Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. What's up, Bill? How you doing, Jeff? Good to see you, bro. Good to see you. This might be one of the coolest things anybody's ever given me. So, you gave me this knife.
Explain all this. All right, so, I mean, there's a larger explanatory reason behind this. My brother and I grew up, my father died when I was five. My brother and I grew up doing these things called rendezvous. Have you ever heard of them? In what way?
What is a rendezvous?
So there you go. So what a rendezvous is, it's not – you know you go to those like – I don't even know what they're called, but people do like reenactments.
Oh, okay.
Like Civil War reenactments? It's not like that. So that's the closest thing, approximation, to probably what it is. You get invited to them, or these days they're easier to get to, but my stepfather, the guy my mother remarried, brought us to him. All you do is camp, but you're only allowed to camp, and no one comes to the camp, or sometimes they might have people at the end.
But while you're in the camp, everything in the camp has to be 1840 or prior.
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Chapter 2: What is a rendezvous and how was it experienced?
So there can be no modern appurtenances, nothing like a refrigerator or nothing like that. 1840, why that year? At the end of the fur trapping. That was considered like Jeremiah Johnson time, like peak fur trapping. So there's people, you know, they dress like either... You know, revolutionary, like American revolutionaries, or they dress like mountain men, or they dress like Indians.
How'd you guys dress?
Mountain men. So while we're there, you learn all kinds of stuff while you're reenacting. Like I learned how to brain tan hides. I learned how to traditionally do traditional archery, stuff like that. So anyway, this knife was a knife I had actually started working on with my brother a while ago. I do more of like the brain tanning, tomahawk flying.
And when you're saying brain tanning, you're talking about using brains to tan animal hides, right?
Yes, yes.
Using animal brains. What does brains do? Why does brains work?
It softens the leather in a natural way. And what's cool about it is every animal, no matter what animal you kill, has the exact amount of brain needed in order to tan the hide. So you don't need any additional, like people use egg yolks or mayonnaise or something like that. All you do is you take the brain out of the cavity, you grind it up, you mix it into some water.
And then after you've cleaned the leather and you've scraped it clean, you stretch it. I usually use like a dull shovel. You stretch it over the dull shovel and then you soak it in the brain water mixture. And then you just keep repeating that pattern and the leather gets like a really nice soft feel to it. What is it about the brain? Is it the fat? It breaks down the leather.
I'm not sure if it's the fat or I haven't gotten that deep into it, but it breaks down the leather and just makes it feel really soft, really nice. So anyway, this knife here, I started, I killed that bear. So the jaw is made out of two bear jaws or out of one bear jaw split in half. So that was a bear I killed in Canada in 2017. It was my biggest black bear.
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Chapter 3: How does brain tanning work and why is it effective?
So did you bring your own food or did you have to hunt for food? So you bring your own food, but there are other rendezvous that are kind of invite only. And I don't even think a lot of people who do rendezvous knew about these. But there's ones that I think they're called. I think I might be speaking out of school.
Somebody might send me an email after this, but I'm going to talk about it anyway because I never got read the right act. They're called juried. I think they called them juried Southerns. And I've only been to one of those. And that's where everything in the camp has to be pre-1840. You meet down in a parking lot. You put everything on the back of a mule. When I did mine, it was up in the...
I think it was the Bighorns. So, you know, you talk to a rancher, get everything packed up. You go into the back of the Bighorns and everything in camp has to be pre-1840, as close as it can get. They'll even look at your stitching and say, oh, that was sewn with a sewing machine. You got to take that off.
And it's always these weird, like, eccentric history teachers that run them, like guys who... teaches history at Berkeley or something like that. There's other places. They just really enjoy living like this. And at those ones, if they're in season, you can hunt whatever's in season. You're hunting with traditional archery. It's really good for kids.
The internet wasn't a problem as much when I was a kid. I was certainly into computers. I have been since I was a child. But you could just detach. Everyone's running around crazy, sitting around the campfire at night. People are singing songs on the guitar. You're learning how to do things like this. You're learning how to brain tan. You're learning how to live traditionally.
And it's an eccentric cult kind of. It's not a cult. It's an eccentric group of people. It's a lot of fun. People take it very seriously. There's more advertising surrounding it now than there used to be because numbers are kind of dwindling. But I did my last one last year with my brother.
So if you go on my Instagram, there's a picture of my brother, my son, and I doing, I think, our second rendezvous together. And we're just dressed like, you know. I've actually got an awesome war shirt. I can show you the picture. I've got an awesome war shirt that a friend of mine went to war with. He was half Native American.
His grandfather was Ojibwe or something, Chippewa, something like that. And he was... I don't remember what his role was, but anyway, we deployed to Iraq together, and his grandpa made me this war shirt. Oh, there, you found it. Jamie? He pulled it up. That's my lodge. How much do you enjoy a shower after you get out of here? I mean, as long as you keep, you know, they have showers in camp.
They've got a showering area where it's just like pallets. That's the inside of my lodge. So there's a cooler at this one. This is not a juried rendezvous. And... So you can shower while you're, some of them, they call them hooters. They'll be like a latrine in a shower area in camp. But also like some of them, I don't do it at all.
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Chapter 4: What are the challenges and experiences of rendezvous events?
They're really federalist-minded, state-minded. And there's, you know, even for that being 250 years ago, there's a profound amount of profanity in that. Like, let's change things slowly and let social experiments take place and adopt the best parts of those things and then integrate them to the culture overall as we move along. But, you know, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Yeah, I think in this country, one of the primary problems that people have is a profound lack of respect for discipline and how important discipline is for your life. And discipline is associated with conservatism. And because of that, like a lot of people think that I'm.
I don't think I'm anything I think I have politically or ideologically I have a lot of everything in me I don't think I identify with one side or another but if one thing that I agree with conservative people on conservative people lend more towards the importance of discipline hard work discipline Don't complain. Get things done.
Deal with the hand that you've been dealt with and just sort it out and get to work. Don't cry. Don't look for other people to save you. They're not going to. And this is not something that's celebrated in society.
It's thought of as a cruelty that if you say that you need discipline, that you're not treating these people that are victims of circumstance with the proper respect or with the proper empathy and – I think a certain amount of empathy is probably not so good for you at a certain point in time.
There comes a point in time where you're letting people wallow in their bullshit and just make excuses for why they're not getting anything done. And in that sense, I think California is – that is a giant part of what's wrong with California. What's wrong with California when it comes to crime? What's wrong with California?
The way they address crime and the way they address homelessness and all these issues that they have, they don't put their foot down. At a certain point in time, you got to realize like – what Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy. Society can suffer from suicidal empathy. And at a certain point in time, you got to enforce rules and you got to make it so that people have to get their shit together.
Yeah. And that suicidal empathy becomes a way for the person who's imposing it on someone else to feel good about themselves, which makes it even trickier and even more insidious because they're feeling good from the weaponization of other people's
And the thing about that is none of the rules that you're going to impose, especially as a legislator or as somebody in a think tank, you'll never feel the repercussions of them. You'll never have to actually deal with it day to day. You're just imposing it on someone else and saying, I better understand the structure of reality and the fabric of the world And you can't help but be this way.
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Chapter 5: What events led to the arrest of Jamar Patek outside Osama bin Laden's compound?
He was actually arrested outside of Osama bin Laden's compound the day after he was killed. We were trying to kill him on that island, or in and around that island is where we were trying to find him and kill him. So they're terrorist facilitators. They did the USS Cole bombing.
Zoom back out. I want to see the Philippines one more time, like all the islands. when you zoom all the way out. It's so nuts how many islands there are.
It's so big. Yeah, so up north in Manila is mostly the Christian population. And as you get down south, it's the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao. And that is all of where these terrorist operations were happening. And I believe that mostly pulled out of there, there might be still some people in Zamboanga.
Chapter 6: What role did the Philippines play in U.S. counterinsurgency operations?
I'm not sure anymore because it's been five years, four years since I retired. But yeah, we were doing counterinsurgency operations down there and guys died down there and they're uh, combat operations. And, uh, I was out there. Um, I was in a tactical military intelligence battalion and I was attached to the first special forces group.
And we were down there a couple of times and a lot of people don't even know about it. So, yeah, I never heard about it. Yeah.
So, uh, anyway, um, sorry, no, no sidebar, but I'm so stunned at how many islands are in the Philippines. It'll spread out of this.
Yeah, it's insane. And the thing about it is I'd go to all of these little outposts and these out islands. We were always debriefing these guys. And I'm going to get these terms wrong, so I'm sure there'll be people in the comments. But I think they were called bongerize or something like that. But they were like these mayors of each one of these little islands.
And there would be terrorists in and around those areas. And we'd try to make friends with these guys so they'd give us some information. And every one of those places was absolutely beautiful. Like you'd go there and be like, man, Hilton could turn this into something in a short order. Right.
You know, when you're out of these places, beautiful beach, beautiful lush jungles, the best swimming water. Nicest people too. Oh, the Filipino people are some of my favorite people, man. Like you want to talk, the guys that we worked with out there, they're a scout. I think they're called scout sniper, scout Rangers. And they were special. I think they were like their special forces.
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Chapter 7: How did personal experiences shape Bill Thompson's views on technology and security?
We go to the range with these guys and show them stuff. And they're the most, um, ride or die type of guys you'll ever meet in your life. Like, you know, so-and-so said this about you last week and I could kill him. It's like, no, dude, it's cool. It's like, don't worry about it. Like fun fact, there's some of the best pool players on earth too.
Oh really? Great. Some of the greatest pool players of all time came out of the Philippines.
They're just great people. I mean, I just, the people down there were fantastic and it was awful because those guys would be bombing churches, Christian churches and stuff like that. And, uh, They're doing counter, like I said, counter intelligence operations out there, doing intelligence operations collection to inform that battle picture.
But those guys had direct links with Osama bin Laden and other people. Wow. I had no idea. Yeah. Right after, like I said, I think it was, I think if you look it up, I think his name is Patek, P-A-T-E-K, P-A-T-E-K. And he was arrested outside of Osama bin Laden's compound. And we had been chasing him in the Philippines. Wow.
Chapter 8: What are the implications of AI and individual rights discussed by Bill Thompson?
Because we thought he was still down there. There was another guy that I believe we killed him. His name was Al-Bader Parad. But yeah, my job was not, I always say this on podcasts because the veteran community is wild right now. They love to cut each other down right now. There's something weird going on where, like obviously lying. Yeah, call the people out.
I prefer to call people out face to face. But I always make sure people know I was not a cool guy. Like sometimes I got to dress like one. You know, for a few years I didn't wear any uniforms and I got to grow my beard out and act like a cool guy. But I was really a nerd for cool guys. I've literally got pictures of myself
down in the holo or in Afghanistan or anywhere else and tape around my glasses and Pez dispenser and my radio and collection equipment looking like a true blue American nerd. But I was not the guy who kicked the door in, I was always the guy who pointed the door out.
So I'd be safe in the Humvee in the back, you know, eat an MRE and somebody that looked like another gorilla, you know, like Annie Stumpf or Tim Kennedy or someone like that. I'd be like, is that the house? I'd be like, pretty sure that's the house. You guys might want to be safe, but go ahead. I'll be in the Humvee. I'll be out here or I'll be in an airplane above, you know.
And yeah, it was it was. Being born in North Dakota and, you know, my mother, single mother, after she left that first guy, trailer house in the middle of this little town called Cavalier, North Dakota. I had no options. I was a horrible student. That's crazy that you're so smart, but you were a horrible student. I wouldn't, yeah, I'd call myself curious before I'd call myself smart.
But, you know, my mother, you know, I don't know if you remember, you would remember this, but maybe other people my age would. you'd get these Scholastic book order forms that you'd bring home from school and you could order books. There'd always be on the back page, there'd always be little cool stuff, like you could get a pair of gloves or a hat or something.
Anyway, one time there was a coil radio that you could order with an earpiece, and you'd put this coil radio together with an earpiece, no battery, It was just the electromagnetic radiation would activate the coil and the coil would, you could listen to radio chatter. Really? With no battery? Yeah, yeah. Just tiny little radio. How did it, what was the power? The electromagnetic radiation.
And you would just, kind of like a record, like, you know, how you hit a record. Electromagnetic radiation would hit the coil and the coil would feed up to an amplifier or up to an earpiece. And the earpiece, you could hear chatter and you could tune it. Did the earpiece have a battery? I don't think anything had a battery on it. I think it was just a... Wow.
I could be mistaken, but I don't believe it was. Powered by electromagnetic radiation. Yeah. I mean, you can look it up, Jamie, if you want. Sorry to say that again, but... Tighten that thing down. That thing's driving me crazy. Yeah, sorry.
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