Scott Payne (retired undercover FBI Agent)

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Umbrella

Tv & Film, Music, Comedy

4.6 • 68.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 127 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.
0:06.5	Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:10.0	Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.
0:13.9	Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert experts on expert.
0:17.1	I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman.
0:19.4	Woo!
0:20.6	Monica! 900! I'm so Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Woo! Woo!
0:21.7	900!
0:23.2	I'm so delighted to announce this episode 900 because I'm a bad exaggerator, as you know.
0:29.1	I'm actually, no, I'm not even a bad exaggerator. I'm an exaggerator and it doesn't even
0:34.1	make sense because it's a marginal exaggeration.
0:37.1	The other day I was listening to our show and we had a guest and we were talking about Sideris.
0:40.9	And I said, oh, yeah, he's been on six times.
0:42.9	And as I was listening, I was like, I know he's been on five times.
0:46.1	Why would I have said six?
0:47.9	Six isn't better than five?
0:50.0	This is a good thing to know about yourself.
0:51.7	So I'm a 20% exaggerator. But I've been saying we're like, oh, well, I've done 850 of these or whatever.
0:58.9	Right.
0:59.4	But it actually is 900.
1:00.9	900 today.
1:02.1	So I'm just starting 1,000 now.
	...

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