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, is rambunctious. It's like when I wake up, I just have a flurry of like, this is what you gotta do. And this is what happened yesterday. Oh.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:24Dax Shepard?

  Value weight my whole life. It's morning. Um, in the evening, I'm kinda like, yeah, whatever. We did, we're alive. We did it. And then I, I can get, and in evening meditation, I can get sometimes like fifteen of the twenty minutes are just blissful no thoughts.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  Interesting, but then, but you don't need it as bad.

• 1:46:42Dax Shepard?

  I should do it though, cause I, what I want is that fifteen minutes of bliss. It is really euphoric.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:49Dax Shepard?

  When I get it.

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  Nice. Okay, great.

• 1:46:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And then I wonder, is it just helping? Like the fact that I do it every morning? And is it, you know, is my overall

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  Calmness?

• 1:47:01Dax Shepard?

  Live wire-ness diminished a little bit?

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  I think you're mellowing out.

• 1:47:06Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Losing my vitality.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Losing your will to live.

• 1:47:11Dax Shepard?

  That's kinda happening. Um, so, uh, Kristen and I went for two days to this conference, uh, up north and, um, I danced.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:47:19Dax Shepard?

  And I love to dance.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  You love it?

• 1:47:21Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:47:29Dax Shepard?

  Snoop D O double G. And so I was dancing, I was jumping, I was jumping. It was fun. Probably danced for like an hour.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:47:36Dax Shepard?

  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 do, you can't jump anymore for a half hour.

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:47:50Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  And you made, didn't make you sad?

• 1:47:56Dax Shepard?

  No, yeah, it 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.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  I have been having a lot of thoughts about.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Life and age.

• 1:48:12Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  No. I don't imagine her, I don't think of her.

• 1:48:20Dax Shepard?

  Is thirty.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  As thirty, and I don't think of me as thirty seven.

• 1:48:24Dax Shepard?

  There we go, that helps. So you're both thirty five?

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  I feel like we're both like thirty four ish, you know, in that zone. She might be, she might be like thirty two and I'm thirty four.

• 1:48:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  Um, 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.

• 1:48:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:48:55Speaker 01

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

• 1:48:59Dax Shepard?

  You feel content in that piece?

• 1:49:01Speaker 01

  But I understand, I really deeply understand that nothing matters.

• 1:49:07Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  In the rest of life, I can tell, you know, I can tell myself and I can understand it intellectually and I can try to live a life that reflects that. But there are times where I am like embody, I feel it.

• 1:49:23Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  That really the purpose is, is to love.

• 1:49:31Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:49:32Speaker 01

  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, to really understand that we're all, none of this matters.

• 1:49:48Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  None of anything we're doing. And I don't mean, like, obviously, helping people is great and, and, um.

• 1:49:56Dax Shepard?

  Feeding yourself is imperative.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I don't, it's hard to explain, obviously. That's why.

• 1:50:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, when I, I kind of like, tried to get really specific about what's going on in my meditation, when it works. And what 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.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:50:21Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:50:29Dax Shepard?

  Because there's really nothing to think about in the moment you're in. That's what's crazy is like you're constantly preparing for what's coming or you're processing what already happened. But in the second to second moment, you don't really need to do shit.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:43Dax Shepard?

  There's nothing to do or to be afraid of because there's no nothing's attacking you like.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:50:47Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

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

• 1:51:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  Um, I wanna know if other people have this like con- constant. There's no time at all that I'm awake, that there isn't a conversation happening.

• 1:51:23Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:51:23Speaker 01

  Or a monologue happening.

• 1:51:26Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:51:26Speaker 01

  And I I assume that's everyone. I just assume that's how humans are.

• 1:51:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:51:32Dax Shepard?

  I read a statistic about this.

• 1:51:35Speaker 01

  That people don't.

• 1:51:36Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

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

• 1:51:46Dax Shepard?

  GLP one, I'm sure it'll fix that, too.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  I am very curious about the GLP ones.

• 1:51:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  Because of so many people we've had on that are saying it could be good for this. It could be good for, yeah.

• 1:51:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  But the, no, it's obvious it works for um, weight loss.

• 1:52:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  And it's helping so many people. That's proven at this point. But these other things like dementia.

• 1:52:09Dax Shepard?

  Addiction.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  Potentially addiction, potential, yeah. There's all these potential benefits, reducing of inflammation.

• 1:52:17Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  And I like kind of wanna try it.

• 1:52:21Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:52:22Speaker 01

  But I don't wanna not eat food.

• 1:52:26Dax Shepard?

  I don't have uh, an opinion whether you should or shouldn't. All I'll just add is. It's dose dependent.

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  Right, but even.

• 1:52:34Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

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

• 1:52:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:52:59Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  As one.

• 1:53:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

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

• 1:53:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but I have been doing my farmer's.

• 1:53:18Dax Shepard?

  Farmer carries on the way to get my wine.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

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

• 1:53:23Dax Shepard?

  I am, I'm very proud of you.

• 1:53:27Dax Shepard?

  Also, it's my job to tease you.

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  I know, and I haven't been doing them this week.

• 1:53:32Dax Shepard?

  Cause if I can't talk about my daughters and I can't tease you, I really, we need to wrap it up.

• 1:53:37Speaker 01

  Actually, maybe we should comment on this episode. Because Dax will read the comments. If you want us to debate about something specific.

• 1:53:47Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  It's kind of fun, right?

• 1:53:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

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

• 1:53:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:56Speaker 01

  Okay, I do have a sort of update-ish.

• 1:53:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  So the person I was speaking about who, um.

• 1:54:04Dax Shepard?

  Went to Saturday Night Live.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  Who went to Saturday Night Live.

• 1:54:06Dax Shepard?

  You're in love with.

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  Yes, apparently, a lot of people are in love with this person. And I didn't know that.

• 1:54:16Dax Shepard?

  You didn't?

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  You didn't, you knew?

• 1:54:19Dax Shepard?

  I assumed a me, he was cast for a reason. Yes, I think he's broadly appealing.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but like.

• 1:54:27Dax Shepard?

  You feel a little bummed that other people.

• 1:54:30Speaker 01

  You know what I feel? It's so old, it's so old for me.

• 1:54:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

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

• 1:54:39Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  Why? No.

• 1:54:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  Why? You don't think I was.

• 1:54:47Dax Shepard?

  Continuation of the, the, the quarterback.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  In my opinion, this person is. Not that.

• 1:54:54Dax Shepard?

  He's not the archetype of a quarterback. The quarterbacks now aren't the quarterbacks. They're Timothy Chalamet.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  Chalamet.

• 1:55:01Dax Shepard?

  There's, um, 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.

• 1:55:14Dax Shepard?

  He's a very sought after. That person doesn't cast her love interest willy nilly.

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:55:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh, uh huh.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  And people aren't gonna overlook him because he doesn't look like Brad Pitt.

• 1:55:37Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  But I, I find him so attractive.

• 1:55:42Dax Shepard?

  Brad Pitt is.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

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

• 1:55:48Dax Shepard?

  I don't think you consciously did that.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

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

• 1:55:54Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:55:57Speaker 01

  Well, just because he's a famous person?

• 1:56:00Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  Well, obviously I'm gonna be attracted to someone who's appealing and sexy.

• 1:56:09Dax Shepard?

  It's not an accident that he was chosen to play that.

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

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

• 1:56:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  And now he's kind of blowing up.

• 1:56:21Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:56:22Speaker 01

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

• 1:56:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, for at least.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

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

• 1:56:45Dax Shepard?

  He has, and that's not me saying you shouldn't like the person because there's too much competition. That's not what I'm saying.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  That's how I feel.

• 1:56:52Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

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

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  Which then this is getting complicated.

• 1:57:16Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're saying that's why I picked him.

• 1:57:23Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:57:32Dax Shepard?

  And I'm arguing your subconscious always knew that.

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  Because I know the feeling in my body.

• 1:57:36Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:37Speaker 01

  When two things happened. One person told me like,

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:57:53Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  And then like soon after that, another person was like, oh my God, yeah, the ladies love him.

• 1:58:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  I was like, what? And I, the feeling in my body during both of those conversations was of heartbreak.

• 1:58:10Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  And of disbelief and of despair.

• 1:58:15Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  But, but, but it's more, it's, he's, 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.

• 1:58:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's, that's great.

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:58:43Dax Shepard?

  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?

• 1:58:51Speaker 01

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

• 1:58:54Dax Shepard?

  I know. And so you do know that.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:58:57Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Sure, I know he's an attractive person.

• 1:59:07Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  I thought I was early in. On a person.

• 1:59:19Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

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

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  Has something.

• 1:59:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  And I guess you're saying the casting director also.

• 1:59:31Dax Shepard?

  And the filmmaker and the co-star all thought that too.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

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

• 1:59:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

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

• 1:59:43Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. You're making it about something so specific, like I, yes, I know that

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  probably only an attractive person, a likable person would get that role. But I didn't, you know, people were like, oh, like.

• 2:00:09Dax Shepard?

  You thought they missed him.

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  I, I don't, yes.

• 2:00:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:13Speaker 01

  And I guess they didn't, but also I, in my own circles, like I know about people

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  being talked about.

• 2:00:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:24Speaker 01

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

• 2:00:26Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  Until now.

• 2:00:28Dax Shepard?

  It's really taken off.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  And I, like, when I imagined being at SNL.

• 2:00:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

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

• 2:00:43Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  Now I do. And that sucks.

• 2:00:48Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:59Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm. And so, and in your mind, then this is where the baggage comes in.

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:05Dax Shepard?

  If there's a lot of competition, I can't have it.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

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

• 2:01:10Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel that way.

• 2:01:13Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  Well, if I'm the only option.

• 2:01:26Dax Shepard?

  You heard other people like him, so you like reverse engineered what now he would, that changed how he would think about you.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:01:34Dax Shepard?

  That's the hiccup in your thinking.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

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

• 2:01:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  We've had, there, we've had this, this has happened in some way before, sort of, ish.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  There was somebody on this show.

• 2:01:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  Um, that showed some interest.

• 2:01:52Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  Got my phone number.

• 2:01:55Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:55Speaker 01

  Then there was.

• 2:01:57Dax Shepard?

  Radio silence.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  There was ghosting.

• 2:01:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:59Speaker 01

  There was ghosting.

• 2:02:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

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

• 2:02:10Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm. 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, my, that, the whole point of that was to stop your train of thought that he, no, he, no, 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.

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

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

• 2:02:49Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  Well, more than do they like you, it's, are you an, are you an option for them?

• 2:03:23Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 2:03:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:03:47Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:47Speaker 01

  Well, I guess that's that.

• 2:03:52Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:04:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:04:05Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:04:16Dax Shepard?

  And she'll like me.

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

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

• 2:04:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she'll want me.

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:04:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:35Speaker 01

  Well, that's the difference then...

• 2:04:37Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:04:43Speaker 01

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

• 2:04:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I mean, you need access to somebody, clearly.

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 2:04:57Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  Well, we did.

• 2:05:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

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

• 2:05:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:53Dax Shepard?

  Although they'll be in the same position I'm already in.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:57Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  I mean, so much of the way we operate is based on...

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  Our experience.

• 2:06:12Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:06:13Speaker 01

  You've been valid, you've been validated many times.

• 2:06:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  Which obviously makes you feel like.

• 2:06:19Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06:29Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:35Dax Shepard?

  But I want the thing so bad.

• 2:06:38Dax Shepard?

  Always deal with the.

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  Projection.

• 2:06:40Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  That makes sense. All right, well, let's transition into some facts.

• 2:06:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 2:06:48Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 2:06:55Speaker 05

  With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Steven, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of Sand Cloud, reinvested their 2% cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com/SparkCashPlus. Terms apply.

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  Okay, some facts for Scott Payne.

• 2:07:31Dax Shepard?

  Number one, he's a stud.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  He's so cool. What a cool, scary life.

• 2:07:38Dax Shepard?

  It's, uh, 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.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:07:51Dax Shepard?

  You're having to meet groups of people and get them to like you.

• 2:07:55Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:07:56Dax Shepard?

  Get them to trust you.

• 2:07:57Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:07:58Dax Shepard?

  You have to be good at moving in different kinds of, you know.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  You say in the episode, and I think it's right, like, I don't think your tolerance.

• 2:08:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, for the stupidity.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a, you have to listen to a lot of crazy shit.

• 2:08:11Dax Shepard?

  Almost exclusively.

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:13Dax Shepard?

  These organizations are not the winners' club. They're like AA. They're the losers' club.

• 2:08:17Speaker 01

  No, AA are people trying to be better.

• 2:08:19Dax Shepard?

  But we, we call it the losers'.

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  I know, but I don't think it's that way.

• 2:08:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but to have to listen to these bozo conspiracy theorists who are racist, like the things they believe.

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:08:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it would be.

• 2:08:33Speaker 01

  So that is. Just so disturbing.

• 2:08:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:08:40Speaker 01

  Okay, well, let's start with that.

• 2:08:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:08:42Speaker 01

  Um, the difference between a goat and a ram.

• 2:08:45Dax Shepard?

  Is a ram a boy goat?

• 2:08:46Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:09:01Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:09:13Speaker 01

  But a ram is a sheep.

• 2:09:15Dax Shepard?

  But a bull moose, a bull cow, a bull elephant.

• 2:09:21Dax Shepard?

  They call a lot of female animals cows.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  No, a male goat is a buck or a billy goat.

• 2:09:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, a buck or a billy goat. Buck, also a male name.

• 2:09:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:09:30Dax Shepard?

  Deer.

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

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

• 2:09:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  Oh, that's.

• 2:09:42Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it kind of creeps me out.

• 2:09:55Dax Shepard?

  You know, like that.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:56Dax Shepard?

  I think that's a fun part of them.

• 2:09:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:09:58Dax Shepard?

  They're very agile.

• 2:09:59Speaker 01

  Um, rams are larger than goats.

• 2:10:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  Um, 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.

• 2:10:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I'm sorry, ladies.

• 2:10:17Speaker 01

  They like it.

• 2:10:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You know, Aaron had a sheep at his,

• 2:10:22Dax Shepard?

  well, his dad had a farm.

• 2:10:23Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:10:24Dax Shepard?

  And he had one of all these animals, which is silly. Like, they weren't in the farming business. No, no one's going to reproduce.

• 2:10:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:10:29Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 2:10:40Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:10:43Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:10:44Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:10:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:10:56Dax Shepard?

  It would just run as fast as it can into the end of that

• 2:11:00Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 2:11:00Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  It is so male, like I'm gonna run into this stick.

• 2:11:12Dax Shepard?

  Well, they gotta do it to get some ass.

• 2:11:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:11:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they do. That's how they get ass.

• 2:11:17Speaker 01

  Attractive.

• 2:11:18Dax Shepard?

  For sheep, it is.

• 2:11:19Speaker 01

  The women sheep love it.

• 2:11:21Dax Shepard?

  Yes, that's how they compete for dominance. And then he gets the sheep.

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  God.

• 2:11:26Dax Shepard?

  They love it.

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  My animal.

• 2:11:27Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 2:11:37Speaker 01

  CTE.

• 2:11:38Dax Shepard?

  They don't get CTE.

• 2:11:39Speaker 01

  Yes, they do. All these sheeps have CTE. It's no wonder.

• 2:11:43Dax Shepard?

  They don't.

• 2:11:44Speaker 01

  What does CBC stand for? Canada Broadcasting Corporation.

• 2:11:49Dax Shepard?

  That makes zero sense.

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  Sorry, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

• 2:11:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 2:11:54Dax Shepard?

  It's CBC. How can the C stand for incorporation?

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  No, corporation.

• 2:11:59Dax Shepard?

  Corporation. I thought you said incorporation.

• 2:12:02Speaker 01

  No, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

• 2:12:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Broadcasting Corporation. Cause you said Broadcasting Corporation.

• 2:12:11Speaker 01

  I said what it was.

• 2:12:12Dax Shepard?

  The G, the ing.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 2:12:16Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:12:20Speaker 01

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

• 2:12:35Dax Shepard?

  Good job.

• 2:12:36Speaker 01

  He knows his stuff. Okay, he said the owner of Flat Rock got in some trouble.

• 2:12:42Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  Hit and run.

• 2:12:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that sounds.

• 2:12:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Harley Rusty Biddle.

• 2:12:47Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God, they threw in a third great name.

• 2:12:51Speaker 01

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

• 2:12:54Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:12:59Speaker 01

  Okay, we won't keep reading.

• 2:13:02Dax Shepard?

  That reminds me of this.

• 2:13:03Speaker 01

  Ignorance.

• 2:13:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, ignorance is bliss.

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 2:13:13Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:13:19Speaker 01

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

• 2:13:23Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:13:28Speaker 01

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

• 2:13:32Dax Shepard?

  At Vista?

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:13:34Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 2:13:35Speaker 01

  Excited.

• 2:13:36Dax Shepard?

  Ding ding ding.

• 2:13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:37Dax Shepard?

  I went and saw Sinner yesterday, or Centers?

• 2:13:39Speaker 01

  You saw it?

• 2:13:40Dax Shepard?

  Center or Centers?

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  Centers, I think.

• 2:13:41Dax Shepard?

  Centers in IMAX at CityWalk by myself.

• 2:13:46Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:13:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  An adventure.

• 2:13:48Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:13:49Speaker 01

  How was it?

• 2:13:50Dax Shepard?

  It's awesome. It's really awesome.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  I really wanna see it.

• 2:13:53Dax Shepard?

  There's a sequence in there where they're

• 2:13:57Dax Shepard?

  kind of incorporating all these different black music traditions. And it's like you're in it. It's a time period movie.

• 2:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:04Dax Shepard?

  Said in like, I wanna say 1932 or something.

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:14:08Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:26Dax Shepard?

  It's crazy powerful. Like I was goosebumps all over my body.

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  I wanna see it.

• 2:14:32Dax Shepard?

  And then I just had this deep curiosity. I wanted to ask the guy, the theater was mostly black folks and there was a dude next to me and I was just, I got kind of curious, like, like, I'm looking at that, A, I can feel it and sense it and I've experienced it in, in so that I've experienced that music and it's made me feel ways. And then I was so curious, like, does this young guy

• 2:15:00Dax Shepard?

  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 and-

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  I'm sure it feels like a connection. Action to it.

• 2:15:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just was wondering, like, I wanted, I wanted to talk to him about that. I wanted to know, like, what is the experience? My hunch is you can, that's all in your

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  It's your history.

• 2:15:23Dax Shepard?

  Genome. Like, I think that's all in their, their body in some way.

• 2:15:26Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 2:15:27Dax Shepard?

  And I was just, I, 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.

• 2:15:45Speaker 01

  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

• 2:15:58Speaker 01

  it's really deep when you start thinking about it that way. And you're looking around at this, I mean, obviously, that's a very, it's a diverse audience, but a lot of black people who are, who, yeah, it's in, it is in their body to connect to these things she is saying.

• 2:16:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:15Speaker 01

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

• 2:16:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:16:35Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 2:16:35Speaker 01

  Like, it is.

• 2:16:36Dax Shepard?

  And the music was always the reprieve. Like, I took a jazz history class in college and it was like, those, all those blue notes and the things that were developed in the cotton field.

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:47Dax Shepard?

  As an escape.

• 2:16:48Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:16:48Dax Shepard?

  From this horrific life is like, it is deeper than chords. There's something wild going on that has carried through way beyond.

• 2:16:59Speaker 01

  It's still there.

• 2:17:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:01Speaker 01

  I know. It's a, it's a beautiful thing. Um, well, I think that is it.

• 2:17:06Dax Shepard?

  That's it. A Sinner's Review and a Cowboy Carter. I loved him.

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  I loved him.

• 2:17:13Dax Shepard?

  He was, he had a sweetness.

• 2:17:15Speaker 01

  He did.

• 2:17:16Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:22Dax Shepard?

  Right?

• 2:17:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:17:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:36Speaker 01

  That comes up in this episode, Scott Payne.

• 2:17:39Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:17:39Speaker 01

  So, you know, piece it all together.

• 2:17:42Dax Shepard?

  Put it, stitch it together.

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, stitch it.

• 2:17:43Dax Shepard?

  All right. Love you.