Best of Wednesday 2025
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. And today is Best of Wednesday's 2025 edition.
Ooh. He's an armchair expert.
From episode 900 with Scott Payne.
They carried me down. Closed line, who's supposed to be my second closest friend, says, yo, Tex, you got a minute? And I said, yeah. And then he walks me through this door that I'd never been in, even though I've been in that clubhouse I don't know how many times. It's the only door I hadn't been through. And it leads into a very tight stairwell down into a, if I call it a basement, that's being generous because I couldn't stand up straight. It's more of a crawl space. And I could touch the wall probably on both sides. I see rope.
Oh, no.
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, I need you to—he says— There's a lot of shit going on, and it's my job to take care of my brothers. I need you to take off. 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.
So now I'm like.
I hate this.
Yeah. Yeah, me too.
Me too.
And there's no one in a van across the street.
We'll get to that.
Okay.
But really quick also, you have to be playing the game in your head where you're like, okay, so I'm not wired.
What are the highlights of Scott Payne's undercover experience?
I am the guy. What's my reaction?
Yeah.
Right? You're trying to.
I would love to say yes to that answer, but I was shitting gold. Yeah. I was having an adrenaline dump. I had that panic. It's the fight or flight or freeze. Yeah, midbrain is in charge. And then you are hopefully doing what you've trained or rehearsed in your head, and that's what I did. If I had not seen me do these things on the video, I would have never known I did them. But just like I can show you cops and military first responders 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.
It's instinctive.
Right.
So in the undercover world, okay, now I'm down there. I'm trying to write my name down. I'm having that adrenaline dump. In other words, 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. I've even had sight get minimal. That's tunnel vision. It starts closing in. That's tunnel vision. So that happens. You're getting the tunnel vision, and everything's time dilation. It's in clicks. It's like in frames, right? You go click. Click, click. You can hear and feel your heart beating through your entire body. Palms are sweaty. I'm starting an Eminem song here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm trying to talk, and I'm trying to write my name, and I forgot my middle name. I've been this dude forever. I know. I know I'm Scott Callaghan. 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 it was this guy that one of the SEALs caught it, and he said, man, if you look, your hand's not even shaking the entire time you're trying to read. I'm trying to remember your name. And I'm like, well, my insides were shaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I yell back. I'm like, and what else do you need? I don't even know how to do it. And he's like, what? I go, my name and what else? It didn't sound that clear, though. Because I'm crapping myself, it sounds like, what else do you need?
My name, well, you know, I'm not even enunciating. You're like underwater. Yeah, I'm not even enunciating. He yells up, and I hear, what do you need for that website? So I'm like, okay, they're going to Google search me.
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