# #2569 - Bill Thompson

- **Show:** The Joe Rogan Experience
- **Published:** 21 Oct 2026
- **Source:** https://traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT2078242472.mp3
- **Transcript:** https://podcasts.opennash.com/shows/joe-rogan-experience/2569-bill-thompson-8a28b8/
- **Provider:** OpenNash Podcasts (machine-generated)

## In brief

Bill Thompson, a retired Army warrant officer who now builds hunting software, argues that people become capable and calm by deliberately putting themselves under pressure. Hard experiences like military survival school, bowhunting, jiu-jitsu and fasted hunts teach people who they are. Joe Rogan largely agrees, adding that we are wired for the struggles our ancestors faced and that modern life too rarely provides them.

The conversation moves from cars and archery nerves into Thompson's survival-school hallucinations, his belief in Jungian dreams and his family's addictions. The tension is between systems and instinct: Thompson trusts analysis, heuristics and apps, while both men admit that deep skill and the unconscious often cannot be explained. It ends with a hopeful, contested view of AI, with Thompson optimistic and Rogan expecting upheaval.

## Key insights

1. **Past pressure makes people calmer in big moments** Rogan argues that archers freeze at a bull elk because they have only shot targets. Thompson adds that he deliberately kills a couple of does before chasing a buck, so he has recent practice before the high-stakes shot.
2. **Scripted self-talk keeps a shot under control** Thompson silently repeats a military acronym (steady position, trigger squeeze, aim, breathe) at full draw. Rogan links this to Joel Turner's 'closed-loop' idea: talking yourself through every step keeps the action stoppable and stops panic from taking over.
3. **Thermal air currents decide whether game smells you** Cold morning air flows down a mountain and warm midday air flows up, carrying a hunter's scent with it. Thompson's Spartan Forge app models this using terrain, tree cover, temperature and wind so hunters can plan their approach from home.
4. **Survival-school stress can cause vivid hallucinations** Thompson describes days without food or water while being chased, then a meeting with hikers who may never have existed. A debriefing doctor told him he had heard similar stories many times, which shows how exhaustion and stress distort perception.
5. **Thompson sees AI as cheaper, Rogan as disruptive** Thompson expects cheaper goods, easier business startups and more demand for handmade and live experiences. Rogan predicts many jobs will vanish and the world will be unrecognizable within ten years, though he thinks live sport, music and comedy will survive.

## Questions this episode answers

### What is SERE training and why did Bill Thompson take it?

SERE stands for survive, evade, resist, escape, and Thompson says the basic version teaches pilots and aircrew those skills. He took a tougher version because he was in a high-risk officer pipeline where capture was a possibility.

### How does Spartan Forge use thermals to help hunters?

Thompson says warm air rises and cool air sinks on mountainsides, carrying a hunter's scent to animals. His app maps this from terrain, tree cover, temperature and wind so hunters can plan an approach that keeps their scent away from the animals.

### Why does Thompson say his dreams are useful?

After reading Carl Jung, he began writing down his dreams and treats them as feedback on his situation. He describes one dream, about fighting on a train, as a warning about taking a long legal dispute too far.

### Does Thompson think AI will take everyone's jobs?

No. He expects AI to make goods cheaper and to make starting a business easier. He thinks people will want handmade and live experiences, and he hopes AI will run locally in homes, like a water heater.

### What does Rogan say about the origin of the word 'pool'?

Rogan says 'pool' comes from people pooling money to gamble on pocket billiards, so pool halls were originally gambling halls. This is his claim in the episode, not something he sourced.

## Facts

- **Joe Rogan** [0:00:50]: "there's a lot of people that paid $250,000 for the roadster in 2017"
- **Joe Rogan** [0:27:22]: "a closed-loop thing is something you could stop at any moment, like writing"
- **Bill Thompson** [0:26:27]: "I had this acronym I learned in the military, which was stab, steady position, trigger squeeze, aiming, and breathing."
- **Bill Thompson** [0:30:54]: "My mother was a alcoholic and, um, would go to AA meetings and drag me along, like when I was really young."
- **Joe Rogan** [0:42:13]: "When it gets hot, then all of a sudden the ground heats up, and then the wind starts going up the mountain."
- **Bill Thompson** [0:43:19]: "you can map the thermals for an area, you can put in the temperature, you can put in the wind speed, and this engine beautifully maps exactly how the scent is gonna move around on this mountainside."
- **Bill Thompson** [0:43:45]: "what we had to build into this was an extremely high resolution topographic layer. We had to, um, have this engine, but then we also had to put, like, canopy cover into this."
- **Joe Rogan** [0:45:31]: "2012, that's when I first started hunting. Im- immediately, I was like, Oh my god, this is so much more difficult"
- **Bill Thompson** [0:50:28]: "in the initial one, which is kind of more for pilots and aircraft crew members, they teach you how to survive in the wild, how to evade capture"
- **Bill Thompson** [1:03:01]: "I actually saw a Jordan Peterson video, but it was not about chaos theory, it was about order"
- **Joe Rogan** [1:08:02]: "he also wrote books like The Shining, Pet Sematary, and The Tom Tommyknockers during that era, while regularly consuming alcohol, cocaine, Valium, Xanax, marijuana, and even mouthwash."
- **Joe Rogan** [1:49:17]: "from the time the UFC came about in 1993, I mean, the Brazilians were way ahead."
- **Joe Rogan** [1:49:48]: "Helio Gracie was having mixed martial arts competitions in the 1940s. You know, they were having what they called it Vale Tudo, which is anything goes"
- **Joe Rogan** [1:50:26]: "in that one moment was the Stephan Bonner Forrest Griffin fight in the finals of The Ultimate Fighter on Spike TV."
- **Joe Rogan** [1:46:51]: "Nissan GTR is one of the best examples of that, where it is essentially the same car for twenty plus Years."
- **Bill Thompson** [1:59:09]: "I turned from 100 into, like, 6K, and then I took it out and used it to rebuild my house."
- **Joe Rogan** [2:02:39]: "pool comes from the term of pooling money together to gamble on pocket billiards."
- **Joe Rogan** [2:02:59]: "I think there was some insane number of pool halls just in New York City, I think it was over 1000."
- **Joe Rogan** [2:08:07]: "Edmonton Oilers and Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender. So, he publicly admitted abusing cocaine for about 7 years"
- **Bill Thompson** [2:09:12]: "This was, like, in a little town called Plum Coulee, Manitoba, like, east of Winkler. Small town, 300 people"
- **Joe Rogan** [2:15:02]: "we are able to use the new skill with effort, so that's conscious competence, and then mastery, we're able to use the skill easily without effort."
- **Joe Rogan** [2:16:59]: "as you expand the bonfire of knowledge, it highlights the surface area of ignorance."
- **Bill Thompson** [2:40:10]: "the biggest movie per dollar spent was Obsession, which was made by a YouTube creator, um, who was doing stuff out of his basement a few years earlier"

## Transcript

**[0:00:01] Speaker 7:** Joe Rogan podcast check it out. The Joe Rogan experience Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night all day.

**[0:00:14] Joe Rogan:** Put the microphone in front of your face so we can use this. What are you saying?

**[0:00:17] Speaker 3:** Some people think the stuff about the roadster online was like, you know, it's not real.

**[0:00:21] Joe Rogan:** It's 100 real. My friend was there.

**[0:00:23] Speaker 3:** No, no, s I so I'm even like, t words are tough to. I have to. You have to choose your words very carefully, you know,

**[0:00:29] Joe Rogan:** Well, here's the thing. Will it be available in the general public? right? Probably not, Oh, no, how could you use it? but also How could you make that like, Uh, legal where you have a car that can fly over other cars if there's a traffic stop?

**[0:00:41] Speaker 3:** uh, like, uh, I'm trying to, I guess what some people are saying, it's like, you know, the um, a mo- a test model car, like it. This will not. This is the Concept version where your concept car. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

**[0:00:50] Joe Rogan:** Well, there first of all, it probably won't be released anywhere near when they say it's gonna be released, just based on what he's done in the past. I mean, the roadster, there's a lot of people that paid $250,000 for the roadster in 2017. I know a guy

**[0:01:03] Speaker 3:** ten years ago.

**[0:01:04] Bill Thompson:** who did that.

**[0:01:04] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, I know a guy who did that too. And like, imagine you did that back then and you were expecting that car, you got a completely different design. No, I mean, completely different looking car. Now it has the fucking Lamborghini doors and it flies. What? This guy's nuts. I would. He's, he's so out of his mind. He's got too much money. He just does whatever the fuck he wants. He I'm not with wanted to do a the people saying car that could fly.

**[0:01:29] Speaker 3:** it's fake with wires and stuff. Some people said that there was wires on cranes, and, yeah, I don't I, I'm not buying that no, well, there for sure.

**[0:01:35] Joe Rogan:** is already a car that does that trick, where it can go upside down. There's

**[0:01:39] Speaker 3:** Really?

**[0:01:39] Joe Rogan:** this, um, there's this race car, uh, god, I forget the name of it, but it actually has a fan underneath the bottom of the car that acts as a suction, and this car does insane lap times because it's absolutely glued to the Perfect handling, ground. Yeah, perfect handling, and it's only a 1-seater car. McMur- Mercury That's it. Yeah,

**[0:02:00] Speaker 3:** Sputter?

**[0:02:01] Joe Rogan:** um, put your headphones on. Shit, watch this thing, put it, see if you can find. It's a it's a hyper. Yeah, see, that's it. It goes upside down. This thing is literally crazy. It it blows away all of the lap times on every single racetrack. Because, 1st of all, it's really light, really tiny, has insane power because it's all electric, and it has so much suction at the bottom that it can go upside down. So they were the 1st ones to at least demo this type of tech, and they did it on this car.

**[0:02:34] Joe Rogan:** Like, this car literally has so much suction. Give me some volume so you can hear this. So this is a literal suction cup underneath the engine that's allowing this thing to hold its entire body weight, which has gotta be, like, I, I would imagine, at least close to 2,000 pounds.

**[0:02:52] Bill Thompson:** yeah, whatever. So It's one of those carbon fiber bodies, carbon even if it fiber everything.

**[0:02:55] Joe Rogan:** is with the engines and the batteries, so l- uh, if it was a a a combustion engine car, maybe it could be under 2,000 pounds. Like, there's a few Porsches, like, they make some really old, like, uh, resto mod Porsches from like the 1960s and early 1970s that can get under 2,000 pounds. They like, there's this guy that worked for God, I think he worked for Bugatti or something like that, one of those crazy high-tech car companies.

**[0:03:27] Joe Rogan:** And he built a car that was completely the opposite. He built a car where he stripped everything out of it. He made like a 1969 Porsche, stripped everything out of it, made all of the panels fiberglass, and he got it to, like, 1, 800 pounds. And the the idea is like, that is like the most, um, visceral driving experience. The most connected you are to a car, the lighter they are, the heavier they are, they can get really crazy with performance.

**[0:03:55] Joe Rogan:** Like, my Tesla is probably like 4,000 pounds, but it just it, it's like a time machine.

**[0:04:00] Bill Thompson:** Isn't the Cybertruck like seven or eight or something Well, that's like that?

**[0:04:02] Joe Rogan:** even bigger, right? I have the Model S, but the Cybertruck is all it's all cold stamped steel. I think that's the the type of steel they use, but it's incredibly heavy.

**[0:04:13] Bill Thompson:** I ordered one of those, and then I ended up pulling out. I

**[0:04:15] Joe Rogan:** What happened?

**[0:04:15] Bill Thompson:** kind of regret it. I don't know. I just I wanted one. I loved. I just like the idea of it. It's very seldom that I would look at a car and just smile every time I looked at a car. And every time I looked at that Cybertruck, I just smiled. So I was like, I kind of want one of those. And then I put the money down and my wife was like, What are you doing? And I was like, I want one.

**[0:04:33] Bill Thompson:** Like, I've always been a Ford guy, so I've got, like, a Ford Tremor, which I love that truck. And, uh, so I put the money down. And then I started hearing, like, other guys got them, and they're like, Oh, there's some issues and bugs being worked out. So I was a coward and I pulled out. I shouldn't have done it, but I did.

**[0:04:46] Joe Rogan:** Well, you can get one now. Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm, I mean, they're I'm, making, I'm sure they make them better now, I'm sure they're they've figured yeah, it's out whatever the like kinks were. any other thing. W- Yeah,

**[0:04:55] Bill Thompson:** The 1st generation, it's gonna have kinks that have to be worked out.

**[0:04:57] Joe Rogan:** yeah, but there's some issues where people, like, pulling the panels off, and some of the panels were, like, literally glued on, but they fixed all that stuff now. So this is the thing in the air. Honestly, though, I, uh, completely honestly, I like the look of the original model better.

**[0:05:12] Bill Thompson:** I do too. That's that's

**[0:05:13] Joe Rogan:** I think it looked cooler. The original Roadster, it looked more like a a modern supercar, and that looks more like a Lamborghini,

**[0:05:22] Bill Thompson:** looks like a Lamborghini had a baby with a Cybertruck. right? And Yeah,

**[0:05:25] Joe Rogan:** not even like a new Lamborghini, like a Lamborghini from the 90s, which are cool. like a kouuntash. Yeah, Yeah, it's just like it, like, that one is

**[0:05:34] Bill Thompson:** s, that's slick.

**[0:05:36] Joe Rogan:** sick, that's that thing's sick, that looks amazing, that's the I mean, maybe they could redo that. I don't know. I It's a crazy don't know. world. It's these things are weird. It's weird that you can get a car that goes 0 to 60, th- that is gonna be real, it's gonna go 0 to 60 in under a second. That's fucking

**[0:05:55] Bill Thompson:** Well, at that test, it insane. was point 8, point 9 seconds or Yeah, that's something like that. crazy. That's that's like you're gonna liquefy your insides, you going any faster.

**[0:06:02] Joe Rogan:** Well, it's half the speed of sound, right? I mean, it's, uh, it's, uh, full top speed, rather, it's top speed is, uh, half the speed of sound, which is just insane. I think it's like top speed is over 300 miles an hour. What is half the speed of sound? Is it like 380 or something? 360? maybe? Yeah, That's insane, that's fucking insane.

**[0:06:22] Bill Thompson:** I mean, I like going Car. fast, but I don't know if I wanna go that fast.

**[0:06:27] Joe Rogan:** I, uh, I like, uh, I like going fast, but what I really like is the feeling of a car. That's what, unless you're a race car driver, all the how fast you go is all horseshit. They're all fast, every car is fast. You can get a, you wanna like, the bargain, th- this is like the absolute best cool car bargain. Get a Ford Mustang GT.

**[0:06:51] Bill Thompson:** My my favorite car of all time, and I've been saying this for years, and I've never bought one. But my sister and her husband used to race, um, Mustangs, and he had a seventy-one Ford Mach One with the big,

**[0:07:01] Joe Rogan:** Great car.

**[0:07:02] Bill Thompson:** big back end. And, uh, he eventually turned it into, like, what they call a super car. So it became alcohol fueled, and the only thing that was original was, like, the back end, but everything else got replaced over time. It was a funny car, essentially. But I've been in love with that car since I was, like, 8 years old. Like, I just look at that and I think to myself, that is like, that is muscle car par excellence, like, it's the perfect.

**[0:07:22] Joe Rogan:** yeah, and those cars aren't the b- best to drive. They don't handle hell no, that good, but it's the feeling that you get when you're driving them. They it's like you're driving a ride. Like when my kids were little, they used to love this one ride at Disneyland. God, what is it called? It's it's based on the movie Cars. It's like you get in a car and you're kinda steering and you're going on, it's like you're on tracks and you're going like the Lightning around.

**[0:07:46] Joe Rogan:** McQueen car type Yeah, of thing, I forget. There's 2 car rides. There's 1 car ride where you're not steering, you're just in a car. It's like a roller coaster, and there's a car next to you and you're supposedly racing. This one's different. This one, you you get in these little cars, you actually do kinda steer em, and they're they're fun, and it's not fast. It's like, but it's like loud and you feel the steering and the engine, like, that's what I like.

**[0:08:10] Joe Rogan:** I like cars that engage you, like, they, there's a visceral connection. There's like, there's some sort of a mechanical connection. You feel it. That's what I like.

**[0:08:19] Bill Thompson:** yeah. I did driving courses while I was in the military. Um, we had, like, uh, what you would call, I guess it was called at the time, like a high-risk officer pipeline. So the, uh, I guess, like, the expectation would be at some point, you might be caught or captured. So there's all these different courses that they send you through Mm, that makes in order to, sense. you know, it's like Sear school on steroids. But one of the courses was, um, for like, a week and a half, all you do is learn how to drive perf- like they have, um, rally car, dri- uh, dr- instructors come and teach you how to drive and like how to do trail turns

**[0:08:54] Bill Thompson:** and how to, uh, you know, navigate course. And then you do on-road, off-road, and like, they put you in all kinds of crazy scenarios. Like, at one point, they drive you up to a checkpoint and you've got a bag over your head, and they put you at the checkpoint and they say, Alright, we're gonna take this bag off. When we take the bag off of your head, uh, re react to the situation like it's a operational scenario, and you can employ whatever you need to do.

**[0:09:17] Bill Thompson:** Like, they basically just wanna see how you do under pressure, but it's part of a car course, so you're at this checkpoint. And, you know, for me, it was, you know, the guards started freaking out and then they're shooting blanks and stuff, and basically, they just wanna see. Cause they teach you exactly how to do it. Like, you plant your left foot, or you, yeah, you plant your left foot, you stand up, you get behind yourself and then steering backwards.

**[0:09:39] Bill Thompson:** And like, how can you navigate a serpentine, uh, in reverse in a car while under fire and get out of a situation? It was a lot of fun, the courses were a ton of fun, and you learn, like, from the best drivers in the world. And, uh, like everything in life, you think you have a conception of how these things will be before you get into them. It's like golf, like, I really, I got got into golf years ago, cause I was I was told I would suck at it, and cause I was a rugby player at the time.

**[0:10:07] Bill Thompson:** And it was my, you know, father-in-law said, You're not g- a golfer. You're you're a large, blunt instrument. Like, go keep playing rugby. And so I was like, Fuck this guy, I'm gonna fucking be as as good as golf as I can. So, um, you know, at first, I was trying to lift the ball, or I was trying to overcorrect and and and prevent a slice by really strengthening my grip. And it was actually, no, you gotta hit from the inside to the out, you gotta transfer your weight here.

**[0:10:35] Bill Thompson:** Um, you actually, if you want the ball to go high, you need to hit down on it. And it was the same thing with cars. If you want to drive fast, keep your tires in contact with the road as much as possible, use the brake to front-load the weight. Cause we were driving, um, Interceptor and Polas in the course, so it's like most of the weight's in the front, so you wanna apply brakes through the corners.

**[0:10:55] Bill Thompson:** People think fast and furious is like the fastest way to drive a car, you know? D I should say the public consciousness. Obviously, anyone who's ever been around a race car driver or watches race cars knows you need the wheels in contact with the road as much as possible. You you try to draw a straight line through the course and navigate that straight line. So if you're cutting corners and stuff like that to keep the cars as straight aligned as possible, steer as little as possible, don't oversteer, like you always see in the movies, like people are oversteering, like the car.

**[0:11:23] Bill Thompson:** It's like, no, like the guy in the course was like, never oversteer. If you have to put one hand over the other, you're failing. Feed one hand, feed the wheel from one hand to the other, and and take a trail turn. And if you oversteer, you're gonna lose contact with the ground and you're gonna be slower. So it was all these opposites, Uh, I guess the point opposites is,

**[0:11:42] Joe Rogan:** of perception, you mean?

**[0:11:44] Bill Thompson:** yeah, yeah, you have a perception going in that. This is like a fast like, when I get really good at this course, I'm gonna be, you know, uh, what do they call it? Like in Fast and the Furious, when they're, you know, taking a really tight corner and their back end swings out and it the car s is squealing. I don't yeah, sliding, remember the terms drifting, drifting, drifting. Like, you'd think, like, you know, twenty-five, thirty-year-old me at the time was like, this is what I'm gonna be doing by the end of the course.

**[0:12:07] Bill Thompson:** Like, no, apply the brake and take the tar turn, correctly. trail turn it correctly, keep the wheels on the ground.

**[0:12:13] Joe Rogan:** yeah, that's the key is knowing the limitations of the car and being able to avoid doing that. yeah, but it's been If you want to get my ca- around quicker,

**[0:12:19] Bill Thompson:** it's been the case for me in life anytime I learn something at a very high level, um, like, even with archery, like, the slower you can pull the trigger on the release. And And you my instinct would be like, snap, slap it, and some people slap it and do fine, but for me, it's the same with long-distance shooting, like, when I take a long-distance shooting course, pull that trigger. So you almost can't even anticipate where the where the, um, uh, the where it's gonna fire, at what point it's gonna fire.

**[0:12:47] Bill Thompson:** Like, manipulate the play and pull the trigger slow as possible, and that will be the most accurate shot you're gonna take. If the shot surprises you 9 times out of 10, it's gonna be more accurate than a shot that you've anticipated.

**[0:12:58] Joe Rogan:** right, because you're anticipating recoil. There's there's a caveat to that. Um, the the caveat to that is there's some very high-level archers that win a lot of big tournaments that do what they call command trigger. for sure, And I think what's going on there is those guys learned how to shoot a surprise shot 1st, and th- those guys, almost all those guys, those target guys, they use a hinge and, or they at least sometimes they use a hinge.

**[0:13:26] Joe Rogan:** A lot of them use thumb buttons now, but and they use a thumb button like a hinge. They just load it up with back pressure until it goes off in a surprise shot. But there's there's guys like James Lutz, and there's a a few of these. Kyle Douglas, Tim Gillingham, these guys win giant tournaments, and they command shoot. So they shoot. What they do is they put the pin over the and they know how to stay stable, and they've done it for so long.

**[0:13:51] Joe Rogan:** And they have tremendous back pressure on the trigger or on the, uh, the bow. They're pulling and then they hit the trigger when they want it to go. They can keep their shit together, and I think it's it's a mental thing. The real problem with people in target panic is 2 things. 1, if you're in a tournament, like, and you're shooting, if you're getting tar like those guys are shooting if people have never seen a a Vegas round, so what a Vegas round is, you have 3 targets and you're shooting at 20 meters, and you're shooting you.

**[0:14:21] Joe Rogan:** You're trying to hit a dime at 20 meters 30 times, and so that's how you get a 300 score. This guy, Lutz, just shot 7-19, so he, uh, out of 7-20, 7-20 is possible, so out of 72 arrows, this motherfucker only got a 9 once, and he's jeez, command shooting. This is the thing, it's like, so it's not, it's not a steadfast rule, but

**[0:14:49] Bill Thompson:** yeah, that's for sure.

**[0:14:49] Joe Rogan:** to overcome the pressure of that anticipation and flinching, that's when people turn to a surprise shot. I think the pressure's the problem, it's not the technique of releasing, cause if you show someone how to shoot a bow and they put the target, uh, they put the pin over the target, they hit the trigger. For a while, they're good at it, right? So what happens? What, what, what makes them not be good anymore? Well, it's clearly their mind, it's clearly the pressure.

**[0:15:21] Joe Rogan:** And so I think maybe you can be just as accurate, if not more accurate, using a command shot. But you need to understand how your mind is working, and you need to s understand how to mitigate pressure and and how to stay calm. And I think there's only a few ways to do that. There's there's strategies that you can use, you can learn techniques, but the reality is when a mo- a big moment hits you, you're gonna freak out.

**[0:15:46] Joe Rogan:** So I think the strategy might be just have a bunch of big moments, have more big moments in your life, more instances in your life where you have to deal with pressure. And that kinda tracks with everything else in life. The people that have dealt with pressure, that understand pressure and and and know how to perform, they can kind of do anything. You can kind of go from that and be involved in all sorts of other things that involve pressure.

**[0:16:11] Joe Rogan:** But if you don't know pressure at all, and then all of a sudden there's a screaming bull elk in front of you at 40 yards, and all you've been shooting at is a target, you're gonna panic. Especially if you're not a pressure person. Now, if you are a pressure person, you're probably still gonna freak out the first couple of times, but eventually, you'll figure it out.

**[0:16:31] Bill Thompson:** yeah. Your road to figuring out will be a lot quicker if you've dealt with pressure in the past.

**[0:16:35] Speaker 3:** that's what I think.

**[0:16:36] Bill Thompson:** I I on our with Spartan Forge, um, we have a guy on the on our, uh, ambassadors, I guess you'd call them. I don't like any of the terms. He's a guy that we trust to consult for us on features in the app, and then he'll talk about the app. It's his name is Levi Morgan, Oh, he's and he's a fantastic

**[0:16:50] Joe Rogan:** the best.

**[0:16:51] Bill Thompson:** archer. Um, and just spending time around those guys, they they definitely have a way of cause. We had an archery competition a couple of years ago, everyone in the company, and he was part of it. And what's funny is this now, if we were to do this 9 times out of 10, this guy wouldn't win. But one of my engineers is this killer named Evan, uh, freed, and he and Levi were in the final. Like 20 guys started this archery competition, it was the 2 of them at the very end, and Evan beat him.

**[0:17:17] Bill Thompson:** Oh my god, I couldn't believe it.

**[0:17:19] Joe Rogan:** weaponized autism.

**[0:17:20] Bill Thompson:** I he's one of them, he's one of them. He, I mean, he absolutely was a stone-cold killer. And then we did it with these other guys at a tack event, like a total archery challenge. We went, uh, with How much this,

**[0:17:31] Joe Rogan:** did he beat Levi Morgan by?

**[0:17:33] Bill Thompson:** I mean, he won. I don't remember exactly what the delta was, but he won That's crazy, and nobody could believe it. Like, everyone looked at him, like John freaking Wick for the last, for the rest of the week, and like, who is this guy that just went and shot at the king and didn't miss? Um, and Levi's the best in the world. And like I said, if they had have done that 9 times more, right, Levi woulda won the next 9.

**[0:17:53] Bill Thompson:** But Maybe for one moment, maybe for one moment, he was Prometheus, I don't know about and he wasn't.

**[0:17:59] Joe Rogan:** that. See, there's the we're going back to the mind again. If he can do it once, why can't he keep doing it?

**[0:18:03] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, maybe, I mean, there you go, Evan, maybe you should quit as an engineer for me and go and be a professional archer or Well, there's a something like that.

**[0:18:09] Joe Rogan:** lot of these rules that people have for things, and I'm like, well, who invents these rules? Other people? And a lot of times, people invent rules to sort of to kind of rationalize or deal with their own struggles, right? So they invent rules of, like, what you can and can't do, what you can and can't get away with, what works and what doesn't work. You only know what works if you try it and it works. Think DraftKings isn't available in your state?

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**[0:19:49] Bill Thompson:** a heur- it's a that's the a heuristic, which is something I talk about all the time, is people come up with a good enough way to do something that works for them and it might not work for everyone. Well, another ad ad, uh, example of this would be, um, Cam Haynes. He doesn't, he really slap the hm whenever he fires.

**[0:20:05] Joe Rogan:** well, he, he kinda pulls it slowly back, but he do. It's, uh, definitely a command shot. But then again, look at, first of all, his ability to deal with pressure, right? He runs 300-mile races, does all this crazy shit. On top of that, he's been a hunter for 30 years, plus, probably more, probably 40 now, right? So he's been hunting his most of his life, and he's had so much experience pulling the trigger on animals.

**[0:20:30] Bill Thompson:** yeah, yeah, and that reps, it's all about reps.

**[0:20:33] Joe Rogan:** It's all about reps with everything in life, and it's all about it's not just reps, it's recent reps. You know, it's like having the amount of repetitions, like recently, to the point where it's a normal, natural part of your psychology, the the way your mind works.

**[0:20:48] Bill Thompson:** I'll do that. With whitetail, hunting is I always make sure I try to kill 2 or 3 doe before I really start zeroing in on going for a buck. Because if a buck's the first thing I'm looking at, and it's been 9 months since I've hunted, or 6 months or whatever since I've hunted, I'll still get it. I've been hunting for 25 years, and I'll still freak out

**[0:21:03] Joe Rogan:** buck fever.

**[0:21:04] Bill Thompson:** or or get the adrenaline drop afterwards. I don't usually get the I've never really gotten the adrenaline drop when it's happening. But as soon as that arrow is loosed, then I'm, like, like, I'm just, like, freaking out, like, I don't even know what happened.

**[0:21:15] Joe Rogan:** well, at least you can keep it together before the arrow's loose, cause that's where most people fall apart. I mean, I've seen professional, you know, I don't wanna call them professional hunters, but people that make their living as hunting influencers. And they have these videos and you can watch them on YouTube and they're shaking like a leaf when they're drawing back their bow. And they're like, Wow, this guy's been hunting for 40 years and he still gets jazzed up.

**[0:21:35] Bill Thompson:** yeah, there's something about that. Um, I think it's why we all wanna keep hunting, right? It's Cause it's probably wired hard to do why it, well, it's hard to do, for sure, but it's wired into our, you know, whatever. However we evolved, however we established over time, one thing is true, is that we were able to stick around and have success because we had these groups of hunters that would go out and hunt for the tribe.

**[0:21:56] Bill Thompson:** So there's wiring in us that that that hunting might be the only way, or one of the few ways, to tap into that in in a way that your body immediately understands.

**[0:22:07] Joe Rogan:** fishing is, too. Yeah, fishing, I always

**[0:22:08] Bill Thompson:** for sure.

**[0:22:08] Joe Rogan:** bring well, I I. I have these comparisons that I do. It's one of the reasons why I say I never go to protests, cause protests are like fishing. This is why, like, fishing is a a part of your DNA. Like, you get a little kid. When my daughter was 5, is like the first time I took her fishing, when she caught a fish, she was like, so excited, like, Oh, oh, oh, it's in you, it's in you.

**[0:22:28] Joe Rogan:** You know that catching this thing means your your, your body's rewarding you with all these good feelings and good endorphins because now you're gonna eat. You're gonna be able to feed your family, keep you're gonna be able

**[0:22:37] Bill Thompson:** doing it.

**[0:22:38] Joe Rogan:** to survive. When you're protesting and everyone's walking down the street chanting and cheering, that's too much like war. That excites the part of the brain that thinks we're supposed to smash Starbucks to crush the patriarchy or whatever the fuck you wanna do, they're bad, we're light things on good. fire. When you see people behaving with, you know, a air quotes, mob mentality, what is that? I'll tell you what that is. That's war, that's y- y- your body's ability to recognize that it's you with a bunch of other people that are supposedly on your side.

**[0:23:11] Joe Rogan:** You're in a life or death situation and you're against another team, and you're marching and chanting and screaming, and everybody's hyped up, and next thing you know, s violence breaks off and everybody gives into that feeling, giving into the kind of behavior that would be almost impossible to imagine if you were by yourself. Smashing someone's car window while you're by yourself, walking up to Starbucks with a a fucking traffic cone and breaking the window and diving in and throwing things off the shelves.

**[0:23:39] Joe Rogan:** You would never do that while you're by yourself. Why are you doing it with this giant group of people? It's it's the war thing. It's just like the fishing thing, you know, like, the, ugh, it's in you, you it's that know? It's like, let's circuitry. go. You start Black Lives Matter, whatever it is, whatever it is, you know, No Kings, whatever it is, you start marching down the street, Free Palestine. You. These fucking buildings are keeping us from freeing Palestine.

**[0:24:01] Joe Rogan:** You wanna light them on fire, and that's what people do. It's it's a normal part of us that allowed us to survive to 2026 with tribal warfare.

**[0:24:12] Bill Thompson:** yep, that we needed that circuitry.

**[0:24:14] Joe Rogan:** And that feeling that you get from, uh, catching a fish, multiply that times a thousand for archery elk hunting. It's it's off the charts, the highs and the lows.

**[0:24:26] Bill Thompson:** there was a, um, a deer I was chasing. I I'm more of a whitetail hunter. I've only been elk hunting twice. Um, I I wanna do it more. I just haven't had the time. And I lived on the eastern seaboard most of my career, I was in the military, so the option of going west and elk hunting wasn't in the cards for me. So I mostly whitetail hunted. But a couple of years ago, I was hunting a, um, uh, a public land buck in the Allegheny that was, uh, 12 years old.

**[0:24:48] Joe Rogan:** Where's the Allegheny?

**[0:24:50] Bill Thompson:** Well, it was actually wasn't actually the Allegheny, it was east of there, but it's, uh, north, it was north central Pennsylvania would've been the better way to say it, but I just say Allegheny cause that's near there. It's farther, it's farther east of there, it's actually a couple hours east of there. But, um, anyway, uh, I was hunting up there, and, uh, there's buck everyone had knew about, and he was old and huge, and at one point, he was like 170 inches, and that's pretty big for a public land, whitetail buck.

**[0:25:15] Bill Thompson:** Huge. And everyone knew about it. And I was going up into this area to hunt where there he had been historically during the rut. Thermals were wrong in the area, thermal draw was pulling and or it was rising still, and it should've been pulling at this point. So I was like, this is a bad spot, like, where where he's at, he's gonna smell me coming in, so I'm just gonna walk to a different part. So I walked to the front of the mountain and just went up there where I knew the thermals would be better.

**[0:25:39] Bill Thompson:** And he was on a doe, and I was still on the ground. I hadn't even got climbed a tree yet, I was still on the ground, and he was pushing a doe into like a ditch. And then he popped out. And when I saw him, I was like, Holy crap, that's him, like, that's the monarch, everyone called him the monarch, and I was like, ugh, like, I'm still like, blah, freaking out. Anyway, I pulled back and put it right in, like double lunged him at like 35 yards.

**[0:26:01] Bill Thompson:** And, uh, I had like an adrenaline drop for like 25 minutes afterwards. I couldn't even call my buddy to come and help me drag him, cause I was so I was freaking out so bad. And, uh, it was. It was a consequence of, like, 3 years of knowing this buck existed or that he was in the area. And then you put all this time in, like, way more time than you should to chase this animal. And you you have this goal, and then all of a sudden it's in front of you and you're like, I can't believe this is happening, this is happening.

**[0:26:27] Bill Thompson:** And then I always say the same thing I used to say in the military when I was shooting, which was to kind of get into my zoning out mode. We I had this acronym I learned in the military, which was stab, steady position, trigger squeeze, aiming, and breathing. So every time I'm at full draw, I say to myself, very silently, I'm just like, steady position, slow trigger, squeeze, aim, breathe. And then I always breathe at the period of my breath.

**[0:26:52] Bill Thompson:** So I'll take a big breath in, I'll breathe all the way out, so there's no air in my body, and then slow pull. And I when I say that, when I remember to say that to myself, then it's kind of like any panic or anything kind of falls away, and I'm just focused on the task of steady position, trigger, squeeze, aiming, breathing. But it happened for, like, 25 minutes afterwards, dude. I've

**[0:27:10] Joe Rogan:** have you studied any of Joel Turner's stuff? uh-uh. The I Do you know I know who he is?

**[0:27:14] Bill Thompson:** who he is. Um, we've talked on Instagram a couple of times. I've I I mean, I've watched some videos, but to say I've studied him or I know the whole story, I would that'd be inaccurate.

**[0:27:22] Joe Rogan:** Well, his strategy is essentially what you just outlined, just with different words, but the same, the same thing. He he says, you should talk to yourself through the entire shot so that you make this a closed-loop thing instead of an open-loop thing. And so what that means is an open-loop thing is like swinging a baseball bat. Once you start to swing it, you're swinging it right, it's going. And a closed-loop thing is something you could stop at any moment, like writing.

**[0:27:47] Joe Rogan:** When you're writing something down, you could just stop that pen at any moment. It's not like it gets away from you. So the thing about an archery shot is it can kinda get away from you, and that's when you flinch, and that's when you're 6 inches off the mark at 20 yards, and you don't understand what happened. And that's that's what he, uh, teaches people to avoid. And he was a a SWAT team member, and he he would teach people proper techniques in order to, I mean, he learned psychology, and he learned, like, what's going on in the mind in order to be able to execute in those situations that are extremely high stress, hostage situations, like you gotta shoot

**[0:28:23] Joe Rogan:** somebody that was holding someone hostage. So, he's, he's been in those things, and he realizes that that's a life or death situation. That can be mitigated by a a certain amount of understanding of what's happening in the mind and what causes open loop or closed loop thinking. And so what you're doing is instigating closed loop thinking by talking to yourself the entire time. So by, uh, having every moment controlled and every moment calm, and you have a system, and you're actually saying that system through your head.

**[0:28:54] Joe Rogan:** That's what keeps you in the present, in the moment, instead of just panicking like a lot of people do. We've all seen it, people just freak out. And some people don't understand what is happening in their mind, so they just repeat these things over and over again. And they have good days and bad days, and they don't understand where the bad days are coming from and what is it? Well, what it is is your mind got away from you, and sometimes the mind can just run amok.

**[0:29:18] Joe Rogan:** It can just take, like, that's why people have anxiety attacks. I mean, I maybe some of the reasons why people I don't wanna say, but I don't know why people have anxiety attacks. But some people have anxiety attacks because they start thinking about some something and dreading it. And then it builds up in their mind. And then all of a sudden, it's just a runaway train inside their brain. And they haven't developed personal methods for stopping that and mitigating that kind of stress and and recognizing what's happening while it's happening.

**[0:29:48] Joe Rogan:** And then talking yourself down off the ledge and just peace of mind, getting getting yourself to a p- a peaceful place. Some people don't have those strategies, so the moment something goes sideways, especially if they're not used to pressure, the moment something goes sideways, it just runs away from them.

**[0:30:05] Bill Thompson:** yeah, oh, so, lots of people say lots of things about me. I I remember Andy on here talking smack about me being Captain America of autism. Uh, that's the first thing that Andy's comes to mind. Andy's the tough, best. He's, I mean, I talk to Andy almost every day. He's become one of my closest, like I shouldn't say, closest friends, I should say someone I regularly talk to. And he's good for me because he's kind of the opposite of me in ways.

**[0:30:28] Bill Thompson:** Like he, eh, like, like, my wife and I are good for Choo each other in the way that she worries about everything. She's worried right now, she's sitting outside, worried out of her mind right now about something, probably something she hasn't even talked to me about. I almost worry about nothing until it becomes something that's important to me. Like, if someone asks me to do some work or something that's particularly important, um, uh, th- then I care about, like, Okay, this work will represent me.

**[0:30:54] Bill Thompson:** I gotta do it as diligently as I can. Um, my my representation reflects on my family, so then things I start caring about things. But if I do have a superpower, I would say it was imposed on me in a weird way by my mother. My mother was a alcoholic and, um, would go to AA meetings and drag me along, like when I was really young. And, uh, she, they would say the Serenity prayer at the beginning of every, um, a alcoholic's anonymous meeting, which was God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

**[0:31:27] Bill Thompson:** So I'd be standing here and watching these people tell these insane stories, like, I went on a seven-day bender, I'm from Missouri, I woke up in Las Vegas, and I'd just be like, What am I doing here? I'm, like, nine years old, like, what is what is happening? But that did stick with me, and, um, I would say that's one of my superpowers is if I can't affect something, I don't worry about it. Like, if there's nothing I can do about it, like, I just had a conversation with my daughter about this last night.

**[0:31:52] Bill Thompson:** She was worried about teenager things. I was like, Look, you know, I've told you the Serenity prayer, your alma, my my mother used to tell you, tell me, like, try to just live by that. And that kinda goes to the things we're talking about with shooting is let's just focus on the things we control, and let's develop a heuristic, or a way to get through this closed loop system that you're talking about. And for me, it was a heuristic, cause it was just something the military taught me that worked particularly well.

**[0:32:16] Bill Thompson:** I didn't know all of the psychology or stuff that you were talking about it there. But, um, I would say if I had one superpower, it's my ability to just not care when I can't affect the outcome.

**[0:32:25] Joe Rogan:** that's very wise.

**[0:32:26] Bill Thompson:** I wouldn't, s, uh, yeah, and I would s wouldn't say it's my wisdom. I adopted it from someone else, but it's served me particularly well in life. Cause whether it was in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the Philippines, or Africa, or anywhere else, I was in, like, a shady situation. It's like, Okay, this is going horribly. What can I focus on? I can get on the radio, I can do this, I can do that, like, let's do those things and let's get out of here.

**[0:32:49] Bill Thompson:** Um, and so it's it's served me really well. Um, so

**[0:32:54] Joe Rogan:** Well, I think that's the proper strategy for navigating life correctly. I I I think the opposite, like, just freaking out about everything every time it happens, uh, that just doesn't, it doesn't serve you. I think what we're talking about earlier is a an issue, too. Like, think about all the things you just said, all the different places you were where things went sideways. Like, eh, most people don't have those experiences, and that's one of the reasons why most people are not resilient.

**[0:33:21] Joe Rogan:** And I think you need a certain amount of very high pressure situations in your life in order to kind of to to galvanize your character. You know, there's

**[0:33:32] Bill Thompson:** find out who you are when the chips yeah, you are down.

**[0:33:33] Joe Rogan:** don't know who you are. Like, we've all seen these guys, they're getting in fistfights online, um, and they these videos online, and they don't know how to fight, and yet they talk themselves into this fight. They cause it's almost like they want to believe and they want to convince this other person they know how to fight. And then they think they're gonna be able to do it and everyone's watching. I'm just gonna hit this guy and it doesn't work out and they wind up a highlight reel and everyone makes fun of them, and then their life is literally ruined now.

**[0:34:03] Joe Rogan:** When I was a kid, if you got your ass kicked, no one knew but you and the guys who kicked your ass.

**[0:34:07] Bill Thompson:** yeah. And it happened all the time for me. It was like every 2 or 3 weeks, somebody would be getting a fight. The fighting was so common for me growing up in, like, in a farm town in the middle of North Dakota. oh, I'm sure It was the highlight of our month. nothing else to Like, if the school do, bully and someone else threw down or whatever and that guy won, or, like, it was just like, This is awesome.

**[0:34:23] Joe Rogan:** But everybody got over it after a while and you forgot about the fight, cause there'd been 10 other fights since then, and life moved on. Now, if you get your ass fucked up in a if you you go to talk some shit to some dude in a convenience store in front of his girlfriend, and he KOs, you,

**[0:34:38] Bill Thompson:** with a can of something yeah, and someone's like I,

**[0:34:39] Joe Rogan:** got the thing in your face, like, Oh, shit, you got knocked lives on the fuck out.

**[0:34:44] Bill Thompson:** the internet remembers.

**[0:34:45] Joe Rogan:** They remember forever, and all your friends remember all all the people that hate you remember.

**[0:34:50] Bill Thompson:** You become a meme.

**[0:34:51] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, it's a way more difficult time to fuck up than ever in the past. But

**[0:34:56] Bill Thompson:** It it's one of those things, too, where I I said this while I just did Andy's podcast, like, 3 weeks ago. Um, but it, it's like, essentially, we can. Ch- if you don't force, you said talked about resilience, but if you don't force, um, the the harshness of nature upon you. Like, if you don't adopt it and try to put yourself in situations where things will get hard so you can find out who you are. And you can do this in a multitude of ways, right?

**[0:35:21] Bill Thompson:** You can do it with jujitsu, you can go to a jujitsu gym and get your ass handed to you time after time and just understand, like, Okay, I'm not the badass I thought I was. And there's a whole wealth of things that I can learn for the next 50 years. And so you're adopting something or, like, hunting, my I have friends that I do, we do fasted hunts together. We were gonna do this one this year, but Spartan Forge fasted.

**[0:35:40] Bill Thompson:** kept me from fasted. So, w- what we do is we take a cooler, we pack it with drinks and food and a accoutrement, like salads and stuff like that. And then we get a, uh, a Yeti, and we lock it. And then one of the wives has the code for the Yeti, and she doesn't give us the code for the Yeti until we kill something. So we have to send her a picture of a doe or send a picture of a buck or something like that.

**[0:36:04] Bill Thompson:** And so we'll just have saltwater, and we'll fast for 2 or 3 days, and then, you know, somebody kills a doe. Finally, like, there's in the past, when we do, there'd be 5 or 6 of us, so someone's gonna kill in the first few couple of days. The shortest time was ever like 36 hours, the longest time, I think we went 4 days, and you're just hunting fasted. And, uh, that's the best feeling in the world when someone texts and says, like, Doe down.

**[0:36:27] Bill Thompson:** It's like when when you're 3 days into, like, and I'm a heavy guy, so I can go a long time without food. Like, I usually do a quarterly fast where I'll go. The shortest is usually 2 or 3 days, and the longest I'll do is 7 days.

**[0:36:40] Joe Rogan:** But isn't that different when you're out hunting, like you're burning off a It wears lot of calories?

**[0:36:44] Bill Thompson:** you down a lot quicker. Yeah, so, like, by day 3, you're hurting, and so we, we, we have always killed within was, except for 1 time, we've always killed within 3 days. But the sense of community and we talked about the wiring that it taps into. Like, when you're sitting around a fire with, like, 5, 6 people and nobody's eaten, and now you're texting the photo and you're opening the cooler. And, like, you wanna, you wanna cry almost.

**[0:37:08] Bill Thompson:** And you're like, Oh, man, you're the best. I just, I can't believe you did this. This is the best day ever. Oh my god, like you're just you're feeling like you're on top of the world. And, uh, it's you just killed a doe.

**[0:37:19] Joe Rogan:** I know, but that's what we're wired for, and we're missing that. I mean, this is one of the reasons why people are so attracted to, like, these videos of people who survive, or p vi videos of subsistence cultures in Naked the Amazon.

**[0:37:33] Bill Thompson:** and afraid.

**[0:37:33] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, all that stuff. There's a reason why we're attach attached to those things. I think it's because that those human reward systems are the strongest purveyors of happiness that we have currently available to us.

**[0:37:46] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, cause we're not really wired to get happy from an Instagram video. It happens like You we get happy may laugh a scrolling.

**[0:37:52] Joe Rogan:** little, but it's diff. It's not the same happiness, it's a very temporary. Ha- It's not a body happiness. Like, y- you shoot an elk at 60 yards and double-lung it and watch it tip over. That kind of happiness is, there's nothing like that. There's nothing like that. That's a different thing, that's a survival thing, it's built into your DNA.

**[0:38:10] Bill Thompson:** But the point I was making was if you don't choose something like, choose to eat well, choose to train, choose to hunt, or choose to do jujitsu, or choose just to get a degree in something really difficult. If you don't adopt those things, then, like, nature, reality will judge you, and you're gonna get fat and old or have no meaning.

**[0:38:28] Joe Rogan:** You're also gonna get anxiety

**[0:38:30] Bill Thompson:** And anxiety. over almost anything, almost Yeah,

**[0:38:31] Joe Rogan:** anything and everything. The people that I know that freak out the most about things don't do anything difficult, and they're the ones that are freaked out all the time about things that I'm like, Oh, just walk it off, you're gonna be fine.

**[0:38:43] Bill Thompson:** One of the things that works really well for my wife is I'll tell her to do something creative when she's feeling anxiety. She'll like paint, or draw, or build something, or do something, um, and that seems

**[0:38:54] Joe Rogan:** That's great.

**[0:38:54] Bill Thompson:** to be a good way to get, like, the creative juices flowing and just like, complete something. Cause I think one of the other problems is that we work, both of us work in the tech industry, um, and well, the job's never done. Like, when you're building software, or you're building things like, it almost never gets finished. You, it's always like, we're done with this thing, it's on to the next thing. So you don't get that sense of, like, you know, through North, I would go back to North Dakota every year and just farm and drive beet trucks for like, 2 weeks.

**[0:39:22] Bill Thompson:** I'd take vacation to go and farm and drive beet trucks, like, do harvest. Cause I just liked it being done, and most times I donated the money to my church. So I'd just go home and drive trucks for 2 days, 12 hours a day, beet trucks where I'm following a a loader, putting beets into the back of the truck and driving it there. Just because I was like, I did 3 fields this week, I feel awesome.

**[0:39:41] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, you worked Yeah, I worked, and I did physical labor, and it's finished. That's the best part about it is the work's done.

**[0:39:46] Joe Rogan:** Well, there's something about that stuff that's very appealing to people. That's why Yellowstone's appealing, right? These people, they they have to run these cows, or they're gonna not survive. I mean, there's that's why we like, you know, these people that live as trappers and they live in the the fucking Siberian mountains. There's something about that stuff that's just built into us.

**[0:40:07] Bill Thompson:** I think we're probably more evolved for that than we are for what is going on today. So it's it's satisfying the same circuitry we talked about before, which is really what we're made for.

**[0:40:17] Joe Rogan:** which is interesting because, like, you recognize this, yet you're in tech and you have a an awesome application for phones,

**[0:40:25] Bill Thompson:** Yes, but the goal of it is to get people out. I always, I w-

**[0:40:29] Joe Rogan:** That's true. a every Like, your t time we're, your tech is actually very good for people that are outside and actually helps you,

**[0:40:35] Bill Thompson:** And because people have less time, they can scout at home. Or, like, when they really wanna get out into the woods, or the, you know, September 13th and they fly in 2 days, it's like, or I can go scout this mountain digitally, find out places I wanna go and look at, and then mark them, and then get on the app. But I always tell people when we're developing the app, too, like, there's a bandwidth between the brain, the thumbs, and a phone, and, uh, the amount of I'm try always trying to maximize that bandwidth.

**[0:41:01] Bill Thompson:** So the less time that I have to interact with an app in order to get more information, I've increased bandwidth. So, less buttons, less time, just let's just get them the information they need and get them focused on the woods. Cause if I had m if my way about it, they wouldn't pick the phone up once they're in the woods. It goes in their chest pocket or their rig or whatever, and then they're hunting. Um, the this is my the apps that I'm building, like, we're just about to implement an awesome thermals feature that we've been building for a long time.

**[0:41:30] Bill Thompson:** And we can a now accurately map thermals. So when you're elk hunting and you see, like, a you know, I'm waiting for these thermals to switch because where these elk are at, where these elk are at, um, the sun is hitting the side of this mountain, thermals are rising from the bottom and the wind is coming from the top. So there's no way to get to these elk, so I need to wait for the thermal switch.

**[0:41:48] Bill Thompson:** So with this, um, update, we're gonna put out 1st on the web. You can pick a day, time of the year, you can go historical and look up historical weather. So you can say, these elk were in this area. I dropped this pin. Now I'm gonna place this marker here, and I wanna see how the thermals are acting in the area. This is what kills most hunters is not understanding how thermals work, especially whitetails and elk hunters.

**[0:42:09] Bill Thompson:** They don't know how the thermals work, or they don't understand it, or they've never gone in the off season, like, What we're talking when,

**[0:42:13] Joe Rogan:** about with peop- for people that don't know what the fuck we're talking about. When the morning is happening, when it's cold and early in the morning, all the wind is going down the mountain. When it gets hot, then all of a sudden the ground heats up, and then the wind starts going up the mountain. So when these animals are below you as you're coming down the mountain, they're gonna smell you immediately because all the smell is coming down.

**[0:42:36] Joe Rogan:** So you have to approach them from the bottom, and then when they're above you. If it starts getting hot out, you gotta get above them, and you gotta get above them quick, or they'll blow out. yep, and They'll blow out of there, they'll, they, and they can smell you from forever away. I've seen animals smell me from 100 yards away. It's wild.

**[0:42:52] Bill Thompson:** I I've seen f- I've seen, um, good data on studies. And a buddy of mine, he used to take a friend of mine. He died in 2017, but he's a prolific whitetail photo, uh, he took photos of whitetails. He had a deer pen, and there was a mountain that was a three-quarter mile away from his property in New York. And when those does came into heat, all of the bucks would gather at the base of this fence to smell the wind coming off this mountain of these does that were three-quarter mile away.

**[0:43:19] Bill Thompson:** So you think about that, like, how well they can smell. And, uh, so, yeah, we we're putting this thermal feature out, but the thermal feature, the reason I bring that up is because it's designed to be used at home. So you can map the thermals for an area, you can put in the temperature, you can put in the wind speed, and this engine beautifully maps exactly how the scent is gonna move around on this mountainside.

**[0:43:39] Joe Rogan:** Can I ask you this? Does it vary depending on east or west slope? Because if it's east slope, it the thermals will rise quicker, right?

**[0:43:45] Bill Thompson:** Yes, and, it, yes, because the sun and the incidence of the sun. Cause what we had to build into this was an extremely high resolution topographic layer. We had to, um, have this engine, but then we also had to put, like, canopy cover into this. So it it modulates differently based on the type of canopy that it's in, whether it's elk on the side of a hill, or it's, uh, in in the open air, or it's elk inside of a bunch of hemlocks or not hemlocks, but, Aspens.

**[0:44:11] Bill Thompson:** like aspens, or something like that. Um, it's gonna change how those thermals work. And, uh, I've been using it, um, just the other day. I've got these spots. With whitetail, it's a little different because the bucks know where these thermals are, as bucks get older, and we'll get off the whitetail deer. I apologize, but you got me hyped up on hunting no. I love again. Uh,

**[0:44:29] Joe Rogan:** whitetail deer. It's the number 1 most hunted big game animal in America.

**[0:44:32] Bill Thompson:** I just mean hunting writ large, people, I doubt mo- most people wanna hear Ooh, me talk about hunting. deers. I think Okay, cool,

**[0:44:38] Joe Rogan:** people like hearing people talk about things that are very fascinating to them. And I think people that don't understand hunting, especially people that think it's easy, you really don't understand what it is. The you really don't understand how complicated it is, particularly bow hunting, but even ri- think rifle hunting's easy. Good fucking luck. Rifle

**[0:44:57] Bill Thompson:** good luck to you. hunting is rifle hunting's Yeah, not easy. It's not no,

**[0:44:59] Joe Rogan:** e- the there's so much territory, you have no idea how big the mountains are. When you get out there, it is insanely hard. It's all hard. Ye- yeah, it's a little easier than archery in that you can be 300 yards away and accurately shoot. Okay, still not easy. Not by the the that's like saying that boxing is slightly easier than MMA. Boxing's not easy. Shut the No, it's fuck up. It's different. there are hard things to do, and especially to do them well and to understand all the diff.

**[0:45:27] Joe Rogan:** Like, when I first started hunting, when Steve Rinella took me, that's that mule deer that I got right there in

**[0:45:31] Bill Thompson:** that's awesome.

**[0:45:31] Joe Rogan:** 2012, that's when I first started hunting. Im- immediately, I was like, Oh my god, this is so much more difficult, and there's so much more to learn than I ever understood. This layer upon lay, it's so complex

**[0:45:44] Bill Thompson:** especially if you're good at it.

**[0:45:45] Joe Rogan:** and I'm not that good at it. I mean, I'm successful at it, but it's also a lot of it cause I use really good guides and people help me, and I'm and I can handle pressure, so and I'm in shape, so there's those things, but I'm learning things all the time. I'd say, like, if I was a hunter, if it was like a jujutsu belt, I'd be like a p- a high level purple belt, maybe a brown belt, you know, but I'm not a black belt.

**[0:46:06] Joe Rogan:** I know the difference. There's like, when I hunt with Cam Haines, I'm like, Oh, okay, yeah, I he's he's

**[0:46:10] Bill Thompson:** don't know anything.

**[0:46:10] Joe Rogan:** a sixth degree black belt, he take he. He shows me things all every time. I've known that guy for 12 fucking years, and every time we hunt together, he shows me something new and I learned something new, some new approach, some new way to handle a situation. This is what's going on. They're gonna do this, this is why they're gonna do this. You gotta know that, we gotta get ahead of them. Like, there's things he knows that I I, I don't know, and I I, uh, you only learn with time and with studying, and when it becomes the primary focus of your life.

**[0:46:38] Joe Rogan:** And for me, it takes over my life around June, around June, it just takes over my mind. I do other things, but I'm thinking about September,

**[0:46:46] Bill Thompson:** same thing. I was when I was driving yesterday, I was telling my family, I'm like, I'm watching the leaves change. All I can think about is I wanna be in those trees right now. And it's like, it's, it's, there, there's something about. Well, anyway, to finish the point on the thermals, I marked some of using this model. I marked some of my best whitetail hunting spots in the mountains, and then I wa- I mapped the thermals and looked at the thermals, and it was it became apparent why deer were using these routes.

**[0:47:08] Bill Thompson:** Because a an old wise whitetail buck knows he's getting thermals from like 320 degrees are funneling into this one spot based on the predominant wind for the area, all these things that the app can tell you. And it's like, Oh, that's why he's always been in this spot, because he knows the whole mountain before he ever steps a foot on it. He knows he knows if there's a hot doe on that mountain, he knows if there's hunters on that mountain, he knows if there's anything on that mountain, he can smell it.

**[0:47:32] Bill Thompson:** And it really has opened my eyes, like, I can't wait to get this feature out so people can see it. But the goal, uh, t to put put a bow on this is to get people out and experiencing it. Because, uh, I think it's a great mechanism for, like, coming of age for young kids. Like, Hey, you know, you're, you're 14 or 15 or whatever. I'm gonna treat you like a man from today. We're gonna go out and kill an animal and eat it together and get a bunch of guys together.

**[0:47:55] Bill Thompson:** For men, I think it it works for women as well, but I'm saying, particularly for young men, we've kind of lost coming of age, um, rites, or we've ki- like, you know, in Native American tribes, you study, or, uh, Viking or all these other. They had a time and place where it's like, now you're a man, I'm gonna treat you like a man. No more excuses. And we've kind of put that off, and we kinda spoke about this last time, but it's something that I think we desperately need for young men, because and for adults even, who haven't really chosen to start acting like men.

**[0:48:24] Bill Thompson:** And I I can say I act like a child all the time, so I'm not a perfect dude, but, um, I the military was that for me, so mine got kind of outsourced. Um, but it's I think it leads to a lot of problems that we have in society today, like things my grandpa used to bitch at me about when I was a kid. Like,

**[0:48:41] Joe Rogan:** 100. There's a lot of people who are never truly tested, and they live their life with this, uh, just cloud of uncertainty constantly hanging over them. And this not this lack of understanding of their capabilities and how they can expand those capabilities. That's the thing about being tested is that you realize, like, Oh, I fell short. I'm I suck at this. This is not my thing. I gotta learn how to do it. And then you learn, and and then you realize, Oh, I can expand my potential in all things.

**[0:49:12] Joe Rogan:** Hm, I learned it from martial arts, that's what that's what happened with me when I was young. I got into martial arts when I was 15, like, really heavily, and then it became my whole focus, and it changed my whole the whole way I approach life. I realized, like, that pressure and big moments and things that are difficult are good for you. They're blessings and you you learn about yourself from those things

**[0:49:33] Bill Thompson:** yeah, I I think I w- talked about this with Andy, but, um, I think it was Plato, um, was not only known for his great thinking, but known for his his excessively good wrestling ability. really. And Plato, uh, means broad or broad shoulders, that's what his name meant. Um, and he said, It's one of the worst things in life to go through life and not understand the full potential of the human body. Like to not push yourself physically to a place where a you understand the actual capability of your body to make it through a situation, um, and then b to understand what type of person you regress to when the chips are down.

**[0:50:11] Bill Thompson:** Which was another thing the military gave me. It wasn't like something I had this profundity and I went out and searched for it. It's like I'm in a SEAR course where I'm being pursued by, you know, operators, and, you know, cause there's there's a regular SEER courses in the military, and then there's graduate level SEER courses. And that was kind What is of about

**[0:50:27] Speaker 8:** a Sear course? How does

**[0:50:28] Bill Thompson:** sur- survive, evade, resist, escape. So, in the initial one, which is kind of more for pilots and aircraft crew members, they teach you how to survive in the wild, how to evade capture, like, if you're being pursued, and then if you're caught, how to resist torture, enhanced interrogation methods, that type of thing, and then how to escape. So you get kind of, like, a watered-down version that a lot of people go to. But then this high-risk officer pipeline, or, um, if you're in JSOC and other organizations, they put you through, like a real deal.

**[0:51:00] Bill Thompson:** Holyfield one. It the one I went to was like 3 weeks, and they teach you picking handcuffs, how to escape from a trunk, how to escape from a house, how to improvise, like, make firearms, shotguns, how to, uh, you know, dress a squirrel and eat it. But they put you through like t like, a week. I think it was actually 6 weeks, maybe, uh, not 4 weeks, but you do 2 weeks of training where it's like you just sit in a place and you're picking handcuffs.

**[0:51:25] Bill Thompson:** You sit in a place and you're learning how to get out of a trunk, you sit in a place and you learn how to, like, conduct polish on what you're wearing. So if you have to, if you're spotted by a policeman and you need to change how you look, how do you polish yourself? So you change your appearance? So if they've got an APB out for a guy in a gray shirt and a black pants, how do you change that quickly?

**[0:51:43] Bill Thompson:** Um, then after they teach you all of that stuff, they throw you into an operational scenario where you're just being pursued by a bunch of people who do this for a living. And, um, you know, my evasion was like, I think, like, 12 or 13 miles through the Appalachian Mountains, and you're sleeping on the ground at night. And I actually had a crazy. It's the only thing that ever happened to me, so I wasn't in an invasion.

**[0:52:06] Bill Thompson:** I people are gonna make fun of me for this story, but it's fine. Um, I was in the Appalachians and I was, like, on day two or three or maybe four, something like that, and I'd v- I eaten very little, um, before I left the town that I was in to get up, uh, on the and. They teach you, like, how not to just walk a trail, you basically serpentine snake a trail, and so you know where the trail is, you can still orient yourself, but you're not following the trail, cause that's gonna make you easily caught.

**[0:52:35] Bill Thompson:** So you're running, and th- when they started the the operational scenario, you're put in a trunk of a car with a painting outfit on, you're handcuffed and your zip tied. So you have to first defeat all of those restraints. So you're learning that you learned how to pick the cuffs, you learned how to get out of duct tape or or these other things, and then you learn how to pop the trunk, um, from the inside whenever it's not built to be popped from the inside.

**[0:52:59] Bill Thompson:** Now, they have all of those latches that you can pull and just jump out, but they'll put you in, like an older vehicle, and then you have to evade. So now you're running from people who are chasing you, and the local authorities know that you're part of this course, and they're also, if they see you, they'll also, um, pursue you. So you quickly learn how to change what you're wearing, whether that's going to, like, a Walmart donation point and reaching in and grabbing clothes.

**[0:53:22] Bill Thompson:** Or, you know, one. At one point in the course, I just put my whole bottom half in a mud puddle, so my white outfit now looked like I had black jeans on in the dark. Um, so you learn all these, like, you know, little things to do, and then you do the evasion part. Well, during, like, day 3 of the evasion part. And I still don't know if this is a dream or if this happened. I'm pretty sure it happened.

**[0:53:42] Bill Thompson:** I'm 80 sure it happened, but I hadn't eaten for a few days. And I thought I ran into hikers on the Appalachian Trail. So I came to an area and there were these people sitting on a log. And again, I don't know if this was a dream. I don't know if this is cause I hadn't eaten for days or cause I was being tracked or I was under a lot of pressure. But I had, like, a quick conversation with them, and they're like, Well, we're gonna go to sleep.

**[0:54:03] Bill Thompson:** And I was like, Okay, like, and they had along the trail, they had these, like, little open-faced cabins. Right? And so I saw them go into this open-faced cabin and, uh, and, um, go to sleep. And then I started a fire and, uh, slept on the ground next to the fire. And I just told them, Oh, I'm just, you know, they give you a cover, so you can just tell people what your cover is while you're in there when you inter when you interact with people.

**[0:54:30] Bill Thompson:** um, and, uh, so I did all that. I started a fire, I'm sleeping, um, by this campfire. I wake up in the morning, and it was a big dirt area, so I wake up in the morning, and I looked over there, like, 3 hours later, this was, like, two AM. when I got there, and it's, like, five or five, thirty now, and I look up, and I'm like, Oh, they're gone already, like, that's weird. So, um, like, I start the fire again, quickly warm myself up to keep evading, and, uh, then I looked at the ground, there were no footprints anywhere.

**[0:54:57] Bill Thompson:** So I was like, Wait, did I see people here last night or not? Like, did this happen or not? And I'm like, freaking out. I'm like, I'm not seeing. Like, there should have been dirt. Like, I thought they were sitting on a log, there's no log here. So when I was debriefing after the course, I told the Do you do a debrief with, like, a s like, uh, with a doctor, um, who's monitoring everyone? Cause at one point, you're being slapped around, or you're locked in these cages, or you're locked in, like, at one point, the government detention part, I'm locked in a cement block, like you're in a cement room where you can't stand up, you can't sit down.

**[0:55:26] Bill Thompson:** It's too thin for you to, like, get on the ground. And they're playing this horrible freaking music at the top behind your head. It's like violins that make no sense, and you're in there for, like, eight hours. And so you really start getting, like, have you ever done, like, a a ex like a a dunk tank or like a tank where it's dark? You start Yeah, sensory Yeah, so this is what

**[0:55:45] Joe Rogan:** Deprivation, yeah.

**[0:55:45] Bill Thompson:** This is. It's sensory deprivation. You can't lay down, you can't stand up, you can't get comfortable, cause it's only, like, five and a half feet tall. Um, it's too thin for you to lay on the ground, they're playing this music in the back of your head, and this is after you've been evading, so you've been captured, so you're dehydrated, you haven't eaten. And I was, like, seeing worms everywhere, and I was, like, kept telling myself, You're hallucinating, like, I was seeing, like, all of these snakes inside of there, like, all this awful shit is happening to you.

**[0:56:10] Bill Thompson:** And so I talked to the doc afterwards. He's like, Oh, no, I've heard this story, like, fifteen times.

**[0:56:15] Joe Rogan:** Did he hear the story of people meeting people that Pe- people Weren't there?

**[0:56:18] Bill Thompson:** Meeting people that weren't there or having an experience or being in a place because they do have you with a GPS sensor in, like, a, um, in a fanny pack, so that if you get lost or you get turned up or hit by a car or something like that, um, they know where you are, um, but they don't use that to chase you, or they're not supposed to. Um, and so he, he's like, Yeah, I debrief guys who thought they were in, like, different parts of the city, or they were thought they were in a different area altogether, um, or they get lost and turned around, they're dehydrated.

**[0:56:46] Bill Thompson:** So, like, when you're not eating for a while, you've got the stress of being chased by people who do this for a living. You haven't had any water, no reliable meals, you're stressed out, and you've been running for 3 or 4 days. Like, you your mind starts doing things to you. So, I still to this day don't know if A that was a dream, B, I hallucinated those people, or C, they were there and just, like, the dirt was gone in the morning.

**[0:57:05] Joe Rogan:** Guys, you know, I'm into ketones, and I rock with Ketone IQ, but here's something that blew my mind. Throughout history, you see all these civilizations talking about fasting and how good it can be for your body and brain. I honestly feel sharper when I do it. That's because when you fast, your body starts making its backup fuel, ketones. They burn clean, last long, feel amazing, and they help you with focus and mental clarity. But fasting is really hard, so what I need is to stay sharp.

**[0:57:33] Joe Rogan:** I take Ketone IQ, it delivers the same super fuel your body naturally makes when fasting right to your brain. They help me drop into laser-like focus when I wanna stay locked in and think clearly, and that's the beauty of it. You get the benefits of ketones without having to fast. Finally, you can pick it up at CVS nationwide, and your first shot of Ketone IQ is always free. So, head to your local CVS and try one for yourself, or go to Ketone dot com slash Rogan for 30% off your subscription order.

**[0:58:05] Joe Rogan:** But, uh, Maybe they're interdimensional travelers.

**[0:58:07] Bill Thompson:** Maybe they're interdimensional. It's it's possible.

**[0:58:10] Joe Rogan:** If you're an interdimensional traveler, why do you have to look like an alien? You know? Yeah, that's If you've got the ability To come here from another dimension, I think you probably have the ability to look like Elon Musk.

**[0:58:22] Bill Thompson:** I think it's highly likely that Elon Musk is an interdimensional traveler, but

**[0:58:25] Joe Rogan:** Something along those lines.

**[0:58:27] Bill Thompson:** he's something.

**[0:58:27] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, there's, but, uh, that's my thought about aliens in general. Like, I think if they were amongst us, there's no way we would ever know.

**[0:58:36] Bill Thompson:** If they have the technology to do the things that we think that they're doing, We we are woefully inept to try to comprehend or understand what it is they're doing, or who they are, or what they're doing.

**[0:58:44] Joe Rogan:** right, and why wouldn't they be able to imitate us? We're simple. W- And there's also so many different models of us to choose from, there's so many different versions of us that you could draw from and create a compilation, and, you know, m make an artificial person or an an image of a person, or just affect someone's visual cortex to the point where they don't see you for what you really look like.

**[0:59:06] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, for sure.

**[0:59:06] Joe Rogan:** That seems, like, simple compared to traveling interdimensionally or traveling interstellar. If they really do have these gravity drives that can instantaneously transport you from one galaxy to another, I think they could probably pretend they're a person.

**[0:59:21] Bill Thompson:** yeah, I mean, we we s we can screw with our own perception all the time, and then people explain it to you, and you're like, Holy crap, I didn't even realize that. Like, the two faces looking together with the vase, Or there's a There's one of the line where it's like, it's a block with, like, a black bar in the middle.

**[0:59:36] Joe Rogan:** Uh-huh. Yeah, we did that the other On Day, yeah.

**[0:59:38] Bill Thompson:** Oh, you did. Oh, okay, well, I won't Retell the story, Oh, we've done then. it twice, it's it's Oh, yeah, so

**[0:59:42] Joe Rogan:** Incredible. What is that called again? wh- Corn sweet. Yeah, corn Corn, yeah. So sweet.

**[0:59:47] Bill Thompson:** we you can your perception can be messed with, and if That's you think

**[0:59:50] Joe Rogan:** That one's nuts.

**[0:59:51] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, if you think you're in control of your faculties, you rest on a limbic system and a central nervous system that's been around for a long time, and it's very patterned the way that it map metabolizes reality, and our ability to mess with that is

**[1:00:04] Joe Rogan:** I wonder what evolutionary advantage, if any, there is in being able to hallucinate when you're tired.

**[1:00:12] Bill Thompson:** I think there's probably something to do with well, what? I I'm not an expert on this, but I know that dreaming is particularly important when it comes to that stage of sleep cycle is where you store memories. So one of the things that happens when you're not sleeping for a long time is your memories, one of the first things to go. Um, because you need those stages of sleep in order to remember things. And

**[1:00:35] Joe Rogan:** No, that makes sense, cause when I'm sleep deprived, my memory sucks.

**[1:00:38] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, I I mean, I think dreams have tremendous amount of function. I myself am a huge believer. It's probably one of the things I believe in most is dreams. And this is gonna sound crazy coming from somebody who makes his living doing engineering, but I do think that the collective subconscious and the individual unconscious, um, we're we're resting on millions of years of learned lessons that we can't possibly be born with. Um, and so they pop up out of this collective subconscious.

**[1:01:10] Bill Thompson:** Like you see a person, you just get the ick. You're like, I don't know what I like this guy, I don't like this guy. That lesson's probably happened to your ancestors 10 million times, and something is popping out of that substrate that you don't have full access to and is telling you that. Because it's a heuristic that has been adopted over a million years of evolution or 300,000 years, or whatever you think humans have been around for, that story's been told a million times, and I think dreams, it doesn't make sense to me.

**[1:01:38] Bill Thompson:** And again, I I I'm not the expert on this, but it's stuff that I think about all the time. Actually, I was, um, back in the day, I was trying to impress my wet now wife, and she's a mathematician. And she, uh, you know, went to Johns Hopkins, super smart, like, just outside of the normal distribution of people, especially, um, you know, a woman who's really into mathematics is just not normal, um, or it's not, you know, as Common.

**[1:02:05] Bill Thompson:** Me there's far more many men, I'm gonna get shit on for this. I meet way more men mathematicians than I do with women, and I'm sorry, I don't control the fabric of reality, but it seems to be the case. I'm just observing things, I'm observing patterns. Anyway, she's a P mathematician.

**[1:02:18] Joe Rogan:** You cover in all your bases.

**[1:02:19] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, well, dude, doing your podcast the first time, so much hate Yeah, you gotta stay Afterwards.

**[1:02:26] Joe Rogan:** out of the comments.

**[1:02:27] Bill Thompson:** I don't know, I don't go to the I didn't read Why are Your comments.

**[1:02:28] Joe Rogan:** You getting hate? DMS. Oh, well, stay out of the DMS.

**[1:02:31] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, well, I will from Shouldn't you Now on.

**[1:02:33] Joe Rogan:** close those off anyway?

**[1:02:34] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, but uh, what, what? Oh, yes, so, um, dreams, um, I will have a problem in my life. And And so the reason I was talking about impressing my wife, um, I she was into chaos theory, and she's reading all these books on chaos theory, and, uh, so I went on YouTube to watch some videos about chaos theory, and I actually this is, uh, an origin story for me of types of of a type.

**[1:03:01] Bill Thompson:** I actually saw a Jordan Peterson video, but it was not about chaos theory, it was about order, like, it was like, you know, it was one of those, but I didn't know, so I clicked the video. And this is before he blew up. This was, like, um, you know, when he was just posting stuff on YouTube. So I watched this video, and my goal of watching the video was to get into understanding chaos theory, but what I ended up doing was getting into Carl Jung, cause I watched one of his first videos.

**[1:03:27] Bill Thompson:** So I have a very addictive personality, so I read it started reading every Carl Jung book I could. Like, the co- everything about the collective unconscious, uh, the red books, everything that he wrote, um, and and and really got into to dreams. And this might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, it doesn't matter because it's particularly useful to me, but I'll have dreams where and I used to, you know, have a a psychologist that I talked to when I was in a a kind of a depressive state years ago, and he w- I made sure to hire one who was a union.

**[1:04:00] Bill Thompson:** So I would document my dreams and say, Here's what I had a dream about, and, um, it would just became astonishing to me that my dreams were trying to tell me things. And from an evolutionary standpoint, it made sense to me that your body wouldn't just present you fuzz like a TV screen, that dreams would have an evolutionary function where you're able to draw on the lessons of the past. And you could call that the collective unconscious, you could call that the Holy Spirit of God, you could call that transcendent reality, it doesn't matter.

**[1:04:31] Bill Thompson:** But there seems to be something to dreams. I'm convinced of it because I still document my dreams to this day, and when things are happening in my life, the dream will be telling me, like, Here's where you're at, this is what you need to do. And then we watch these dreams manifested in reality through a particularly good book or a particularly good movie, and it's te it's tugging on that same string where we're watching something and people have done this better than me, but you're watching something and you're not understanding what you're watching, but you know that you love it, and you wanna keep watching it.

**[1:05:04] Bill Thompson:** And it's because your unconscious is telling you, there's a lesson here for you, and I'm gonna make you keep watching this until you understand what the lesson is. And the example I always give people is, let me tell you a story, and the story is about a guy who's innocent, but he's sentenced to death. And, um, he had a collection of disciples that followed him around, and he taught them beautiful things about the world and the fabric of reality and gave them appreciation for life.

**[1:05:31] Bill Thompson:** He w- he he died and was reborn or raised from the dead. Um, a and and but also passed through to this world, um, through a woman's womb, and, uh, he's a fisher of men. So I'll tell people that story, and I'll be like, What story am I telling you? They're like, Well, you're telling me the story of Christ. I was like, No, I'm telling you the Shawshank Redemption. It's the greatest movie of all time, per, you know, IMDB, per Rotten Tomatoes, it's a perfect movie.

**[1:05:58] Bill Thompson:** I'm not saying Stephen King wrote that book to retell the Christ story. What I'm saying is is that story is a very base story, a story of the complete perfect man who's innocent of a crime, he's tried and killed for that crime, but reborn. And that's because in the collective unconscious and in our lives, we need to undergo those same things. Like I talked about before, you have to force nature and reality onto you and adapt to them and suffer a little death, like a even an ego death.

**[1:06:26] Bill Thompson:** Like you had a system, the system failed, now it's time for you to recalibrate that system and then be reborn into the world. And so I think all of those things are tightly coupled when it comes to dreams, when it comes to media that we consume, stories that hit with us and we don't understand why. And, um, and great art is art that's made, and the and the artist doesn't even know the story that he's telling.

**[1:06:47] Bill Thompson:** He just ha- is c can it's just has a compulsion to tell the story, and so they write it down, and we don't know, like, s Stephen King's a great author, I I love consuming his his his stuff. But he's more of a vessel to the unconscious than he is somebody who just thinks up great stories. He Well, he He

**[1:07:06] Joe Rogan:** wrote a lot of his stuff basically unconscious, You know, some of his what, what do Great works,

**[1:07:10] Bill Thompson:** You mean by that?

**[1:07:10] Joe Rogan:** He wrote Well, he doesn't even remember writing Cujo.

**[1:07:15] Bill Thompson:** Great movie. Yeah, great b- great Uh, I didn't book. The book read the book.

**[1:07:17] Joe Rogan:** is fantastic.

**[1:07:18] Bill Thompson:** I didn't read the book.

**[1:07:19] Joe Rogan:** Well, he was, uh, heavily drinking and doing drugs back in those Days, and he would just get blacked out and write these books. And I think it was Carrie too, right?

**[1:07:32] Bill Thompson:** I'm not sure.

**[1:07:32] Joe Rogan:** One of he's got a a a bunch of his books where you know, some of the best ones where he was just obliterated when he wrote Yeah, so them, and that was he's tapping The way, yeah, the Into he's Way he could get

**[1:07:44] Bill Thompson:** Tapping into that.

**[1:07:44] Joe Rogan:** Away from himself, get out of his own Way and tap into that thing, Cause that's one of the things that creative people always talk about Is getting out of your own Way. And, you know, finding that that zone. Kevin Coo- coo- Yeah,

**[1:07:57] Bill Thompson:** Hartman's super cocaine to do Say. Have you ever seen the coke. Movie Maximum Overdrive?

**[1:08:02] Joe Rogan:** No memory of writing the book at all. Yeah, I did. Oh, great book, great King wrote it between movie. eighty-one and eighty-five while deeply dependent on alcohol and cocaine, one of the best books. Uh, he also wrote books like The Shining, Pet Sematary, and The Tom Tommyknockers during that era, while regularly consuming alcohol, cocaine, Valium, Xanax, marijuana, and even mouthwash. He's openly shared his mem on writing. Yeah, it's in the book. Um, he often had to stuff cotton swabs in his nose to stop cocaine-induced nosebleeds from dripping onto his typewriter.

**[1:08:32] Joe Rogan:** Fuck yeah, Jeez, so I mean, M, some diving of his best stuff.

**[1:08:36] Bill Thompson:** Diving into unconsciousness and then, like a hero, coming back with something a story,

**[1:08:41] Speaker 5:** Have you ever heard of the Hypnagogic state?

**[1:08:45] Joe Rogan:** Yes, I have, but I don't remember what that term is.

**[1:08:47] Speaker 5:** Oh, I I have a perplexity describing Salvador Dali's use of it, cause I've found a few people that did it, but I was getting really into dreams too and was having some weird sleep deprived visions, and I found that this is a thing that smart people, I guess, have tapped into.

**[1:09:02] Joe Rogan:** Ha- being half-awake and sleep deprived. Well, I told you about the news radio writers. I've told You that before. Yeah, and so the the writers on news radio, w- they didn't do drugs, but they would stay awake. So they'd stay awake till, like, three in the morning and then start writing the scripts. Yeah, and everybody was just, like, delirious, and they would write till, like, six, seven in the morning. We would show up to do the table read, and these guys were Still awake from the night before, so they had written the entire and hilarious shit.

**[1:09:32] Joe Rogan:** Because they were just like, it's like they were high, but they weren't high. And they would write these ridiculous, absurd scenarios and really hilarious lines, and they were do they were purposely doing it under sleep deprivation to induce that state.

**[1:09:48] Bill Thompson:** yeah, and that that, I think, is a, you know, it's gonna sound paradoxical to say it, but that's a heroic action, right? Like, going into going into the unconscious, a place where you're either depriving yourself, hurting yourself, but you're you're you're diving into the mud, the the water, and you're pulling out Something great. Like, it goes to what you said about fishing, like, Christ said, I'll make you fishers of men, and that means I'm gonna dive into the water, to the abyss, I'm gonna pull out something of value, and everyone gets to eat and be happy, and that's the that's the hero story par excellence is, um, people going into unsavory conditions, making sense of an unknowable environment,

**[1:10:27] Bill Thompson:** uh, recalibrating themselves, and then returning. That's always the story in the book, right? The hero gets defeated in the beginning, um, he has to go through some type of transformational period, which often, like Star Wars, he's in the swamp, or Thor Ragnarok, he goes to this upside down world where he has to fight the Hulk, who's his friend. Or, um, any of these movies, they have that, and then there there's the return of the king, where he sets order and makes everything right, and, uh, dreams, I just i i.

**[1:10:53] Bill Thompson:** It's one of the most valuable things to me, and the one of the things that kinda sucks about it is is, and Jung talks about this is once you start to really learn and live, like you try to become a better version of yourself, you'll actually end up dreaming less. But when you do dream, the dream will be more, um, dense, and but the layers of the dream get more, um, the dream is never just to solve one problem, it's usually it's many problems stacked on top of themselves.

**[1:11:22] Joe Rogan:** so say that again, when you learn more about yourself,

**[1:11:24] Bill Thompson:** When you start listening to the dreams and you start living like you

**[1:11:28] Joe Rogan:** you dream less.

**[1:11:28] Bill Thompson:** can, well, not not necessarily. The the better lesson is, if you start listening to your dreams and you start orienting yourself based on the feedback that you're getting from the collective unconscious or the word of God or the voice of God. And you start setting your life in order, and you start acting like a better person, the need for dreams is not as profound.

**[1:11:48] Joe Rogan:** Where how does he make this determination? Does he do? Is he running a study? Like, how many people is he looking at? Is he dealing with his own personal experiences?

**[1:11:55] Bill Thompson:** I I so I read this, and I think it's called, um, uh, I think this was in the Red Book, but I'm not sure. Or it might be I can't remember which might be Man and his Symbols. It doesn't matter, but what what, what he's basically saying is the dreams are there to provide you input and corrective measures and to let you know the the the archetype that you're acting out. And then once you start setting yourself in order, um, a good marker is you're no longer dreaming.

**[1:12:23] Bill Thompson:** In other words, you're doing the right thing now, so your dreams don't have to keep recurring, giving you this feedback. Um, Jamie can pressure test me, cause I might be wrong, and I don't wanna say something wrong on this podcast. But it About was also it's like, This statement E-

**[1:12:35] Speaker 5:** All I mean, this is taken from something, he said. It's almost like that, but Dreams It's not fully.

**[1:12:38] Joe Rogan:** Balance the conscious mind. If your waking mind is overly rigid, hyper-rational, or arrogant, the dream will supply emotional, vulnerable, or contradictory imagery to restore equilibrium. Interesting self-portrayal of the psyche. Jung saw that a dream was a spontaneous self-portrayal in symbolic form and of the actual situation in the unconscious. They show you where you truly stand psychologically without the ego's filters.

**[1:13:09] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, dreams, tort- um, drive towards, um, wholeness and self-realization. So what I got from Jung was the more you start to become more of a whole person and you engage in this self-realization, the less utility the dreams will have, and therefore you'll have less of them. So, in other words, if you're doing well by yourself, I understand um,

**[1:13:26] Joe Rogan:** this, but I don't understand how you'd be able to study this unless it's all completely anecdotal from an individual Because you, you're one person, and your thought process, especially as a psychologist and a psychoanalyst, is gonna be very different than most people. So, to say that, it's gotta be people that always dream like, there's people that have very vivid, lucid dreams, and they're they're able to cultivate those.

**[1:13:49] Bill Thompson:** yeah. And I would also say, well, Jung falls out of the distribution of today. What most people engage in is cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is not what Jung was doing, like, Jung was far more radical, and I wouldn't say the most peer-reviewed guy in the world. Um, so it just it it, and it could be like anything else in life, a heuristic that doesn't necessarily the the right way. And the reason I say that is because heuristic is something that's not the right way to do something, but it works for you, it's the right way to do things for you.

**[1:14:17] Bill Thompson:** Um, and it just might be a useful heuristic to me, but it it certainly, um, I can think of just, you know, a dream, even I had last week, where I wrote it down and went back to it the next day. Cause I woke up at, like, four in the morning, I wrote it all down, woke up the next day and looked at it, and it was, like, smacking me in the face, like, what the dream was telling me.

**[1:14:37] Bill Thompson:** Um,

**[1:14:37] Joe Rogan:** What was that? Is it personal?

**[1:14:40] Bill Thompson:** uh, I mean, I'll c- I can talk at it at a high general level, but it is personal. Um, uh, uh, problems with legal, with, uh, some legal stuff, and, um, uh, you know, I'm almost through it, but, uh, it's taken a toll on me for about a couple of years. And we got some resolution. That was some of what I wanted to see and some of what I didn't wanna see. And that night, I went to bed pretty angry, and then I had a dream where I was on a train and there were these people that were, like, rendezvous people all over the train, and they were like, you know, biker-looking guys, kinda rough, and, uh, they were making

**[1:15:18] Bill Thompson:** fun of me, or they were telling me I was shit, and then some of them would challenge me to things. And then in the dream, I met a woman, and I was like, Hey, I really don't know what's going on in this dream, like or I'm not in this dream, in this in this place, like, can you help me out? And she was like, Well, you kinda have to learn what's going on here on your own, like, and so at one point, a bunch of gunshots came from the outside of the train, and I grabbed her, like, as the guns were shooting, and I put myself in between her and the gunshots where they were coming from.

**[1:15:47] Bill Thompson:** And then she said, When we got up and, like, the gun stopped firing, she's like, Okay, I I can help you out some here. Um, and she started telling me things about this, this, this train world that I was in. And then a guy came and challenged me, whose name was also Bill, but he looked like old, like an old bearded guy, like an old, like biker beard guy. And, uh, we started fighting, and I put him in an Americana, and which, you know, you anybody who knows how to fight shouldn't succumb to an Americana.

**[1:16:16] Joe Rogan:** What are you talking about?

**[1:16:18] Bill Thompson:** Well, I'm saying, like, uh, you know, if I'm fighting, like, a blue belt, and I try to hit him with a, you know, a a basic jujitsu move, he's gonna fuck my world up.

**[1:16:25] Joe Rogan:** Oh, I don't know about that.

**[1:16:27] Bill Thompson:** Well, I, uh, Andy, would guys that I Gordon would, or, or maybe you know, guys,

**[1:16:31] Joe Rogan:** a high-level black belt.

**[1:16:32] Bill Thompson:** Well, I don't know. I I just seems Cause people get I

**[1:16:34] Joe Rogan:** caught in Americanos all the time. maybe, I It's the don't. You know more legit move.

**[1:16:37] Bill Thompson:** about more than this than I do, but I put him in an Americana, and I ended up, not not that this is possible, but I ended up compound fracturing his elbow.

**[1:16:45] Joe Rogan:** That happens all the time.

**[1:16:46] Bill Thompson:** And, um, he didn't quit, and the woman told me as I was fighting, she's like, Not only does he have to say Uncle, you have to accept that he's submitted before it's over. And so he's like, I'm not done, and I was like, Oh my god. So we keep rolling, and I he tackles me, and I get into a guard, and I and I put him in an arm bar, and I break his arm with an arm bar, his other arm.

**[1:17:09] Bill Thompson:** And then he's like, Okay, I submit, and then she's like, Now tell him you accept his submission. And so I was like, I accept your submission. And then and then later in the dream, like, I get off this train,

**[1:17:21] Joe Rogan:** This is a crazy fucking dream.

**[1:17:22] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, a and I wrote it all down. I can show you it on my phone when we get out of here, cause I woke up at four AM and wrote it all down. And then I got out of the dream and I ran into my wife, and my wife said, Um, I'm going to get on the train as well, and I I feel like I need to, um, go and test myself or get into the world.

**[1:17:40] Bill Thompson:** And I was like, Babe, don't like, don't do that, don't get on the train, like, it's not a good place to be. It's it's horrible, don't do it. And she's like, Oh, I feel like I need to do it. And then I woke up. So the dream, uh, like, I immediately knew, just from, like, the self-study and and reading these things, the f- train was a framework for the legal system. In other words, there are these w- the there are these people that speak terms you don't understand.

**[1:18:05] Bill Thompson:** Um, it's got a it's got its own, um, direction and inertia and gravity, and you don't control where the train train goes, just like you don't control where a courtroom or a judge or the justice system goes. You are subject to everything that's happening in that train, and they're gonna say and do things, um, that, um, don't make sense to you, and that you're gonna need someone else. And, like, it's set up there, a compensatory, a a compensatory function for men is usually an anima character, and anima relation is, you know, w- you I've heard you talk about this, and what you're describing is anima integration.

**[1:18:40] Bill Thompson:** But, essentially, men need to first become men, and once men become men, then they can start integrating anima. And what, what, ha- uh, a way, easy way to say this is a grandfather or a a a man needs to grow up and become hard. He needs to be disagreeable, he needs to fight, he needs to learn how to push himself and test himself and instill these masculine features into him. Once he's done that, then he can be the old grandfather that's got, like, a granddaughter on his lap, um, or or he's emotional with a grandchild, or he's starting to learn really more about his wife.

**[1:19:13] Bill Thompson:** But he first needs to learn himself. So he has to harden his masculine, uh, um, his his, um, his masculine features before he integrates anima features. But anima features in movies, um, or in books, or in all of these things, it's usually a character, like, if you watch the movie Wolverine, um, or not Wolverine, if you watch the Logan movie, he's got a young version of himself who's a woman who has no ability to speak. So she lacks logos, she lacks, um, an ability to express herself in the world.

**[1:19:44] Bill Thompson:** And as she starts to integrate and get closer to W- uh, to Logan, um, who's this masculine character, she finally adopts logos and starts to speak towards the end of the movie, and even starts speaking I English. And so w- and because they're the same person, she's a clone of him, you Jung would say that's the anima part of Logan that he needs to integrate before he can defeat the bad guy in the end of the movie.

**[1:20:05] Bill Thompson:** So this anima character on this train, who is, uh, is, you know, a a particularly good lawyer or someone who understands this world that I don't understand, um, and I need to show them something like protecting her from the gunfire before she starts telling me about this world and how it works. In other words, I have to s I have to use that compensatory relating function in order to understand this train that I'm on, that I've got really no control over.

**[1:20:31] Bill Thompson:** And that the stakes of this fight were far bigger than I ever thought they were. And that the person m that I'm fighting, which is not the person I'm fighting in court, or not the person that I'm fighting in life, was actually me. And there's a part of me that I was experiencing in that dream who's not willing to give the fight up. He will fight until his he's gotten a Americana, until he's got a broken arm, until he's got a ankle lock, and he can't walk anymore.

**[1:20:56] Bill Thompson:** My dream was warning me about taking this to the end. And if you take this to the end, it it could be bad or it could be good, we don't know.

**[1:21:04] Joe Rogan:** Well, it could consume your life, It could consume more importantly.

**[1:21:06] Bill Thompson:** me, yes, and consume millions of dollars and consume everything else. And so my dream was readying me and saying, Look, you're at a threshold where you have to, where you have to open yourself up to parts and really learn the justice system and really learn these things, um, or you're not gonna be ready for the fight. And the fight's not against the other guy, the fight's actually about your, uh, against yourself. Um, and and so that that's the cent- that's the nexus of the dream.

**[1:21:33] Bill Thompson:** The dream's not telling me about the future, it's telling me where I am at this point in time. So it's it's very useful to me, these things, um, and we see them reflected in media. Like I said, um, in that Logan movie I talked about, he actually fights himself, and that himself that he fights, the clone. Have you seen the movie? He's got no logos, he can't speak, and he and this daughter or this clone of him has no logos, and he cannot speak.

**[1:21:56] Bill Thompson:** And they're moving from south of the border, um, which is this, like, chaotic desert wasteland up into North Dakota, actually in the movie, which is this, like, Garden of Eden type of place, and it's there it's this, like, buddy travel story across this place where he has to integrate these parts of himself in order to finally defeat his shadow self, which is a union thing, which is this other wolverine with no ability to speak, who's this animalistic version of himself.

**[1:22:22] Bill Thompson:** And only then, in the end of the movie, he's, you know, it's really the story of Moses, but in the end of the movie, he's literally hung on a tree and killed by his own shadow self. And then only then can this new version of him, this anima integrated version of him, um, go north into Canada and live freely. So it's it's one of the highest grossing M Marvel movies of all time. I think it made a over $1 billion, but it's telling a very old story, and that old story that it's telling is an ascent of a mountain, like Moses, to go up and get the new law.

**[1:22:54] Bill Thompson:** But it's also an ascent of the mountain to that that will ultimately lead to your crucifixion, but it will save everyone else that you love. It's like, you know, the the Jews in the wasteland. Um, uh, it's this death and rebirth story that, um, it speaks to a very deep level in people. And even as engineering-minded as I am and as scientifically minded as I am, I can't dispense with something when it's as useful as it is.

**[1:23:20] Bill Thompson:** Um, there's just something there that keeps scratching at me, and I can't let it go. And it's part of my addictive personality. Like I said, I've consumed, so, like, Eric Neumann and Carl Jung and Freud and Adler and all of these great authors who wrote about all of this, the perseverance of the human soul under extraordinary circumstances. Um, you can't dispatch with these things because it got these people to where we are today, and there seems to be some truth there.

**[1:23:47] Bill Thompson:** So,

**[1:23:47] Joe Rogan:** Well, it's undefinable, and it's very strange. Whatever the dream state is, it's there's something going on there that's very odd, very, very odd. And, um, I I don't dismiss it, I don't understand it, I don't dismiss it. But I'm very wary of people who are clearly defining it, like mapping the territory. I don't, I don't, I don't Know if you have the ability to do that. And I don't, ah, you know, I think people want to define things that are undefinable because it gives them comfort

**[1:24:17] Bill Thompson:** for sure.

**[1:24:17] Joe Rogan:** that there's a structure to things that, you know, they can, they can say, Oh, I get it now. I don't know if you're ever gonna get it.

**[1:24:25] Bill Thompson:** I think it's the same thing that you get when you hear from people. When I was sixteen is the only time I've ever done drugs in my whole entire life, and I can now say that I've

**[1:24:32] Joe Rogan:** That's outrageous.

**[1:24:33] Bill Thompson:** I've never done anything. But when I was a child, um

**[1:24:37] Joe Rogan:** Meanwhile, you're doing drugs right now.

**[1:24:38] Bill Thompson:** right, nicotine. When I was a child, um, some friends, some friends gave me mushrooms when I was, like, sixteen, and it was crazy experience. Um, and, uh, it it it also. I won't tell the story cause we've already done this once, but it also led me to an updating of my system and an understanding of who I am.

**[1:24:59] Joe Rogan:** How come you never did it again?

**[1:25:01] Bill Thompson:** Mil I was in the military, How come you and I

**[1:25:02] Joe Rogan:** don't do it now?

**[1:25:03] Bill Thompson:** got security clearance. Um, I don't know, I just, uh, I'm not saying I wouldn't. All I'm saying is I'm so hyper-focused on what I'm doing now that I don't. I don't. There will be a time and a utility for it, there will be a time and place for it. And I do think I've talked to lots of veterans, um, other guys, um, who have done, like the uh, um, they go to South America and they do

**[1:25:27] Joe Rogan:** Ibogaine? Ibogaine. Um, and, Yeah,

**[1:25:29] Bill Thompson:** uh, you know, I talked to one guy, um, who said, you know, he had a ton of antidepressants and medication and stuff, and he went down there and did that. When he got back, he threw it all away, and he was better afterwards. Um, so there's definitely value there, but again, that's that that that's that pattern of diving into unconsciousness and diving into these this world that will judge you. Um, and y- some people come back better, some people come back broken, some people overcook the goose.

**[1:25:57] Bill Thompson:** I'm not sure. I'm I think I would probably do it. I've, uh, one day. Um, I'm just so busy building. I I I would worry. I also worry about my mind, like, I also know I would never do, like a cocaine, or I would never do, like, some of these other drugs because I'm really already highly strung, and I'm really hyper-focused on things.

**[1:26:18] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, that's why I've avoided Adderall, even though Yeah, I It's very interesting would. to me.

**[1:26:22] Bill Thompson:** I would never be able to get near. I mean, I do

**[1:26:24] Joe Rogan:** I might wanna try it Nicotine, I once.

**[1:26:26] Bill Thompson:** do nicotine because it helps me think. It's the only thing that can make me focus. Like, when I I'll, I don't do, uh, too many a day, but when I do them, it's usually when I'm trying to think about a problem or, like, zero in on something. Whereas other people, it, like, makes them feel like giddy or high or whatever. I get no feeling from this other than, Zoop, like, it just

**[1:26:45] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, it's a it's a definite nootropic. makes the world focus Yeah,

**[1:26:48] Bill Thompson:** in. Um, and I had it, you know, when I was in Iraq, on my second tour to Iraq, I started doing, like, mint, skull, cause we'd convoy like a long ways, and there wasn't anything to do. It's not like we had a turtle box or a Bluetooth speaker in the Humvee. You just had six hours of driving in front of you, so I'm gonna throw a skull in, just like dip mint skull. And. But then I started brushing my gums away, so I quit.

**[1:27:13] Bill Thompson:** And then when this stuff came out, I was like, Oh, I get to get the nicotine without the without brushing my gums away. Sign me up.

**[1:27:20] Joe Rogan:** right, yeah, it's very addictive to people. It's interesting. It's, uh, it's this stuff, these pouches have come out of nowhere.

**[1:27:28] Bill Thompson:** I get off of them every once in a while, like, I'll switch to, um, there's this one that I use, um, that's got no nicotine in it. Ultras. Yeah, Ultras. Yeah, so I'll just do, like, that for like two or three weeks. Um, yeah, those are great, and then I can,

**[1:27:43] Joe Rogan:** and that's just nootropics.

**[1:27:44] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, and so I'm not, you know, wired up. Like, the first day is always like this kinda sucks. Like, I want one. I don't have, like, the comedown that most people have where I'm like, I'm gonna kill someone I don't If I don't get one either. right now.

**[1:27:55] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, it's interesting.

**[1:27:55] Bill Thompson:** But I do get I do get, um, disagreeable.

**[1:27:58] Joe Rogan:** D I don't. I think it's biological, man. I I, I can just stop taking them. I took them, uh, like, uh, wh- when I was on vacation, I took off ten days, and, uh, no problem at all. And I do that all the time, I take three, four days off. Doesn't irritate me. But I think that's biological. I think some people have that weird thing, and some people don't, and some people they it gets in their system to the point where they need it all the time, and some people don't.

**[1:28:25] Joe Rogan:** Um, I've heard horror stories of people. Um, I've heard also heard ha- horror stories of people with other stuff that I I find, uh, really troubling, like kratom. Kratom's a big one, What is that? I'm kratom. That that's that sorry. weird fucking it's kind of an opiate, and it's everywhere, it's in those live free drinks, and those, uh, the there's a lot of different, like they banned the synthetic version of it from gas stations now. People are buying this stuff in convenience stores and weird sketchy And it's an opiate stores.

**[1:28:57] Joe Rogan:** Yeah,

**[1:28:57] Bill Thompson:** that you can buy in man, it's a grocery it's it's store or a convenience you can get it store.

**[1:28:59] Joe Rogan:** from a leaf, right? It's from a a plant called the kratom kratom leaf. I don't know what the plant is, but this stuff has become very popular. And, uh, I've heard horror stories of people going to, like, you know, a quote, unquote, health food store, like a juice shop, and they have these little live-free drinks, and they go, Oh, this must be healthy. It's in this place, and you drink it, and you're fucking vomiting, and it's like, you feel like you're on opiates.

**[1:29:26] Bill Thompson:** Wow, I've not even ever heard of this.

**[1:29:28] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, it's interesting because, uh, there was a guy that, uh, he had some real problems with opiates. And then he started telling me, uh, that well, he got off opiates, got clean, and then, uh, he was telling me about kratom that he takes kratom. And I say, Uh, what is this stuff? And he said, Well, at low doses, it acts almost like a stimulant, like caffeine, and then at higher doses, it's, uh, it it's, it more relaxes you.

**[1:29:54] Joe Rogan:** And I'm like, Okay, like, well, how much do you take? So he told me, Well, you know, if you wanna take a couple of them, like, before a podcast or something, try it. And I did, and I was like, Hm, this is kind of interesting. Took a couple pills. I was like, It is, it's kinda like a little stimulant, no big deal. And then I said, How much do you take? And, uh, he said, Well, before I work out, work out, I take ten.

**[1:30:15] Joe Rogan:** So I said, What? I go, You take ten? I go, What does that feel like? He goes, I don't have a problem with it at all. So I took ten, and, uh, I called him up and I said, Hey, man, I go, You're high. I go, You're getting high. This is you're not sober. Like, this is not a sober thing. You're, uh, this I'm high as fuck right now. It was a weird high because it was a high that didn't seem to affect my motor skills.

**[1:30:40] Joe Rogan:** So, uh, uh, it was at the studio, I did it, so I worked out, have no problem working out. It didn't affect my cardio, it didn't affect my ability to lift weights, it didn't affect anything. And then I was playing pool, it didn't affect my ability to play pool either. It didn't, like, uh, fuck with my motor skills, like alcohol will. How do you feel Alco-

**[1:30:58] Bill Thompson:** like when you're on it? Like, what do you feel?

**[1:30:59] Joe Rogan:** it's so it's weird. It's a weird high, um, but whatever it is, it's a high. I was like, Dude, you're high as fuck. If you're taking ten of these, like, you're not sober. And, you know, I think there's a bunch of people that have had problems with opiates that don't recognize that this takes them down that same road. And then I know a a lot of people that are heavily addicted to kratom and can't get off of it.

**[1:31:25] Joe Rogan:** Like friends, I've, uh, one good friend who takes it every day, he's taking s he's drinks bottles of these things, and he's drinking, like, six a day. I was like, Fuck, dude, that's crazy.

**[1:31:34] Bill Thompson:** I I'm so afraid of drugs, um, just cause I come from a family of not to smite my own. I love my family, but just drug addicts and alcoholics.

**[1:31:43] Joe Rogan:** Many people do. I mean, it's it's not nothing to be ashamed of. It's normal. I think I'm It is normal.

**[1:31:47] Bill Thompson:** the only one who's not been to jail or rehab.

**[1:31:50] Joe Rogan:** That's crazy.

**[1:31:51] Bill Thompson:** And then, you know, I've got two sisters that died from overdoses and a brother that killed Oh my Himself. God, Um, I just, fuck. Yeah, two years ago or three years ago, my sister Jenny died, maybe even longer, four years ago, and then my sister Heather, who was most like me in the family. In other words, like, we both wanted to get out of North Dakota. And, um, she married into a great family, like one of the best families I've ever seen, and then got on antidepressants.

**[1:32:18] Bill Thompson:** And then, I believe when she got off the antidepressants, it was really rough, like a really rough time for her, and she got addicted to methamphetamines and then ended up leaving her family and going up to, like, Fort McMurray, Alberta. And she was up there for like seven years and wouldn't talk to any of us. And her and I were very close growing up. We were the most alike, and that we just wanted to leave North Dakota and see the world and do things.

**[1:32:42] Bill Thompson:** And um, and so while she was up there, she was at, like, a rehab facility. And in this wacky fucking Canadian America's top hat place, um, they would give them meth once a week

**[1:32:58] Joe Rogan:** What?

**[1:32:59] Bill Thompson:** at the facility. Yeah. And so she either stored up her meth, like, didn't do it one week and kept it and faked it, or got some from someone else, but did, like, a critical amount of meth and killed herself at the facility. And and, um,

**[1:33:17] Joe Rogan:** They would give you meth?

**[1:33:18] Bill Thompson:** they were giving it. I mean, Why were they giving Jamie, you can look this up, but there's a term for it, and I don't remember what it was cause I asked the same question cause her brother or my brother, ex-brother-in-law, her husband, Rick told me, and I was like, Why are they giving it to people? And he's like, Well, they wanted them doing it, like, in a clean, safe environment, instead of, like, out on the streets.

**[1:33:38] Bill Thompson:** And I'm like, how about we just get them off of that shit? Like, can we all agree that's bad?

**[1:33:42] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, what a strange strategy. This is the strategy that they employ in a lot of these cities, right, where they give people access to drugs that are safe, and they also give them f- clean needles and crack pipes. This is something that you see, particularly on the West Coast. It's a very common thing in the Pacific Northwest. There's a bunch of these places that will give people they give them money, they'll give you you drugs, and they'll give you needles.

**[1:34:07] Joe Rogan:** And, uh, the idea is that you're providing them with safe access.

**[1:34:12] Bill Thompson:** Well, it killed my sister. Um, well, she killed herself, but I'm I'm saying it, it, you know, my family's just, uh, the story, not the story of it. There's good people in my family, very good people that I love very much, so I'm not trying to smite my own. But we have a problem with addiction.

**[1:34:26] Joe Rogan:** Dude, a lot of people have a problem with addiction, whether they believe it or not. You know, I think addiction is a normal part of human behavior, and I I think there's probably, uh, an evolutionary aspect to that. I think, um, addiction is what allows people to get very focused on certain things, like, uh, like, uh, to become a good hunter. What do you have to do? Well, you we have to be very addicted to the idea of hunting, you know?

**[1:34:54] Joe Rogan:** And I think that same sort of pathway can be very destructive, and it can be d very destructive. Like, you can get addicted to gambling, which I've seen a lot of people get addicted to gambling. Or you can get addicted to drugs and alcohol. You know, there's this guy that I knew that was a world-class pool player, like one of the best in the world. And, uh, he hurt his back in a car accident and then became addicted to pills.

**[1:35:18] Joe Rogan:** And my friend Tommy said this best. He said, The same thing that made him great at pool made him addicted to those fucking pills. Like, he couldn't put them down. He he was just invested in those pills. He wanted to take them all the time, and he died of a drug overdose young. And this was a guy that never drank, never smoked, was clean, sober, and was just his number one focus was just being the best pool player in the world.

**[1:35:39] Joe Rogan:** And, um, I think that thing that we all have, especially some people have, uh, in in spades, I have it, is e- I become very addicted to things. yeah, me too. It's Very focused on things where it be it co- consumes me.

**[1:35:56] Bill Thompson:** Golf did that to me. I don't golf anymore, but I got to where I was like a six handicap, which is a fairly good golfer.

**[1:36:03] Joe Rogan:** What are you, Jim?

**[1:36:05] Speaker 5:** About a, uh, uh, fourteen, fifteen

**[1:36:09] Bill Thompson:** So I just shot a I play. I had played for the first time in a few months the other day and just shot, like, twelve over, which is, like, a good golfer. But, uh, there was a point when I lived in Hawaii that I was like, you know, I I shot a couple of par rounds, like one or two over. And I did this solely because somebody told me I was too much of a fucking gorilla and I'd never be good at it.

**[1:36:27] Bill Thompson:** That was the sole reason. Every time I was practicing, I'm like, I'm gonna show your father'll That motherfucker,

**[1:36:31] Joe Rogan:** love it.

**[1:36:31] Bill Thompson:** I'm gonna show him, I'm gonna show him.

**[1:36:32] Joe Rogan:** That's so ridiculous.

**[1:36:33] Bill Thompson:** I'm, I'm gonna beat it. And I, like, devoted my whole life to it. And then when I got really good and I was better than most people I ran into, I lost all interest. I hardly ever do it now.

**[1:36:42] Joe Rogan:** Really?

**[1:36:43] Bill Thompson:** Hardly ever do it. It's how am I? It's that, that's that it's a really weird. It's happened to me a couple of times in life where I would go down a road of addiction. Just fortunately, the addictions were in, like, positive kind of, you know, positive control loops, um, where I would get into something hard. And then once I felt like I had a certain level of mastery, I'd move on to something else.

**[1:37:08] Joe Rogan:** Well, that's probably the part of you that wants to learn something from scratch again, to go through that same process. Which is that's the most important part, I think. The most difficult part is the beginning. The becoming a beginner at things, I think, is very beneficial the white to you. Yeah, Belt. it's very beneficial to you to learn that there's something that, Oh my God, I know nothing about this. I'm terrible at this. I have so much room to grow.

**[1:37:32] Joe Rogan:** Whereas something that you've been do doing for a long, long time, it it, you know, it's it becomes more of, like, fine-tuning and s. These slow, incremental improvements, rather than understanding this, this, like, enormous sea of information that you're not, you don't have access to yet.

**[1:37:49] Bill Thompson:** yeah, with golf, it was like, I'm hitting the ball straight. Moving on,

**[1:37:54] Joe Rogan:** That's nuts.

**[1:37:55] Bill Thompson:** Uh, like, next thing, um, w- bowhunting is, though, is something I haven't exhausted, and obviously, technology is something I haven't exhausted.

**[1:38:03] Joe Rogan:** Well, I think bowhunting is so variable, too. There's so many different thing. If every shot was twenty yards and every animal stood still, it would be boring. You'd get bored of it. Well, you, I don't think you'd get bored of it, but it wouldn't have the same appeal that it has, where there it's it's completely chaotic. One of you doesn't even know the game you're playing, that's the animal, you know, it's it's playing a different game.

**[1:38:26] Joe Rogan:** It's game of survival, it's looking for predators, and you are a predator, but it doesn't understand how you're doing it. And your your your thing is like to get to a position where you can execute, execute a shot and do it right. And then the amount of time that you have to put into it, I think, is the real thing for me. It's like the understanding that, uh, look, if I take a few days off of archery and I go and shoot, my first few shots are a little shaky.

**[1:38:53] Joe Rogan:** Like, a lot of times, I'll still, you know, hit the ten-ring at sixty yards with, you know, a a few days off. But it feels a little odd. It feels doesn't feel 100% locked in, and then I have to do it again till I'm locked in. And if I had to shoot an animal like that, like if I had to shoot if I had a very difficult shot on an elk at, like, seventy yards, and I hadn't shot a bow in two months, I would not take it.

**[1:39:18] Joe Rogan:** I wouldn't be able to, which is nuts. I've I've shot thousands of arrows at seventy yards effectively in a lethal zone. And yet, I wouldn't be confident that I could do it. Where there's a lot of other things that I would be very confident that I could do if I hadn't done in months. It's weird.

**[1:39:37] Bill Thompson:** It is weird.

**[1:39:38] Joe Rogan:** And I think because of that, because it's such an engrossing and involving process, the process of archery in particular, and then bowhunting at the extreme, eh, level of it. I think there's two different extreme levels of archery. There's target archery, which I think is extreme mentally, but it's still a stable, static shot, static, uh, target versus bowhunting, which is non-static, moving enormous animals and all their senses and all the different things that are involved. Wind, all the all the factors, elevation changes.

**[1:40:11] Joe Rogan:** There's a lot of stuff going on. They're moving. There's a lot of things happening that you never can master it. Nope. It it there's no mastery. You can get more effective than you used to be.

**[1:40:22] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, there's different ways to do it. Hm, like, I've got like, I'm a very analytically minded bowhunter. I like breaking everything down, understanding the thermals, rise and fall of the sun, first light, last light. What are these thermals gonna do on this hill? Where's this buck coming from? Where's the doe bedding? Where are the scrapes outside of that doe bedding? How do I get downwind of them? How do I avoid the parking lots? How do I do all of these things?

**[1:40:42] Bill Thompson:** Then I've got this other buddy, his name is Johnny Stewart, who is just a deer. Like, I'll go scouting with him. This guy will kill two or three big bucks every year, and you would think this guy must have, like, a system. And he's just like, This feels like a place where there are deer. I'm like, Well, John, what are you talking about right now? He's like, I don't know, Bill, but, like, I uh, the just the way this place looks to me, Well, it's pattern this looks like Yeah, recognition, too, but but yeah.

**[1:41:06] Bill Thompson:** But he's pulling it from a place where he he can't sight to you what's going on. Whereas when I walk into a spot, I'm like, Well, I've got three intersecting trails that come here, there's d you know, doe bedding over here, I've got two scrapes here. The thermals come up at eight thirty, so I wanna be, I wanna wait for the thermal switch before I get into my stand, otherwise my scent is gonna paint this side of the mountain.

**[1:41:25] Bill Thompson:** And he's just like, This looks good.

**[1:41:28] Joe Rogan:** It's interesting that there's there's people that are system oriented, and then there's other people that are instinctive. That that's a a big factor in striking. So, in striking, one of the things that I find interesting is some people who are great strikers, and by strikers, I'm talking about martial arts. Uh, some people have a system, and they're really good at, like, uh, sh- showing their system and teaching their system, and other people can't quite tell you what they're doing.

**[1:41:56] Joe Rogan:** They just know how to do it. They know how to, they know how to, like, do something at varying speeds in order to fuck with someone's perceptions and their timing and reads. And they just do it instinctively, and it's just they've done it, they've done it so many times, they just know what they're doing, but they can't teach it.

**[1:42:15] Bill Thompson:** yeah, yeah, it's it's so strange, especially when you t talk to people who are at that very high level. Like, I I think, you know, but I've become pretty good friends with George St-Pierre, and when you him and I bear hunted last year together, and I spent basically a week with him. And I w- didn't do jujitsu. Uh, I did mixed martial arts in the milit- or I did combatives, we called it in the military for like seven, eight years.

**[1:42:38] Bill Thompson:** So it was a little different. Like, you would learn the basics, but then it would get into alright, now that you've got him in this position, you can stab him, or now that you're in this position, you can break contact. Or, like, just so there was a there was a combat nexus To it. That wasn't strictly jujitsu, there was more to it. And, um, but, like, talking to him and then just like messing around or seeing, like, how he applies pressure or what he's doing, or h- how he's a great wrestler and how he integrates these other things.

**[1:43:05] Bill Thompson:** It's just when you deal with these people, or, like, with Gordon, it's like you're at a level that's just I couldn't ever get there, even if I hoped to. And even if you could explain to me what's go like, in other words, Gordon could pin me in a position and say, Here's what you gotta do. I still can't do it. You know What I'm saying? Like, to him, to him, um, and so they're just at such a level that even if they are are able to articulate it to you, you're still not getting there because you don't have everything that it takes to bridge the gap from here to there.

**[1:43:33] Joe Rogan:** Well, Gordon's very st- systematic, you know? And it comes from his, uh, teaching under Donaher, like Donaher, John Donaher's, I think, the great mastermind of jujitsu. He has a very specific systems, and he breaks things down like they're very technique oriented. And then there's there's things that you just learn from over the course of training. There's the flow of it all that you Learn from it. But Gordon is like a great example of someone who's an amazing teacher as well as an amazing jujitsu competitor.

**[1:44:06] Joe Rogan:** Because, like, his, um, a big part of his income comes from his, uh, instructionals, selling instructionals, cause they're so good.

**[1:44:14] Bill Thompson:** yeah, he I mean, w- the thing that that's interesting to me about Donaher is, like, he's almost like a first-principles jujitsu guy. Like, when you hear him talk, like, he breaks things down to, like, very elemental levels, where it's like, what is the point of jujitsu? What are you doing with jujitsu? Like, what are you trying to establish? And it's like, I'm not even thinking about these things, but he's like, cause I think his background's in philosophy, right, or something like that.

**[1:44:37] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, Columbia. So he's got ye- He was he was a professor.

**[1:44:41] Bill Thompson:** that's so that's crazy to that transition to Or at least MMA.

**[1:44:43] Joe Rogan:** a was he a professor, or was he? It was d definitely was a PhD, I believe. And then, uh, started doing jujitsu because he was a bouncer, and, um, wanted to learn how to fight. So, like, I probably should learn how to fight, cause he was a power lifter at one point in time and a rugby player also. And then became obsessed, and, you know, became the greatest coach of all time. And he's like a character from a film.

**[1:45:06] Joe Rogan:** Really, yeah, he's like doesn't he doesn't exist a in real life because he's a guy who wears a rash guard every Everywhere day, even he goes. I saw Like to pictures of him at weddings.

**[1:45:12] Bill Thompson:** a wedding. Yeah, yeah, you just took the words right out of my mouth.

**[1:45:15] Joe Rogan:** He's a I mean, but he's a real eccentric. It's not like he's trying to be eccentric.

**[1:45:19] Bill Thompson:** It's like he's either this or he's a bad guy in a Bond movie.

**[1:45:22] Joe Rogan:** Okay, so six degree black belt, uh, arrived in United States in ninety-one to study at Columbia University's philosophy PhD program. After arriving in New York, Donaher was introduced to Brazilian jiu-jitsu, continued training at the academy, became teaching classes as well while Gracie, uh, Henzo Gracie was, uh, traveling for competition. So did he finish his education, and did he It's start teaching?

**[1:45:44] Bill Thompson:** said that he had a PhD. Master's degree in philosophy and was pursuing a PhD in Epistemology.

**[1:45:51] Joe Rogan:** And so that's when he became obsessed, and so while he was attending the university, he worked as a bouncer in various Manhattan nightclubs, so I've elevated his education, but a little

**[1:46:00] Bill Thompson:** That's insane.

**[1:46:00] Joe Rogan:** bit. I thought he was teaching, but he, uh, when he started teaching jujitsu, he was like sleeping on the mats, like he's he, he was there all day long, every day.

**[1:46:08] Bill Thompson:** Another addictive personality.

**[1:46:10] Joe Rogan:** Not just that, but a man who is obsessed with, uh, do you know the Japanese term kaizen?

**[1:46:16] Bill Thompson:** I've heard you talk about it.

**[1:46:17] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, kaizen is you continue to improve on one thing constantly, where it's this never-ending cycle of improvement. And this is his philosophy that he applies to jujitsu. This is this continual cycle of improvement. You know, there's, uh, there's certain applications that people have seen, like the the application of kaizen in engineering, for example. Like, uh, a good example is, like, they take a specific platform and continue to work on. Like, a good example is the Nissan GTR.

**[1:46:51] Joe Rogan:** You are you aware I of the Nissan am. Yes, yes, GTR? Okay, so Nissan GTR is one of the best examples of that, where it is essentially the same car for twenty plus Years. And they they don't change the body shape, they don't change the the geometry, they don't change the way it's all all-wheel drive sports car. But what they do is continue to refine it to the point where it was just fucking dialed in,

**[1:47:14] Bill Thompson:** Tweaking it. just constantly Yeah,

**[1:47:16] Joe Rogan:** improving it and just dialing it in, dialing it in further further. And if you get, like, a 2025, I think it was 2025 or 2026 was the last year they made the GTR. And you compare it to, like, a one that was released in the nineteen God, when was the first GTR? Was it 2000s? Was it?

**[1:47:37] Bill Thompson:** I think it was late nine nineties, I thought, but maybe early 2000s.

**[1:47:41] Joe Rogan:** It might be early 2000s. I think it's in the 2000s, but it it almost looks the same, but they're so much better. And that's that's the same with everything. I mean, kaizen as applied to mixed martial arts, i as a whole, like, if you looked at mixed martial arts as a whole, all of these individuals that are competing in it and all these individuals that are pursuing it and teaching it and and studying it, they're essentially doing that.

**[1:48:06] Joe Rogan:** They're, uh, taking this thing that used to be this chaotic thing where, uh, you know, there was certain strategies that people had. You know, one guy was a brawler, the other guy was a grappler. He'd get you down on the ground and punch you in the face a bunch of times. And then they're expanding the possibilities to this, like, insane level where you're seeing people now that are like on the Dana White Contender Series that would be absolute world champions in 1994, and these guys haven't even entered the UFC yet.

**[1:48:37] Joe Rogan:** You know, because the level of the game So through this constant fast. pursuit of excellence, and then this competition, this, uh, boiling pot of competition, where you have, eh, I mean, how many MMA athletes are there worldwide now?

**[1:48:51] Bill Thompson:** My god.

**[1:48:51] Joe Rogan:** Who knows? Hun- it's got to be in the hundreds of thousands of elite MMA athletes world. When I by if I say elite, I mean, like, guys who could fight professionally. I would, am I would say, there's probab- I mean, they might not all be fighting professionally yet, but they're at that level. When you introduce amateurs, and you think about how many, um, how thousands and thousands and thousands of gyms there are, and out of those gyms, how many people have, like, people that are at a very high level?

**[1:49:17] Joe Rogan:** Fuck, it's crazy. So, this is a new thing. Like, t I I say this all the time, but it really is accurate. Martial arts have evolved more in the last 33 years than they have in the last 33,000 years, and that is true, cause from the time the UFC came about in 1993, I mean, the Brazilians were way ahead. The Brazilians were way the Gracie family, in particular, were way ahead of the curve. They were pursuing this and looking into this in the 1940s and 50s.

**[1:49:48] Joe Rogan:** Like, Helio Gracie was having mixed martial arts competitions in the 1940s. You know, they were having what they called it Vale Tudo, which is anything goes, and they were having fights in the ring in front of large groups of people long before the UFC was ever around. You know, Hicks and Gracie famously had them when he was 18 years old, when he became the champion of the family, I mean, he was he was b- defeating much larger people when he was 18.

**[1:50:12] Bill Thompson:** Yeah. I remember watching that back in the day too, like, peak UFC, not peak, but it's pre big now. I still go to it now, but watching, like, GSP in his heyday back in the day and stuff like that, it's just we dude

**[1:50:23] Joe Rogan:** Well, that was peak emergence,

**[1:50:24] Bill Thompson:** Peak emergence. right? Yeah, peak Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**[1:50:26] Joe Rogan:** emergence was like 2005 on, so 2005 was the Ultimate Fighter, and, uh, it's very rare when one moment really sort of defines the growth of a sport, but you can find that in MMA. And in that one moment was the Stephan Bonner Forrest Griffin fight in the finals of The Ultimate Fighter on Spike TV. It got millions and millions of people watching it, like, more than anything anybody had ever watched on Spike TV before, and it was just because it was so good, it was so crazy, and you see the rise of people watching it.

**[1:50:57] Joe Rogan:** They could s they could track the ratings in real time, so people were calling their friends going, Dude, you gotta fucking watch this. Turn on Spike TV, this is crazy. And they were watching it, and it def it changed the entire course of martial arts forever. That that one fight.

**[1:51:14] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, I mean, for me, the one the my my watershed moment was, like, GSP bisping, like, watching, um, uh, when GSP went up a weight class, and what year was that? Um, 2017 or something?

**[1:51:27] Joe Rogan:** Somewhere around there, yeah. Went up to middleweight, I can't even yeah.

**[1:51:30] Bill Thompson:** rem- but for me, it was just like, Okay, now I'm obsessed, cause this guy's just done some like, I thought, I love GSP, I know him, but I didn't think at the I didn't know him at the time. I just thought, I don't know, this is gonna be tough. Um, and just to watch somebody go up another weight class and go and and win in this, like I just it was amazing, it was By the way, GSP amazing.

**[1:51:50] Joe Rogan:** is not even a big welterweight. You know, GSP, when you look at welterweights today, GSP is the size of a large middleweight to or, excuse me, a large lightweight today. A large 155 pounder Yeah, I think today would walk he walks around around

**[1:52:01] Bill Thompson:** like 160 right now or something like

**[1:52:03] Joe Rogan:** That's light. that. I think he's heavier than that. I

**[1:52:05] Bill Thompson:** Is he?

**[1:52:05] Joe Rogan:** think he's in the 80s. Maybe

**[1:52:06] Bill Thompson:** Is he?

**[1:52:07] Joe Rogan:** in the maybe even in the 90s. Well, it depending on how much he's weightlifting and what he's doing.

**[1:52:12] Bill Thompson:** I thought he was, but I He's definitely do

**[1:52:13] Joe Rogan:** heavier than that, but but in his prime, he would hover around the the high 190s and then cut down to 170.

**[1:52:19] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, but he was a There's beast in that fight too. He looked There's like such a beast.

**[1:52:22] Joe Rogan:** guys now, like, do you, uh, do you follow closely, like, top contenders Not closely, now?

**[1:52:27] Bill Thompson:** not like I should, no, not as closely as I should, I mean, I like, I'll watch the big events or, like, you know,

**[1:52:32] Joe Rogan:** There's this cat, Michael Morales, he's one of the scariest guys in the 170 pound division, he's a fucking monster, like a really, really dangerous guy, and he's enormous. He gets well over 220. Well over 220 and gets down to 170.

**[1:52:46] Bill Thompson:** And cut just cuts it the last minute?

**[1:52:48] Joe Rogan:** No, he he cuts it slowly over time, but then he rehydrates and reinflates, and when you see him inside the octagon, you're like, How the fuck? And I don't know how many times he can do that, so that is

**[1:53:00] Bill Thompson:** That's tough on the body.

**[1:53:00] Joe Rogan:** essentially very brutal on the kidneys. It is, uh, essentially a, uh, a death's door event. You're getting to death's door. You're getting to death's door 24 hours before you have to fight in a cage, and then you're rehydrating yourself and replenishing yourself not to 100%, by the way. No, no, you Yeah, you're not

**[1:53:19] Bill Thompson:** can't. Yeah.

**[1:53:20] Joe Rogan:** there's no way. So, this is how big Morales is. He's fucking enormous dude, and he's so powerful, he's absolutely huge for the weight class. When you see him, he looks like a light heavyweight. He really does, cause he is. I mean, he's basically, like, 220 pounds now. He looks like a big middleweight when he's Jeez. in there, but yet, somehow or another, he makes it to 170, and he's undefeated, and not just undefeated in the UFC, he's starching people.

**[1:53:45] Joe Rogan:** And he's a wrestler who very rarely wrestles, and he has a judo background, very rarely uses that.

**[1:53:51] Bill Thompson:** It's kinda like, uh, Gaethje, Gaethie right?

**[1:53:54] Joe Rogan:** Justin Gaethie. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't No way, but this guy is much bigger and, uh, just a real seek and destroy welterweight and one of the absolute top contenders. Terrifying human.

**[1:54:05] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, I just meant in that Gaethje was a really good wrestler and you hardly ever seen wrestling.

**[1:54:11] Joe Rogan:** Right, right. Well, it takes a lotta energy to wrestle people, that's part of the problem. In order to grapple and constantly shoot and takedown people, it's one of the most energy-intensive aspects of MMA, like, shooting on someone, you're exploding,

**[1:54:24] Bill Thompson:** A lotta energy.

**[1:54:24] Joe Rogan:** and then you're wrestling with them, so you're you're grappling with all their strength, using technique and leverage, and then you have to hoist their body up in the air and slam them to the ground.

**[1:54:34] Bill Thompson:** And get that takedown.

**[1:54:35] Joe Rogan:** And you can only do that so many times, which is one of the reasons why Merab is so fucking extraordinary, is the fact that that guy can do that full blast for 5 rounds. It's insane. His his cardio should be studied in a fucking laboratory cause he's a real freak. He's a real

**[1:54:54] Bill Thompson:** I bet.

**[1:54:54] Joe Rogan:** freak. But very few people have that ability. He breaks world-class fighters, like, you know, U- Umar Numergomentov, uh, like, when he fought him, like, it's like he he almost, like, couldn't believe that this guy was still doing this, like, deep into the 5th round, like, it was just so crazy, his his, uh, his work output. And most people don't have that, so most people when they're really good grapplers, they develop a style that's, like, a mix of grappling and striking cause there's ti- even Khabib, like, uh, one of the rounds with Conor McGregor, he never shot for a takedown, it's the round that Conor won, and it's because he just chose to stand because he had to, like, realize, like,

**[1:55:32] Joe Rogan:** Okay, I burned so much energy in the first couple rounds going after this guy, taking him down, smashing him. I I can't keep this up. I have to take a round where I don't burn off as much energy and let my body recover a bit.

**[1:55:45] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, tha- the White House fight, I watched that from my cabin out in North Dakota, uh, the event at the White So I was alone. I've I've I've shown you pictures, the cabin out in the middle of nowhere, it was my father's cabin, um, that I I I bought back in the family, like, 4 years ago, rebuilt it from the ground up, and I was like, I'm in the perfect place to watch this fight. I was so hyped up, like, watching the whole thing, like, my son was coming downstairs, I was like, No, no, I'm watching the fight, like, leave me alone, watch the fight.

**[1:56:10] Bill Thompson:** I was cheering, it was crazy. I just remember watching Ilia talk, I think he was on your podcast, wasn't he? Saying he was just gonna decimate Gaethie. And, uh, yeah, that it was

**[1:56:21] Joe Rogan:** Well, he thought it was just gonna be easy, and I said, Man, I don't know how you could think it. And a lot of people were saying to me, like, when I was saying Justin has a huge chance, and they would go, Oh, you're hyping this fight up, I know what you do. Like, Ari Shafir accused me of that, he's like, Oh, I know what you're doing. The guy is gonna lose. You're you're you're saying he has a chance.

**[1:56:37] Joe Rogan:** I go, No, he has a real fucking chance. He's insanely durable, he's extremely experienced in very high level competition against world-class fighters, and he's been in the deep trenches where you're in hell. Like, if you're in a war, like the wars that he had, like, with Dustin Poirier, he had a war, he had that war with Max Holloway. He's been in those trench wars where it's 4 and 5 rounds, you've been beaten up for fucking 3 rounds, your body is broken, and you're exhausted, and yet you have to persevere and press on.

**[1:57:09] Bill Thompson:** He's a freak of nature.

**[1:57:10] Joe Rogan:** He's amazing.

**[1:57:10] Bill Thompson:** J- so Tyler from Archery Country, uh, is a good friend of mine. We were in Vegas for the Paddy fight with Gaethje, um, that you were gracious enough to invite me to, and, um, we we I don't gamble, and but we were leaving a casino, we were at there for some reason, and I think I had, like, 100 bucks in my pocket. So, Tyler and I were like, We're gonna go back or go we're gonna go to the fight, I think.

**[1:57:36] Bill Thompson:** Actually, we were going to the fight, so I sat down at, like, a 3-card poker table, and I was like, It's an easy game, let's just play, like, I got 100 bucks, let's just do this. So I ended up getting up to, like, 1000 at this 3-card poker table with Tyler, so I was like, Dude, like, let's just leave, like, we've got the money, like, let's just get out of here, so we're walking out of the casino, and he says, Hey, why don't we put money on the, um, Gaethje fight tonight against Pimblett?

**[1:58:00] Bill Thompson:** And I was like, Okay, so I had, like, downloaded an app, and we went to the thing and, like, placed the bet a at the place, and we both were like, We gotta bet on Justin, like, it's gotta go this way, it's like, you know, cause and he was the underdog.

**[1:58:12] Joe Rogan:** He was?

**[1:58:13] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, he was the underdog for sure, cause I got paid, I put down 500 or something like that.

**[1:58:18] Joe Rogan:** Wow, that's crazy.

**[1:58:19] Bill Thompson:** Can you certify that? But I'm 99% sure because I got a big payday on it. I made, like I think I got 2000 bucks. Um, or or maybe 1500 or something like I do that.

**[1:58:29] Joe Rogan:** not know why he would be the underdog.

**[1:58:31] Bill Thompson:** there it is.

**[1:58:31] Joe Rogan:** Paddy Pimble is a favorite, and Justin Gaethje is the under Yeah, so we Oh, wow. put Mine is 238, that's crazy.

**[1:58:38] Bill Thompson:** So we we put that 500 a piece that we won playing 3-card p- that I won playing 3-card poker on Justin, and then we got paid, and it, uh, it was in, like, my DraftKings account or whatever, whatever that wherever the money got deposited, I didn't even know how to get to the money. I just had 1500 bucks there, so, at the at the White House fight, I called Tyler that night, that day of, and I said, Dude, I'm just gonna put all of this money back on Justin again, and he's like, Ah, I already took my money out, I should have done that, and I was like, I mean, it was 100 bucks, and now it's 1500 bucks, so

**[1:59:09] Bill Thompson:** I put it all on the mon- and he was the underdog again for the Ilia fight. So i it ended up being like 6K. That I turned from 100 into, like, 6K, and then I took it out and used it to rebuild my house. So, Justin, I owe Justin my my upstairs. I paid for all the flooring upstairs from Justin's fists.

**[1:59:30] Joe Rogan:** That's a good way to gamble. Yeah, that's good that's good, healthy gamble.

**[1:59:34] Bill Thompson:** Never do it again, but, uh, it was awesome. Uh, I mean, I had one run.

**[1:59:38] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, I'm very conflicted about gambling because I've met a lot of gambling addicts. I know a lot of gang cause I come from the pool world, you know, and the pool world was filled with gambling addicts. That was my first real exposure to people that are addicted. They would go to off-track betting before they ever got to the pool hall, and then they'd show up at the pool hall during the day. They'd have stories, The fucking horse, I I bet on this horse, he didn't come in.

**[2:00:00] Joe Rogan:** They were all addicts, and then they would all be looking for action. Oh my They’d either God. they played gin, there was guys that would play gin, or they'd play poker. Uh, there was, like, a whole, like, elevated level where it was, like, seating and stuff where it was, like, above the pool tables where guys would hang out and have card games, and then they would gamble on pool games, and everybody was just in action. It was in everyone was in action, and part of me is like, Oh, you know, gambling can be destructive, right?

**[2:00:26] Joe Rogan:** But it wasn't for me. So why is that? So isn't it like, uh, isn't it a a personal control thing? Like, isn't it, like, recognizing what's detrimental to you and what's positive? Isn't that a bunch of aspects of life? Like, I'm pro-alcohol too, but I recognize that people could become alcoholics, right? But isn't that also, like, a personal control thing? Like, should you shouldn't you know what you you can do and what you can't do, and isn't the real thing learning how to control yourself?

**[2:00:56] Joe Rogan:** I mean, so I don't have any problem with gambling at all, and I know way too many people who enjoy it to ever, like, come out against gambling. But yet, I have friends that are staunchly anti-gambling, and they think that these gambling apps are terrible, and think these casinos are terrible, and that we should outlaw all of it. And I'm like, man

**[2:01:15] Bill Thompson:** You're just shoving it underground.

**[2:01:16] Joe Rogan:** I, it's also people have enjoyed that since the beginning of time, and then also coming from the world that I come from, coming from the pool world, gambling is a huge part of how you get good at pool. One of the things about pool is stakes. Like, you know, the term pool, it comes from pooling money together to gamble

**[2:01:34] Bill Thompson:** No, I did not know that.

**[2:01:34] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, it's not called pool, it's called pocket billiards. So, the origin the original billiards game well, there's a game that is, uh, also still played in a lot of Latin American countries, South Korea, they're really big on it, and it's called 3 cushion billiards, and 3 cushion billiards is a game that you play on a table that doesn't have any pockets, and what it is is you have 3 balls, and the key is understanding, um, geometry and force and spin and how it affects the rails.

**[2:02:04] Joe Rogan:** So, the rails are all these rubber rails, and in 3 cushion billiards, you contact 1 ball, and then you have to go 3 cushions, contact the 2nd ball, and then the the the original ball. So, you're contacting these these 3 balls, but also hitting 3 cushions. Yeah, or 2 d 2 balls, but also hitting, uh, hitting 3 cushions, so you can't just hit 1 ball into another ball, there's a there's a there is an old billiard game where they did that, but it's a very boring game, but this 3 cushion game is a much more dynamic form of it.

**[2:02:39] Joe Rogan:** So, that's billiards, and then there's pocket billiards. So, pocket billiards is what people think of as pool, is where you're shooting a ball into a hole, and there's 6 holes on the table. So, pool comes from the term of pooling money together to gamble on pocket billiards. So, when you go to a pool hall, that's a gambling

**[2:02:58] Bill Thompson:** Gambling hall.

**[2:02:59] Joe Rogan:** hall. That's what they were. And so, in New York City, at the turn of the century, the turn of the 20th century, I think there was some insane number of pool halls just in New York City, I think it was over 1000. Yep. And it was a lot of these guys, especially in the 1940s and, uh, guys coming home from the war, they didn't have families, and it was a bachelor culture, and these guys, they didn't want to be a part of society anymore, they just wanted to, you Unplug.

**[2:03:29] Joe Rogan:** know, just unplug and be a part of this world of men where men got together and they gambled and they smoked and they talked shit, and they and engaged

**[2:03:38] Bill Thompson:** Sounds fun.

**[2:03:38] Joe Rogan:** in a lot of vice, you know? There's and, that was also when I was exposed to drugs, like a lot of drugs.

**[2:03:45] Bill Thompson:** How old were you at this time?

**[2:03:46] Joe Rogan:** 23? Yeah, about 23, maybe 24, when I really started playing a lot, um, and, uh, a lot of these guys, there was the first time I ever saw anybody do heroin. Yeah, there w- it was a guy who was a a a world-class pool player. Uh, he had 2 nicknames, one of em was Buffalo Bill, and the other one was Water Dog. And this guy, um, he was a a world-class pool player who was also a heroin addict, and what he would do is he would go into the bathroom, and everybody knew what was going on.

**[2:04:16] Joe Rogan:** He would go into the bathroom, lock the door, shoot up, and then he'd come out, and he would sit on one of those billiard chairs. So, he'd sit on like, it's like a big barstool with, like, arms on it. He'd sit there like this.

**[2:04:27] Bill Thompson:** And just pass out.

**[2:04:28] Joe Rogan:** No, just j- just zone down for, like, 20 minutes, just high as fuck on heroin, and then come back. And then Holy when he's back, he's f- ready to play, and his eyes, his fucking pupils were huge, that's what I remember. He was like he had gerbil eyes, like shark eyes, and he couldn't miss. I mean, it was insane watching him play. He we're playing w- there's a table in Executive Billiards in White Plains, New York, where I used to play.

**[2:04:51] Joe Rogan:** Table 1 had these tiny little pockets cause it was the gambling tables, so the ta- the pockets Hard. were just just shy of 4 inches, so you couldn't fit 2 balls in them, and they were very gaffy, meaning, like, the way the angles were cut, like, it was like the way it was made was kind of haphazard, the way they wedged these things in there to make the pockets tighter, it wasn't perfect. Like, if you would hit the point a little bit, it would wobble out.

**[2:05:17] Joe Rogan:** It wasn't it was very difficult to be accurate on this table, and this fucking guy couldn't miss. He was playing for $10,000, and I was watching this Holy guy play.

**[2:05:27] Bill Thompson:** sh- that stresses me out.

**[2:05:28] Joe Rogan:** I was watching this guy play for $10,000, and he, the other guy, the guy he was playing was this guy, George the Greek, who was a famous gambler, and George would be yelling at him, This motherfucker, he can't play without his shit. He's gotta take that fucking shit. So, he's trying to distract him while he's playing, and this guy just shoo shoo, he just couldn't miss, just m moving around the table, seeing all the angles.

**[2:05:47] Joe Rogan:** It's like, to him, the game was simple, and it was just when he was on heroin, and he had to do heroin. And, uh, I ran into him years later, so I I knew him in New York, and then I moved to California, and this was, like, '95, '96. I was playing in this tournament in, uh, Bellflower, California, this is legendary pool hall that used to exist there. There's still one in Sacramento, but there's one in, um, Bellflower that was called Hard Times, and Hard Times was the mecca.

**[2:06:16] Joe Rogan:** When I was playing pool in New York, everybody was talking about Hard Times. Hard Times is where all the gambling was, and all the great players, the Filipino players would go there, and this they had this big Sunday tournament. And so, I would go and play in the Sunday tournament cause anybody could play, I just get killed every week, but I'd go anyway, just to be able to play like world-class players and to watch and just to have fun.

**[2:06:35] Joe Rogan:** And, uh, Water Dog was there, and I go, Hey, man, what are you doing out here? And he's like, Yeah, I d I took a trip. I took a trip to California, you know, just t try to get get in some action. He goes, I wanna get in the tournament, but I don't have any money. I go, I'll put you in. So, it was only, like, I don't remember it was, like, 20 bucks, 25 bucks to get in the tournament.

**[2:06:52] Joe Rogan:** And, uh, so I said, I'll put you in. He goes, Oh, but I gotta go get my shit. And I was like, What? I go, Well, well, go get your shit. He

**[2:06:58] Bill Thompson:** Hell yeah.

**[2:06:58] Joe Rogan:** goes, I need a ride. I go, I'm not driving you, and he goes, Come on, he goes, You gotta give me a ride, it's fine, don't worry. And, but I had a nice car at the time, my first nice car, I had a Toyota Supra Turbo. I loved it. I was like I'm like, I can't dri- they'll confiscate my car Thought you were if we get gonna say High caught. Line. You can you can get in real trouble, and he wouldn't he he wouldn't play, like or he he wouldn't accept that I wouldn't, uh, take him there, so I put him in anyway, he played sober, he played terrible.

**[2:07:27] Joe Rogan:** He, he, like, he was angry, like, wasn't playing good, he was, like, rotten, like, like, you could you could tell it was a mess, and he just guy could've won the tournament, he was that good.

**[2:07:36] Bill Thompson:** I I grew up in Canada for a few years, my like, 3 years, and, uh, I remember reading, I don't know who this is, and I hope Jamie can look it up for me, Jamie, if you don't mind, but there was a story of a goaltender that would play on drugs, and I wanna say it was something crazy. Maybe it was something simple like cocaine, but he would take the drugs before a hockey match because it made the world look slower, and it made him a better goaltender.

**[2:08:01] Bill Thompson:** And he said it was like the b- the puck became like catching a beach ball or something like that. Grant Fuhr, that's him.

**[2:08:07] Joe Rogan:** Edmonton Oilers and Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender. So, he publicly admitted abusing cocaine for about 7 years or using it correctly. Why is that abusing? He used it correctly. Rumors and reports circulated about cocaine use involving several members of the powerhouse Edmonton Oilers dynasty, including a well-known 1986 Sports Illustrated report, though Fuhr was the most high-profile player to face official league discipline regarding well, probably because he admitted it.

**[2:08:37] Bill Thompson:** Right. I mean, I remember hearing him say like

**[2:08:39] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, 1990, he admitted it publicly.

**[2:08:41] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, and I was a child then, so I'd have been 8 at that time, but I was living in Canada where everything was hockey. Like, you were not it was hockey night in Canada, it was Molson Lebat Blue, and the whole like, uh, when I moved there, I was in 2nd grade, and I only knew football, and the coach was like, Uh, yeah, we we only play hockey here. And I was like, I've never played hockey.

**[2:09:00] Bill Thompson:** He's like, Well, you do now. And I was like, Well, we're I'm my mom, we're poor, we don't have any money. This is like in a Boy, they're small

**[2:09:06] Joe Rogan:** selling cocaine, look at that. Look at the Hockey news. Wow.

**[2:09:12] Bill Thompson:** Oh, shit, but a all I did was watch hockey they made you, and I told them, I was like, We can't afford hockey gear. All of the kids on the team donated a hockey bag full of gear, and the coach brought it to my house. This was, like, in a little town called Plum Coulee, Manitoba, like, east of Winkler. Small town, 300 people, and they're like, You play hockey now. And I started learning to skate and did that for, like, 3 years, and it was just all everything was hockey, there was no choice in it, it was it was It's a it's crazy.

**[2:09:38] Joe Rogan:** religion up there.

**[2:09:39] Bill Thompson:** It was total religion, and, uh, it was I remember hearing that story about that guy, and it made me think of that when you were saying that, and that's strange. That's so strange that people get better when they're in these altered states.

**[2:09:50] Joe Rogan:** Well, Ariel Helwani posted something on Twitter today that someone sent me cause it was it was pretty interesting, and it was about this guy who's a goalie. See if you can find it. It was he's talking about how interesting and introspective this guy is and a w- a a fascinating thinker. And this guy's very intelligent. I don't know his name, I don't follow hockey unfortunately, but he was talking about how he has to be in an unconscious state to play, uh, a goalie, and that as a when he's in his conscious state, like, when he's joking around and talking to people and laughing and having fun with his teammates, then he's conscious, and he's thinking, he's thinking too much.

**[2:10:28] Joe Rogan:** So, he has to achieve this unconscious state in order to just react as to be a better goalie. But it was see if you can find it.

**[2:10:35] Bill Thompson:** Like a flow state almost.

**[2:10:36] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, and the way he described it was really interesting cause I was like, I get that. I understand what he's saying. Because you you get that with everything, like, I cannot talk and play pool. If I talk and play pool, I'll play like shit. Like, I'm talking to my buddies and having fun, I get frustrated. I'm like, I gotta stop talking, cause if I'm talking, I can't. Like, listen, yeah, this is the guy. Listen to this.

**[2:10:54] Bill Thompson:** About, uh, 34 saves in your night, just how you felt, uh, and what you saw as you looked out from your crease.

**[2:11:52] Joe Rogan:** Yes, uh, I felt nothing. The the problem with me is that I have a lot of fun playing, but when I start having too much fun, it makes me into from a unconscious goalie to a conscious goalie, and my conscious brain is really bad at playing goalie. So, I have to, like, let my unconscious brain do the work cause it reacts a lot quicker. When I'm having too much fun, and I'm smiling, and I'm talking to everybody, and I'm hanging out, what happens is that shifts me into more conscious brain goalie, and then I can't react in time, and then I'm slow, I'm behind the play, and then I give up 7 goals, you know?

**[2:12:32] Joe Rogan:** But today, it was just unconscious, like, don't think about anything. You know, if you ask me how I made a save, I'd be like, I have no idea, just my unconscious brain does it, and, uh, that's what you work and practice for, you know?

**[2:12:35] Speaker 6:** Well, you felt nothing during the game, but I wonder what you felt like after when you're doing the 3 stars and you hear the crowd and, When the buzzer uh, and when the buzzer you feel it.

**[2:12:36] Joe Rogan:** went, that's when it's like, Okay, now you can let all go. So, you get a a huge rush of, like, dopamine and serotonin and adrenaline and just, like, goosebumps. It's the best feeling in the world. It's, like, the biggest reason why I love to play. And, uh, yeah, then you can just let it all out. Now I can smile and enjoy myself, but, yeah, like, TV timeouts, in between periods, I'm like, Don't smile, don't talk to anyone, just focus on your game, let your unconscious brain do it.

**[2:12:44] Joe Rogan:** And, uh, it was great. It worked. What is this guy's name? Jamie? Did it say? And Ariel's, uh Okay.

**[2:12:44] Bill Thompson:** I don't follow hockey anymore But it's the either.

**[2:12:44] Joe Rogan:** same as you were talking about with archery when you're shooting a deer, right? Like, you're going through this process, you're d you're thinking, you're going through it, but it's like you're just trying to stay focused, and then after it's over, you're like, Oh, now you can be conscious and aware of this moment, like, Wow, this is insane.

**[2:12:44] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, it's a flow state. Devin And

**[2:12:44] Joe Rogan:** Cooley. Amazing.

**[2:12:44] Bill Thompson:** The only other place that I ever experienced that was in the military, like, we would plan for 6 months for an operation and do all this intelligence gathering going into an operation where blood and treasure's on the line, um, one of the operations

**[2:12:58] Joe Rogan:** Blood and treasure, I like how you put that.

**[2:12:59] Bill Thompson:** Well, uh, that that's the always the stake. When I was collecting intelligence, those are always the stakes that I kept foremost in my mind is that collect this like blood and treasures on the line, like our country's money and the taxpayer that has to labor every day to pay these fucking taxes, and the blood of the people, your brothers that you love, are the ones that are going into this cause. I was, like I said before, I'm not the long tabber, I'm not the cool guy.

**[2:13:25] Bill Thompson:** I was the nerd for the cool guys, so I treated it like it was like the like the outcome of the entire operation depended on me is always what went through my brain. That was the only way that I went into this, and if I wasn't totally locked in, but when the when I would be on a hill or in a helicopter or in a Humvee watching an operation go down based off of my intelligence work, I would get into that same flow state I get with bow hunting.

**[2:13:48] Bill Thompson:** Bow hunting when I was retiring from the military, I was so stressed out cause I had no idea what I was gonna do that was gonna replicate rep- uh, replicate this experience. I was like, Where where am I gonna get this flow state from? And it dawned on me while I was in the military that helping hunters in the same way solve targeting problems a as helping, you know, J-SOC guys or Rangers or or Green Army guys, um, that sense of completion that I would get at the end, like when bad guys were dead or arrested or, you know, a terrorist operation was sunk, um, based off of all that work was just, like, the most addictive feeling in the

**[2:14:24] Bill Thompson:** world. It's a very addictive feeling, and that flow state that I would get into when I was doing work that was particularly meaningful is such a hard thing to replicate. It's like a place you have to find yourself in, it's not a place you can put yourself in. You have to get there, like, start doing the work, start putting things together, start thinking

**[2:14:40] Joe Rogan:** Here it is. What do we got here? This is just Jamie?

**[2:14:48] Bill Thompson:** this thing. I a friend of mine taught me this a long time ago. I don't think you probably learned it in college somewhere, but

**[2:14:54] Joe Rogan:** Oh, I've seen this. Yes. Four stages of competence.

**[2:14:55] Bill Thompson:** Yes, unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, unconscious competence, and conscious completion No, no, it's, comp- competence. uh, unconscious competence Right.

**[2:15:00] Joe Rogan:** is the last one.

**[2:15:01] Bill Thompson:** The last one.

**[2:15:02] Joe Rogan:** So, the idea is that you start from ignorance, and we're all aware of a lack of knowledge of skill exists, and then you go into conscious incompetence, we're aware that a lack of knowledge and a skill exists, we're unaware at, i initially, and then you go to we are able to use the new skill with effort, so that's conscious competence, and then mastery, we're able to use the skill easily without effort.

**[2:15:28] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, it gets it gets integrated Yeah, and then it into your consciousness.

**[2:15:31] Joe Rogan:** starts all over again when you learn something new. Yeah, and that's why people are addicted to learning things new. From the be the beginning, beginner stage is very important, very, very good for the mind, and and becoming a beginner at new things, I think, is one of the best things a person can do, especially a new difficult thing like bow hunting or, like, jujitsu or, like, golf or, like, anything or yoga, anything that's hard to do, like, learning it in the beginning, it's very exciting and very good for the mind, and I think one of the things that happens to people is they stop doing that, and then their brain atrophies.

**[2:16:03] Joe Rogan:** Their brain atrophies the same way your muscles atrophy when you no longer use it. And that skill of a l- or the the the experience, rather, of learning a new skill, learning learning a new world, a new universe that you are now, uh, engrossed in. Very, very beneficial.

**[2:16:19] Bill Thompson:** It's so good for your ego too. Like, um, just I the thing as I get better at anything, whether it's, um, building apps, military operations, um, my limited time in doing things like jiu-jitsu, like, I just rejoined, or was try attempting to rejoin a gym, but I'm gonna find a different one. Um, eh, just knowing there there's a thing in life like, wh- when I when you get really good at something, you actually start to learn how much you don't know.

**[2:16:46] Bill Thompson:** It's like you've just uncovered a new world of, like, Holy shit, I really don't know anything. I thought I was getting toward the top, and this was a false mountain, and now the big, like, I w- looked at a mountain, I started to climb, I got to the top, and I'm like, Oh, shit, this isn't even the mountain I was looking at. That's over there.

**[2:16:59] Joe Rogan:** Dennis McKenna had a great expression about this. He said, Uh, and I'm gonna fuck this up, but it's essentially I'm paraphrasing it, that as you expand the bonfire of knowledge, it highlights the surface area of ignorance.

**[2:17:20] Bill Thompson:** That's pretty good.

**[2:17:20] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, and that the more you learn, and the more it expands this this understanding that you have of the world you live in, the more it highlights how much you don't know. And that's why people that pretend they know it all are so fucking dangerous, as the bonfire of knowledge grows brighter, the more the darkness is revealed to our startled eyes. That's Terence. I think his brother was the original. I think that someone's paraphrasing that. I think they're attributing that to Terence when it's Dennis, I think, cause I'm pretty I I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Terence is quoting Dennis.

**[2:17:54] Joe Rogan:** Um, either way, both brilliant guys.

**[2:17:58] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, it's like the it's like the yin-yang thing, like, have 1 foot in the competence of what you've learned, and then another foot in the unconscious incompetence of what you don't know or what you know you don't know, and it's, like, one of those things too is, like, as you begin to learn these things, you realize, I almost become ashamed, um, when I see how great I can be in certain, like, how good one of the things, uh, my grandmother taught me all of these pearls of wisdom that I come back to now because there was a significant amount of time where I was being raised by my grandparents.

**[2:18:28] Bill Thompson:** My grandmother used to say, Be good for goodness sakes. And as a kid, I was always like, Whatever, grandma.

**[2:18:34] Joe Rogan:** Isn't that like Santa Claus? It ought to be good.

**[2:18:36] Bill Thompson:** Good, uh, I think it's from that song. I think that's right, I think that's right. But she would always say, like, when I was fucking up, she'd like, Be good for goodness sakes. Like, just be good. And I threw that away, but she, like, put a seed. I think Andy said, I I put that can of food on the on the in the pantry of my mind to come back to it later, cause now in my adulthood, it's like, um, I am I'm always trying to f- um, you know, be good, but also for no reward in itself.

**[2:19:04] Bill Thompson:** Like, one of the things, this funny story I always tell is when my wife and kids, when I go to poison my children at McDonald's every once in a while, um, I always pay for the vehicle behind me. So, we'll go through and, you know, we have this thing, and my kids are always, like, looking at the vehicle behind because I always tell the person at McDonald's, like, I'm paying for the person behind me. I do this in other places in my life much more meaningfully, but this is a good example.

**[2:19:26] Bill Thompson:** And this one time, uh, the lady is like, Are you sure you wanna pay for the people behind you? And, like, my wife looks at me, and she's like, Uh, you know, what's the problem? And she's like, It's gonna be, like, a $170 or something. And I was like, Well, it's not a principle if I don't do it right now, so I'm gonna pay for them. And then as we're pulling away, there's, like, big group of, like, you know, a bunch of kids just going nuts that their food was paid for.

**[2:19:47] Bill Thompson:** Um, but I would often engage in those types of things because it made me feel good, and that's probably the wrong reason to be gracious, and as I've gotten W- why is it older

**[2:19:58] Joe Rogan:** bad to feel good, though? You're Well doing a good thing, and you feel good doing there's something a good thing.

**[2:20:02] Bill Thompson:** self-centric about it. A little There's self-centered

**[2:20:05] Joe Rogan:** bit. I say that all the and time, that there's something selfish about being generous.

**[2:20:09] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, and so now I try to do it with no expectation that the person will ever know who did it, and my hope is that they'll walk around saying they're angels in the world or good people in the world that do like, I'll never know who this person is. So now I try to do big meaningful with things in that way, but that was the pearl that my grandmother dropped me was, Be good for goodness sakes.

**[2:20:28] Bill Thompson:** Like, I'm just being good for goodness sakes. I'm not doing it because it's gonna inflate my ego, I'm not doing it because I'm gonna go tell people what I've done. Like, I'll never tell people these things, I only use the McDonald's analogy because it's a easy one that's not like I'm not this benevolent guy, but trying to do it in that way, it's just, you know, these old ways of doing things and these old sayings that people have start to come full circle, and you realize there's a ton of freaking profundity in these things that we can leverage and try to make ourselves better people by doing it, and

**[2:20:56] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, it's interesting, that idea that there's knowledge that's in us that we don't know, and that we've been given, whether, uh, I guess, it's through genetics, uh, or for lack of a better term, or through whatever soul transmission. But, you know, have you aware that there's a a young Chinese kid who did an experiment with moths? And he ran this experiment with moths in the caterpillar stage, and he found out that through the transformation from a moth to a caterpillar, you know, they essentially become, like, mush and then reemerge as a caterpillar once they go into the cocoon.

**[2:21:40] Joe Rogan:** Like, this is, like, very intense metabolic transformation where their body's, like, broken down to this mush and then becomes, uh, a butterfly, um, that or a moth, that this knowledge is transmitted through that process, and not just that, but it's also transmitted to their offspring somehow or another, and Yeah, epigenetics, he's proven this.

**[2:22:02] Bill Thompson:** epigenetics, I think it's called.

**[2:22:04] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, but this kid proved this, like, physically with these animals, with these insects. See if you can find that.

**[2:22:10] Bill Thompson:** I've only found a video saying it, and they don't have a link on the

**[2:22:15] Joe Rogan:** It has something to do with lavender. They used a a scent, and the scent, um, when they encountered the scent, they they developed this, like, they they had something where there there was, like, a vibration, and when they encountered the scent, there was an uncomfortable vibration they experienced, so they avoided that scent, and they he could prove that the moths had trans that it had gone from the caterpillar stage, and the moths still retained that memory, and then also it had been transmitted to their offspring.

**[2:22:46] Bill Thompson:** I believe BF Skinner also did this with rats. Mm, right, with mazes, Yeah, yeah, and with the smell of cats, something along those lines. Well, the the So

**[2:22:55] Joe Rogan:** rat thing is really interesting too because this puts it that the right, the Skinner, right? This also puts it into the, um, the principle of morphic resonance, you know, like, the idea is that your so this is one one of the things they've shown is that if you teach rats on the East Coast how to navigate a maze, rats on the West Coast can navigate that maze quicker. Yeah, this is you Rupert Sheldrake's work

**[2:23:19] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, strange.

**[2:23:19] Joe Rogan:** and very weird stuff, because I think we're very, um, we have this narrow-minded perception of what knowledge is and what information is and where it is and where it's coming from. It's like that thing that you said when you see someone, you get the ick. Like, well, I don't know what you're getting, like, maybe you're getting there's maybe it's pattern recognition, maybe it's not, maybe there's, like, a there's a sense that we have that's undefined that you can't put a ruler to or you can't put on a scale, but there's something there that we're not totally aware of that allows us to stay safe, and has been inside of us forever.

**[2:23:57] Bill Thompson:** I think it's, like, a framing problem because, like, the Greeks would say the spirit of war, and the the I don't think they meant, like, a flying demon or something, or, like, you know, they didn't mean that there's this god of war, and he's a physical entity. I think they mean this is a persistent thing across across all classes of humans that no matter who they are, this is inside of them, and so it's like a god to us.

**[2:24:23] Bill Thompson:** It's a god it's a god because it rules us. We don't it doesn't have we don't have it, it has us.

**[2:24:28] Joe Rogan:** Well, it's that spirit that comes out when I was talking about with protests. Yeah, it's there's and so a m the mob mentality thing. It's this thing that happens to us.

**[2:24:37] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, and so if that's why I say I don't make a lot of distinction between God, the collective unconscious, or transcendent reality. It's this abyss of unknowing that we are fortunate to tap into every once in a while and pull something out of it, and, uh, like, uh, it was interesting, I watched your interview with J. D. Vance, and you guys were talking about the difference between, like, h- what he conceptualizes as a demon and what you conceptualize as an alien, and I just think that was a mismatch in pedants.

**[2:25:08] Bill Thompson:** I think you guys could be talking about the same thing, but you're using a a regionally accepted formal lexicon to describe it, but you're but you could be saying the same thing. So Perhaps, what, what

**[2:25:20] Joe Rogan:** but I had a purpose maybe to why I was questioning him on that. My purpose is that my pers- my perception was that he was signaling to, uh, a certain group of very religious voters.

**[2:25:31] Bill Thompson:** Yes, I know.

**[2:25:32] Joe Rogan:** You know what I mean?

**[2:25:33] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, no, I I and I know, uh, that's why I was so I don't know if I messaged you about this or not, I believe I did, but it blew my mind that people were talking shit that you had him on. It's like, why wouldn't you want the vice president on? Like, there are a bunch of comments like, Oh, so-and-so's here, big freaking deal, blah, blah, blah. It's like, Look, we're in a hot war, and there's a lot of shit going on in the world, and even if Joe's been told he can't ask about certain things like you talked about with Kamala, I still want the guy talking for 3 I didn't hours.

**[2:26:00] Bill Thompson:** There's nobody

**[2:26:00] Joe Rogan:** get any re requests from him about Well, I'm I'm not talking about just saying, even if things. that happened, I Yeah.

**[2:26:05] Bill Thompson:** still want those people talking for 3 hours because you can't sit for 3 hours and talk and not reveal yourself. Like, I I th- I mean, things Doth protest too much. Like, you will talk about the things that are going on even if you don't want to just get the person talking, and that's what I think is the beauty of this podcast for a myriad reasons. One of them is everyone can come on here and just talk, and people will reveal themselves in those 3 hours.

**[2:26:30] Bill Thompson:** You will get to the nexus of who someone is, um, over that 3 hours, and that's why I w- I want Bernie on here, or I want J.D. on here, or I want Trump on here, Kamala. And when someone won't come on to the biggest podcast in the world who's running for high office, then we should dispatch with that person. And it d wouldn't matter if it was this podcast or another one, it the biggest if you can't sit there and talk about your principles and your organizing, um, criteria of how you that way you metabolize the world and why you think you're the one who's fit to change it.

**[2:27:02] Bill Thompson:** If you can't talk, um, extemporaneously about that, I don't want you in high office because you're not revealing yourself.

**[2:27:09] Joe Rogan:** Right, you're not revealing yourself, you're probably a construct. You're probably y- you probably have this thing that you're promoting, this this image that you're pursuing, and that you're you're trying to get the general public to accept, that's not totally real.

**[2:27:25] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, this isn't Fox News for 15 minutes where you get to read the talking points.

**[2:27:29] Joe Rogan:** Right, that's that's the issue with those things. This is just not enough of an understanding of who that person is, and in a long-form podcast, you do get that understanding. I get why people have that sense you shouldn't platform people. I think that instinct is incorrect.

**[2:27:44] Bill Thompson:** If I didn't like someone, I want them platformed.

**[2:27:46] Joe Rogan:** No, well, not only that, that you already know them, like, they're already out there, you're not gonna make them more popular, they are who they are. But, like, there's certain times, like the Trump interview was a good one, where you never got a chance to see that guy talk that way in in a really a non-combative situation, cause almost all media that he did is either kissing his ass, like, on Fox News, or trying to d d take everything he said out of context.

**[2:28:15] Bill Thompson:** It was binary.

**[2:28:16] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, and so, you know, and you get a chance to see someone communicate for a long period of time.

**[2:28:23] Bill Thompson:** I got so much shit about Trump after the podcast with you, when I gave him, like, a C plus or something. That was a majority of my messages were, Were they mad Yeah, you don't

**[2:28:32] Joe Rogan:** or happy?

**[2:28:32] Bill Thompson:** understand Trump and what he's doing. There's 4D chess here, and you're not getting it. Oh, the And I was, like

**[2:28:36] Joe Rogan:** 4D chess one is great.

**[2:28:37] Bill Thompson:** and I was like, Okay, um, please elucidate me on what's going on right now because I'm not getting it, um, but because I was for him in the beginning, and then when everything started going topsy- topsy-turvy and I wasn't able to, r- you know, rationally predict what the next step was gonna be, now I'm the bad guy. It's like, Look, I just wanted, like, these 5 things, and I'm not getting them. I'm getting one of them.

**[2:28:59] Bill Thompson:** Uh, can we have a discussion about the other 4? Um, and so, uh, just it's like you said, people aren't gonna get changed. Co- there's no one who's gonna listen to your podcast with Kamala and say, You know what? I was a right-wing guy, you know, before this podcast, but now I think I might vote for Kamala.

**[2:29:16] Joe Rogan:** But the thing is, there are a bunch of people that she could have reached that are in the middle.

**[2:29:20] Bill Thompson:** For sure, yeah, absolutely.

**[2:29:21] Joe Rogan:** And that's where I think there was a missed opportunity, and I think a lot of people agree to that.

**[2:29:25] Bill Thompson:** Or who wanna know more about her. Like, the, uh, one thing I'll say about I'll say a good thing about Trump. I've met him a few times, I was on stage with him in North Carolina. He's really good at, like, summing one up and summing on up, summing someone up quickly. Like, when I first met him, I, like, shook his hand, and he's like, So, you're, like, the AI guy? You're the AI guy. You do AI?

**[2:29:46] Bill Thompson:** And I was like, Uh, well, yeah, I mean, I was a soldier in the military, I kinda learned it while I was there, and he's like, Soldier, I could see you being central casting AI. I don't think so, and, uh, and that was our conversation, and I was like, this guy's like, he just summed me up in, like, a second, like, uh, cause I, you know, I I'm more soldier than I am that, and, uh, he said some other things, but that was about it, and I just stood behind him on stage for a couple of hours.

**[2:30:10] Bill Thompson:** But, um, uh, you know, i it's, he's got a ability he's got this comedic timing, which I think is, un- like, unheard of, um, pretty good, um, but, uh, there's other things I just disagree with, and that's that's a free world and Well, to disagree.

**[2:30:26] Joe Rogan:** it's very clear that, um, you don't have ultimate power as a president. You can't just do things. It's And thank this

**[2:30:33] Bill Thompson:** God for it.

**[2:30:34] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that's what the whole process is supposed to be about. That's that's the reason why we have Congress and the Senate. It's the reason why all that stuff exists.

**[2:30:44] Bill Thompson:** What what do you think? What do what do you are you think we're looking at Gavin Newsom and

**[2:30:49] Joe Rogan:** I don't think so. or someone like I don't I

**[2:30:50] Bill Thompson:** that?

**[2:30:51] Joe Rogan:** think he's too much of a liability. I don't think they're gonna there's there's too much going on with him. There's just I mean, unless they were severely desperate, I think it's probably gonna be someone who's not tainted in the public eye. Um, someone, you know, because we buy narrative so quickly. We we hated, or I don't say we, a lot of people hated Kamala Harris as a vice president, and then all of a sudden she was our savior.

**[2:31:14] Joe Rogan:** And they did that quickly. You know, there's there's a way that they can promote things, especially now through bots and Oh my social media, and God. social media is infested with nonsense. It's infested with bots, it's infested with completely fake stories. There's so many stories that I read, like, national news stories that are absolutely fake on X, and that people just put up there, and I think they're trying to discourage that somehow. I think, you know, like, y- you you don't get as much money from do cause there's things like, you get money from posting on X.

**[2:31:49] Joe Rogan:** I don't, but some people do. Like, you you sign up, and you it's people that make their living

**[2:31:53] Bill Thompson:** I knew they had it

**[2:31:54] Joe Rogan:** from engagement. on Facebook. I didn't Oh, yeah, know they had they have it

**[2:31:56] Bill Thompson:** it on X. on X. Yeah, people Okay.

**[2:31:57] Joe Rogan:** make their living i with engagement.

**[2:32:00] Bill Thompson:** But the bots are a real thing, um, I can speak personally to that, like, I've pulled the string on the bot stuff, looking at how they get funded, where they're ran out of, the people that are behind them, why they do them, how they do them, um, and it's such a real thing, um, to a degree that people just don't understand how they're being being manipulated by these things.

**[2:32:18] Joe Rogan:** It's enormous.

**[2:32:19] Bill Thompson:** It's a it's an enormous market, billions, and it's it's funded in ways that I think would surprise people, um, and thank God for things like data leaks leaks and things like it, um, where we can get to this information. Or just the fact that there's campaign finance laws and that money has to be routed and accounted for and these types of things to so that people can pull the string on it and understand how things are being manipulated in the public

**[2:32:44] Joe Rogan:** should be illegal. eye. It really should be. I I am all for people being able to express their opinions, but it should be an individual's opinions or the opinions of an individual that represents an organization. If you're a spokesperson for an organization, you wanna tweet something, okay, no problem with that. But I think that organized campaigns where, you know, uh, let's say in particular, like, um, there's some sort of big social issue, some some some something that's going on in the world or something that involves our civilization, our culture, and then you have either a foreign country, or you have an intelligence agency, or you have a corporation that's funding, uh, this propaganda narrative, this fake viewpoint, and making it

**[2:33:27] Joe Rogan:** look like people are in lockstep with this, and then you've got a lot of people that, if that whatever that narrative is is attached to the ideology they identify with, whether it's left-wing or right-wing, then those people will start parroting those points, and you'll see it. You see this, like, sheep-like behavior with people, and it has a tremendous effect on how we view things as a culture, and I think it should be illegal. I think you should have to be a person, post for yourself.

**[2:33:56] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, even if you post, even if you're not named, you should have to authenticate some way if you're going to enter the zeitgeist of public a any of these types of things. Because, uh, I mean, the the other thing about s Facebook and social media and these are things that people don't realize is they can feed you the narrative and put it on the vector that helps you metabolize it in the best way. In other words, if a public person is running for office, and you might only agree with 10% of what this public person thinks, um, there are ways to manipulate the algorithm so you're only fed that 10%.

**[2:34:27] Bill Thompson:** So you only understand this this you're only getting what you agree with with this particular politician, and there might be 10 other things you don't agree with that you're not going to see unless you pull the thread yourself. And, unfortunately, a just a lot of people don't pull the thread themselves cause they're busy, they have to make money, they have families, and so they're only getting one side of the story, um, and then it's being monetized, which is also really gross.

**[2:34:48] Bill Thompson:** Um, it's just super dangerous. It's super dangerous.

**[2:34:51] Joe Rogan:** But it's so super dangerous and super easy to manipulate us. It's it's like there's never been a better time to use propaganda on a society than today.

**[2:35:01] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, and I watch the ways I've been in the past, how it's happened to me, so it's like, no, I'm not immune to this, even though I understand a lot of it and how it's happening.

**[2:35:08] Joe Rogan:** None of us are, and you're certainly not immune to your algorithm. Your algorithm in the echo chamber that you exist in, they they just constantly bombard you with one-sided opinions. Yeah, it's it's a weird time in terms of truth, and, you know, and everyone has to figure out what's the best way for them to engage with that, and, uh, my the way that I do it, I only look at things that people send me. Someone has to send me something interesting.

**[2:35:32] Joe Rogan:** I'm not seeking anything out anymore. It's just too much. It's too negative.

**[2:35:37] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, and you'll drown in it.

**[2:35:38] Joe Rogan:** You d you'll drown in it, and it also takes away from your time. It it's, uh, it's such a time suck and such an attention suck, and it will wasted it's wasted energy. And I I I always try to explain it to people in terms of, uh, I try to look at my attention and my energy of the day as units. I have a 100 units, and if I spend 30 of those units concentrating on nonsense and horseshit, I've wasted 30 units, very precious units.

**[2:36:05] Joe Rogan:** It's only a certain amount of days in a year, and a certain amount of years in your life.

**[2:36:09] Bill Thompson:** I was gonna say that about gambling. The reason I don't like gambling is because if I throw down $100, that's an hour of my time, and it makes me worried. Like, I only have so much time. I'm like, I I'm I'm throwing an hour away. I just threw an hour to this casino.

**[2:36:25] Joe Rogan:** I think I would gamble on fights if I wasn't involved in the UFC. I think I would do that cause I think I'm pretty good at it, It gets and I think you into the you're fight. Yeah, Yeah, 100%. If you got money on Gaethje and he starts to knock down Ilia Topuria, you're like, Oh, shit!

**[2:36:37] Bill Thompson:** I was doing cartwheels in my living room, but, um, it it it I just think about things as time. And so when I had that three grand, I'm like, Well, this is what this would take me. I think of my personal time, I bill it about a hundred bucks an hour. Is about how I look at my personal time. So, that's the the it's time I can't get back, or I've just gained a bunch of time by getting that 3,000 bucks.

**[2:36:55] Bill Thompson:** So I get nervous when I think about getting rid of it. Like, I don't like to spend like that. I w- I wanna be able to pull the thread. And you said it is units, I would s money units, it doesn't matter, because time, ultimately, in the final analysis, is the only thing we can't make more of. Right, and At least not now.

**[2:37:08] Joe Rogan:** I think to live a better life, use your time wisely, and that is an old age-old expression.

**[2:37:15] Bill Thompson:** Another one of those pearls of wisdom that seems to come use your back

**[2:37:18] Joe Rogan:** time wisely.

**[2:37:19] Bill Thompson:** only so much of it.

**[2:37:20] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, it's so finite. I mean, it it's so funny when I I have days where I do nothing on purpose, where I just I'm burnt out, I've done too much, and I just like to vegetate. I just like to hang out in front of the TV and watch cool shit. I just wanna be entertained. But I'm amazed at how much time flies by. It's like, sometimes I'll I'll be watching just YouTube documentaries, and it's 5 hours later, I'm like, Fuck.

**[2:37:45] Joe Rogan:** Yeah, Covid feels That's crazy.

**[2:37:46] Bill Thompson:** like yesterday. Right, it does. It It does.

**[2:37:49] Joe Rogan:** does. It does. It really does. It's it's nuts. It's nuts. We live in a a very unique moment in history, and I think about to become even more unique, and

**[2:38:01] Bill Thompson:** In what ways? with AI. I Yeah.

**[2:38:04] Joe Rogan:** think the way AI is gonna transform society is going to be, uh, unlike anything that's ever happened before.

**[2:38:10] Bill Thompson:** How do you think it's gonna trans- form society?

**[2:38:13] Joe Rogan:** Well, I think jobs are gonna be eliminated. That's a big one,

**[2:38:16] Bill Thompson:** Eliminated?

**[2:38:16] Joe Rogan:** eliminated. I think there's gonna be no use for people for a lot of things that people do right now.

**[2:38:21] Bill Thompson:** What time scale are we talking? 10 years maximum. Yeah, Maximum?

**[2:38:24] Joe Rogan:** maxima in 10 years, the world's gonna be unrecognizable. That's what I think.

**[2:38:30] Bill Thompson:** So, w- how do you feel? Do you think this will happen? Do you think we're on that course already and that it that, um, all jobs will be subsumed?

**[2:38:42] Joe Rogan:** No, not all jobs. I think creative endeavors are always gonna exist. There's always gonna be human beings are always gonna have the need for human connection. We're always gonna wanna see live sports. We're always gonna see wanna see live music, live comedy is always gonna exist. Uh, I think going to the movies is a great, like, sort of a community experience. I used to love going to comedy movies. Comedy movies when they used to make em, cause they're fucking Garbage.

**[2:39:07] Joe Rogan:** the woke killed comedy movies. We used to be able to go and the you're laughing really hard with a whole group of people Whole group that you don't

**[2:39:14] Bill Thompson:** of people.

**[2:39:14] Joe Rogan:** know, just like going to a comedy club. It's very similar in a lot of ways.

**[2:39:17] Bill Thompson:** I was telling my wife about your comedy club, and I said, It's the closest thing to 1996 that I can get to, and she's like, Well, what what are you talking about? I'm like, Well, you lock your phone away, you go in there, there's no worry about someone recording something. People get to go on stage and talk shit, and you're just you just feel like you're back in a place like, no one's sitting there, scroll I hate watching, like, people at dinner, and both of them are scrolling their phones.

**[2:39:42] Bill Thompson:** And you don't see any of that, and it's just shit talking and fun, and you're with your buddies, and you're laughing, and it's just a great experience, and and so I have a theory about AI, a with when it comes to what you just talked about. So, I think we're in agreement in at least one thing, and I think what's gonna I think what's gonna happen is if you look at, like, the number 1 movie in 2020 or 2019 was, like, Avengers Endgame or Avengers Infinity War, those 2 movies.

**[2:40:10] Bill Thompson:** Highly digitized, uh, tons of CGI, everything's getting done in front of a green screen, um, and it made, you know, $2 billion, or over a billion, I don't remember exactly what the number was. And then you look at this last year, and the biggest movie per dollar spent was Obsession, which was made by a YouTube creator, um, who was doing stuff out of his basement a few years earlier. So, I think your to your point about people wanting genuine human interaction, my theory as it pertains to AI is AI will become ubiquitous in certain ways.

**[2:40:43] Bill Thompson:** It will run it will eventually, unfor- fortunately or unfortunately, run massive parts of the economy. Um, it will run a lot of things, but what but what will happen with people will get sick, and in a few years, your daughters are gonna be able to send you an Avengers movie where it's you, Ari, Shane, Right now, and and they can do well, I'm saying, that. like, a they'll with a prompt, they'll make a 2-hour movie, and it'll just be the Avengers movie, and it will look undistinguishable from another movie, and you'll get sick of that quick.

**[2:41:16] Bill Thompson:** And and then people I think things like regional theater houses, well, my wife and I's favorite thing to do is go to, um, The Nutcracker at Christmas time in DC at the National Theater. Those things will start springing up and they'll be easier to spring up because to start a business, to start an LLC, if you have a novel idea, you're looking at 30 to $100,000 of negotiating red tape and government in order to start a business.

**[2:41:40] Bill Thompson:** AI is gonna make that in super easy. And I think in a few years, we're gonna see theaters. I think we're gonna see the I I agree with Elon in that prices are gonna get way cheaper to make something production scale-wise, Amazon's gonna be you'll be able to be able to buy a coffee table for a dollar, $2, $3. I think there will be a large deflationary effect where products are gonna get cheaper, and the quality of life will go up because more people will be able to buy cheaper things.

**[2:42:06] Bill Thompson:** And if you're living for at on $10,000 a year, you're gonna be able to live really well in the coming years because of AI. But because people will be able to set up businesses easier, like craft tables, handmade things, people setting up businesses, it will allow a rejuvenation of creative endeavors, and people with money or people who are making money in the middle income and above, middle class income and above, will yearn for handmade things.

**[2:42:33] Bill Thompson:** And because it's so easy to start these businesses, we're gonna it's it's the same thing with people who have money now. All of my friends who have money now have classic cars. A lot of them have lots of classic cars, they have handmade things, handmade furniture, all of these things. They're the I think the market is gonna get flooded because people are gonna be so sick of highly stylized AI making thing everything look awesome. I think it's much more likely that in 10 years, if you and your wife and myself and my wife are gonna go out, we're gonna go to a regional theater house and watch Hamlet or some play or something like that.

**[2:43:04] Bill Thompson:** Yes, that will start with people with more money, but as more theater houses pop up and more creative endeavors, I think people are gonna be able to get creatively back into things. And AI, in my estimation, will exist as like a utility in your house. Um, they're trying to not do that in ways that we've talked about. But, um, a a good output for AI is it becomes a water heater in your house. You have your own personal GPU that you do your own training or your own things on, or it does your bills for you, it takes care of the doldrums of life, and it can do all of these things for you.

**[2:43:35] Bill Thompson:** It's ran locally, it's not something that you go to OpenAI for or you go to, um, a like a large company, name your large AI company. Um, a good output from AI would would be we have these open weighted systems that are available to everyone. You buy your GPUs, it goes in your basement, your data never leaves your home, you're not out training some other company's AI. It all gets done regionally, and it handles your bills for you, it does your bank account, it does all That's a Of these things.

**[2:44:02] Bill Thompson:** Very rose-colored glasses It is.

**[2:44:04] Joe Rogan:** View. Yeah. It is. Um But I I see where they're the the the human thing, like, human created stuff is gonna be more valuable. That's the best possible best case scenario.

**[2:44:14] Bill Thompson:** And and people will be able to afford things. If you're not making a lot of money and you don't have a lot of economic output, you're gonna be able to live very Well, we'll see Well, I

**[2:44:23] Joe Rogan:** If we don't get killed Think. Um, we'll By the robots.

**[2:44:24] Bill Thompson:** We'll see. If we don't get killed by the robots I mean, I just I don't see a path to sentience with AI in its current form today. I guess it's my big

**[2:44:33] Joe Rogan:** That's another conversation that we're we're gonna have to have when we Have more time. That's a that's a I didn't think Long one. There'd be a That's a long Second time, One.

**[2:44:39] Bill Thompson:** So now I believe you Oh, come on, When you say Man. We'll do It. There's

**[2:44:40] Joe Rogan:** It again.

**[2:44:41] Bill Thompson:** A third time. 100%. Let's definitely Um

**[2:44:42] Joe Rogan:** Do it again.

**[2:44:43] Bill Thompson:** I I really appreciate you having

**[2:44:44] Joe Rogan:** My pleasure, brother.

**[2:44:44] Bill Thompson:** Me here.

**[2:44:45] Joe Rogan:** It's always great to talk to you. You're a fascinating guy.

**[2:44:47] Bill Thompson:** If I can do the, um, obligatory, um, P- um, so Spartan Forge, my company, we've released 2 Hunt Plus updates, tons of UI updates, UX, tons of features. We're about to release that thermal thing that I just talked about before. We've got car play. We've done a lot of things. We've grown a ton, and, uh, there's some too many features for me to, uh, go into there, but there's we just produced a film, uh, on YouTube about a engineer in our company who's also a gunsmith called, um, Old Soul.

**[2:45:17] Bill Thompson:** We're doing a third one about my cabin, um, that I purchased back, um, and having my family out there, and we're gonna have some veterans out there and raise some Is this Spartan Money.

**[2:45:25] Joe Rogan:** Forge YouTube channel?

**[2:45:26] Bill Thompson:** Yeah, on the Spartan Forge YouTube channel. And we're gonna do one about my dad's cabin coming up here, and we've got some great companies, Hoyt is sponsoring it, um, VPA Archery, which have you shot VPA's before? If you haven't, oh, You have. Uh, best broadhead I love those broadheads. That's the V

**[2:45:40] Joe Rogan:** Arch they make the archery country broadhead. The whole punch. My god. Dude, Yeah.

**[2:45:43] Bill Thompson:** I have been aiming for shoulder blades with those things on does and Bucks, 'cause you can just double shoulder blade and It's a it's Animal and drop

**[2:45:50] Joe Rogan:** A great broadhead.

**[2:45:51] Bill Thompson:** It. It's a great broadhead. So VPA, um, uh, Azio Camo is another one, and my buddy Joe, um, is runs Azio Camo. These companies are sponsoring us, um, to produce these films, and we're gonna do a coffee table book with it. But we're trying to get into reminding people why we hunt, and why we're out here doing these crazy things, and it's not about bloodlust or killing. It's it's about the joy of having a backstrap with your kids at the table, like, you know, up until we run out of deer meat, most of my kids has died is deer meat, and it's about that coming of age and getting back to our roots and engaging that circuitry that we talked

**[2:46:27] Bill Thompson:** about before, and as paradoxical as it sounds, I'm hoping to help people do that through an application, but, um, yeah, we're producing a lot of stuff, and, uh, it's also just reminding hunters why we hunt, it's not just about the big racks and the bloodlust. Um, it's about food and tribe and Beautiful. Shared heritage. So, thank you again.

**[2:46:45] Joe Rogan:** Beautiful. My pleasure, brother. Affection. Thank you. Good to see you. Affection. Bye.