Transcript of The Girlfriends S5/E4: Stolen Valor

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy? Not quite. On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between-songs banter.

Where does your group perform?

We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the iHeart iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the Look Back at It podcast.

1979, that was a big moment for me. '84 was big to me.

I'm Sam Jay.

And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Marc Lamont Hill on the '80s.

'84 was a wild—

I mean, it was a wild year.

I don't think there's a more important year for Black people.

Listen to Look Back at It on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.

Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the Enhanced Games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.

Listen to Superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Kia Gaines. This space is about Black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit of armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability, that does not mean that you need to. Listen Learn the Hard Way on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Novel. Last time on The Girlfriends— Trust me, babe. Derek Aldred skips town.

They let him go, and he then disappeared again.

Lisa, a hockey-loving mom in Minnesota, tries to put the past behind her.

I'd forget about it for a while, and then another text would come.

Only now there's been a new update, this time from Texas. It's spring 2017, and a woman named Dory has an exciting date with a guy she met online, Richie Taylor.

He asked me to go to the Ranger game, Texas's Major League Baseball team.

He's pretty tall, nice smile, close-cropped hair, flies jets in the Navy, teaches at the university nearby. It's their second date.

We pulled into a $50 parking lot, and I'm like, I'm not paying $50 to park.

Dory's the one behind the wheel, but Richie insists he claims to have a receipt that should get them in for free.

So I pull in. We get up to the guy and he's ready to collect the $50.

Richie says, you know, "Hold on a minute, I've got a receipt." Dory, the guy at the ticket booth, and a steadily increasing line of cars wait while Richie fruitlessly searches through his phone.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

In the course of his searching, Richie flashes a badge to the ticket booth guy.

He always showed his NCIS badge.

The badge is gold. It's shiny. It's got an eagle on it. It signifies that Richie, now furiously scrolling through his emails, is also a law enforcement officer in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, no less.

You know, the crowd is getting huge. The game's going to start. You're not going to sit there and wait for this guy to find this email. What's the guy going to do? And finally, the guy just goes, just go. So we got parking for free.

And the special treatment doesn't end there. Once they're parked up, they head to the stadium box office.

He goes up there and he says, I'm Captain Rich Taylor. Corporal, let's say, John Smith left tickets for us here. They go and look. They can't find anything. And he starts getting louder and louder.

You'll have guessed by now, Richie Taylor isn't the jet-flying college professor slash naval investigator he's making himself out to be. This is actually just plain old Derek Aldred appearing to chuck a tantrum for free tickets to a baseball game. But Dory doesn't know that yet.

He's getting angry and making a scene.

This kind of identity fraud the kind Derek Aldred seems to keep getting away with. It's hard to investigate, hard to catch, hard to prove, and it's hard to prosecute, never mind successfully. But what really helps is when the person doing it makes a mistake.

Finally, they just gave us two tickets.

And Derek's made a big one.

We were there for quite a while, It's on camera.

Messing with Dory won't prove to be one of Derek Aldred's smartest moves either.

I vowed I will be his last target. I can stop him.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and from the teams at Novel and iHeartPodcasts, you're listening to The Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. Episode 4: Stolen Valor. I got you, I got you.

I have to laugh because you know what I just found in my hair? A drill. I'm like, what is—

When we first speak to Dorrie, she's tucked up on a gray sofa in her apartment on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. There's a cinnamon-scented candle burning, and she's plucking a single small flat-bottomed crystal out of her hair. In the diamond art world, these glittering little beads are called drills.

My diamond art was in my hair. I'm like, what is this? It's from my beading.

In her spare time, Dori likes to do diamond art.

You take these little beads and put them on this sticky canvas and it makes a picture. My anxiety is still very high, and I'm telling you what, I can get into that diamond painting and it just takes my anxiety away.

By 2017, Dory had survived a tough divorce, and through the pain of that breakup, she was carving out a new version of herself.

Suddenly it was like, you know, what does Dory like to do?

Self-sufficient, artistic, independent.

I learned that I'm extremely crafty. I made wreaths and crochet and cross-stitch.

But don't go wrong, She contains multitudes.

I have my license to carry, so I can carry my gun at any time.

This is Texas, after all.

I was feeling good about myself. I was looking good. You know, everything was going right for me at that time. I thought, let's go.

So Dory decides to add dating into the mix.

Next thing you know, I met Richie. I still can't stop calling him Richie.

When she first meets Richie Taylor, she's working in HR, loving her job, and living just outside of Dallas in a place called The Colony.

It's a big town but has a very small town feel. It probably could be like a Norman Rockwell painting.

I'm now picturing a Norman Rockwell in Diamond Art, a nostalgic picture book idealized America but with dating apps.

I can remember his name on Plenty of Fish was Flyboy because he pretended to be a pilot.

It's a story you've heard before. Their first date is magic.

I felt like my stomach dropped in a good way.

The fact that this guy is a pilot in the Navy is hugely appealing for one reason.

My grandpa was in the Navy. I almost trusted him a little more. Opened up a little more. So I'm hearing about this guy who flies jets, and he's telling me all these big stories. I can distinctly remember one time he put on his dress blues, his formal Navy uniform, and there was a couple times he wore his flight suit too. He had the helmet with the microphone on it. I was impressed by him.

I saw They kept dating.

He's telling me he loves me left and right.

But soon the cracks begin to appear, like Richie's quick temper, or the fact that he wasn't very reliable. He'd be on his phone a lot, or he'd cancel on their dates last minute.

At first I took it personally. I thought, well, he's not interested in me. He explained it was because of this military things going on, and he needed to fly to Washington. This was around when the Korean crisis was going on.

The new level of threats and provocations from North Korea.

Just hours ago, the regime carried out a large-scale artillery drill just 100 miles from Seoul, South Korea. Experts say that Kim Jong-un seems to be sending a message.

It was frustrating. It's kind of hard to hold it against a guy who's just trying to prevent nuclear destruction. But then Dory receives a sign that's quite hard to ignore. One day, mid-April, Richie is over at Dory's townhouse. They're in the living room when her phone pings.

So I checked my phone and it said that, just to let you know, your withdrawal's coming up for your credit card.

The number on her credit card statement sends Dorianne into shock.

Holy Moses. I don't come near that much every month. It was close to $8,000.

How did it get that high? Dorianne logs in to analyze the charges. Gift cards, flowers, Airbnbs, eBay purchases.

It wasn't me. I don't even buy anything from eBay. Richie's sitting on the couch, I'm standing by the door, and I'm just looking at him with my mouth like, oh my gosh, somebody's gotten a hold of my number. And he said, do you want me to pay it for you?

While Dory panics, Richie goes over to the computer, attempts to make a payment into Dory's account. Huge surprise incoming.

He attempted to send it 3 times and it did not go through.

Immediately, Dory calls her bank, cancels the card. But until the bank processes her complaint, she has to pay it off. Dory gets a new card, and as the days go by, she pays much closer attention to her payments.

I saw it happening again right away.

She stares at the payments. She can't figure out how it's happening again.

I didn't realize it was him yet. Till I got a hold of the iPad.

Soon after they'd started dating, Richie asked Dory if he could borrow her iPad. She didn't use it much, and he could really use it for his college work.

I said, no problem.

After that, Dory doesn't see her iPad for a while, until one night she's up late watching television, and that's when she spots it.

He had left the iPad, my iPad. I picked it up, I opened it up, and I was shocked to see that the picture was changed. There was a passcode on it. I had seen the passcode he had put in his phone, so I tried the same passcode on my iPad and I got in. And everything was changed. I'm thinking, where are my pictures at? So I went to pictures and I hit it. All his pictures from his iCloud had downloaded.

One of those pictures is Richie lying in a hospital bed.

He's got the blue pillow, the blue blankets pulled up to him. He's smiling, taking a picture. There's hospital equipment behind him. And at the bottom it said, "A big thank you for everyone's prayers and support. Surgery was a success. Should be out of the hospital Monday." And the name on the picture was Derek M. Allred. I'm looking at this and I'm like, that is Richie. I go over to my computer and I Googled Derek Allred.

Google doesn't recognize that name. But it makes a helpful suggestion.

It said, "Did you mean Derrick Aldred?" She sure did. All of a sudden, like, 6 to 9 mugshots popped up. Everything in me stopped. Like, my heart just absolutely stopped. All these things in the past that were not adding up Everything, everything started making sense.

All those eBay purchases, the gift cards, flowers, Airbnb charges— those were all Derek. Her credit card had been sitting next to her computer for weeks. She'd left it there to remind herself to get the names on her cards changed after her divorce.

That's how Richie got the card, and I never noticed it was gone. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

Attached to the mugshots were articles about a prolific con man with a habit of escaping justice, articles featuring other women who claim they've been scammed by Derek.

I was terrified. Is he going to come back here?

Dory knows Derek's anger can escalate fast.

I leashed up my dogs. I moved my bookcase in front of my door. I went upstairs and got my gun and waited.

Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the Enhanced Games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.

Listen to Superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Lil' Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like Black people? I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Lil' Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at It podcast. I'm Sam Jay.

And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it.

Including a recent episode with Marc Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the '80s.

To be clear, '84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, we have plenty. But just so y'all know.

I mean, at this point, Marc, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line.

We also have AIDS on the table right now.

So thank you for finishing that sentence. And yes, I don't think there's a more important year for Black people.

Really?

Yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for Black people in American history.

Listen to Look Back at It on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way, with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kier Gaines. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing and we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we done enough because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you're here on Earth, or are you a good person because you're afraid 'Cause that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that, that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kier Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Learn the Hard Way, and listen now.

Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fans, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away, such as the biology of tauntauns and wampas on the ice planet Hoth, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith Rule of Two. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

By the time the sun rises, Dorie has been sitting wide awake, gun on the table in front of her, for hours. There's been no sign of Derrick.

The next morning, I got ahold of my brother, and I called him and told him what was going on. He said, you know, pack your dogs and get out here. My brother and his wife have a little ranch. I hid out there for 2 days.

Dori feels terrified of what Derek might do to her. While she's in hiding, she has a chance to really process what's happened.

That's where I found out he had also gotten into my checking account. I had my checkbook sitting out on my computer, so I think he probably just snapped a picture of it. Then I had another credit card he had gotten a hold of too, so I uncovered a bunch of charges on there too.

This was on top of the one she'd already noticed and canceled.

In total, it was just under $20,000 that he had gotten.

Dory will get some of that money back by reporting the fraudulent charges to her banks. Two of them will refund her, but one bank refuses, meaning Dory is still out close to $12,000.

It was devastating, absolutely devastating. To realize that 99.9% of the things that he told me were false. They were absolutely all lies. I was embarrassed. I was humiliated. I thought, how could this happen to me? How could I have fallen for somebody that, you know, lied from the get-go? But I don't know. I'm like, why, God? Why am I going through this?

Dori and her brother are sitting together on the deck of his Texan ranch. Dori hasn't spoken to Derek at all since she arrived.

My brother says, give me his phone number. So I said, okay. So we're sitting out there and we ring his phone and Derek answers. And my brother says to him, "So, Richie, Derek, Taylor Peterson, whatever we should call you, how's it feel to know that you've been caught?" It felt great at the time. I'm laughing about it now, but at the time then I thought, oh my gosh, what have we just done? We have just told him that we know who he is. We've just basically told him, I know that you're a fraud.

This unlocks a new fear.

Is he going to come after me?

Dory knows from her reading that Derek has a habit of skipping town when things get sticky. But what if his MO changes.

And you hear all the time, oh, you know, that's one in a million. Oh, that's not gonna happen to you.

That kind of thinking has lost all its power for Dory in the last two days. Suddenly every fear, irrational or not, is in play.

Anything can happen to me is what I think now.

She doesn't know what Derek could be capable of, who might be helping him and how.

You know, he had ID cards for Army, Navy, Marines. I was just so embarrassed that I had fallen hook, line, and sinker for somebody who probably didn't care two pennies about me. Okay, I'm gonna go in here and tell the police that I just got totally used and fell for it.

Despite the feeling of embarrassment, the next day Dory is sitting in her car in the parking lot of the Colony Police Station.

I'd spent the weekend crying.

And now she's gearing herself up for a difficult conversation. Dory has read all the same stories I've told you about.

I felt like I had every other girl, every other person on my shoulder or behind me that he had wronged. I felt I was representing all of them, and I had to do it right. So I knew that I had one chance. This is serious. Please take me seriously. I almost felt like I was on a job interview.

Dory works in HR, and as an HR girlie, she knows better than most A first impression is everything.

I looked professional, so it didn't look like I crawled out of bed after crying for 3 days. I made sure I had my backup, my documentation.

Dory opens up her car door, gets out, and heads into the station.

I explained briefly what I was there for, and they put me in a room. Where I wrote out my statement, what I've got had to be taken seriously and not just, oh gosh, look, another guy got some money from a girl and she's crying about it.

The Colony PD assigns a detective to Dory's case.

I thought I won the lottery. She listened to me with different ears than a man would have, I think.

Detective Kelly Hunt.

She was just what I needed. Very calming. It's okay, Dory, we hear you, we've got this.

When Detective Kelly meets Dory in 2017, she's working for the Colony PD as a fraud and financial crimes investigator, and she's got enough experience to know that this is going to be a hard case to get over the line, but she sets about investigating it anyway. She speaks to a bartender at a local Irish-themed bar, McSwiggans, where Richie appears to be a regular. She visits the local grocery store just a few doors down, speaks to some of the employees there. Both confirmed that Richie Taylor was using a card that didn't have his name on it. One clerk said he intended to question Richie on it, but once he spotted that shiny gold NCIS badge the guy was toting around, He dropped it. Both are able to identify Richie as Derek Aldred in a photo lineup. Detective Kelly is getting close, but there's only so much a local fraud investigator can do for a case like this. She's one of a small handful of detectives servicing a big community, like over 40,000 people. And the pressure is building to move on to one of the other 50 or so cases waiting for her attention and let the banks deal with it privately.

But then Dory arrives at the police station with new evidence— her iPad and a duffel bag. The duffel bag is full of military uniforms. Luckily, Derek had left an entire Hollywood costume department at Dory's house. There's a formal black jacket with gold stars and stripes on the sleeves, two long-sleeve jumpsuits, green and khaki, some black combat boots, a green flight helmet, and a badge. That shiny gold NCIS badge. As Detective Hunt is sifting through these uniforms, she has an idea. Sure, she could nab Derek for credit card theft, But the Texas Penal Code doesn't distinguish between a stranger stealing your credit card and using it and a person who pretended to be your boyfriend for weeks in order to steal it. Those charges would barely touch the sides of the betrayal Dory is feeling, and it's not even clear that charging Derek with that would result in any jail time, let alone make it into a courtroom if they even managed to catch up with him. He could just claim that he had Dory's permission all along. If Detective Kelly wants to help Dory get justice, she needs to take this case up the ladder to someone with a bit more federal power.

And these uniforms are the key.

Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the Enhanced Games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.

Listen to Superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Lil' Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like Black people? I know what you're thinking, what the hell does George Bush got to do with Lil' Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at It podcast. I'm Sam Jett.

And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we Survived it.

Including a recent episode with Marc Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the '80s.

To be clear, '84 was big to me not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but yeah, yeah, but just so y'all know, I mean, at this point, Marc, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack, so I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now, so thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for Black people.

Really?

Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for Black people in American history.

Listen to Look Back at It on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way, with me, your host and your favorite therapist, Kier Gaines. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests I'm talking Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing and we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we done enough because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you're here on Earth, or are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely.

And that's two different levels of trust.

I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kier Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Learn the Hard Way, and listen now.

Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fans, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away. Such as the biology of Tauntauns and Wampas on the ice planet Hoth, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith Rule of Two. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It was kind of like a cold call.

It's a Wednesday, and Special Agent Mike Elker is at his office in Arlington, Texas, when Detective Kelly Hunt gets a hold of him.

She was really pitching me the case on the phone.

Mike works for the NCIS, as in he actually works for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

She reached out about Derek Aldred. Hey, listen, I kind of got this deal where we have a guy and he's a kind of a fraudster.

Detective Kelly explains the investigation she's been doing into Derek Oldred's jaunt around the Colony, the money he appears to have stolen from Dory.

Just on the threshold alone, the monetary threshold, I would say 90 to 95% of agencies on the federal level would probably have dismissed that.

She explains he's been pretending to be in the military, the Navy specifically. And as she predicted, that detail catches Mike's interest. The next day, Mike is at the Colony Police Department.

She invited me into the conference room. She kind of had everything laid out on the table. And so I think my first reaction was, what's that?

Carefully arranged across the conference room table is the evidence.

A flight helmet, counterfeit Geneva Convention ID cards, the uniforms, the certificates, anything of value that he left that said, you know, he was a captain in the Navy or he was a professor or any of these items that Dory had in the house. And she gave that up.

And among them, a badge, a counterfeit NCIS badge that looked pretty darn real. Mike takes out his own badge— gold, looks like a shield, an eagle on the top— and places it down on the table next to Derek's.

It was darn near identical. I think for the average person, you wouldn't know the difference if you saw that badge and my badge at the time. Is he committing crimes with that badge? Is he stopping women with that badge? Is he assaulting people with that badge? It was immediately apparent that likely this was going to be a bigger deal than just some isolated local issue.

Together, Detective Kelly and Special Agent Mike can make this into a case, one that catches all Derek's historical wrongdoing, state-based or otherwise, into one investigation.

We have resources. We can travel. We can conduct interviews and we can charge in different states because we are federal law enforcement officers.

And the crime that could link all those cases, that gets the NCIS's backs really up? Not kidnapping, not fraud, not theft, or the other allegations we know about now. What about stolen valor?

Somebody that's using the military or being in uniform and obtaining something of value.

It may not be the most obvious crime, but it is a federal one.

People are very patriotic in this country. In Texas, that's almost like to another level.

You see, stolen valor is something that the good military lads and ladies of America get really pissed off about.

To pretend to be in the military or a police officer, to me, is fairly despicable. I have no respect for that, and I have no tolerance for that.

Girlfriends, we've found our in. Suddenly, the hunt for Derek Oldred goes coast to coast with Special Agent Mike at the helm. First port of call: Dory.

I first met with Mike, I think it was in the parking lot of Mick Swiggins, actually. He's just a good guy.

This is the first of many meetings Dorie and Mike will have. Dorie in her Camaro, Mike in his Dodge Charger, in the parking lot of that Irish-themed bar.

As I was finding stuff in the apartment, he'd be like, "All right, meet me in the parking lot," and I'd give it to him.

They talk about cars for a bit, and then they get into business. Mike needs evidence that Derek used the uniforms to make financial gains. That's the crime of stolen valor. Not wearing the uniform just to trick people, but using the uniform to get things. And Dorie has just the story. The one from their second date where Richie/Derek flashes his badge at the baseball game. She can give Mike exact dates, and the whole exchange was caught on camera. Special Agent Mike knows he has to tread carefully here. Derek has an MO when he's cornered.

He gets a sense usually that he's in trouble, and then he takes off. And so my fear was that he would figure out that he was in trouble, the police were on to him, he was being investigated, and then he was going to skip out of town. The objective was to really get him into custody as soon as possible. Let's get him off the street. Before he runs, and then we can go from there.

You see, Special Agent Mike has a new plan underway right at this moment. His team have realized if he's still in town, the fastest way to catch Derek would be if someone still close to him just tells them where he is.

While we were looking through all the material from the iPad, we also saw Tracy's information.

Another woman named Tracy who Derek appears to be dating too, at the very same time as Dory. Coming up next on The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe, Tracy turns out to be just the girlfriend for the job. Never fuck with a country girl. Never fuck Good luck with a country girl. If you've found any of the themes explored in this episode difficult and you need support or advice, please reach out to our charity partners, No More, at nomore.org. We'll add some useful links to the episode description. Look after yourself. The Girlfriend's Trust Me Babe is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio. The series is hosted by me, Anna Sinfield. It's produced by Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is Valeria Rocker. Our editor is Joe Wheeler. Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact-checking by Dania Sulaiman. Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. The Girlfriend's Theme was composed by Daniel Kempson and Louisa Gerstein and performed by Daniel Kempson with vocals by Louisa Gerstein. Music supervision from Daniel Kempson and Anna Sinfield. The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemkuhl. Story development by Susie Baker and Olivia Smart.

Novel's director of development is Selina Metta. Max O'Brien is the executive producer for Novel. Katrina Norval and Nikki Etor are the executive producers for iHeartPodcasts, and the marketing lead is Allison Cantor. Special thanks to Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at iHeartPodcasts, Julie Sensulo, Anne Langston, Carolyn Sherlevin, Katie Gillis, Kelly Hunt, Rachel Monroe, Tom Oldag, and Tad Vezner.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy? Not quite. On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the Look Back at It podcast.

1979, that was a big moment for me. '84 was big to me.

I'm Sam Jay.

And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors like Marc Lamont Hill on the '80s.

84 was a wild—

I mean, it was a wild year.

I don't think there's a more important year for Black people.

Listen to Look Back at It on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the Enhanced Games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all. Embedded in the Games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.

Listen to Superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Kia Gaines. This space is about Black men's experiences, having honest conversations, that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit of armor? It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability, that does not mean that you need to. Listen to Learn the Hard Way on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.