Paul Rosolie on Surviving Tribal Warriors & Amazon Cartels

Donate to the Junglekeepers: https://www.junglekeepers.org/donate We are blessed today to have such an incredible guest, Paul Rosolie. We're talking: - Amazon rainforest and the highly specialised local knowledge - Bumping into uncontacted tribes - Narco-traffickers & jungle airstrips - Hunting actually being beneficial - Anacondas - Being so close to saving and establishing a national park - Ayahuasca experiences and spirituality And much, much more Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:01 Culture shock, DC + Almost killing Lex 4:50 Survival content + Chances of us surviving 6:38 Strategy for pooing in the wild 13:29 Specialist knowledge, Snakes + JJ's fluency 19:50 Learning from locals + Fearlessness 22:46 Dying, The canopy + Brazil 26:46 Tech, It's still real + Floating logs 34:07 Sleeping, the sounds + Camping 40:05 Uncontacted tribes + Sh0t in the head 50:22 Meeting a tribe + We want bananas 59:52 Protecting them, Loggers + Narco-Traffickers 1:04:05 Buying the Amazon + Conservation = profitable 1:07:25 Narcos using the jungle + Being hunted 1:13:21 Indigenous villages + Wild Foods 1:19:02 Man City are CHEATING RATS 1:22:03 Why the jungle? Steve Irwin + Hunting is "good" 1:28:19 Trophy hunting, ecosystems + Saving spider monkey 1:31:29 When to intervene? 1:35:32 Anacondas, Failures + Junglekeepers 1:51:46 We can save this, Tourism + DONATE 2:02:02 How f-ed are you? Jaguar 2:04:06 Black Caiman, Green anaconda + "Read the ground" 2:0:31 Bushmasters reading the jungle 2:10:51 Spirituality + Ayahuasca experience 2:16:20 Jungle smashing, Is it hanging? Sense of humor 2:23:18 Bringing things back + JJ in New York 2:29:14 Bronx Zoo, True passion + What are you made of? 2:41:00 Learn through experience + JJ's dad was a LEGEND 2:46:37 Relationship with death + Cities are unnatural 2:49:49 What is the next dream? Matching donations This episode is sponsored by Kalshi. This episode is sponsored by Sesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's up everybody? At 18 years old, our guest went into the Amazon rainforest and basically never came back. Since then, he's wrestled anacondas wider than tree trunks, but attacked by uncontacted tribes, nearly killed himself a thousand times, and dedicated his life to protecting over 100,000 acres of one of the last truly wild places on earth. Most conservationists want you to care about the rainforest. This motherfucker makes you want to move there. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm flagrant welcome, straight from the Amazon, hours away, the real-life Tarzan from Brooklyn, New York. Paul Rosolie's in the building.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Good to get here.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Okay, so you were like off the plane, off the plane.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Off the plane, off the plane. Look, I like, I still got dirt from the Amazon on my shoes.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Dirt in your Timberlands, that's crazy.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Vivos, vivos. Don't get me in trouble. Yeah, no, I just got off, it's like culture shock getting back here. I mean, I'm living in a place where I'm like chopping wood, carrying water, looking for fish. And you come back and you're like, shit's so easy.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Like, I could use my thumb to get most things done.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  I'm like, trying to figure out how to, you know, it's just very different.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  We offered you a coffee, you're like, I'm okay. We offer you a water, you're like, I'm okay. And then we said Diet Coke, we just threw it out there.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Woo, silver bullet.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  The DC, you said the DC is the one thing you miss in the job.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, the fridge cigarette, man. We don't have them in the Amazon. Yeah. You know, you're 4,000 miles away from the nearest Diet Coke. They got Coke Zero.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  And, you know, most of the time, we don't have refrigeration out there. So even if you have a Coke, a sad Coke, it'll be warm.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  We'll get there later, but when Lex came down, I know he loves Coke Zero.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  And so I put two in my bag secretly. And I was like, at our lowest moment.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  I'm gonna crap these out. Did he have an emotional response, or was he Lex?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Uh, we were almost dead, we were almost dead at that point. So I pulled him out and he just went, fuck. And like, it was the only liquid we had for days. So it was like, we were surviving on it. It wasn't like a celebratory moment, we were, we had to live on Coke for a while.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Why the only liquid you had for days? I thought you, you go straight out of the river.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yes. And so the problem is, okay, okay, so there's a, you know the kid into the wild?

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  So that guy.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Bear, right?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 2:28Speaker 00

  He got eaten by a bear.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  No, no, no, that's Grizzly Man. That's different, different dude. That's the Werner Herzog documentary. Into the Wild is a kid who burns his security card and goes, lives in a bus.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  He crossed over, I believe, if I remember, he crossed over a river and got into the wilderness where he lived in the bus. And then it's from what I know is that then he wanted to cross, when he was like starving, he wanted to cross back over the river, and it had changed volumes. And like, one day, you can wade across the river, and one day, it's not possible.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  And that's what happened to us and Lex. And the reaction I got, because I told the story on Joe, the reaction I got was people were like, yo, fuck you for almost killing Lex Friedman.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Everybody loves Lex. And they're like, you know, how could you be a survival expert? Never claimed to be a survival expert.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. You could survive.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I could survive. No, I know, but like, you know, we, we walked through the jungle, and there's streams everywhere, right? Lex wanted to go into a part of the jungle that no one had ever explored. And so we said, there'll be streams, right? No. Topographically, it was totally different. It was very elevation and drop. And so we were at a part where we had to, we had to go this way, right? We'd take a straight bearing north.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  But we weren't finding streams. Mountain valley, mountain valley, but we were too high up in the watershed, so the streams weren't starting until later. And after a few days, and you're sweating, picture being in a sauna all day long, all day long.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Not carrying any water with you.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Well, we drank all of our water in like three hours. You can only carry so much fucking water.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  And Lex is about to die and you've been holding two cokes.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  I just remember we were going to bed.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  We were going to bed, we were getting into our tents, it was me, Lex and JJ, and we're like, yo, we're, we're kinda, we're kinda fucked. And like Lex was like looking at a puddle, and he goes, can I drink that? And I was like, no, don't drink that puddle.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  And he was like, you know, like, we're all like splashing a little bit of water, like gross water, like puddle water on ourselves, just because we're so hot. And we were like, okay, we'll just get in our tents with like no food, no water. And then I was like, I do have these cokes. And it was like, we just like drank them. It wasn't like, yeah, we got there, it was just like, drink the cokes.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  You know? Yeah, plus like warm Coke actually tastes like gasoline.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  It's delicious when it's cold, and then when you, when you drink it when it's warm, you go, no.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Okay. I love survival content.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Which is hilarious.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  I've, I've never camped, I grew up in the city my whole life, I've seen very few animals, like.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  You grew up in the city or Queens?

• 4:59Speaker 00

  In the East Village.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  East Village, okay.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Jim texts me at 2:00 AM, I'm like, why are you awake? He's like, I'm in the Arctic, I'm surviving. He's watching an Arctic video.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  I go to, I go to sleep to somebody surviving in the snow every night. This is no bullshit.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  I put it on, I wait for them to do their little hot tent, and they usually make something, maybe it's Outdoor Boys, once he starts making the bread and he puts in the honey butter, I can go to bed.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  That's my bedtime routine.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  I love it, I'm obsessed with it, okay?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  So my question, but I've never done it, my question is, of the three of us, what are the chances of us surviving in the Amazon?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Like if I left you there?

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Like, like, I, like, I drive you on a boat into a deep part of the Amazon, walk you out five miles away from the river, and then leave you there and say, I'll come back in a week.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Are we together in this hypothetical?

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, all three of us are together.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  If you had headlamps and machetes, you, you might be able to, might be able to like make it a week on pure starvation. But if you don't know how to hunt food, which if you don't have someone native like I did to teach you, you're not gonna make it far.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  It's like being dropped in the, and I know people that are so native that I've had to explain this to them, but, you know, if you get dropped in the city, and let's say you got dropped with no cellphone, no credit cards, no cash, and no like prior knowledge of like stores will give you food, there's like crosswalks, like, you wouldn't get very far. You'd be on the street, you'd be sleeping on the street.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  You know, you wouldn't even be able to, to take a shit in New York City. You're like, it's an emergency, please. And they're like, nah.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  They're like, nah.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Like, sorry.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  It's probably easier to take a shit in the Amazon than here.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Because you've never been camping?

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  So, so you've never taken a shit in the woods?

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Never.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Never?

• 6:44Speaker 00

  I've taken a shit in the ocean before, and it comes out easy.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  You just go, boom.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is a boom.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Except for.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  You jerk off on carpets at a hotel.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  That's inside.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's how it gets there?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  The black lights is him.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  Okay, you were saying, no?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  So, so, so, okay, so you, first of all, I'd be happy to share this experience with you.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  If you ever want to learn how to shit in the woods.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  You just call me up, I'll take you upstate New York.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  We could do, we could do this, we could do this like this spring, you know? Or we do it for the fall. Shitting in the woods is one thing, you gotta learn how to, you know, eat, some people are pants off, some people are pants around your ankles, you know, and you get there, you just gotta not pee on your shoes and not, not, not, you know, because sometimes you, you get a log that falls.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Oh, and it falls on your ankle or something like that?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. Because what you want is for it to fall backwards or forwards, you don't want it to, to fall on a shoe.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Is there a strategy for that, Paul?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  You gotta wag backwards a little bit.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Why is Paul twerking over there?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you gotta do that, but now the Amazon, like most things, the Amazon is an extreme environment on earth. So when you're shitting in the Amazon, all right, when you're shitting in the woods, you shit in the woods, you're like, all right, I gotta balance. So you're like, I'm gonna balance, all right? So you're like, cool, and my feet are wide enough apart, and you're like, I got this. And you just, you can like chill.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  You hold on to a tree maybe? I've done that before.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  This we gotta be careful with, I'll tell you, I'll tell you about that later. You can't just pick those up. In the woods, though, you can chill.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  See, you're already dead in the woods.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  You're like, you're like, oh, there's a deer, and you're like, there's a chipmunk, you can like look behind you, whatever. Uh, some people lean against a tree, some people hold a tree. Jungle's different. First of all, you probably have jungle gut, right? So you're, you're like, I gotta go now. You know, you're like, you're sweating.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And you're like, all right, this gotta happen.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  DC withdrawals.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Now, you're not, you're not gonna worry about this, because it's coming out.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Oh, you're worried about spray?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Now you're worried about spray.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  The other thing is, human poop is some of the most nutrient-rich poop on the planet, right?

• 8:50Speaker 00

  They want it.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Like a varied diet. They want it, man.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  That shit is delicious, bro.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Not want my scalp. They're coming in, and they're like, that's the best shit in the world. And so, so first of all.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Who's they, who's they, Paul? Who wants it? Who wants it the most?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  The animals.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  All of them, okay.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  So I can't, I've gotta get back in that position in a second, but it's, so you have

• 9:16Speaker 01

  sandflies, you have mosquitoes, you have a variety of other types of like red flies, green flies, other flies, you've got wasps. Now wasps are carnivorous, they land on you and they want to eat your skin. Now, it doesn't really hurt, but the problem is if the wasp goes up your sleeve and it stings you, it's a pain in the ass. So the moment you pull down your pants, now your, your arms are sunburned and a little bit banged up, and so your skin is thicker, right?

• 9:39Speaker 00

  You've got great arms, by the way.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Thank you. As soon as you pull down your pants and expose that white, white ass we all got, they're like, yo. Not to mention, they, now, let me explain this. Your balls.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Oh, they're swinging.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Are just hanging out there.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Those shit's are swinging.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  In the tropical fuckland. Like, there are, there are mosquitoes now all coming, and they're like, lots of blood.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  And so they're going for it. So what you gotta do is break off a stick.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  And you gotta be doing this.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Constantly, no.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  While you're going, yes, because the flies and the mosquitoes and everything, they're coming for you, right? And some of them, like they'll, like the, the flies have no respect. They'll fly like up your butthole, like they will do anything.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And so you really have to have this game good, which means you have to have your balance game good. And you can't do this, because there could be spikes on the ground or a venomous snake, so you can't just, just relax.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  A snake?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Then, assuming you have brought toilet paper, let's just assume that, right?

• 10:36Speaker 00

  That's a big assumption.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  It's a big assumption, but let's say like, you know, you have a headlamp, you have a machete, you don't, you bring some toilet paper, because if you start talking about jungle leaves, you could, you think poison ivy's bad, you could wipe your ass with something you never get better from.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  You know? And something.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  It's a tough injury to explain to people.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  I have no skin on my ass.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  A shitting incident in the Amazon.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Every time I shit, I get a, a life-threatening infection.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  I should get AIDS.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  And so, so as you're doing this, right? And then you gotta, this is where it gets complicated, because you gotta two-handed, because you have to be guarding the jewels, right?

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  And you gotta do a quick wipe, because now, you've been, we're doing this work long enough, that there's an army of mosquitoes, and they're big, big mosquitoes going around you, and so they're hitting you wherever you're not paying attention. It's like fighting a pack of dogs. If you're over here, they're biting you over here. And so the mosquitoes are all over you, so as you slap, you're also throwing weight, so you might fall over. And so, the worst part, though, then, is that the dung beetles, dung beetles the size of a golf ball, picture a minivan that's bright purple, and can open its wings and fly, it makes no sense, size of a golf ball, and they're, they're really awkward flyers, and they come in, and they'll like smack you, and my friend got a scratched cornea, because one, they have those like brinocerous things on the front, and it hit him in the eyeball.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  And so they, those, that, the purple one, right there, you see that big spike? So they want your poop, right? Really bad, they're gonna roll it up into a ball, and they carry it away. They roll it up into a ball, and they're like, got it, and they like take it away. And so you got the flies and mosquitoes and the things, and you gotta manage to, to squat and wipe and defend yourself from a whole army. It's, it's a big deal, so you just don't wanna do that.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  The guys in Amazon really don't understand the joy of taking a shit at home, and just avoiding your responsibilities.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, scrolling.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Scrolling, reading a book.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, reading, reading a book.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Get a hemorrhoid.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Why not just wear like an adult pamper?

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, man, and then, you know, the squeeze one out in the river down there, I feel like, again, something's, something's gonna take that opportunity.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  What about the people that pee, and then they get like a, a thing that flies in their urethra?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  And the, the candiru fish, but that, I think it's been like three people in all of human history, I'll take my odds.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  I'm not risking that. That's three too many.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  That's three too many.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's three too many. What do you do with toilet paper?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  What do you, what do you do?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  You just kinda bundle it up and leave it there and let the jungle?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Stick in the ground, it'll be gone in twenty, twenty, it'll be gone in ten hours. I mean, if you put a dead body in the jungle, it's, it's gone in forty-eight hours.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Completely to the bone.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  How do you know this?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  I told you guys.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  He's an Italian from Brooklyn.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  My people. I told you guys, stop doing that, and stop thinking too hard.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, hey, you don't wanna know.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Stop trying to, to sort shit out.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  So when did that happen exactly? No, no, don't pinch it on me.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  They did try to kill you, though.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Alright, so the-

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Tons of people down there have tried to kill you, it's not just the animals. Have you ever thought it's you?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Sort of like looking in the mirror type of shit?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Who am I? No, I mean, that's, look, the, the, most of the people I work with down there, we make friends with, you know, I'm friends with the natives. We've started Jungle Keepers together, we protect all this jungle, that's why I do what I do.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  This is you and JJ famously, right?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Yes, I met JJ when I was eighteen, and he sort of took me under his wing, and he was like, I know everything about the jungle, I know the medicines, I know tracking, I know the animals, and I was like, I know how to catch snakes, that's the only thing I know that you don't know.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  And he was afraid of snakes.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  He was terrified of snakes, and he was like, you can teach me snakes? And I was like, yeah, I could teach you snakes. And he was like, fuck off. He's like, you're gonna touch that snake? And he's like, none of us have touched that snake, and like, you pick it up and let it bite me, and be like, this is a harmless snake, and he'd be like, how do you know?

• 14:27Speaker 00

  So all of them are afraid of snakes?

• 14:28Speaker 01

  All of them are afraid of snakes because their interaction with the jungle is very much based on, like, a utilitarian sort of view, like, you know, can I eat that, that, or that, is that wood good? And it's like, if you find a wood that's like pulpy and not very strong, they're like, oh, that, that's crap. But mahogany, and kaoba, and kenea, they're like, these woods, they know everything. They know what the sap does, if there's medicinal uses, you know, how to age it, you know, crazy shit that we could never know, they're like, there's one time we cut down a tree, huge tree, this huge tree, I saw these guys cut down this tree, uh, because they needed to build a bridge, and this tree goes down, I didn't want them to cut this tree down, and they cut it down, and, and I, I cry when trees go down.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  And you're talking about a centuries-old tree, it's laying on the floor, and the logger looks at it, and he goes, ah, shit. He goes, I didn't realize what day it is, he goes, we can't use this wood, this tree's fucked, so they start cutting another tree. And I went crazy, I like grabbed his chainsaw, I was like, fuck you, you just took down a centuries-old tree, what do you mean you can't use the wood? You use that wood, and he goes, it will not work, can't build with that wood, and I went, why not? And he goes, it's a new moon. I was like, what the fuck? Does a new moon have to do with it? I was like, I don't do mumbo jumbo, I'm from Brooklyn, I was like, with Western science, like, the wood is there, build with the wood, and JJ saw me fight with the guy, takes me aside, and he goes, listen, he goes, you're not from here, you don't understand, every

• 15:51Speaker 01

  moon cycle, there's this one insect that reproduces, and if you happen to cut down a tree, when they reproduce, their, their larva will go into the wood, at that perfect moment, because you've, you've destroyed the tree's defenses, and then, in like, a year, that wood's gonna be destroyed. So if you go build like the scaffolding for a roof-

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Done, delepted.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  You're done. So like, that's where, like, if you're not a local, if you don't know the jungle, the secrets of the jungle, you're not doing shit.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  What percentage do you think you know now, like, if you compared yourself to a JJ, and this is like a vocabulary or a fluency, like, the jungle's a language, where are you at with fluency?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  If JJ's like Novak Djokovic, I'm like-

• 16:37Speaker 00

  A female tennis player.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  What? No, what? What the fuck did you say? What, no, no, no, they play just as good, they play just as good, they're really good, yeah, yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  If JJ was like Novak Djokovic, or the best female player-

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  I'm like the best guy in like your hometown.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  No, no, it's massive, like, he grew up, he grew up without shoes, till he was thirteen years old, like, he grew up where they had to get a howler monkey or a fish for dinner, or they starve, like, I've been doing this for twenty years, and I've learned as much as I can, and it's a privilege, but, but there's things in there that you can't even, like, we'll be walking, no, I'll give you a better one, one day we're sitting there, and I was like, JJ, let's go fishing. And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we should go fishing, and like, you know, he's got a couple of gray hair, you got like glasses on now, and he's sitting there reading The Birds of Peru, as you do, and he's like, oh, the tanagers and the flycatchers, and I'm like, JJ, can we go fishing before it's like nighttime? And he goes, no, no, no, we need bait, and I went, yeah, and he goes, find some bait, and so I start, I start looking on the ground, whatever, I was like looking for a worm, there's

• 17:44Speaker 01

  no, the sand, it's just sand under the leaves in the Amazon, so I'm looking for bait, and you can't find any, you know, you find like a big katydid or something, you try and grab it, it'll bite you, and so, I hear JJ, and he's just sitting there going-

• 18:02Speaker 01

  I'm like, this motherfucker's just sitting here killing time, huh, all of a sudden, then I hear, on the other side of the, on the other side of the deck, I hear, and I look, and it's this grasshopper making this sound with its wings, and JJ then makes a sound again, and the grasshopper keeps coming closer, looking for its mate.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  And he's tricking the grasshopper, and, and I look, and there's like three other grasshoppers, and they're all coming, because he's making this sound, and then at some point, he was like, okay, we go, and he takes this one, takes this one, takes this one, and he goes, good, we got bait, and he was like, let's-

• 18:34Speaker 02

  You're lying.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  And I'm like, and then we go down to the river, and he's like, got three hooks, he's got a small hook, medium hook, large hook, takes a small hook, takes a dumb fish out, quick, puts it on the larger hook, pulls out a piranha this big, cuts the tail off, and puts it on a large hook, throws that in the river, and ties it to a tree, and I was like, why don't you tie it to the boat? And he's like, because the boat has a solid beam there, he's like, if that pulls on the fishing line, it'll break it, he's like, you tie it to a tree, the tree will do this, and it'll like, it'll tire the fish out, and sure enough, this tree is like, you gotta fish this big. So he like worked his way from grasshopper to piranha to giant catfish that fed ten people in the span of a couple hours. So that's the type of shit where like-

• 19:18Speaker 02

  It's literally the language.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  It's a language.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  If you were to get, like, is there an age cutoff? Like, if you were to move there when you're five years old, like, you could become a local, but if you move there at twenty-five, it might be harder for you to become like a native in the, sort of-

• 19:32Speaker 01

  It's also how much time you spend there, you know, I know a lot of, um, people who have spent significant time in the jungle, and like, you know, when I was starting out, like, I was a kid that had terrible grades, I'm severely dyslexic, didn't do well in school, dropped out of high school after sophomore year, and just went to the Amazon, and like, I started learning from JJ, and, and like, the rate at which a person can absorb, like, the people that come down and do research, and they're wearing like big boots, and they're wearing long sleeves, and they have like a bug net over, and they're learning from other researchers, that they're, they're, they're learning academic facts about the jungle, and with him, we'd be like, I'd be like, JJ, you think there's anacondas in that swamp?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  He'd be like, I don't know, and like, pop his shirt off, and be like, let's go find out, though. We'd be up to our necks, and I, I remember the first time I did it, and I was like eighteen, and I was like, are you sure this is okay? And he was like, think so, it's like, I never went looking for anacondas before, and I was like, like, you know, like, I'm like, what in this nightmare soup is going to crawl up our pants?

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Like, it's like, are you certain that there's not like some sort of water bug that's gonna burrow into our skin? I mean, there is.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  But just no fear?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  He doesn't have fear, he, he's a, I mean, he's, he's pretty fearless, even, even when we've dealt with people that are dangerous, one of the first times I saw him defending land, people had come to cut some trees, and I just remember him, I was like eighteen and brand new there, so I was like, I'm not gonna say shit, right? I'm just gonna stand there.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  Is this his cool property?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  His was, his property at the time, it was before we started Jungle Keepers, he just was like, I'm gonna protect this, and I was like, with what? And he was like, he's like, I just have a dream of protecting the wildest place on earth, because my home, my village, they killed all the animals, they cut all the big trees, he's like, so now I've gone out to the wildest place, and we're gonna protect it, and that's where I met him. But when people came, you know, it's like a boat of like vagrant migrant hunters, and they walked down this trail, and he was like, let's go, he's like, we gotta go get these guys, I was like, get these guys? And we show up on these guys, and they all got fucking shotguns, and JJ, no, no gun, walks up to these guys and goes, get off my land.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  English?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  No, in Spanish.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  And they're like, you know, click, clack, fuck yourself, no, and he's like, get off my land now, and then like, as they advanced on us, I just was like, I was like, well, you know, how, how do we fight them? Like, we have, we have two machetes against like five guys with shotguns, and I was just kinda like standing there, I was like, you know, whatever, whatever happens next, you know? And he put up such a, such a, such a, he was just like, back my land.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  They bitched out.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  They they turned around. I mean, what are you, they gotta shoot them? Most people don't wanna shoot them.

• 22:22Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, for them, it's not worth the hassle.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Exactly. They're getting paid to do that job.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  They're like, we'll go find a different trail.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  But still, out there, if they did shoot us, they could drag us into the jungle, leave us there, and in two days, nobody'd ever know we existed.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  How much should that happen, so you think? How mu- how many people are killed out there? And it's just, you just get devoured by the jungle?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I mean, a native people, there's lots of people that die in the Amazon in all kinds of creative ways. But but in terms of like the narco trafficking that's happening right now, and

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Or the tree harvesting, or any of the other?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  The tree harvesting, I mean, I, we've heard, I've heard all the stories down there in 20 years. I mean, somebody gets cut down by, you know, landed on by a tree, and I'm talking about trees three times as thick as this room, like huge trees. You know, like, they'll cut it, and they'll be looking up at the tree they cut. And as it's going down, they don't realize that it's tied by a vine to the next tree back. And so that tree comes and just mouse traps an entire group of people.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  Whoa, wow.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  It takes down an acre of forest on top of some people, and you just don't know. You're like, oh, yeah, we cut the tree, it's gonna, it's going that way, timber. And you're like, damn, this is wild. And then like, an acre comes down.

• 23:29Mark Gagnon?

  Wow. It's not one guy, you're talking about like 10 guys.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  You're talking about everybody dead. I was just climbing on a tree two nights ago with my guys. And like the branches, you know, you're talking about like six foot thick branches. And if this tree had fallen, and we were exploring the canopy of a tree on the ground at night. But there's all these orchids that grow nowhere else but in the canopy, 160 feet off the jungle floor. And they don't exist down here. And so it's different species up there. 50% of the life in a rainforest is in the canopy, not on the ground. And so it's one of the least explored things on our planet. And since the Amazon has so much biodiversity in it, this is like undiscovered species, undiscovered medicines. And when you're walking down there, you're this big, you're on the ground, and the canopy's up here. So like, if you get lost, it's not like you're going to a, it's not like, you know,

• 24:16Speaker 01

  you're lost in the Rockies, you go to a mountaintop, and you're like, should I go north or should I go west? Now, you're at the bottom of a green ocean. So you're like, where the fuck is the sun? You know, you're like, looking around for it, and it's like, there's no way out.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Is that what it feels like being underwater?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  It can.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  It's a interesting metaphor for it.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  It feels like you're under the ocean in a sort of magical way. There's these giant trees over you. It's a very cathedral-like experience, right? There's these giant, beautiful trees, you know, and there's sort of like light hitting the tops of them, and you see like spider monkeys up there. And then these tremendous trunks coming down, and you can interact with them. But just like a skyscraper, you can't climb up that, because it's sheer.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  And then if you're in true old jungle, the the overstory is so big that the understory can be pretty open. And so you can kind of walk around, because there's not much light.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  So not much can grow.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, less than 3% of the light that hits the jungle makes it to the jungle floor.

• 25:13Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  So it can even exist on the bottom?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Well, like, you see that picture, like, that's the bottom of a tree.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  And, you know, there's trees, but you see, it's not dense, dense, dense. Oh, I hate that picture on the lower left. See, that, that makes me

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  That makes me sick.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Where's this?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  That's probably Brazil.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, you mentioned Brazil a lot in terms of, uh

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I work in Peru, but Brazil has 60% of the Amazon within their territory.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  And it seems to be that they're a little bit more, uh, how do I say it? They're less strict about conservation over there, is what it feels like from listening to you.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  It seems like, it seems like there's, you know, it depends who's in charge.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  Uh, fluctuates based on administration.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  I mean, but that's everything. You know, in the, in the US, they're like, we're gonna drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. And then the regime changes, and they go, we're not going to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. And then they're like, we're going to drill. And I'm like, alright, shit.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Like, can somebody please just hold some continuity? Like, when we make it a national park, just put it off. Like, Teddy Roosevelt would be rolling in his fucking grave.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  He would come out and wreck shit. You're like, you're gonna touch Yosemite? He would come out, the Rough Rider.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, you think you protect this stuff forever. And that's why in conservation, they always say the victories are temporary, and it's the losses that are final, because you go, oh, great, we protected this, this group of rhinos in Africa.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  10 years later.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  And then like, some poachers get in there and clean out half of them, you know, in the night. And you're like, we thought we protected them, and then they got through the fence.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Fuck.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:46Mark Gagnon?

  What type of tech you're using to like, not get lost, or stay in communication with people, like?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Well, we have now, the old days, it was, that's a great question. The old days, we used to go, so you see, there's this windy, windy river right there.

• 26:59Mark Gagnon?

  There's one.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  So in the old days, we used to go up that for two whole days. Two days of just that.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Let me, let me understand this. So up that means you're in a boat?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  You're in a boat. You're in like a 30-foot-long canoe with a, with a, sometimes with a roof, sometimes not.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  And you gotta motor on the back.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  And you're just trudging along?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Or you're just going up that? So you do 10 hours, stop on side, you make camp in the jungle, you do another 10 hours. Then we get to our research station where JJ had set up this, this, this project. And so out there, we didn't even have a generator. We'd have to bring AA batteries for our headlamp. And every night, it gets dark at 6 o'clock, and every morning, it gets light at 6 o'clock. It's the equator, right? So you have 12 hours.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  And so you'd basically stay in the jungle as long as your food lasted, and as long as your batteries lasted. Because if it gets dark and you don't have light, you got a problem. Especially out there. Because if you get lost in the middle of that, you literally can't take one step. Like, I've had a headlamp when I was my first year down there. I was like, JJ, I'm going out. You know, you grow up in school with rules. And I got to the jungle, and I was like, this is like Pirates of the Caribbean. I was like, I'm going out. I was like, I'm gonna go on some adventures. I wanna risk my life.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  You know, you're 18 years old, and you're like, fuck, yeah. And so I went out there, and I was like, I'm gonna discover some shit by myself. I went out.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  And then at like 2:00 in the morning, my headlamp dies.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  And I'm, I'm going like this, you can't see your hand. And if you take a step, you could step on a venomous snake, you could step on spikes.

• 28:32Mark Gagnon?

  The noise you're hearing is

• 28:36Speaker 01

  of all the, of all the frogs. And so I had to just sit down and like curl into a ball, and like pull some palm fronds, and just sit there like this, and like put my shirt over me, and the mosquitoes are biting you through the shirt, but at least they can't get to your face, because you like turtle up. And I sat there like that until morning, and I was so messed up. I was really messed up after that, and so I never let that happen again. Now it's different. Now we have a major organization, we have 160,000 acres. We're on the verge of making a national park, so now we're professionals. And so now we have like Starlink, and we're able to communicate. Now I have 80-something rangers that I need, that we need to coordinate. And so we have to have Starlink at the different bases, so that we can communicate through the jungle. And, uh

• 29:19Mark Gagnon?

  But how didn't that experience, early on, you're just like, yo, fuck this, go back home, like?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Because, um, there's a scene in The Shawshank Redemption when they're sitting on the roof, and like the guards of the prisoners crack the beers, and you're like, I wanna be there. And you're like, I don't, but I kind of do.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  And it's like, when you're suffering, and you've been in the rain for six hours, and then the tropical sun bakes you until your skin's peeling off, and all you have to eat is the head of a wild boar that you shot yesterday. There's something where you just go, man, this is so fucking wild. Especially in today's world, where it's like Minority Report, like Big Brother, like Terminator beginnings. Out there, it's still the real world. It's still the real world, and it reminds you of that. And like, the mountains and the ocean are these constant things that you can return to. And the jungle is like this, this, this giant organism, this godlike force. And it's like, you just go, you know what? Civilizations rise and fall. Whatever's on the news cycle right now,

• 30:19Speaker 01

  these, this, this ecosystem has been, has been speciating for 55 million years. It, it holds medicines. It's, it's the heartbeat of our planet, it's the lungs of our planet. And you go, man, this, everything's gonna be okay. Like, even if I die and I get digested by this giant machine, you're like, but it's so beautiful. And so for that wild vibration, where you feel completely at heightened awareness with this, with this wild thing around you, I'll, I'll, I'll carry a motor, I'll, I'll, you know, I'll get my skin ripped open. I've had every injury. I've had, I've suffered for days. I'm like, can you see like that little, that little bit of sand on the side of the river? Like, that, you get to one of those things, and let the mosquitoes tear you apart. But you're waiting for a boat, and there are no boats from decade to decade.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  And so you're like, I gotta cut down a tree, and I'm gonna float on this tree all the way back to civilization.

• 31:09Mark Gagnon?

  Fuck.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  That, the only thing I said wrong there is, you can't cut down a whole ass tree with a machete. So what you do is you wait for it to rain, and then the rain pulls a few of the closest trees to the river, into the river. And then when you get the flood, you swim out, you jump on a log, and then you take that motherfucker back to civilization.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  Have you taken a floating log back to civilization?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  I've covered, I've covered hundreds of miles on a log, yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  I'm talking logs, I'm not talking about like a little log, I'm talking about like a, like a school bus sized log that's like 90 feet long. What's cool is at the, at the, at the canopy side, the, the half of the thing is down, half the thing is up, right? So you can actually climb up onto the upper branches and like stand up there like you're on a pirate ship. And the thing is so big, like a small log, you do this, right? Like it'll like, no, no, no, these logs are so big that it's like, it's like an ant on a log. Like you don't influence its, its, its roll or tilt. And so you could just walk around on this log.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  How deep is it though? I mean, like, these are like turns that you have to make.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the scary part. Cause if you hit into something, your ass goes flying forward. It's on a seatbelt. So you gotta be very vigilant. And then the scariest shit ever is when you're riding a log and it hits a shallow spot and it goes like, I was on a log one time and went, and then the river starts lifting it. And so you're like, it's terrifying.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  And what about when you sleep? Like, is someone manning it throughout the night? Like what happened? Or do you die?

• 32:38Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I've never, I've never, you can't, I've never logged through the night. I feel like you'd fall in the river. And the other thing is if there's one log, there's more logs. And I'm very, very scared of being held underwater or even worse. Like if you have a leg hanging on and a lugger one pinch, no, no, no, no, I don't want that.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Guys, important information. Street Fighter, October 16th, okay? You're all buying tickets right now. We're stopping the pod, going to buy tickets, selling every single showtime out. Opening weekend and the weekend after that, and the weekend after that. After that, also back in the lab, on tour this fall, Indianapolis, October 23rd through 24th, Alabama, November 6th through 7th, Cleveland, November 13th and 14th, Raleigh, I think that's sold out, December 4th and 5th, Columbus, December 11th and 12th. We will see you guys there at the Andrew Shores.com.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Also, guys, I'm coming to a bunch of cities as well at the end of this year. This weekend, I'll be in Dallas, Texas, the weekend after that, or two weekends, I'll be in Chandler, Arizona, and then I'm going to be in Pasadena, California, San Diego, California, Detroit, Michigan, and then Salt Lake City in the new year. You can get tickets right now with Mark Gagnon live. Alex?

• 33:52Mark Gagnon?

  And guys, Cancel Comedy is back, October 29th at Chelsea Table. We have a full night, happy hour, show and after party, it's all included, one ticket. Costumes are encouraged, but you will be giving the comics material. See you guys there.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Okay, sleeping. Cause I'm curious about survival and most of my survival videos are around sleeping. You've yet to describe a way where sleeping feels comfortable at all. And you're out in the Amazon for, you're out in the Amazon for months at a time, whatever. But I imagine there's a place that's a little less Amazony, where you sleep more comfortably? And then there's a version where you're like deep in the bush and then that's less comfortable, right?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  What's the most comfortable sleeping situation?

• 34:43Speaker 01

  So I built the world's tallest treehouse. Cause I would, it's the Alta, A-L-T-A, Alta Sanctuary Treehouse. You know, I used to make it to the top of these trees and you see, there's this thing called the invisible mist river that's above the Amazon. 20 trillion liters of water a day get pumped off, off the canopy. And that's the whole lungs of our planet thing. And I would see it every day.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Get the fuck out of here.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Not every day, but I would see it.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  Is this real?

• 35:08Speaker 01

  This is real. You can stay there. Like you can book that. Like people come and stay there. That's why I built it was to share this with the world. My whole thing is I want to share this all with the world.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  How many stories up is this?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Uh, it's 110 feet at the deck.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  So you're 11 story, 11 stories up?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when you wake up, you're like eye level with spider monkeys and harpy eagles and howler monkeys. It's great. Cause at 4am, when it gets purple in the east, and the east is that way, where it's blue in that picture. At about 4am, it starts getting purple and you hear the last of the night frogs start to like peter out. And then it's, it's like God goes to the switch in the universe and just goes, and it becomes morning. And the whole jungle just starts tuning its instruments and everything starts going, and the howler monkeys start going, and you're like, the day is coming. And the sun is coming up and you're standing up there and you're like, I'm here for the first day on earth. And it's like the universe is being created. And then when you see the macaws flying across the

• 36:07Speaker 01

  golden mist that's rising in the east off of the greatest display of life on our planet in the universe, you just sit there and you're like, every morning, every morning. And so being able to share that with people. So there's a bathroom, a bedroom, you got toilet, wifi, everything you need up there.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  That's comfortable.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  You're out here gladbin', bro.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  You said, what's the most comfortable?

• 36:36Speaker 01

  See, this is one of the years have I not learned.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  You've earned it. The building right now is not even half, like where we're sitting right now.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Really?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Is, I mean, this is probably what, 40 feet? Like if you're standing on the fire escape, you look out, it's 40 feet.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're only 40 feet up.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Scroll down a little, I want to see if there's this one picture. See that, the stairs? That's people like, how do you get up there? That. And then the bed, you just, you, if you zoom out again, the bed. See like there's a comfortable right there, down, down, down. Bed. Like you're comfortable up there. And so you, you're protected.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  It's like a wedding night.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Well, that's a, that's a, that's a mosquito net.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say that in the marketing. Say, say veil, say wedding suite. Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a wedding veil.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  That's the comfortable.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  This is the most comfortable that you can be.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Now take me to, you're just camping. You pull over the side of, this is what you like. Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  This is the stuff I live for. Okay.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  This. We're camping, all four of us. You're taking us.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Please pull up the video. There's a thing where leaf cutter ants eat my tent. I'll tell you the story. I get in my tent, brand new tent. Okay. When Lex left the Amazon, he's like, I'm never gonna camp again and take my tent. So this is a tent that's been used like once. Take this tent and we're on this like little, little mini thing. We just go out to, yeah, yeah, this. Let's just, let's just wash this and I'll tell you about it.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  There's about 10 million leaf cutter ants outside this tent.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Is cutting leaf sized holes out of my tent. Which means everything else in the Amazon is coming into my tent. I just woke up because there's a leaf cutter ant using its pincer jaws to bite my ear to try and carry off a piece. This is what camping in the wild is. Sometimes you put your tent in the wrong place and the leaf cutter ants and the gods of the jungle decide it's gonna be the worst night ever. This is one of those nightmare nights, man.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Get the fuck out of here. Tarantula?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like everything in the jungle decided to come into the tent that night.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Nah, bro.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  So that was not fun. Cause you're trying to just sleep. And usually you zip your tent and the jungle's out there and you're like kinda clean. A little bit of sand gets in. That night it was raining and, and the leaf cutter ants decided, like I had like 10,000, probably 100,000. Cause they, they go in, in, in lines. They actually will clear highways through the jungle. They'll push the leaves to the side. So they make a trail. And they just, I was in the way. And they were like, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta move this tent.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  So they started taking it apart piece by piece?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then when they got to me, they started trying, like they literally, I woke up and I was like, whoa. And I was chomping, like they can cut your ear. They can cut you.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  So is there no way to have a night's sleep when you're?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  No, that's, I mean, again, that's the, you said, what's the best, what's the worst? In between that is a lot of nights where you're like, you know, you hike all day, you're super sweaty. It's not especially fun getting in a tent if you can't jump in water. A lot of times there is water to jump in. It's great.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Why? Cause the water will cool you down?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. You cool down, you get the sweat off your body, you get in tent and the, you know, it's probably 90 degrees at night, most of the time. And so you cool down, get in your tent, try and fall asleep quick. That's fine. It's not that bad. Camping's not that bad. I hope you experience it soon.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I hope to be the person that can give this to you.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  I don't know if I'd let anybody else do it.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Especially camping like upstate. It's like kinda, you know, you go up to the Catskills or the Adirondacks, you can get beautiful spots. And because it's a little chilly, there's no bugs.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  There's nothing, there's no jaguars, there's no uncontacted tribes, there's no poachers that are gonna, you know, no one's gonna show up. You're, you're good.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Take, take us to the uncontacted tribes. Because I think this is something that like, maybe it just taps into the colonizer in me. What? Sorry. No, no, no, not at all. No, I'm joking. No. But like, the idea that there's a group of people that lives somewhere and has no clue about external existence. Is that what the uncontacted tribe is? Or are they aware of us? And they are just operating completely off the grid? The government doesn't really pay them any attention. What is definitionally uncontacted tribe mean?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Great question, because it's, it's actually the complete sort of like wrong term. When people say, I like, it came out, I was like, you know, we had an encounter with an uncontacted tribe. This is a, I can't think of another example of this, but it's like, that's what they've been called. So that's what we gotta call them. So people know what I'm talking about.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  Indians that are actually Native Americans.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  As a, as an anthropologist, this anthropologist is like, stop calling them uncontacted tribes. He always bothers me. This guy, he'll like DM me. And he'll be like, stop calling them uncontacted tribes. And I'm like, what do you want me to call them? And he's like, people living in voluntary, voluntary isolation nativo. And I'm like, dude, get out of here. Just go home. They're uncontacted tribes. And.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  There are people that we think, right? Because you have tribes in the Amazon, like in Ecuadorian Amazon, where they've become very modern but maintained their native culture. And that they're business owners. They have like great ecotourism things, so they're protecting their jungle, but in collaboration with the modern economy.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  Kind of fire.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. Like, we still wear feathers at times. We can still walk barefoot in the jungle, but we're also pulling in a few million a year to protect the land that is ours.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  If our kid wants to go get educated, they can take advantage of that. Maybe they'll come back here, help us protect this area.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Is that kind of best-case scenario?

• 41:58Speaker 01

  That is the best-case scenario. Because then they use their natural heritage and they continue their...

• 42:04Speaker 00

  Way of life.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  You can't replace that knowledge, right?

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Thousands of years of knowledge that's coming down. You know, I can show you how to log into Instagram in two seconds. For us to understand what JJ was doing about calling in the insects or for them to know the difference between 5,000 different leaves that all look the same, and they're like, "Yeah, yeah, but this one will make your mouth numb, so we could pull a tooth out." And then I go, "How does it look different than this one? Show me." And they're like, "Oh, come on. You gotta taste it." And I'm like, "So you know the taste of all the leaves?" And they're like, "Yes." And they're like, "You don't?" They're like, "Silly, gringo." And you're like, "Okay, you guys are just beyond me." So you have these tribes that are modernizing in a controlled way.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  You have communities and tribes of people that are getting obliterated, which is unfortunately the norm. You know, the outside world comes in, a road comes in, you know, disease, alcohol, an inability to sort of learn this abstract concept that money gets you food and that you can no longer just go to the river and get your food. You gotta get this other shit and give it to someone to get your food, but then you gotta find a way to get more of that shit.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  It doesn't actually make that much sense in the jungle.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  And so there's that. It's very difficult to transition. We think that what happens, at least my belief with the uncontacted tribes, is that around the turn of the century, rubber boom, there's this horrible period of destruction.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  I was researching a little bit of that, but yeah.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  And so there were tribes that said, "Look, we're not gonna be burned at the stake. We're not gonna be your slaves.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  We're gonna go out there and we're gonna defend ourselves." They were like the Comanches. They were just like, "He ain't gonna get us." And so they went out there and they got their six-foot bow and arrows. And they're, you know, anybody that comes... So then they're telling their kids, "Any of the outsiders show up, kill them first, because they're gonna kill you." Fair.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  I imagine the first introduction was not that bad.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  The first introduction to what?

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Meaning like when the rubber, whatever, people came over, the uncontacted tribes meet them and they're like, "Hey, this is pretty sick. I've never seen other people before." And then all of a sudden, the rubber people came and they're like, "Well, we're gonna need you guys to get the fuck out of the way. We're probably gonna kill you all anyway." And then you change your energy when someone comes around again. Like Mark was in before the pod, he's like, "When aliens first come, if they're chill, we're pretty excited about it. If they act crazy, the next time aliens come..."

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Then we uncontacted tribe them.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  Then we uncontacted tribe them.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  To me, that seems pretty reasonable.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems pretty reasonable.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  What was the North Sentinel thing that you said?

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, like North Sentinel Islands, like they're known for being violent and very territorial and very defensive

• 44:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  to us. But there was originally contact in like the late 1800s where British explorers went down there. I'm sure you know the story better than I do. But basically, they went down there and they kidnapped like five or six of them, brought them back to England, a bunch of them died from disease, and then they repatriated one or two of them. And then from that point forward, they were like, "Hey, these people come in, they abduct our people, they kill our people."

• 45:08Speaker 00

  "Anybody comes, it's on sight."

• 45:10Speaker 02

  "So if we just kill anyone that shows up."

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Which is a very human thing. We can understand that.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  I understand that. And that's why they're still alive, by the way.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  The only reason they're still alive. And so a few years ago, the Sentinel Island people, some dipshit with a little boat, little rowboat, he got over there and he was like, "I got a Bible." And they were like, "Wah-pah, wah-pah, wah-pah."

• 45:28Speaker 00

  We fell for that one before. You don't think the last people came with a Bible?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  I mean, that's hilarious in my... I mean, you just thought, you thought.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  And so these uncontacted, so you're saying like, "Oh, the first time, if you read Columbus or Pizarro's journals, they showed up and the native people were like, 'Here are textiles.'"

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Would you not be stoked? I'd be stoked.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  "You guys are amazing. Like, look at your ships." They were like, "Yo, you wanna talk?"

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  They're like, "You got women? We got women." They're like, "We could talk."

• 45:58Speaker 00

  Ours have long tits.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, "We got different types."

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Blue eyes? And so the reception from the native peoples always seems to be rather friendly.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Until...

• 46:11Speaker 01

  And then it's the fucking conquistadors that are like, "Wrap them up, burn a few of them, and let's..." And it's like, "Dude, what were you doing?"

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, immediately. I think Columbus even wrote in his journal, he's like, "The people are very friendly, they're very nice, and they're easy to enslave." I think it's like basically what he writes. It's like, "Bro."

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's horrible. It's absolutely horrible, because you could've made friends.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Easily.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  And they would've helped you. Their whole colony fell apart in the Caribbean. And had they had the native people there, they probably would've done way better.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  And so the rubber boom, these rubber barons went down. And here's the thing, the only way to get latex out of the jungle, which we needed now for the Industrial Revolution, hoses, gaskets, tires, everything,

• 46:50Speaker 01

  the latex was only in the Amazon, in the jungle, in the rubber trees. And Henry Ford tried. He was like, "I'm just gonna plant Fordlandia. I'm just gonna make a plantation, a giant one of rubber, so I'm gonna get it all." Wouldn't grow. Leaf blight killed it all. So then they were like, "The only way to do this is to get the native people to do it." And so they would go down there and be like, "You all are gonna go get latex all day." And they were like, "For what?" Oh, that's my boy, right there, top left. He got shot in the head by one of those arrows. And so anyway, what they would do is, they would burn these people and then be like, "You'll do it, because or else we're gonna Game of Thrones you. We're gonna like flay you." And so the uncontacted tribes were like, "That is not gonna happen to us." And so they went out there.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  We're going deep, and if you come, it's on.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Then it's on. That, yeah, she's not on the list.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Hold on, so this person got shot in the head?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's...

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Is he alive?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Alive? He's very alive. I WhatsApp him all the time.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Wait, but he got shot in the head?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  He's one of my rangers, yes. He was trying to communicate with an uncontacted tribe.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Whoa, what was that?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And major distractions.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Huge distraction.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Huge distractions.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  What'd you bring up the milk for, bro? Talking about the rubber trees.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  I'm trying to find a boy.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  He's trying to go, just trying to make contact.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  If you type in Paul Rosell Ignacio, I don't know, I'm sure like, I'm sure it comes up. He's a local guy who was in charge of managing an interaction. And this detailed story is in the book. And he was...

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Jungle Keeper, by the way, available everywhere books are available. New York Times Bestseller, no big deal, continue.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of blood required to make that book.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  Shit.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Who's blood?

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Mine.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Still out, Rosell, still out.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the conquistador.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  I'm just saying, we got it in our...

• 48:43Speaker 01

  A lot of my blood got spilled to be able to tell those stories. But Ignacio was trying to peacefully interact with these uncontacted tribes. And they shot him in the head, and he almost died.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  With what?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  With the arrow that he's holding in that picture. They have six-foot arrows. We would call them spears.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Right? And they can hit a spider monkey at 120 feet straight up. So hitting a guy who's standing there is pretty easy. You're not gonna miss.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  So they hit him in the head?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  He was trying to get away from them, because they were, you know, they're getting more and more agitated. And he dove under the river as they're going for him. And he came up and looked back, and he said he saw it coming straight into his eyeball. And he said, you know, in the electron hyperspeed at the moment, he like moved his head, and it just went, hit him on the side of the head. And the bamboo ripped him, and it like took off, like made a big flap on his scalp. And so he blacked out, and then he had to get helicopter evac'd. They were able to like CB radio back to the government, even though they were four days from the nearest like port. And somehow he lived. Bless you.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  I mean, he could've bled out easily.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  He was. I have a picture of him, so in the book, there's a picture.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  Wait, you're with him when this happens?

• 50:01Speaker 01

  No, no, no. This happened in 2019. But then me and him were together when we ran into the tribe. And he was the one that was keeping us safe from getting shot. He was the one like telling us.

• 50:11Speaker 00

  All right.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  So look, that's him shot in the head. I mean, bleed out, and that's him on the stretcher.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just a puddle. And that's the scar right there.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  And that's the scar, exactly, yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Okay, so you meet the uncontacted tribe for the first time.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Are you aware that you're in their territory? Are you like...

• 50:30Speaker 01

  This is great. No, no, I need you to, I need this, I need this, because...

• 50:35Speaker 00

  I need this, okay?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  I, no, because in January, we sort of like came out and told the world. We were like, "Hey, we saw this." Because it was a year before that that we saw them. And you have to understand, so Jungle Keepers is trying to protect a whole watershed, because JJ told us to, right?

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Can you tell me what a watershed is?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  A watershed is like, you know, think of a basin of a... Well, the Amazon basin is a giant watershed. The Hudson Valley is a watershed. So all the little streams that are flowing into the Hudson are part of this watershed.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Is that watershed from the Andes?

• 51:09Speaker 01

  In the Amazon?

• 51:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's perfect. So you see, basically, all roads lead to the Amazon. All rivers lead to the Amazon. So everything that's coming off the Andes there is coming down and eventually traveling thousands of miles across the continent that lead to the Amazon, which flows out into the Atlantic Ocean.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Holy shit, so it all starts over here?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you throw a tennis ball in the river...

• 51:32Speaker 00

  It legs in Rio. Or not, wherever the fuck it is.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  But, you know, hypothetically, it doesn't get stuck.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  It looks like lungs. That is crazy.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  It does. It looks like the inside of our lungs, and it is the lungs of our planet.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay, so take us there. So you're an uncontacted tribe.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  So we're trying to protect this whole watershed, right? So this is an important part of what I do. The reason I write these books, the reason I come up here and talk to everybody, is because we're trying to save a part of the Amazon.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Can you show us real quick where it is by, like where the watershed is?

• 52:03Speaker 01

  My watershed?

• 52:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, type in Madre de Dios, Peru.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Okay. While he does that, so you're trying to save this?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  We're trying to save this watershed, because JJ, when I got there, said, "This is the wildest place." We started exploring it. It is, and that's, again, this is what I'm writing about in the book. The first few years I was there was just like, it was pure avatar. It was just green from horizon to horizon, and you could explore this jungle that was packed with wildlife. And it's like Earth before humans messed it up. It's like Earth the day God made it. It's just left there, growing for 55 million years. And I love animals, and it's filled with animals. That's gotta be the worst map on the internet. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's on junglekeepers.com.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  That's where we found it.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  There, right there, see, oh no, that's, that's a, that's a, that's the second worst map.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Can we just go to satellite images on maps?

• 53:01Speaker 02

  That's easier.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, so you see right above where it says in the red Madre de Dios, there's a long river, right there. See it says Alta Sanctuary Treehouse right there?

• 53:10Speaker 00

  Oh, that's you.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  There we go. Yeah, that's, that's where you go. So we're trying to protect that whole watershed. Now, the very headwaters are already in a national park, which is great.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  So you don't have to worry about it.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  We don't have to worry about it. Now, we're trying to protect the lower part because you see there's, see that yellow line?

• 53:25Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Trans-Amazon Highway. That's the IMF and the World Bank in Brazil and China coming together and going, "Let's get their resources out of the heart of the Amazon."

• 53:33Speaker 00

  Fuck.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  That's the parasite. That's like, that's, that's the death metastasizing into the jungle and trying to draw it out. And so that's come right past us. And so there's all these logging offshoot roads that are coming towards us. And so the land that JJ and I used to explore, that used to just be jungle, just green. You see, it looks, it looks like it has smallpox now. You see that on either side of the road? You start getting these people clear stuff.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  And so, man, that's the circuitous way of saying, "We're trying to protect this river, and the uncontacted tribes live in the upper reaches of this river." And the reason I said I need you to ask me this question is because when I told people that we were working on this river and we didn't contact the uncontacted tribes, we were there one day and they came out. And they said, "You know, we don't know about World War II, or Jesus, or civilization. We've never even heard the name of the country we live in." But they're like, "We do want bananas."

• 54:31Speaker 01

  And they were like urgently, "And we'll kill you if you don't give them to us."

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Like it was a problem. Like it was urgent, banana emergency.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  Is there a native tongue or they speak in Spanish?

• 54:45Speaker 01

  They're speaking a language that nobody speaks.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  So they're just describing banana and nobody knows what they're saying? I need this. I need this in my mouth.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Paul, this is you. You gotta handle that one.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  These tribes are terrified. They're like, "You must have bananas or you're all dying." No, so, so the, the, the people, the, the, the communities that we do work with speak the Yene language.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  And the Yene language is similar enough to what the Majkopiro or Nomole people speak, that, that is a rough translation.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  You can, you can get there.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  And I, I always make the comparison that what, I've been in Italy and I speak enough Spanish, and I'm like, "I don't really speak Italian, even though I'm Italian-American." And they're like, "I speak Spanish." And they're like, "I, I know what you're saying."

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, you need to get by.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you need a bathroom.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  And so...

• 55:34Speaker 00

  So they need bananas bad.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  They need bananas bad because they're still hunter-gatherers. They're living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  How many people roughly show up?

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Fuck me, that day. I don't want to get the numbers wrong because then, you know what happens? People watch my shit more closely than I do on the...

• 55:51Speaker 02

  It's like a hundred or like five?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  I want to say like a hundred because there was, there was numerous people out on the beach. And we were, the anthropologist was like, "Put down your bows, put down your weapons." And they're like walking in on us. Like, I mean, they came from up the beach. Ah, I'll never forget it because I got chills down my spine because it's like the thing you never think could happen.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  You're worried about Jaguars.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  I'm not, it's just, you just, it's like, it's like aliens landing or like, or like seeing a dinosaur. It's like, we're looking down the beach and there were dogs barking and people running and we're all on the side of this community and you just see these figures coming. And they're like, they're like stalking across the beach like this. Like they're moving the way you think they would move. And they got their bows and arrows out and they're like, "Yo, look at that." And they're like, they're like moving back and you're like, "Holy shit." And you're like, "Am I, am I still safe?"

• 56:39Speaker 00

  No.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  You're like, "Are they about to come in here and just wreck the village? Like, we don't know what's gonna happen."

• 56:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  And there's, you're, you're two days from police, right? So you're not in society anymore. You're out in the jungle. So you're, you're out past the boundary of civilization. So you're, you're, whatever happens, happens. It's the Wild West. So if they decide to start shooting, it's like, you start going, "How many shotguns do we have? How many working, should we start going, "How many working shotguns do we have right now? Right here, right now?" And they're like, "Six." And you're like, "Holy shit." You look across the beach and you're like, "There's 55 visible people with six-foot arrows." And they're carrying packets of more of them. And you're like, "We are, we are outgunned like 30 to one." And, and so, you know, the anthropologist is going, "Please put down your bows.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  We are not enemies. Nomole, brothers. Nomole." He kept saying, "Nomole, brothers."

• 57:35Speaker 01

  And so then they, they indicated that they were like, "We want food. We want bananas." Like, no joke, they wanted bananas and we pushed a boat across, which is exactly what Ignacio was doing when he got shot in 2019. And so they very carefully piled up a boat with bananas and pushed it across. And they like jump on it. You might be able to find this video. Type in "Paul Rosey, uncontacted tribes." I don't know if it's just up there. I don't know. But to either YouTube or something, but there might be a clip of it. But there's a moment that they all hit this boat and it was, I mean, it was so surreal. I remember that day trying to, trying to be super present. And it's weird. You get into that meditation thing where you go, "How do I be super present?

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Like, how do I?" I was like looking at it and I was like rubbing my eyes and I'm going, "I am looking at these, these people are right there." But it felt like historic. There it is. I said, "I'm coming across the beach." Yep. And they're pointing at us. They're like, "Look at this." So they're wearing rope around their waist.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  Sick haircuts. They look like hipsters.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think they had like one machete in the whole group. So they would grab the front of their hair and just cut the bangs.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  You know, so these were the guys that had put down their, their bows. There you go. That's the spot. Right there, it's coming.

• 58:52Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so when they get them, what you're seeing here is this sort of, it's not like they're grabbing the bananas and they're like, "Cool, we'll divvy them up later and we all got bananas now." They're, they're, they're like, "My banana's my banana. Your banana, your banana." Notice though, they're not sharing this. The urgency. Otherwise, they could just grab the boat and chill. What are they, why are they grabbing them like that? That's, that's, that was, that like changes your heart when you see that. You go, "What are they doing?" And then you go, "I hope they get the boat back."

• 59:21Speaker 00

  Do they?

• 59:21Speaker 01

  They did, they did because they wanted more bananas.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  And did you have any more?

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Well, we gave them all the bananas. And then the scariest part was like, you know, we're, we're all focused very, very forward. We're looking at all this. Yeah, that guy, he got his hands on a Jungle Keeper shirt. So these naked people have been in the jungle for, for centuries, no clothes. That dude gets a fur shirt and he's got a Jungle Keeper's logo right on there. So he's walking off into the jungle and I was like, "Man, he has no idea." And the reason I said I need to tell this story is because since then, you know, you had these people come out and they're like, "How could you exploit these people by publishing their images without their permission?" Well, you know what? Since the book came out and since that footage came out, we were able to protect 20,000 acres of pristine rainforest where they live.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  And they'll never know about it, but they're safe now because we protect them. And because people all over the world saw that footage, and so we gotta keep them safe. Like, let them keep living like that. And if they want to come in, they can come in. That's their choice. But if they want to stay out, they should be able to stay out. And the problem is that the, the loggers, the gold miners, the narco traffickers will come in and kill them. You know, the, the bows and arrows are scary until you have an AK-47.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Like, it'll straight up be, like, I guess the biggest threat to them is loggers coming in and just actively murdering them to take the land.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  So the loggers, interestingly enough, the loggers are mostly really chill. It's interesting. You know, it's like your parents are like, "Watch out for drug dealers." And then you're like, "They're my friends."

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  I don't know any drug dealers. My buddy Steve sells weed.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. We're like, "I've never met a scary one. They're just in my dorm."

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  And like, so like the loggers tend to be local guys that are working for their families. And that's who we turn into the Rangers. Because like JJ will be like, "Yo, my brother Pico was a logger. Like, let's have him drive boat." Great.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  Awesome.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  And like, "You want a better job?" And then you realize, wait, they're not bad guys. They're friends we haven't hired.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  And that's, and that's sort of, that thing is sort of the, the, the higher message here is like, "There's a way to fix all this. Like, you don't, the world doesn't have to be ending. Like, we're smart enough to fix a lot of these problems."

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  But like, the biggest threat to them?

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Narco traffickers.

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  Why? What happens with the narco traffickers?

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Because the narco traffickers are going out into the jungle, into the wildest places. And so this is an interesting problem that we never anticipated. Because when I went out there, it was the wildest place on earth. It took days to get there. Nobody could get there. And then, you know, about a, two years ago, the narcos showed up. And they, they, they, you know, we always heard, stuff comes in legend first, then it comes real. You hear these uncontacted tribes out there and you go, "That's bull, it's gotta be bullshit. There's no way that's real." And then they walk out of the jungle. You're like, "Holy shit." And then they were like, you know, "Now there's narcos." And you're like, "How are there narcos? Where are there narcos? And where are they gonna..." They wait for that bend in the river.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  They cut the trees back into an airstrip. And so they get, they get a long bend in the river and then a turn as they cut an airstrip back. So they lower the plane, fly right over the river and fly under the jungle. So then you have the trees at 150 feet. And so no one's able to surveil down. Otherwise you'd be able to see it through an airstrip. You can't see through the trees.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  Hold on.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  The airstrip that they're cutting.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Is under the trees.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  Is under the tree line.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  So the plane uses the river as like the beginning of the landing strip. As the entry point. This is on some like.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Tony Stark shit where the.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  They're smart. They got submarines.

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  Okay, so the plane lands, but the plane also has to exit, right?

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  There's definitely no pictures of this. No, no, the plane does not have to exit because you go down, you fly under the trees. And then you have a hallway. Exactly. You go to the end, turn around and then fly back out.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Come back out. Holy shit.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Now, the problem with this is the narcos go in and they are not local loggers who are trying to feed their family. These are professional drug traffickers, killers. And they know if anybody messes with their business, they put them down. And so when they, you know, they'll hear about the tribes and they're like, that's. Because they're usually coming from other parts of the Amazon. And they're like, wow, you look at all that green jungle. They're like, no cops are going out there.

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  So like, so we'll go out there. So they do the work to get out there. And then they find out there's these, these, these naked people out there. And they're like, well, we'll just kill them.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  And nobody's gonna know.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  And no one's gonna know. And so that's, that's a horrific thing. And we've been working with Peruvian authorities to stop that. But the most significant thing that we've done is just get, you know, we're, we're. The other thing is people, people go, I'll get these questions or people go, I say like, we're just protecting. We just bought 20,000 acres of the Amazon that's now protected. And people go, you can't buy the Amazon. It's just the Amazon. I'm like, listen, the Peruvian government's cut it up into logging concessions. So what I've figured out with JJ is we buy it before it's destroyed. And add it to what we're trying to make is this national park that saves the whole.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  You're never gonna make everybody happy, Paul. There's always gonna be somebody.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  You could literally be Mother Teresa trying to save the Amazon with a, with rainbows surrounding you and, and angels. And they'd be like, fuck you.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  You hear the same about Mother Teresa.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Really? She's terrible.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, there you go.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, literally.

• 1:04:45Speaker 00

  That's the thing. It's like, it's almost like you just kind of.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  Convince the people that you can convince and get the support that you want and then just accept it. You also gotta understand with the internet now, so much is not even real. Some of those criticisms could be coming from.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Cartels.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  Cartel groups that are lobbying against you protecting territory that they would like to exploit. Same thing with the logging, same thing with the run. Like, I would, I would be shocked if billion dollar corporations are not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in bots and fake accounts just to put out hit pieces against anybody getting in their way. It happens all the time in every other industry. Why wouldn't it happen here?

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  I agree with you, except for that the guys that we're dealing with on this level.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  I, I, I think they're the guys that sell it to the guys that sell it to the guys. Like, these are the, these are the.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  They aren't doing anything. I'm talking to people building the highways in Amazon. They are actively lobbying.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  You embarrassed the government because you're like, hey, I'm gonna protect the thing you were supposed to protect. And then the government doesn't love it.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so interestingly, I was talking to the Peruvian Minister of Interior. I forget what it was. We're sitting there and he was like, I love gold mining. He's like, because it makes a lot of money. And I was like, you realize gold mining destroys the forest? And he's like, he looks at me and he goes, yeah, but what do you want my people to do? He's like, they gotta eat. And I was like, listen, if you destroy that forest, your people are gonna eat for three years while they wreck everything you can see and turn it into a, like, a wasteland, like Dune. You keep that forest, you establish ecotourism, you do carbon credits, you make European countries pay you to keep this habitat up. You have water now. And you have, you have rain and you can do agriculture.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Your, your, your country continues to have resources as the rest of the world falls apart. It's like, it's like investing. You don't have it today, you got it later.

• 1:06:34Speaker 00

  You gotta incentivize them with capitalism.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Which is fine.

• 1:06:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, if, if it works for it, then why not? Like, your ultimate goal is to protect this resource. But it can't be, it can't be sold to them like, hey, this is really important and beautiful and we have to protect it. You have to almost like appease their greed.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  But it's not even greed. It's the way things work. If there's land, people are gonna build on it. If, if, I see this in the US, people inherit land. And then they're like, well, if I make subdivisions on it, I can make a couple million. And then like, I'm out. And it's like, well, then the, the, the capitalist entropy is always to destroy the nature.

• 1:07:08Speaker 00

  Also, if you're like a democratically elected politician, you gotta prove that you've done something good. And if the economy looks good for two years because you've been selling gold mining rights, all of a sudden people are like, well, no. You know, most people don't live in the Amazon. So the people in the country are going, that's been pretty good. The economy's humming. They don't realize that.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  What's happening?

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Now, as far as the narco economy goes, like, why are they choosing this place? It seems so difficult to survive.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Because no cops are gonna show up.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  But what are they doing? Are they growing?

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  They're growing and turning it into cocaine. And then, and then they take it down the rivers and they, they take it out. They figure it out.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  So the operation, like, as far as like.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  It's a small operation.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Growth and processing is all done out there.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:49Speaker 00

  And then once it, once it leaves the Amazon, it's already packaged, ready to go.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Well, once it hits that highway.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  Forget it.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Forget it.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Have you ever come across these like packaging and grow sites?

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  So I have not come across a packaging. I've come across growth sites. I've never come across where they're actually making it like a lab. I've come across them transporting it and I've come, you know, I've seen the guys with guns on the boats. But I, at the time, I was coming down river after a multi-day solo. And I was just in this little yellow raft, a pack raft. And I had my, my, my, my backpack. And they pulled up on me and they're like, what are you doing out here? And I was like, I picked up my camera. I was like, I'm a photographer. And they were like, where's your guide? They're like, what are you doing? If you, yeah, you're, you're a gringo foreigner? Where's your guide?

• 1:08:29Speaker 00

  You look like special ops, bro. I'm not gonna lie.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  This is the problem. And they were like.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  They were like, fuck you. You're innocent. Where are you? And I was like, what could I? I was literally, my Spanish was good enough at the time. I was like, what could I possibly do to you? I was like, I'm going that way, you're going this way. I was like, I got no problems. I was like, also, I've been out here for a week. You guys got any cigarettes? And they were like, we got you. They threw me some cigarettes. I was like, all right, peace. Yeah, I was like, oh, we're good.

• 1:08:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  You know, but they, their, their first reaction is like, we'll just, we'll just turn you to juice.

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, if you're in army fatigues.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  You say the narcos is new, like, within the last one to two years. So what's to stop them from attacking you guys?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Well, they, they have. They've, they've, me and JJ and really, really now the, the rest of the team. Like, two years ago, not two years ago, a year and a half ago, they actually tried. They actually had people on a road stop our pickup truck. And they came in with guns and it just happened to be a day that I wasn't there and JJ wasn't there. And they pulled the car over, they pulled our driver out at gunpoint.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  Fuck.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  They took his cellphone and wallet. And they, they literally were like, yo, just tell them we didn't get them today, but we're gonna get them next time.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  So hit out on you, full hit.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Full hit. And so, you know, now when we're down there, you know, in the old days, it would be like me on a boat with a motor, looking for frogs and snakes. And now when I go down there, there's 10 security guards waiting at the airport to escort me to wherever I gotta go. And I can't go anywhere alone. Like, unless I'm really in the interior. Anytime I'm on a road, like, there's no more like going to a cafe in town. There's no more driving my boat on the river, none of that. There's gotta be three guys, at least three guys with me at all times that are armed.

• 1:10:14Speaker 00

  No, fuck, because they would do a hit even in town on you?

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Especially in town. Because you're sitting there and there's more concentration of people. So then, you know, someone goes, yo, aren't you looking to that, you know, that bearded Italian guy with the fucking nose? And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's not that many of them here. And they're like, yo, get down there right away. And then they just, you know, what, what does it take for them to walk up behind you while you're sipping an espresso and just? You're done.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  They're on a motorcycle, they're out.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Mark Gagnon?

  I think it's time to work from home, my guy.

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  Is there a way to negotiate with them? Like, like, we, we can't put a, we can't take like our legal system and apply it to the beginning of time. So is there a way to just be like, hey, guys, like, I'm not gonna interfere with what you guys are doing. I'm just in conservation, like, I'm not looking in your direction, don't look at mine.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a, the problem I have with that is, you know how Batman doesn't use guns? Negotiating with people that are selling drugs to, to people and, and bringing human trafficking girls into prostitution. And murdering the uncontacted tribes. Me being like, we'll be cool as long as you don't shoot me. They're bad guys.

• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  And like, we're not, we're not.

• 1:11:30Speaker 00

  They're not gonna operate in good faith.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  No. And what we're trying to do is build this national park that protects the indigenous people that are earning an honest living. And, and there's really, there's no, like, inclusivity stops at murderer, drug.

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  I'm not saying include them, I'm just saying you getting killed would ultimately hurt this region.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  Far more.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but working with the Peruvian authorities to find a way to bring the law out there. Like, part of what Jungle Keepers does now is we work with the Peruvian authorities. Because people go, oh, they're South America, they're probably.

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  They're on board, huh?

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  They're on board. They're like, look, we wanna make our country better.

• 1:12:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  And they're like, we wanna go out there, but that's two days. We don't, our department doesn't give us the gasoline and we don't have the ammunition and we don't have enough handcuffs to get 50 different narcos. And so what we come in is we go, look, you guys got everything you need. Go out there and get them. And so then they pull the narcos off the land, they do it however they do it. And then we go get that land, add it to the reserve. And then that's more land that's safe for millions of animal heartbeats, ancient trees, the uncontacted tribes, everything. And what, what's cool about this project is that, you know, a lot of organizations are trying to protect the environment. Or like, the ocean.

• 1:12:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  And like, where does that start or end?

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  And so with this, we're trying to protect this watershed, right? And so there's a start and a finish. If we, there's a success line, there's a finish line. And so if we can protect the watershed and the Peruvian government agrees, they said, okay, you did all the hard work. We sign it into legislative, dead legislation, this is protected. Now we protected it.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Is that?

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  And we had a success.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  So you get them off the land, you take their land and then.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  We take the bad guys.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  What do you do with the agriculture that has to be grown over there?

• 1:13:12Speaker 00

  It's medicinal.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  I don't know what you're talking about. Why are you asking?

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  Stop asking about that.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, I'm saying, I'm seeing stuff hard to handle.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  A lot of questions. Have you ever been?

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, go, go.

• 1:13:21Speaker 00

  I just wanted to know if you've been to the, any of the indigenous peoples like homes?

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 00

  Like, have you pulled up to like their village? I don't even know what you call it. Is it like a town?

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Indigenous or uncontacted?

• 1:13:31Speaker 00

  No, I guess either.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Uncontacted, I'd be dead. But the indigenous villages.

• 1:13:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. What does it look like?

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  It, you know, it's, they usually do a platform and it's a lot of times a thatched roof, very simple, no, no walls. And so I, when I'm down there, I live the way they do, like, you know, it can A-frame, no walls. So even when I'm living comfortably at base, I'm living in a, in a, in a, in a situation where like when I sleep at night, birds, bats, jaguars, whatever, can all come in my room.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  What about mosquitoes? How are they handling mosquitoes?

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  They a lot of times make a, make a fire at night. I mean, people have.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  But you can't make fire over there.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  It's difficult, but they know how to do it.

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 1:14:11Mark Gagnon?

  You haven't figured out some type of paste you can make to?

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  There's mosquito repellent, but half of the mosquito repellent that we use, they just like it better.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, this picture.

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  What do mosquitoes like? They prefer?

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Can you pull up the picture of the little girl eating a monkey head? Cause I had to babysit for this little girl and we were living.

• 1:14:29Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Outskirts of an indigenous community.

• 1:14:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  And it was like time for her to eat, you know? And I was like, what do you got? And she opens the pot and there was a monkey head.

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  And she just starts pulling, pulling, there she is, Dyer, she's adorable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so she just started eating.

• 1:14:44Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  She started eating that monkey face and she was like, I can't get the ear off. And I was like, well, I'll do it for you. And it's like, now we're both sharing this monkey head.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  You know, and she's, well, that's, she's eating a turtle. She dug into that turtle, man. She loved that thing.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  What's the wildest shit that you've eaten that we would be surprised by? None of it probably shocks you.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Monkey head. I would, I would say that, that takes the cake.

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  That's Indiana Jones shit.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  I never, I never anticipated that, you know, and again, yeah.

• 1:15:13Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  What is the audio?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  It's a Yine song that this woman was singing while she was sewing.

• 1:15:27Speaker 00

  Oh, no, he's getting in there. Wow, that's beautiful.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Like jerky.

• 1:15:31Speaker 00

  Oh, she's getting in there.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:34Speaker 00

  Look at that. Nah, bro.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  Yo, Al.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Why are you laughing?

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  This is a culture thing.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  I just let her eat on the monkey's neck. She's also, she's not even eating like the nose or the.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  She's getting into like the underside.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Speaker 00

  Pulling out the.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  Good part. Yeah, yeah, she is, she's getting the good part.

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  I mean, I've heard that.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Yo. There you go.

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  Go.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. She's adorable.

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  Get it.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  But you know, she's tough too, cause she'll take like a giant grub this big.

• 1:16:08Speaker 00

  What's a grub?

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  Like a grub, a larva of a, of a beetle.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  You ever seen Lion King?

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Like the Lion King where they're sucking, like Pumba and Timon, where they're sucking down the grubs?

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  It's under a tree larva, it's a big old slug thing.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Where's he been?

• 1:16:20Speaker 00

  I grew up in the city, guys.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  I did too.

• 1:16:22Speaker 00

  We also, we didn't have that part of the Lion King.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, growing in the city.

• 1:16:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  We didn't have Lion King in the city.

• 1:16:29Speaker 00

  We're not Lion King, bro.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Didn't make it.

• 1:16:30Speaker 00

  Mulan. I was watching Mulan, guys. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second because therapy is important, but it can be expensive. Take it from me, I've been to therapy many different times in my life and it used to be a hassle to find the right help. But right now, there is help getting help. Talkspace makes getting the help you need easy, accessible and affordable. Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy, bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatrists that you can access anytime, anywhere. Talkspace therapy and psychiatry is covered by most insurers and most insured members pay a go pay of $0. Talkspace is affordable, even out of pocket.

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• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  But you've got to go to ziprecruiter.com/flare to post your job for free. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/flare. Oh, and if you forget where to go, don't worry. You hear another ZipRecruiter ad soon enough. Now let's get back to the show. Also, very important to note, I told you guys this from back in the day, that, uh, Man City was cheating rats.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  When did you bring this up?

• 1:19:13Speaker 00

  Well, this is the first time we're talking about football, soccer.

• 1:19:18Speaker 00

  I said they were cheating rats.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  They were, okay.

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

  When we were in Man, when we were in Manchester doing shows, I said they were a little cheating rats.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Fan, isn't he? He is such a, you have such.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  First of all, I haven't shows on my team yet, but like I at least respect it.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Oh, he's an Arsenal guy.

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  You think so? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I, you know, some might say, some might say.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  I mean, let's check the standing. Oh, they're the number one in the Premier League right now. That's convenient.

• 1:19:39Speaker 00

  Hard for me to root for whoever's on top.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:19:42Speaker 00

  I'm a Nick fan in my soul.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  And you're gonna go for Arsenal at number one?

• 1:19:45Speaker 00

  Hard. My point is the Knicks would never do what Man City did, rat up.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  But if you root for Man City now, you're gonna be able to ride them all the way from the bottom.

• 1:19:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, but they were rats. I'm a New Yorker, I can't be a rat.

• 1:19:57Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, you can't be a rat. Come on, that's like rooting for Brooklyn.

• 1:20:01Mark Gagnon?

  Come on, come on, come on, man.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  You're making me a Nets fan.

• 1:20:05Speaker 00

  Yo, yo, that's so true right there. If you're a New Yorker still rock, actually, I respect you if you're a New Yorker still rocking with the Nets. Cause you were a Nick fan your whole life and you had to watch the greatest summer in history.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. They got, they got KD and they were like, oh, I love the Nets.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  You a loyal little bitch. All you Nets fans out there, you little loyal little bitches.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  But yeah, it seems like Man City is probably gonna get relegated.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  So what are the chances?

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  Well, this is just total from Kalshi's, like their general EPL relegation market, which had been running since the beginning of the season. And Man City jumped up 30%.

• 1:20:45Speaker 00

  Nah, they get relegated.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  They're second in the table right now.

• 1:20:47Speaker 00

  You gotta relegate the rats, man. You can't rat yourself into a championship.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  No, they've used their money smart and won. Like, do you even know what the allegation is?

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  Is that what they're accused of?

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  They're accused of being super good with money.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  I'm, I, I thought that was Tottenham.

• 1:21:09Speaker 00

  I thought that was Tottenham that does that, that they accuse them of.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Why do you think them?

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  Isn't that the, the army?

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  The Spurs, the Spurs army.

• 1:21:17Speaker 00

  Aren't they good at that?

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  That's what people have said on Twitter.

• 1:21:20Speaker 00

  Oh, okay, yeah. No, if they're only accused of just spending their money wisely, then I might have to jump on board.

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess you have to check it out, but it looks like they're gonna get relegated.

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're getting relegated.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Coventry City's at 66%, but Man City's at 35%.

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  Man, shout out Coventry City, man. We, we rock with you, bro. We rock with you. A hundred percent. Not a, not a set of braces in that city. No, that feels north, right?

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  What part of England is that?

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  I think their crest actually has some teeth on it.

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  Nah, no way.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  I mean, that'd be a fire crest.

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, also Ipswich.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, Ipswich and whole city.

• 1:21:57Speaker 00

  Man.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:21:59Speaker 00

  Anyway, respect, man. We gotta, we gotta get back to the pod.

• 1:22:03Speaker 04

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• 1:22:18Mark Gagnon?

  And you're from New York, why the jungle? Like usually you do bad at school, you go to the military.

• 1:22:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:24Mark Gagnon?

  Why the jungle?

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  That is a great question. Uh, nature versus nurture, I don't know. I, I just remember from being about three and, and my parents, we moved out of Bay Ridge, we went to Jersey. And I think they, part of them, they, they both wanted trees and nature. And I, on the weekends, I was like, take me to the stream. You know, I would be lifting rocks, looking for salamanders. I've always been very connected to animals, peep, I mean, the anacondas, the monkeys out of the river, the, the, I, I tend to have elephants. I tend to have animal encounters, whether or not I want them. And they, um, like I, I've rescued so many animals. And so even as a kid, this, this thing was there where we'd be walking and I'd be like, my parents are from Brooklyn and I'd be like, do you see that snake in the tree?

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  And there'd be a six foot, black snake in a tree. And like, they'd never seen anything like that in their lives and they're like, what is this kid? You know, I'd be like, look, there's a red-tailed hawk, you know, and just spotting things.

• 1:23:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  And that was, I think that, that's what happens with kids though, then you see what gets a reaction out of people.

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  And so part of it was my innate love for it and part of it was, I was like, all right, I think I'm good at this.

• 1:23:33Speaker 00

  And they nurtured it, they thought it was cool.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  And then they nurtured it and then they were like, look, my mom was a big like no, no TV.

• 1:23:39Speaker 00

  Get out of the house.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, get out of the house. And also just you're not allowed to watch junk. Like they're like, you can watch like David Attenborough, Steve Irwin, or like old black and white movies.

• 1:23:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Classy stuff. And so I grew up on Steve Irwin. He's someone that I don't think anybody can really criticize. Steve Irwin, Jane Goodall, those are two people you never.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  They'll find a way, bro.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  They'll find, they'll find a way, I hope not.

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  I think what they said about, uh, what is it? What they criticized Steve, that he's like handling the animals rough or something like that. This is.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  These are bunny huggers.

• 1:24:08Speaker 00

  This is after the fact.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  These are people that I was on a.

• 1:24:11Mark Gagnon?

  Bunny hugger.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  They're bunny huggers. I was on a podcast called the Meat Eater Podcast a couple of weeks ago and they're like, they're hunters, right? These are like guys out west that hunt. That's their primary interaction. But I didn't realize like all of the con, conservation area in the US, they're the ones managing it. The people, you know, eating, drinking green juice on the coasts and advocating for the, the rights of turkeys, they're not the ones making sure that like BLM lands or, this is Bureau of Land Management, by the way.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Different stickers. But like you realize, you know, these guys, yeah, they're taking a deer or an elk, but they're also hyper vigilant about how those populations are doing. Hyper vigilant about making sure that, that the politicians don't put roads through those areas. And that those ecosystems continue and that there are trout in the streams.

• 1:25:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  And so there's that juxtaposition of like, yeah, we hunt, yeah, we fish because we care.

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  And actually, those, those, those ecosystem services that come standard with life on earth, they only get messed up when people stop relying on them. Like if we all were eating salmon out of the river, we'd be like, do not fuck with the river.

• 1:25:21Speaker 00

  There was a, I think you were talking to Lex about it, but it was about a, some sort of like ranch. I'm not exactly sure it was where they had rehabilitated and like started to breed like rhinos or something like that, but you could also hunt on the ranch.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:35Speaker 00

  But it was done in a way like you couldn't do with rhinos. It was done with certain species where if you didn't hunt enough of them, that might cause problems in the ecosystem, et cetera. I think that seems like hard for some people to conceptualize when like if their brain, their brain almost goes to an unnatural place with animal life where they're like, no animals will be killed ever and nothing should happen about it. And like, once you probably have experience in these actual ecosystems as you do, you understand that like death is a very unbearably natural process in this place. It's kind of all death.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  I mean, everything's death. Life is a momentary stasis. The jungle is just a meat grinder. Like it's just, and so then you, you come to treasure life. And so what, and then let's, let's go back to the spider monkey on that. But the, the thing that like, when I have students come, we have student groups come to the Amazon and I'll, one of the tricks I'll play on them is I'll be like, guys, we're all eating vegetarian for a few days because we only care about nature. And then after like two days you'll get, usually it's one of the guys first will be like, yo, man, he's like, I need some meat. And like, yeah, you do. Yeah, I know you do. And they'll be like, how do you, you know, and I'll be like, oh, I eat lots of meat. And I'm like, you guys want meat? You're gonna have to kill a chicken. And most of the kids are like, we're not doing that. I'm like, you eat chicken every day.

• 1:26:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, you want someone else to do it.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  You bring in a chick, they're like, oh, he's cute. There's one girl, she was like, I can't, I can't watch this. And I said, what are you studying? And she goes, I'm a veterinary student. I said, you know what you're gonna do? You know how many dogs you're gonna have to put down as a veterinary student? I was like, you watch me kill this chicken. And she was like, I can't. I was like, you're gonna have to change majors.

• 1:27:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  You know, and it's so quick. You, you know, you put a chicken's head on the log, you calm them down, give them a drink of water, and then you just take a machete and go whack. There's no suffering, there's no period of, of, of discomfort. Lights out.

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  And so as long as it's done really ethically and learn that that's how you eat.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're so disconnected.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Or eat avocados the rest of your life, whatever you want to do. But even those, you know, I don't know. I just think that Dara over here eating a monkey, as shocking as it is to eat a primate, right? It's not, it's not super appealing, that face. But I, I do think that there is almost a sacred beauty about being connected to our ecosystems and we've become so disconnected to the point that people think that it's bad to like, to hunt an elk, you know? And in, and in this country where we have-

• 1:28:01Speaker 00

  That's to pardon the ecosystem.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Where we have ecologists working with the government to say, we're gonna make sure that these, that we're not depleting this population. And in fact, what we're gonna do is keep it at the carrying capacity where, where, where it's doing good.

• 1:28:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  And then you have people being like, that's terrible. It's a shut up. I just, I don't do bunny huggers. I got, I got a jungle to protect. I have one mission in life. I don't concern myself with anything else. And if they have a problem with it, they should come. I don't think they want to go talk to the uncontacted tribes about not eating turtles. Like, go.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  By all means, please. I understand like hunting, if you're gonna actually consume the animal, but what about just game hunting?

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  So I don't like trophy hunting at all, but in Africa right now, there's a lot of land, this is like one of those truths that whether you like it or not, a lot of the land, like you're saying, that is protected for wildlife is either photo tourism or game hunting. Sometimes both. And so the places that I've worked in Africa have been hunting reserves where they don't hunt the, the rhinos or the elephants.

• 1:29:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  But things like zebras and water buffalo and things, you're talking about people paying 80 grand to hunt a buffalo. No one's gonna pay 80 grand to take a picture of a buffalo. And so you make 80 grand on an old buffalo who's, who's messing up the younger buffalos.

• 1:29:18Speaker 00

  But that's an important distinction is it, at least how you said it is like, the ecosystem isn't exactly balanced because there's security and safety there. So you have certain populations that start to like fluctuate in age. Older buffalos hanging around, not giving the younger buffalos the opportunity to like create their prides or whatever, families.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  They're just, they're over the hill. They're on their way out.

• 1:29:41Speaker 00

  They wouldn't be taken out by a predator that might not exist in that capacity there. So there's a version where you can make the argument that you are ethically game hunting these animals.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  The other thing is, a high powered rifle is going to kill an animal like that.

• 1:29:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  Right? Hard shot. A team of hyenas is going to rip them apart. You know, when you see the animal like looking backwards as they're pulling its guts out. And it's like, dude, you know what? I'll take the 357, like I'm cool.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  And so, and so look, that one's complicated. I don't, I think this is way above the pay grade of bunny huggers. You know, like understanding like eating a trout is like where we start, the one on one level.

• 1:30:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  The complexities of like big game hunting is another one. And so like you, you mentioned this before and I don't want to miss it because it's important, but when I pulled that spider monkey out of the river, people said two things. They said, A, there's no way you were speaking spider monkey. And I said, I sure as hell was. You didn't trust me until I spoke spider monkey. And next people were saying, well, why? Most people were like, thank you. Right? Like save the spider monkey. Some people were going, why didn't you, how could, why didn't you just let it die?

• 1:30:51Speaker 00

  Bro, you gotta get a dating app just to put that picture up, bro. The damage that that picture would do on a dating app? Go back to that pic, Mark.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Mad married, mad married. I got the one I want.

• 1:31:03Speaker 00

  I know you're married, but God, Henry Cavill helping a monkey out of the river.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  So that's better than a fish pic? I feel like that's what a lot of guys go with.

• 1:31:13Speaker 00

  You don't need a fish pic. You dragging a monkey out of the fucking river. Yeah, of course. Can't get that wet. Can't get that shirt wet. We gotta save the hands off, my boy.

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  Well, I fucking threw the monkey in like two seconds before.

• 1:31:31Speaker 00

  I pee game. Mark, Mark made a great point, Mark, which is like, um, sometimes you'll see these, you should say it, but about the nature docs where they're like, you can't.

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. We're, we're talking about it before.

• 1:31:43Speaker 00

  I thought this is a great point.

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  But there's nature docs, like there's one I can think of specifically where there's a, a big like pit in the Arctic and a penguin fell in and got stuck. And the penguin was trying to climb up and it slides back down, tries to climb up, slides back down, film crew's up above and they're filming it. And then the narrator comes on, he's like, due to our contract with nature, we don't intervene and we leave this penguin to die. Cut to black. And I'm at home with my wife and my son. I'm like, what?

• 1:32:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  You let the penguin die of starvation and exposure in the middle of a pit? Like how is, and it's like, we're a part of nature and to an extent, like-

• 1:32:19Speaker 00

  We are.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  In my mind, if I'm there and I would like to believe this film crew did not let the penguin die and that they're like, okay, technically because we're filming permits, we have to save this. And that they went in there and launched him out of the pit.

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  Well, there was one where they did that. There was like a whole colony, you saw that one? There was a whole colony, it was like several hundred penguins. And then whatever reason, like the way that they got down to this area, it was too steep to get back up. And they just made a decision and they filmed it all and they carved steps into this thing. And they saved the whole colony.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Far.

• 1:32:47Speaker 00

  But like, again, this could be AI videos that I watch, but is, is it not abnormal that like if a certain animal sees like a baby version of prey, that they won't kill it or they just tear it up?

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  That's a weird, like-

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  He already found a feather.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Glitch.

• 1:33:05Speaker 00

  He's back.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  What kind of birds are you killing? Do you have any chickens? That's a weird one. There's a few examples of that where like a lion will kill a gazelle and the baby will be left over. And then it's like, maybe this baby's okay. And then it'll kind of take care of it for a few days. But I think that the thing of leaving animals, here's the thing, if you're interrupting a predation event, for example, if there's, let it go. Let it go. Then don't, do not intervene.

• 1:33:35Speaker 00

  Predation event you're saying is like, if some hyenas are attacking a zebra.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  No matter how brutal it is.

• 1:33:41Speaker 00

  It is what it is.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  I watched a, a cheetah and her cubs rip apart an impala and she was pregnant, so she couldn't get away. And what they did, the cheetah caught the impala and then she let her cubs practice on it to kill it.

• 1:33:55Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  And so they didn't kill her quick. They dismantled her. And then they went for the soft bits inside. It was like, we were sitting there watching it and it was like, you're getting like drunk watching it. It was rough. But, but like with a spider monkey, I said to people like, dude, it was just gonna die for no reason.

• 1:34:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  Like there was, what you can't see in the videos, like it's always back currents and whirlpools. And, and I lifted her up, you know, I could have just like animal controlled her and like grabbed her by the head, but I was like, she's a spider monkey. So I lifted her up by the kayak paddle and, and she was like, you know, at first she was like, no, and jumps back in the river. And then when I lifted her up and I started going, which is kind of their, their little language, she looks, you can see she looks at me. She went, oh, really? She goes, all right, cool. And she was like, hang on. You can see that part where she looks back at me, she's like, what? And so I had this amazing moment with her, just like right there, right there, right there, where she looks backwards, right there.

• 1:34:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, she grabs it with her tail as well.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  Well, her tail is, that's the coolest part of a spider monkey. Yeah. And so at this point I'm going, just kind of, and I'm going, it's okay, it's okay. And then she looks, she looks back at me, she's like, what? Like what's happening here? Like, how did I get out of this river? She's like, what?

• 1:35:12Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  And she's like, this is worse, this is better than drowning.

• 1:35:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  Now, are they any threat, like a spider monkey?

• 1:35:20Speaker 00

  No, no, no, they're good. Okay, so right here, gets off.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  And then she's back up, she goes back up into the tree.

• 1:35:27Speaker 00

  Is there any recognition?

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  Stabs you up?

• 1:35:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're like, thank you. So thankless, these spider monkeys, man.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  Spider monkey's got a crazy story though, you're not gonna fucking believe what just happened.

• 1:35:40Speaker 00

  So I was drowning.

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  This naked ripped monkey jumped in.

• 1:35:47Speaker 00

  Okay, you gotta, you gotta tell us about the anacondas, man.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  So that was the thing. JJ, JJ was like, look, I know everything about the jungle. I'll teach you about the jungle. He's like, you gotta, you gotta explain a bit to snakes.

• 1:35:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  And so I started showing him snakes and I started showing him bigger snakes and then I started going, but where are the anacondas?

• 1:36:05Speaker 00

  So, so you're aware going into the Amazon, obviously, that the biggest snakes in the world are the anaconda.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:11Speaker 00

  And they exist in the Amazon and they're kind of like things of myth and legends.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Speaker 00

  At a certain point, right? Like, we've seen anacondas.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you see anacondas, but then there's anacondas.

• 1:36:22Speaker 00

  And, and how big are the anacondas?

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  A normal male, I'd say is like nine feet, nine to 11 feet, you know, big snake.

• 1:36:31Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  Not gonna break the, you know, a big female, you see that picture of me right there with the?

• 1:36:37Speaker 00

  Jesus.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  There. That's like a 15 foot snake. That's not that big, though. That's AI.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  And then, and then some of these females, see, reptiles have indeterminate growth. Like, we grow to a certain height and then that's it. Like, we usually just get fatter. Snakes and crocodiles will just keep growing as long as you keep feeding them, as long as they keep living. And so fishermen know this. You'll get like this giant catfish that'll find this perfect spot and it'll live there forever. Crocodiles will do the same thing where they'll find a backwater that just, there's a good prey source and they won't move. They'll get shrewd. They'll stay alive because they're careful. And the big anacondas, they'll go far from people on a swamp. That's the floating forest that we found where there's, there's floating vegetation over this deep swamp. And there's trees growing from the bottom of it. See, if you type in floating forest.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, see the down, down, down, right to the drawing, yeah. So that's a, I tried to draw what it was like when we, when we caught, tried to catch one of these snakes and it was so big. And so the trees are coming up from the bottom of this lake.

• 1:37:47Speaker 00

  Can you stand on them?

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Not on the trees, but there's floating grass, floating grass on top of the lake.

• 1:37:53Speaker 00

  And it can support you?

• 1:37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good enough.

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Now, the interesting thing is if you're a snake, it supports you perfectly.

• 1:37:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Cause your, your weight is.

• 1:38:00Speaker 00

  Distributed.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. As a human, you're walking like this and you're like, straight down. Nightmare soup. Stingrays, piranha, crocodiles, diatoms, just all kinds of stuff swimming in there. There's black water down there. But the big anacondas there, real big anacondas there. And so the biggest ones that we've caught get like oil drum size.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  And the thing that we're, that, you know, at first it started out as us just going looking for anacondas.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  And then it became us realizing that there's not a lot of scientific data on how many anacondas are there? Are we losing anacondas? Are they an endangered species? We have no idea because no one's going through the swamps to do this. You know, birds, you can sit on the side of a river with binoculars and be like, there are 14 parrots.

• 1:38:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  That's very good.

• 1:38:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Anacondas is like, yo, let's get in the swamps up to our necks at two in the morning and go looking for dragons. And it's like, you gotta be out of your fucking mind. I mean, and I say that with, that some of the times that we're out there, we look at each other and we're like, we shouldn't be here.

• 1:39:03Speaker 00

  You said two in the morning?

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:05Speaker 00

  So you're going when it's pitch black? That's the only chance you have with that?

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  It's not the only chance, or you could go at like 9:00 AM when the sun gets over the trees. Cause then there, you're walking through this tall grass and what you look for is bees and butterflies really like, uh, salt. And also when the, when the snakes shed, they, they just, they, they have a scent and the insects like it. And butterflies especially will go, so you're walking through the grass and you'll see like butterflies going to this one spot in the grass. And you're like, and there'll be an anaconda just, you know, curled up.

• 1:39:35Speaker 00

  Crazy poetry.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Like dinner, dinner table sized anaconda.

• 1:39:39Speaker 00

  You see these pretty butterflies and you're like, this is gorgeous.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Next to the apex predator. Sleeping dragon on the grass. And you know what the crazy thing is? I've caught 90 something anacondas, seen double that. And even a snake this big, you go up to it and you're like, we gotta get this snake. We're gonna be on the front cover of National Geographic if we get this one. And we're on all this floating vegetation and you're like, if this thing turns around, we're all gonna die. And we go to try and restrain it so we can measure it and, and, and study it. And the thing just dives down, just dives down. That picture I was showing you, I once jumped on the back of one that, that carried me over the floating grass and she was just trying to swim. She was just getting to the edge and going down, never even turned around, could have, you know, with a head this big, like a Great Dane.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  She could have turned around and done anything she wanted to, but it, it, they're, they're, they're pretty peaceful. We're learning that they're not ambush predators the way we thought they were. They actually do travel through streams, through the jungle to hunt other animals. We found, we found one, we, again, butterflies and anacondas. This is weird thing. Do you know the blue, the blue morphos? Me and JJ were tracking peccary, which is like the, the pigs, through the jungle. And at this point, he's just teaching me to track. And so we're just running around barefoot through the jungle. And we get to this stream and he's like, you know what? We lost them. Here's the tracks in the mud. This is where they cross. And he's like, they're so far ahead of us. He's like, we should go back. And I was like, yeah.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  And there's this really beautiful blue morpho butterfly just on the ground doing this. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And I like took my camera. I'm waiting for this morpho to open so I could get a picture of it. And I just hear, I was like, oh, it's like, you know, like bone breaking sound. I was like, ah, like a wet stick snapping.

• 1:41:23Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  And this anaconda has one of the pigs, he got it by the jaw, bent it in half. And the sound I was hearing was the spine breaking. As this anaconda just constricted the life out of this wild boar. And I'm standing right there. And we got one picture of it and it's just, I just.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  And it's like, you don't think you're ever gonna see this shit in real life.

• 1:41:46Speaker 00

  Have you had them attack you?

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Anacondas?

• 1:41:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  No, they don't attack.

• 1:41:50Speaker 00

  Not attack, but like wrap around you or?

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first one I ever caught around that time, the first one that I ever got, I clamped hands on it. It's cause the way, you know, if you wanna get control over a snake's head, you grab it like this and then it can't, you know. The, I'm talking big, big snakes. They can't, you gotta get them right behind the head. You get them too far back.

• 1:42:08Speaker 00

  They're gone, they're all.

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  You're on, you're on. So I got this big snake. I'm like, I got it. This is great. And JJ's running full steam from like a hundred yards down. And I'm like, I got this snake. And then it wraps my arms, clamps them together. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, change. And then it went over my shoulders and now it pulls me to the ground. And so I made this mistake. I, I went after the anaconda, grabbed her by the neck and she went, well, I'm gonna remove the threat. Come here. Like someone doing jujitsu. It's like, come here, I'll get in my guard position and invite you in here. And then she just started crushing. And so it was hands and I was like, I wanna, I wanna get, get rid of this snake. Couldn't do it. Now I'm in the handcuffs and then she goes around my shoulders and then she's pulling me like this.

• 1:42:51Speaker 00

  What's the sensation of just being crushed?

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  Well, I just went, holy shit, this is how I die? I was like, my mother would fucking hate me for dying this way, like voluntarily jumping on a dangerous animal. And, and every time you breathe out, you can't breathe in again. And so I had this sudden thing of like, and we've been breathing since the moment we left our mothers. And so you breathe all day long, all night long.

• 1:43:15Speaker 00

  Instinctually, you never think about.

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  And then you suddenly denied breath. And the finality of going, am I, I'm like, I know I'm about to die and I'm about to die. And right as I, my clavicle was just about to, I was hearing it go. And then JJ comes and just like tackles me down and pulls the tail off. And then his brothers kind of unwound me. And I was holding on. Yeah, I said, they saved my life and I never made that mistake again. We do this with a bigger team now.

• 1:43:43Speaker 00

  The mistake was you going alone.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  The mistake was me going in alone. That was stupid. I was like 19.

• 1:43:51Speaker 01

  In my defense.

• 1:43:53Speaker 00

  But didn't you like, tried to get swallowed by an anaconda?

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and.

• 1:43:58Speaker 00

  Voluntarily?

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  Voluntarily. And, and the reason was, I went to, at the time I was, you know, I don't know how to say it. I was like 25 and I was getting a little bit of attention for this shit and, and living out in the jungle. And then, and then you get these emails or phone calls from like producers. And they'd be like, yo, jungle guy, like you wanna, you wanna do something like a show?

• 1:44:21Speaker 00

  Careful.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  And that's the thing though, at that age, at that age, you got, you got stars in your eyes and you go, I want this.

• 1:44:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  And you go, I want that. I could, I could do like what Steve Irwin did.

• 1:44:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  And you start going, I could do this, you know? And then you get in rooms with people and they're like, man, we've never seen anybody like you. Like shake my hand, sign this contract. And pretty soon, they're getting a ringer. They said, if you dress up in this suit that we're gonna make and try and get swallowed by an anaconda, you'll have a platform on Discovery Channel to tell everyone about this jungle that you wanna protect. And so it's not worth going into more than, it was bullshit. It was fake. I got Hollywooded really hard. It was a disaster. Probably took five years off of my career. It knocked me down, which was great because I learned. Those people that say like, get, make friends with failure, this was a great one.

• 1:45:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  I got a little bit starry eyed. I tried too hard, too fast. Got smacked down for it.

• 1:45:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  And then I spent years back in the Amazon, back to basics. I kinda had to exile to India for a while. I ended up, I got to live with a herd of elephants for a while. Like, I, I had to really re-enter and sort of re-ask myself the question of like, what do you wanna be? You trying to be a TV guy that shows people animals or are you trying to save a river and do something meaningful? Is it really about the heartbeats or is it about you being a famous wildlife guy?

• 1:45:50Speaker 00

  And what makes that change? And when do you realize that change? This is in India?

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. This is when, when, when, when I was back in the Amazon. It's like the first time, you know, you can run around and, and have adventures and jump in the water and climb the trees and that's great. Who's it helping? You know, and it's, it's, you gotta decide what character are you? And I always think this when you get, when you get someone that's like following the rules and they're like, "You got here five minutes late, you can't come in." And it's like, "What character did you wanna be?" Well, at my cousin's wedding, we were, we were at Fordham University, and I remember they wanted us to take pictures in this one building. A security guard comes in and he goes, "You guys can't be in here, get out." And they were like, "Yo, it's our wedding." And he was like, "I don't care, get out in your cars." And he was yelling at them. And my, this, my one friend went over to the guy, he goes, "Buddy, buddy, buddy, come here for a second."

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  He goes, "It's their wedding." He goes, "They're gonna be out of here in five minutes." He goes, "Who do you wanna be?" He goes, "Did you wanna be this guy as a kid?" And the guy just went, "No." And he went, "I'm sorry." He goes, "Guys, finish up." He goes, "But, you know, in like five minutes, get out of here, so I don't gotta deal with it." And it took him down a notch. But it's like, you know, do you wanna be the guy that's polluting the river? Do you wanna be the guy that's killing the, the nice bright? Do you wanna be the people? On which side of the Avatar movie do you wanna be? Do you wanna be with the blue people? Or do you wanna be with the people shooting them?

• 1:47:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  And we get to decide that. And so the first time that I saw

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  my jungle that I'd come to love with my monkeys and my jaguar, these animals that I've come to love and, and, and see as almost like neighbors. You wake up in the morning, you're like, "Oh, the macaws are out." You know, there is the spider monkeys and like, you know, you wave to them and they like pee at you and stuff. And it's like, you have a relationship with them.

• 1:47:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  And the first time you see jungle just leveled. And the old trees that you walked under are smoking on the ground.

• 1:47:44Speaker 00

  Like Ferngully, remember that movie?

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 1:47:46Speaker 00

  Same concept.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  It's just, it rips your heart out. It rips your heart out and then you go, "I don't really have a choice." It's not, it's not a choice anymore. You go, "No one is going to do this if we don't do it." At that point, we were the only people out there.

• 1:47:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  And so I said to JJ one day when we were standing there just with tears in our eyes and black ashes all over us. We've been trying to save whatever animals we could from this, what had been a beautiful pristine area. And I said, "There has to be someone we can call who can do something about this." Like this, isn't there, someone has to stop this. And he looked at me and he goes, he goes, "Look up river." And I look up, and he goes, "Look down this way." He goes, "You see anybody else?"

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  And he really meant it. He was, he said, "No one's gonna do anything unless we do it." "No help is coming."

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  And so we made Jungle Keepers and we started, and this is why I said it's great that I got smacked down. It's great that I didn't have a television career. Because at that age, I would have ruined it. I would have been such an asshole.

• 1:48:48Speaker 01

  And so it's, it, you know, at that, this forced us back into the Amazon to make us, uh, uh, you know, make this basically, you know, rubbing sticks together. We said, "Okay, how do we get our first ranger?" And he was like, "Let's just go talk to some loggers." We went and talked to the loggers and we said, "Who owns this land that you guys are cutting down all these trees on?" And they were like, "So and so." And we were like, "Cool." We went and talked to so and so and we said, "Look, how long, you know, how much money? How long? How much land?" And the guy's like, you know, "7,000 acres, you know, I don't know, like a hundred grand, whatever you want." He's like, "But it's gonna be..." We said, "Do you want, we'll pay it, we'll, we'll pay you tomorrow."

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  And I'd been raising money from doing this stuff, doing publicity books. And we paid the guy. And then we went back to the loggers on the grounds. Now we own the land. We went back to the loggers on the ground and we go, "So you guys, how long you been out here?" And they're like, "Dude, we've been out here for three months and like, I got a leg infection and like, my kid is sick. And like, there's nothing to eat and like, the trees are dangerous." And we're like, "Yeah, you want a better job? Like, we'll give you Jungle Keeper shirts and you get a boat. And you're gonna be part of an organization and we're actually gonna start protecting the forest." And you know what the first question they asked us was? They go, "Do we have to leave?" And I said, "What do you mean?" They go, "We don't really wanna leave." They're like, "We love it here." I said, "You're cutting down the trees, but you love it." And they're like, "We gotta feed our kids."

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  And we, I was, we were like, "Let's get you guys signed up." And that's how Jungle Keepers started. And then, once 2019 came and the Amazon was burning, and then I sort of got another shot when I released this video where I was screaming in the Amazon being like, "You fucking people don't realize, every day..." I just lost my mind on my phone. And I posted it and it went mega viral. Cause I just lost it. I just lost it. I'd never swore, I'd never sworn on Instagram. I'd never, I was like crying and sweating and there was animals dying behind me with 70 foot flames. And I was just like, "Welcome to the fucking Anthropocene." Cause it's like, dude, we're losing the Amazon rainforest. They're talking about life on earth being in danger. All you have to do is not cut down trees.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  All you people have to do is nothing and everything will be okay.

• 1:50:55Speaker 00

  This is the fire right here, right?

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  That's the video. And why is it burning? Because people set it on fire.

• 1:51:01Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  The Amazon doesn't burn. Look at that, look at that. That's the shit that I can't stand. That's the shit that breaks my heart.

• 1:51:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, you were saying that...

• 1:51:10Mark Gagnon?

  Like, why does that, why does that help?

• 1:51:12Speaker 00

  Farm land.

• 1:51:12Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, just for farm land.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  So they're wasting, some of those trees are worth like a hundred grand, 300 grand a tree, some of those mahogany trees.

• 1:51:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  And they waste it, they cut it down so that they can like farm papayas. There are people from other parts of the Amazon, these aren't the local people doing it.

• 1:51:28Speaker 00

  Is it like foreign investors? Are there people from other countries buying this and being like, "Yeah, burn it down, plant papayas, grow them?"

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  There's that as well. Where we are, it's a lot of just like migrant people coming in from Venezuela, Brazil, other parts of Peru. And they'll just burn 10 acres.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  Now again, you have a highway that was never there before. You have new roads that were never there before. And I'm talking about in human history. And now they're coming in and they're burning parts of the jungle that were never accessible to humans. And so this is what I keep telling everybody. We have the chance to save the crown jewel of nature on our planet. Just like Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, they went in and they saved Yosemite and Sequoia. And now Sequoia trees are the most incredible thing, the largest trees on earth, and they're safe. And we all get to enjoy them. We can protect one of the greatest natural treasures we have on this planet right now, if we can do it. And we've been asking everybody for help. We need about $20 million to protect the rest of the river. That's it. That's not that much money.

• 1:52:26Speaker 00

  That's not crazy.

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  No. To protect 500,000 acres of forest? No, it's not that much.

• 1:52:31Speaker 00

  I'm shocked that some like billionaire that, you know, has a, a boner for nature doesn't just cough up that 20 to you.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and you know, what's been more effective is what we, eventually we had more people come in. Me and JJ are really good at catching fish with our feet and, and navigating the jungle. We needed people that knew how to make an organization, how to, how to do the website of it. And like, I've never used a spreadsheet. Like, I don't know what that is. And so the guy Stefan, who became part of our organization, he figured out, okay, so, and this was, it was interesting before the first time. So 2019, I, I got this big hit of, of publicity. And so I'd had the discovery thing, got knocked down. 2019, I'm still on my own, but now I got really like viral famous for this video. And I was like, "You gotta help me." And like, millions of people contacted me. But I had no way of doing anything.

• 1:53:23Speaker 01

  I didn't have any way of taking their donations. I didn't know who was good and who was bad. There was a lot of bad people coming out of the woodwork to try and take advantage of me. People wanting JJ's number, people trying to ask me if I, and you know, "Do you wanna be on Naked and Afraid?" And all this kind of shit. And all I wanted to do is protect the forest. And I said, "The analogy is like I put out 10,000 fishing lines with 10,000 hooks and everything bit." Boat capsizes.

• 1:53:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  So interestingly then, we got a few more years to build and now it's like 2023. And out of nowhere, Lex messages me and he goes, "You wanna be on this podcast I do?" And I was like, "The Lex Fucking Friedman Podcast."

• 1:54:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  And so we kind of knew that this was gonna be...

• 1:54:09Speaker 00

  A big moment.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  A big moment. And we, and we, we, we got the website ready and we made donor portals and we've become a 501(c)(3) in the US. And so now, we start, we did, we did the podcast and people loved it.

• 1:54:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden we got donations and then we started protecting acres. And then as you get momentum, everybody, everybody roots for the Yankees. Once you start doing well, no one was there when you were barefoot machete days. Now all of a sudden you're like, "We're protecting 50,000 acres." We are the Jungle Keepers. We're not faking it till we make it anymore. We're really doing it.

• 1:54:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  And so now we have this organization and I tell people, "This is the most crucial moment in history, in world history." Cause we've had World War I, World War II, this, you know, civilizations rise and fall. There's never been a time when the entire environment is being attacked.

• 1:54:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  And we can survive this. It's not like the hope is lost. But if this is like civilizational global society adolescence where it's like, technology's gone here, our understanding is still trying to catch up. And it's like, "Hey, if we don't kill the polar bears, melt the ice caps and ruin the Amazon in the next 10 years, you do realize we could kind of, we could stabilize out."

• 1:55:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  Is tourism helpful?

• 1:55:19Speaker 02

  In the way that like you talk about these like safaris and things like that, this in central Africa, it helps the economy. Is it helpful for someone to like get on a plane and fly here to experience it?

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Very much so. And so when I met JJ, he was trying this and it wasn't working. And now with the exposure we've gotten, what we do is for instance, that treehouse, the Alta Treehouse, Alta Sanctuary Treehouse, we built it to share the canopy with people. Well, we didn't realize how was was how magical it was. And so like families were going to come up there and that then along with providing conservation rangers that we could be like, hey, do you know how to cook? Jump in the kitchen and we're going to send you to chef school and then you can come back and cook professionally. Boat driver, boat driver, boat driver. You guys can guide who's got who's good at birds. And all of a sudden you're employing 35 people to run this tiny little lodge. And if the jungle we're saving

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  is an entire football field, I'm talking about like a dime sized area that we use for tourism. So people like, how could you bring people to the wildest place? That's terrible. You're ruining the, shut up. We're doing using this much of it, a dime size on a football field. And we're bringing people to show them how beautiful it is, employing all these people. And so then the indigenous communities, the ones that we're in contact with, they go, oh, wait, we don't want a road. Like, we don't want like a McDonald's. We don't want to become narco traffickers. We want to be with those guys. And we're all having fun showing people beautiful blue butterflies, watching the sunrise over the thing and sipping coffee. And suddenly you come up with a sustainable future where the local people win, the wildlife continues to thrive, the ancient trees grow higher,

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  and everything's okay. And it's like, we just, we just need people to, we're so close, $20 million. What we do right now is we have people, like people come up to me, they give $5, $10 a month. Some people give like $100 a month, people all over the world. And so I'll help you in the airport on my way here. And somebody stopped and they're like, yo, I'm a jungle keeper. And I was like, no shit.

• 1:57:18Speaker 00

  That's fire.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  And she's like, yeah, she's like, I've been given $5 a month for the last two years. And I was like, well, we're halfway to making.

• 1:57:23Speaker 00

  We're gonna make a donation on behalf of this podcast. We got that. 100%. But also, we're gonna put the link there. So anybody else watching, if they feel motivated, that'd be absolutely awesome. Yo, 20 you can do.

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  20.

• 1:57:35Speaker 00

  I thought it was just the people.

• 1:57:37Speaker 01

  A billion dollars, bro.

• 1:57:38Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no. You kind of got to lead with 20. 20 is very doable.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  20 million to protect the wildest, most, most species diverse place on earth. It's not that much to ask. People spend 20 million on a new cafeteria. Like, it's like, not that much money. And with social media, with podcasts, if you reach, I mean, you get 20 million people to give $1. Forget if you get people to, to donate, you know, a mocha chino Starbucks, what people get, you know, I drink river water. I don't know. Orange mocha frappuccino, whatever they call it. I don't know. It's possible.

• 1:58:15Speaker 00

  No, it is possible.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  It's possible in this world.

• 1:58:18Speaker 00

  And you're gonna do it.

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  I'm, we're working there. We're risking our lives to do it.

• 1:58:21Speaker 00

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• 2:02:18Speaker 05

  Hello, I'm Chris Richards, general manager at Safford Volkswagen Richmond. I'm here to announce an exciting new program that I want you to listen to. Here's my friend Happy. Hi, I'm Happy Harry Turner, special finance manager at SaffordCredit.com. If you're in an open Chapter 13 bankruptcy, recently filed a Chapter 7, or you've been turned down because of credit challenges, don't give up. For nearly 30 years, I've helped people get reliable transportation when others said no. Visit SaffordCredit.com. Remember, I'm not happy unless you are.

• 2:02:48Speaker 00

  Speaking of risking your lives, can you take us through this? Okay. How fucked are you? This is the Paul Rosley scale. We're all in the Amazon. We come across a jaguar 1 to 10. How fucked are we? You can also elaborate on the 1 to 10, but how fucked are we?

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  All right. The answer's going to shock you.

• 2:03:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  There's a jaguar right there.

• 2:03:11Speaker 00

  Right there.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  You are 0% fucked.

• 2:03:13Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  Jaguar's gonna sit there and look at you. Jaguar don't give a shit. Yo, I was checking it. Listen, this is a camera trap, okay? This is a remote camera that takes pictures, right? I'm on the trail and I'm setting this camera trap up and I'm doing my thing and I'm opening it, checking the batteries, checking the settings, and I hear footsteps behind me, right? And it's good that you guys got plants here for this reenactment. This is perfect. This is perfect. Okay? I'm sitting right there where I just was. A jaguar walks by like this, just goes, what's up? Keeps walking. I was within five feet of a jaguar.

• 2:03:44Speaker 00

  And why do they not see you as prey?

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  No, they don't care. Plus, they smell like shit.

• 2:03:49Speaker 00

  We smell like shit to them.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we smell like shampoo and deodorant and, and all this stuff, toothpaste.

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  Not all of us.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:57Speaker 02

  I go natural.

• 2:04:01Speaker 00

  Glad to know he'll be in first, bathing in the Guanis.

• 2:04:05Mark Gagnon?

  So they wouldn't eat us at all?

• 2:04:07Speaker 01

  No. In my entire, in the region, in the Madre de Dios, I have never once heard of a jaguar attacking a person. Not once.

• 2:04:16Speaker 02

  Now, what if we fuck up crazy? Like, we're all out there and Alex goes, guys, look what I found, holds up a baby jaguar. I'm like, where'd you get that? He goes, oh, I found it. And then all of a sudden you hear.

• 2:04:24Mark Gagnon?

  I would do something like that.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  100% fucked. 100%. That mother jaguar.

• 2:04:30Speaker 00

  I would have did it because you said we're good.

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  You're watching from a distance, not touching their babies, we're good. You pick up a cub, as soon as mother figures out where, as soon as that thing goes, mom, she's going to take her claws and she's going to open you in ways that would horrify us.

• 2:04:47Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  All right. Okay.

• 2:04:49Speaker 02

  But you would have deserved it. So, just fun.

• 2:04:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:52Speaker 00

  Black caiman.

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  Black caiman.

• 2:04:55Mark Gagnon?

  What is that?

• 2:04:55Speaker 01

  Black caiman, again, middle of the data, it's the biggest caiman. It's a, you know, we have, we have smooth fronted caiman, we have, we have spectacle caiman.

• 2:05:05Mark Gagnon?

  That's what I meant, like.

• 2:05:07Speaker 01

  Go to that picture, the butterflies, bottom center, bottom center. Look at that. I love this picture. Look at that. That's the Amazon for it. I'm telling you, the butterflies, they want the salt that comes in the, in the corners of your eyes. Yeah. And so they, and like, look, they're by the nostrils and by the eyes and they're fighting for position.

• 2:05:25Speaker 00

  Crazy.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:26Speaker 00

  What are we, are we fucked? 1 to 10 fucked?

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  Okay, so you're swimming in a lake at night.

• 2:05:30Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  And there's, there's a 15 foot black caiman?

• 2:05:33Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  You're toast.

• 2:05:35Speaker 00

  Okay, 10 out of 10 fucked. Okay, green anaconda.

• 2:05:40Speaker 01

  Again, 50/50. If you're walking and, or you're in a boat and you see a green anaconda sitting there and this green anaconda's taking in the sun and she just ate a big capybara and it's a normal day, 10 out of 10 safe. If you're messing around in a swamp, filling a pot and washing it and you're a little drunk and you, you do this regularly and you're in a deep part of the Amazon and, and that snake is hungry, she's gonna grab you by the face, drag you down. To hell, you're all your bones are gonna be broken, then she's gonna swallow you and you're gonna decompose inside of her.

• 2:06:15Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 2:06:16Speaker 02

  Have you heard of stories where people get eaten by?

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, my friend's, my friend's father got, got swallowed by one. Also, cool, cool side quest with this is that anacondas will try to eat turtles, like big land turtles, like tortoises. And we found the bones of a 16 foot anaconda. And in the center of the ribs was a huge tortoise shell with nothing in it. And I, I don't, I wasn't this forensic with it, but JJ was like, you realize what happened here? I was like, what? And he's like, the anaconda swallowed the giant tortoise. And then the tortoise would, it wasn't crushed to death because it's a tortoise. And then it just sat there, just digging inside the anaconda until it tore up its stomach and the anaconda died.

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  And I was like, how did you even think of that? And JJ was like, this is obvious.

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  Just like he did this thing, and I write about this in the book, is one of my earliest lessons. We're walking and he sees some sand and there's jaguar footprints. And he stops in this beautiful day, there's butterflies flying through this cathedral ceiling, emerald green. And JJ goes, tell me what happened here. I go, what do you mean? He goes, it's like the morning newspaper. He goes, tell me what happened here. He goes, read, read the ground.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  I said, okay. I said, well, there's jaguar footprints. And he's like, great. And there's jaguar footprints with the toes down right by the edge of the water. I said, oh, the jaguar drank. I know the jaguar drank. He goes, very good. And he goes, keep looking. And then I was like, look at this. And it's like a big log of jaguar shit. A big one. And then we pick it up. It's a hard log, like it looked like it hurt coming out. And, and so he, you know, he picked the hair out and he goes, what kind of hair is this? And I was like, red rocket deer. And he's like, yes. And I was like, I got it right.

• 2:08:08Speaker 02

  That's pretty good.

• 2:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:09Speaker 02

  You're like level four now.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  I'm doing good.

• 2:08:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:12Speaker 01

  And so, but then I'm about to fail because he's like, so what else? I'm like, what do you mean, what else? I'm like, the jaguar drank after eating a red rocket deer. And he's like, what else? And I was like, I don't know. Long story short, he, he shows me that there's two different places where the jaguar drank. And one of them has like bits of leaves in it. And one of them has little bits of water still in it, which means it just put those impressions and just left. You know, it's like, it's like somebody leaves a teacup and it's still smoking. And we were like, whoa. So I was like, you're saying he was just here? And I said, but wait, they walk. So why would the jaguar be here yesterday and today? And he was like, think. And I was like, oh, he killed a deer and he's eating the deer.

• 2:08:55Speaker 01

  And then he came here to drink and he took a shit and then he came back and he's still right here. And JJ was like, yeah. And he's like, and look at that. And there's these vultures right there and they're not looking at us.

• 2:09:04Speaker 00

  They're looking at that food.

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  That way. And he's like, so the jaguar is right over there. So talk fucking lower.

• 2:09:10Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:09:11Speaker 01

  And I was like, you. And that's what he would do. He would sit there, you know, he'd sit there and just be like, tell me what's going on.

• 2:09:16Speaker 02

  I love these. I love Bushmaster stories, just like a guy, just like a bushman, like out there, just like finding, it's my favorite thing.

• 2:09:24Speaker 00

  It's like, like reading the jungle.

• 2:09:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, like reading the jungle. It's like you hear dumb things where like, oh yeah, the Native Americans, they can see where the moss grows and they know, like, it's

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  True.

• 2:09:32Speaker 02

  Is it really?

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, look, the story I just told you, you know, any of us would walk by, not see the jaguar prints, maybe see the poop, not know what it was from. Whereas he sees a whole story. And it's evident to him. So as he's walking, you know, you think of like the Terminator vision where it's downloading all this information, like I'm like green tree, water, rock. And he's like, that's a capirona tree. He's like, those are, you know,

• 2:10:03Speaker 01

  and he's going through all of this stuff with all this indigenous thing. He's like, there's an ayahuasca vine. And he was like, there's the type of plant that does this. And, and we're over there getting 2% of that information. I'm like, oh, that's a blue morpho, like that's a, you know, whip snake.

• 2:10:17Speaker 02

  Do you have other specific stories of like things that we would all miss? That they are able just to say, I know exactly what this is and it actually was useful.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

  Wow. I mean, there's, there's so many things like, like I was on a trail with Ignacio on a horrible, long expedition and he saved us from actually, these are not the, the uncontacted tribe on our river. We'd gone to another part. And he just, he just put his hand on my chest one day and he's like, we're done. We're going back. And I was like, what do you mean? What are we doing? What are we going back for? And he was like, he like, I never would have noticed it, but there's, there was an X of sticks on the trail. And he goes, that's their way of saying, don't go farther.

• 2:10:53Speaker 02

  Oh shit.

• 2:10:54Speaker 01

  And I was like, come on, those are two sticks that fell. And he goes, yeah? And he picks up the edges of the stick and you can see that it's cut. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause these break like this, right? And I was like, oh. And again, to them, they're like, you're stupid. They're like, how can you not see?

• 2:11:12Speaker 02

  It's like having a gate on your property. It's like a stop sign.

• 2:11:14Speaker 00

  What's farther?

• 2:11:16Speaker 01

  What's farther?

• 2:11:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, what was over there?

• 2:11:19Speaker 01

  Their territory.

• 2:11:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, no, that was like their gate.

• 2:11:22Speaker 00

  That's their front yard.

• 2:11:23Speaker 01

  They were gently saying, you go past here.

• 2:11:26Speaker 00

  It's on.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  And, and fair game.

• 2:11:27Speaker 02

  Second amendment.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  Castle doctrine, castle doctrine.

• 2:11:34Mark Gagnon?

  What about the indigenous people, like, um, any spirituality, bruhas stuff?

• 2:11:40Speaker 02

  Now we're talking.

• 2:11:41Speaker 01

  Now we're talking. That's what we want to hear about.

• 2:11:43Mark Gagnon?

  Peru, you know?

• 2:11:44Speaker 01

  It is Peru. Um, yeah, everybody, you know, I don't know what's going on in the last two years. I'm like, I work in the Amazon, trying to protect the Peruvian jungle.

• 2:11:52Speaker 00

  Ayahuasca.

• 2:11:52Speaker 01

  Do you do ayahuasca? They're like, I did ayahuasca in Brooklyn last week and I'm like,

• 2:11:57Speaker 00

  Paul, Paul, Paul.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  Funny you mention that. Alex did ayahuasca in some guy's house in New Jersey.

• 2:12:05Speaker 00

  Was he a shaman?

• 2:12:06Mark Gagnon?

  No, actually they were from South America.

• 2:12:10Speaker 02

  Did you assess his experience just through a few questions? As a bushman, what do you?

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  I don't want to assess his experience.

• 2:12:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, tell us about it. I'd like to hear about it.

• 2:12:20Speaker 01

  Mark said that he did ayahuasca the way you should have done ayahuasca, which is in a house in New Jersey.

• 2:12:28Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, nah, she's a medicine woman. She's been doing it from, she's from Colombia, like she's been doing it and her family's been doing it for like decades and decades. And so she like travels and does this and spreads the medicine, as they say.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  I think that's, I mean, that sounds like you're doing it with someone that's legit and that's important. My only assessment of that, not that I, not that I have any right to assess anything, is that my guys, my, my shamans in the jungle would, would say, if you're not doing ayahuasca in the jungle, you're not really doing ayahuasca because it's from the jungle. And because they still can't, out of the, what I think it's 15,000 just tree species and then all the other vines and lianas and plants. But if you calculate, you know, they say every time you mix a deck of cards, that combination has never existed before, which I find mind bending.

• 2:13:26Speaker 01

  But if you look at the combinations of all the plants in the Amazon, coming up with the two plants that you have to mix together to make ayahuasca, they can't figure out how it happened. You would need many more centuries and millenniums for that to happen. So they say that it really is a gift from the gods of the jungle to us so that we can blend into the spirit realm. And that's why my guys are, I mean, these are indigenous guys. They're very, very hard lined on that. If you're gonna do ayahuasca, you must be in the jungle so that you can feel it move through you. And when you listen to them sing,

• 2:14:04Speaker 01

  they're singing about the anaconda, the great anaconda carving the rivers. And they're singing about the, the stars becoming butterflies. And they're singing about the ancient trees and the, the life cycle going back. And so it, it does move through you in a very interesting way where you can almost feel the jungle. So I can't speak to not doing it in the jungle because I can't imagine it. But I'm sure it's still a powerful experience.

• 2:14:28Mark Gagnon?

  How many times have you sit with?

• 2:14:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I've done four and I'm retired now.

• 2:14:33Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, really? Why?

• 2:14:34Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm good.

• 2:14:35Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah?

• 2:14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I met God.

• 2:14:39Speaker 01

  And I don't want to, you know, I said, the next time I do it, I'd like to be dead.

• 2:14:44Speaker 02

  A certain number of times God's like you again.

• 2:14:47Speaker 02

  You didn't get the message?

• 2:14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm good. I'm good.

• 2:14:50Speaker 02

  It's kind of like New Yorkers with pizza, right? They're always like, oh, New York is the only place you can eat pizza.

• 2:14:54Speaker 00

  We never stop eating pizza.

• 2:14:55Speaker 02

  No, New Yorkers are like, you only eat pizza in New York. If you go anywhere else, it's not real New York pizza. It's kind of like ayahuasca in the jungle. It's like you can only get real ayahuasca.

• 2:15:03Speaker 01

  I thought we were still on the God thing.

• 2:15:06Speaker 00

  No, no, I mean, we He's outside New York, but yeah, we judge it.

• 2:15:09Speaker 01

  But we judge it. There's no.

• 2:15:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:15:12Speaker 02

  And it's kind of like your guys down there being, you know, they territorial.

• 2:15:17Speaker 01

  But you know what? It's like, it's exactly, you're right. It's exactly like that where they're like, anything else isn't the real deal. And like, I get it. I really do get it. But, um, you know, for, for us, we usually do it outdoors. And, you know, in the jungle and like the first, you know, you drink it. You go, I'm fine. I'm fine. It's not working. I think I'm fine. And like they're singing and there's candles and the jungle's

• 2:15:41Speaker 01

  and then all of a sudden you're like

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  when the sounds get really louder and just, it just, it's, look, it's exciting, but it's, it's a roller coaster that I think I'm good on. I think I've, I've explored everything I need to explore and now I really want to stay up here.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. How do they utilize it culturally? Is it like, oh, once a month we do this? Is this once a year? Is this around certain holidays?

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  It's definitely around healing. It's definitely around making it through hard times. For outsiders, the shamans that I've, that I know, that I work with, they help people addicted to drugs they can't get off of.

• 2:16:21Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 2:16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes. Cause they'll, they'll, they'll put them down for like a week. They'll be like, you're going to be drinking dieting, they call it for a week and they'll just keep, you just keep.

• 2:16:30Speaker 00

  As a detox essentially.

• 2:16:31Speaker 01

  As a detox. And also apparently, you know, the, the, the spiritual implications of being on something that's that powerful can help you to beat addiction in ways that nothing else can.

• 2:16:42Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 2:16:43Speaker 02

  I've heard this with Ibogaine. I knew a guy that was addicted to heroin.

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:46Speaker 02

  Went to Amsterdam because it was like medicinally legal for this specific treatment, did Ibogaine and never relapsed on heroin again.

• 2:16:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:55Speaker 00

  That's super cool.

• 2:16:56Speaker 02

  A horrendous experience, but saved his life. Cause he was like, I'm going to go try this thing. If it doesn't work, I will come back and end my life. I'm saving his life.

• 2:17:02Speaker 00

  All right. So little shift. Indigenous people living in these roofs with no walls.

• 2:17:12Speaker 00

  How are they like, how are they fucking? Like, does everybody hear?

• 2:17:15Speaker 01

  Great question. Yeah.

• 2:17:17Speaker 00

  And is it kind of like, it is, it's the sounds of the jungle.

• 2:17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all good. Um.

• 2:17:22Speaker 00

  Do you try to mimic the frogs so it blends in?

• 2:17:25Speaker 01

  Well, you want to find a girl that makes frog noises.

• 2:17:30Speaker 02

  Well, there's Sally again.

• 2:17:35Speaker 00

  No, but like, is it, is it more, is it more like accepted because everybody sees everybody kind of naked?

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so one thing is, you know, every now and then you'll hear that thing of like, oh, there's a woman breastfeeding on a plane and passengers got upset and it's like.

• 2:17:51Speaker 00

  That's the corniest shit.

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  It's, it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. And down there, like breasts are not, there's nothing to.

• 2:17:58Speaker 00

  Nothing special. We got them. They got them.

• 2:17:59Speaker 01

  We got papayas. You don't, that's it. We, they're used for children. They're, they're hardly. And so, yeah, what I know about communal living in indigenous situations is like, there's a lot of like easy hammock sex and.

• 2:18:12Speaker 00

  And like, like the kids playing and they're just doing.

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  Real acrobatic. You know, I think it's a lot of like spooning, you know, in the middle of the night. And so like, I do think they keep it toned down. I think if you're gonna go, if you're gonna slap cheeks, like you gotta go, you gotta go deep.

• 2:18:29Speaker 02

  So much of our like version of sex is probably been formed by porn. But like, if they don't have porn, then, well, I think most people like.

• 2:18:37Speaker 00

  That's an expectation for sure.

• 2:18:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I think it like absolutely infiltrates like the Western mind in America at least. And like, you're exposed to it so young that it becomes the.

• 2:18:44Speaker 00

  Normalized and.

• 2:18:46Speaker 02

  Whereas out there, if they never seen porn, I wonder what their, their relationship with is probably so different. And then the way they conduct it is probably different.

• 2:18:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  That's my assumption. I don't know.

• 2:18:53Speaker 01

  But it, but it's definitely, it's not a big deal. Yeah. It's not a big deal.

• 2:18:56Speaker 00

  But did you hear it the first time? Were you like, were you kind of giggling like, oh shit, they're getting after it?

• 2:19:01Speaker 01

  You know, I've always kind of been happy that, you know, you hear somebody getting something. You're like, they got it. You know, you're like, good, good. You fall asleep listening to the frogs and you're like, yeah, you guys get it.

• 2:19:15Speaker 02

  Are the dudes, they're wearing like, kind of like, like, uh, like loincloth.

• 2:19:20Speaker 01

  Just acts if you want to act.

• 2:19:21Speaker 00

  Like, what does he want to act?

• 2:19:23Speaker 01

  He wants to know if they hang it.

• 2:19:25Speaker 02

  Is it hanging?

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, no, they tie it up. Uh, the video you found.

• 2:19:30Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  The video you found on my phone.

• 2:19:32Speaker 02

  It was the censored version.

• 2:19:33Speaker 01

  It was the censored version, but if you find the uncensored version anywhere, uh, or I could show you on my phone, they, they tie it up to their stomach. That's why they're wearing the rope around. And I think, um.

• 2:19:45Speaker 00

  So it doesn't get caught on something or does it? I mean, I imagine if you're like.

• 2:19:48Speaker 01

  To get it caught on. There's a lot of thorns in the Amazon. And again, this thing of, of the mosquitoes. I think that the, the closer to you it is, the more.

• 2:19:57Speaker 00

  Protected.

• 2:19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's like easy blood for them. They're going to go where the most blood is. And that's why they like ears. Mosquitoes always go for your ears.

• 2:20:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:20:04Speaker 01

  And I think like, uh, a penis is just too much for mosquitoes to take. You're going to be constantly inundated.

• 2:20:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I think this one's still a little bit blurred.

• 2:20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's still a little bit blurred.

• 2:20:16Speaker 00

  The shaft they tie up with the balls, they let go.

• 2:20:18Speaker 01

  The balls are out, which I, you know, again, I don't, I don't, I don't aspire to.

• 2:20:24Speaker 02

  I mean, I've done the waistband from time to time.

• 2:20:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:20:27Speaker 02

  We've all done a.

• 2:20:27Speaker 01

  I mean, I think we should try it. I think we should just have a day where you go, you tie it up and, and just walk around. I mean, certainly, you know, not hitting into branches and sticks and thorns makes sense.

• 2:20:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. What about like jokes?

• 2:20:42Speaker 02

  Oh, jokes. Yeah.

• 2:20:43Speaker 00

  What, what is their sense of humor? Like all, all cultures have their own sense of humor, right? Like there's certain things that are uncomfortable, certain things that are naughty. Like, how are they making each other laugh?

• 2:20:54Speaker 01

  Me and JJ are in a stream one day and he goes, ah, and I was like, what is it? And he's like, I know something's wrong. And I was like, what is it? And I was like, he's like, I don't know. I think I'll be okay. Okay. 10 minutes passes. And then he's like, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude. And he's like holding his dick. And I'm like, what, what? And he's like, yo, something's wrong. He's like, I got a huge boner. And I was like, now? In a stream with me? I was like, what, what, what's going on? And he shows me.

• 2:21:21Speaker 00

  I want the bananas.

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  And he shows me and it's like, and he's got this. I was like, JJ, first of all, well done.

• 2:21:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:21:27Speaker 01

  I was like, second of all, that's a problem. And he's like, no, it feels like it's going to burst. And I was like, JJ. And he's like, no, no, he's like, feel it. It's like dangerous. And I was like, and I was like, that's like a rock. Come on. And he starts laughing and he like pulls this huge fish out of his pants. And it's like.

• 2:21:46Speaker 02

  You wild for poking it though.

• 2:21:56Speaker 00

  He was like, no, it can explode. And then the tension of the.

• 2:22:00Speaker 02

  Did you go behind it like an anaconda?

• 2:22:03Speaker 00

  Control the head.

• 2:22:09Speaker 00

  Okay. All right. So it's.

• 2:22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a lot of dick jokes.

• 2:22:11Speaker 00

  But same shit then.

• 2:22:12Speaker 01

  It's that humor that transcends.

• 2:22:14Speaker 02

  Fart jokes.

• 2:22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like fart jokes.

• 2:22:16Speaker 00

  Farts are funny?

• 2:22:17Speaker 01

  Farts are funny. Like I, cause like when you're out on an expedition, you know, you're all sad and you're sitting there in the rain and someone just lets out like a trombone.

• 2:22:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22:27Speaker 01

  You know, this melancholy. And you're just like, it's, it's, you're going to be laughing about the shit when we're naked. And you don't have to speak the same language.

• 2:22:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22:36Speaker 01

  You know, um, when we were across the river from the uncontacted tribe, once it became clear that they weren't going to kill us and that nothing terrible was going to happen. There was a moment where this guy, even across the river, somehow he'd found a machete. They don't have metal, right? So he found a machete. That's like Excalibur. That's like GTA cheat codes. Like you're like, yo, I got a machete. He just jumped up through like three ages, Bronze Age. And so he's walking and he's like swanging this machete as he's walking. And on my side of the river, one of the guys goes, hey, they have my machete. He's like, drop the machete. It's my machete. And the dude just looked and he goes, and it's like, yo, you don't speak the same language at all. Anyway, come and get it, motherfucker.

• 2:23:22Speaker 01

  And he smiled at us. It was like, oh man, you don't need to speak the same language. International. You want it? Come get it.

• 2:23:30Speaker 00

  What about things that you've brought there? Like little things that they love? Is there ever a thing where like you're coming back and they're, and they're.

• 2:23:39Speaker 01

  Trying to think what it would be fucking Fanta.

• 2:23:41Speaker 00

  Like a nerds cluster.

• 2:23:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a candy or something like that.

• 2:23:46Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 2:23:46Speaker 01

  Nerd's cluster. That sounds pornographic.

• 2:23:49Speaker 00

  I know.

• 2:23:49Speaker 01

  It looks it. Is that how guys that can't get laid?

• 2:23:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. We're talking about gushers, dude.

• 2:23:58Speaker 01

  Is that like a circle truck?

• 2:24:04Speaker 00

  But like, is there some shit when they know you're going back? They're like, yo, please bring me a belt.

• 2:24:09Speaker 01

  Uh, no, no, no. So let me think, cause um, I just bought for two of my favorite guys. Listerine strips. I don't know. They seem like they got everything they need. Two of my guys, I just, you know, just to, I don't, I don't bring them anything. I brought like, I love New York sweaters.

• 2:24:24Speaker 00

  Well, like anything fun that you'd go, hey, put these on. And they're just like, mine belong.

• 2:24:30Speaker 01

  Put on virtual reality glasses on JJ.

• 2:24:33Speaker 00

  Now we're talking.

• 2:24:33Speaker 01

  That, that fucked him up. That fucked him up.

• 2:24:35Speaker 00

  Where did you put them?

• 2:24:36Speaker 01

  Uh, no, he wasn't. Thank God we weren't in the jungle. We were in, or the office in town. And, and he lasted about 15 seconds and he was like, nope.

• 2:24:43Speaker 00

  What was he looking at?

• 2:24:44Speaker 01

  I have no idea. I have no idea. I walked in the room. I was like, guys, like, come on. And he was like, I feel so sick.

• 2:24:51Speaker 00

  Have you ever brought JJ to New York?

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  JJ has done, for a kid that started out with no shoes as a little naked Amazonian kid playing in the rivers. He now, I mean, his English is better than mine. Uh, he's a scientist. He's a conservationist. He was named one of Time Magazine's fifty environmental leaders of 2024. He was in New York last year. We had a gala where we, you know, celebrated jungle keepers and tried to get as much donations as we could. And JJ was there. And, and yeah, so he, he actually got to experience snow last year.

• 2:25:25Speaker 00

  Oh, for the first time.

• 2:25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, he got snowed in at my parents' house upstate. We were all like hanging out and eating and my house is like five minutes away. And I have a Tacoma. I was like, we'll be fine. Getting the Tacoma. Like the snow, the snow was two feet deep. And like, I just had tires spinning on snow. And I was like, JJ, we're not going anywhere. And me and JJ have been in the Amazon for 20 years. All of a sudden we're out there. He's, he's like, dude, dude. And I was like, watch this. And I like pasted with a snowball. And he was like, yo. We had the most epic sort of snow wrestling.

• 2:25:54Speaker 00

  What is his interaction with snow? What is the first interaction?

• 2:25:56Speaker 01

  He just, you know what? He started taking pictures right away.

• 2:25:59Speaker 00

  Does he, is he touching it? Is he like trying to understand it?

• 2:26:02Speaker 01

  Is he peeing in it? Maple syrup on snow.

• 2:26:04Speaker 00

  Fire.

• 2:26:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:26:05Speaker 00

  Maple syrup on snow.

• 2:26:06Speaker 01

  I was like, guys, I got, cause they've made me taste so much stuff. I was like, here, I got you something. I was like, this only comes out of trees here. And I was like, we got snow. And I was like, try that. And they were like, this is where it's at.

• 2:26:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's a thing?

• 2:26:18Speaker 01

  Oh, hell.

• 2:26:19Speaker 00

  Canadians are all on that.

• 2:26:21Speaker 01

  Get some really, I'm not talking about like Aunt Jemima or like the diner stuff. I'm saying get some like Vermont maple syrup.

• 2:26:26Speaker 00

  And just put it on snow.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  I mean, clean snow.

• 2:26:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, like.

• 2:26:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I did not know this.

• 2:26:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, no, this is really good. Get some fresh snow.

• 2:26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:33Speaker 00

  And just pack it a little bit. And it's, it's a snow cone.

• 2:26:36Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 2:26:36Speaker 00

  Sugary snow cone.

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 2:26:38Speaker 00

  I never.

• 2:26:39Speaker 01

  Also, the sap that comes straight out of a maple tree, cause upstate, everyone's got the buckets on the trees. And like, there's a sapsicle, you know, you get the clear sap icicle, but it's sugar. A sapsicle, you break it right off the tree and you just have it. And it's, oh, that's the shit.

• 2:26:56Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 2:26:56Speaker 01

  So good.

• 2:26:57Speaker 00

  It must've been cool showing JJ around, being like.

• 2:26:58Speaker 01

  That's what I think. For once, I'm showing him something.

• 2:27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:27:01Speaker 01

  And the only thing I felt bad about is that they came in January.

• 2:27:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:27:06Speaker 01

  And so everything's dead.

• 2:27:07Speaker 00

  But you take him on the subway?

• 2:27:10Speaker 01

  Did we take him on the subway?

• 2:27:11Speaker 00

  Come on.

• 2:27:12Speaker 01

  I think, I think, I don't know if he was on the subway.

• 2:27:14Speaker 00

  Being anaconda.

• 2:27:15Speaker 01

  I just remember him, I just, we were at the Jazz at Lincoln Center and I remember him walking around. He just, they were just walking around looking at the buildings. And like, you know, he just kind of grabbed me and went, you know, I mean, uh, the other guy, Roy, who we brought up, he, he just went, this is not the jungle. I mean, seeing buildings, you know, in their city, this little gold mining town, I mean, I think the highest you get is four stories.

• 2:27:35Speaker 00

  Bro, I grew up in New York City. First time I went to Chicago was the first time I went to another city that had a skyline that could rival New York City. And I was fucking blown away.

• 2:27:46Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:27:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I see these buildings all the time. So I can't imagine someone's only seen a four story building.

• 2:27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:51Speaker 00

  And then a 12 story tree is as high as it's gone.

• 2:27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:55Speaker 00

  And then you just look up. Empire State Building.

• 2:27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:58Speaker 00

  Fuck.

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, honestly, for me, it's 30 Rock, like every, cause I've had to go in there a bunch to do like the interviews and stuff. And every time I walk in there, you walk in and they have the mural in the front.

• 2:28:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:28:08Speaker 01

  And you, like, for me, who has spent so much of my life, you know, trading bananas for monkeys and trying to tie my shoes and find. Like, oh, wait a second. They had to find the stone and plan the thing and get the I-beams and they did this when?

• 2:28:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:25Speaker 00

  And, and you just sit there and I'm like, oh my God.

• 2:28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's sort of beyond.

• 2:28:30Speaker 00

  It's unbelievable.

• 2:28:31Speaker 01

  Comprehension. And so I think for them, it takes us so much work to throw up a research station in the jungle.

• 2:28:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:28:37Speaker 01

  Where we're like carting wood and, and chainsaws and, and people, you know, you get cut and like, so they're going, they go, how did this happen?

• 2:28:45Speaker 00

  So is, in the same way that you're so impressed with their knowledge and what they're able to do.

• 2:28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:50Speaker 00

  Are they having that same feeling? Are they blown away?

• 2:28:54Speaker 01

  I think that the, the things like the skyscrapers, yes. I think the things like the way that we live, they're like, oh man, like you guys don't have to worry about. Like you can just have a house and you don't have to worry about that someone's gonna like take it.

• 2:29:07Speaker 00

  Clean water all the time.

• 2:29:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they're like, so you guys are safe? Like, there's Connecticut? Like, you know, they're like.

• 2:29:14Speaker 00

  Were they confused about anything or anything that they didn't like, like culturally?

• 2:29:17Speaker 01

  Well, they, I mean, culturally, I don't think so, but it was just, it really was, they come from a really nice, warm place. And January is so brutal. I was like, just, just promise me you'll come back in July.

• 2:29:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  I was like, we'll go to the beach, we'll go hiking upstate.

• 2:29:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:29:33Speaker 01

  Like, I'll show you like maple trees and oak tree, like all my friends here, you know, go see.

• 2:29:38Speaker 00

  If he got homesick, you could have just took him to the Bronx. He'll be right at home.

• 2:29:41Speaker 01

  Yo, yo.

• 2:29:42Speaker 00

  That's that jungle right there.

• 2:29:44Speaker 01

  The Bronx Zoo Jungle World is part of the reason I do what I do, is I went there as a kid. It's so good. You, you meant just take him to the Bronx.

• 2:29:55Speaker 00

  I heard it later.

• 2:29:57Speaker 00

  That's not what he meant. Wait, wait, go to the Bronx Zoo? Where you fall in love with animals? That's your first experience with them?

• 2:30:05Speaker 01

  It's, it's one of the things. So I always loved animals. I went to the Bronx Zoo. And so you get to Jungle World.

• 2:30:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:30:10Speaker 01

  You open the door and no matter what time of year it is, just like steam and it's hot. And you're like, oh, whatever I'm wearing, I gotta take it off. Cause you're like, it's different in here. And you hear like whoop and just all this bird sounds and they have, they have like frogs. And you're like, wait a second, like what's that? And you're like, you're looking and there's like, and then there's like an orange, like tree kangaroo in there. And you're like. And then there's a, a Malaysian taper and there's a, they have one thing where there's, you know, there's a blood python. You're like, hold on, hold on, hold on. There's all these incredible animals out there in the jungle. And you're like, this feeling of jungle, like sort of jungle core. And then they have the wall of butterflies and they have all these, you know, all these.

• 2:30:50Speaker 01

  And you go, it's all these colors and arrow frogs that are bright blue and orange and anacondas. And I just went, man, whatever this is, I want more of this. Whatever this feeling is, I want it. And then at the end of Jungle World, what they do is. They get you all hopped up on this beautiful stuff. And they're like, the life is everywhere. Everywhere you look, there's colorful life and medicines and animals, more species than anywhere else. And then you walk into like the end of the exhibit. Or it might've been right before the gorilla exhibit. And that the sound changes from frogs to reeeeee and you hear chainsaws. And then you, they have a video of trees going down.

• 2:31:27Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 2:31:28Speaker 01

  And as a kid, I just remember like you hold, you know, you're like, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry in front of my parents. And you're like. And they're showing you this going down and they're like, but the rainforest is dying. And they have like a, you know, British lady being like, and soon, you know, 18,000 football fields a year are like leaving and all the animals are dying. And you're like, what? And then they, they like show you the gorillas and they're like, they're still here, but they don't have long. And like, you could help them. And I was like, sign me the fuck up. I was like, I want to go see them before they're gone. And so I literally got charged with, I was like, yeah, I love animals, but I got charged with this urgency of like, wait, so you're telling me if we don't protect. Elephants could go extinct in our lifetime? Gorillas could go extinct in our lifetime?

• 2:32:13Speaker 01

  And so that's, you know, and then my mom would read us, you know, Jane Goodall stories. And you'd be like, you know. So this woman went to Africa and said, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna learn chimpanzee dialect and social structures. And break all the rules of science and become this, this living legend of a, you know, and it's like, so. So she started off as a person who just went to the jungle. And I was like, well, if she could go to the jungle as a 20 year old girl. Back then, I was like, shouldn't I be able to go to the jungle? And I'd be like, sitting in like seventh period English class, like reading about Teddy Roosevelt. And they'd be like, Rosolie, detention, put down the book. And I was like, yeah, I gotta go to the jungle.

• 2:32:51Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 2:32:52Speaker 01

  And I was like, I can't do this. I was like, I want my life to be, I felt like there's, there's people you hear about that have had a life where that meant something. That was an adventure, that, that benefited other people and creatures. And I was like, why? I feel like everyone's just like talking about, like I just, I wasn't, I wasn't feeling it. I was like, why, why is my life so different from those narratives? And so I'd look at these people that had had these epic lives. And I was like, I want to do that. At the very least, I want to have some adventures where, where I, where I learn what I'm made of. You know, as a kid, you're like, what, what am I? Who am I? Which character in the story am I? And I was like, I want to find out. You know, like you can't find out certain things. There's certain things you can't fake.

• 2:33:34Speaker 01

  And, and you know, the first time in Brazil that I had a, one, one night, I got in an altercation with some people. A guy took a gun, put it like this, again, in my face. And was the first thing I did was go, whoa, please, please no, right? Like this. Now I knew somebody and I happened to watch another altercation and I watched someone, this man was known for being a tough, tough man. And somebody stuck a gun in his face.

• 2:34:00Speaker 01

  He goes, what are you gonna do? Didn't even move, didn't get red, ears stayed the same color. He didn't move because he goes, what are you gonna do? Either do it or don't do it. And you can't fake that. You have to learn that. And so when you're a kid, you go, when the shit hits the fan and the river's flooding and the boat flips and everybody's gonna die, do I scramble on top of the boat and save myself? Because you don't know yet.

• 2:34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:26Speaker 01

  Or do I go help somebody else and risk my own life first? And you have to be in those situations. Because we all think.

• 2:34:33Speaker 02

  We would be the hero.

• 2:34:34Speaker 01

  You would be the hero. You go, I would be the hero. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me that. Tell me that. When you're on the side of the mountain and the lightning is pounding the side of the mountain and you've got people over there that are still exposed, you gonna go cross the open, the open part? You gonna go be a lightning rod?

• 2:34:48Speaker 02

  Fuck.

• 2:34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, talk to me when you're in the river and there's all these swirling whirlpools. You jumping in after that person? Can you swim that good? Or are you just, you know? It's, it's so, and I think that that was a major. I wanted to know which, you know, what, what, what are you made of? What do you, what do you have in you? And so then, meeting people like JJ and you go, okay, so, man's not scared of anything. Man goes, he ain't, he didn't have a prayer. He goes, I'm gonna go out to the wildest place on earth and I'm gonna protect it. With no plan. That's the other thing. I think that the people that get things done are kind of missing the screw that keeps us all in line.

• 2:35:25Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:35:26Speaker 01

  You go like, oh, you know, reasonably, I mean, I could say the same thing for myself. When I started out as a kid, was born in Brooklyn, grew up in New Jersey, went to the Amazon. I saw, I remember I came back from the jungle and like everywhere I went, I was wearing this tooth around my neck that JJ had given me. And everywhere I went, I was like, I work in the Amazon Reinforcement. My dad goes, you don't work in the Amazon Reinforcement. You went there once. He goes, like, calm down. And it was like, but it changed me so much that I was like, I'm going back. And I just told everyone, like, I'm going to save the Amazon. And it's like, you know what, though? You're 19 years old and you work at the YMCA for 1350 an hour. You're not gonna save the Amazon. And so it's like, you, you do have to be stupid enough to think you can do it.

• 2:36:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:36:09Speaker 01

  And then, and then sort of.

• 2:36:11Speaker 02

  Delusional optimism.

• 2:36:13Speaker 01

  Delusional optimism and then with, with the grit to hang in there until you figure it out. And that, and that's, and that's, I've watched a lot of people join our team and it's sort of like, we, me and JJ started it.

• 2:36:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:25Speaker 01

  Being like, we're just gonna save this thing and just started yelling it. It's like when you go, I'm gonna run a marathon.

• 2:36:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:30Speaker 01

  You know, you just start telling everybody you're gonna do it. And then you're like, my fucking hat.

• 2:36:33Speaker 02

  Do you have people that join that fade out? And can you tell when someone isn't built for it?

• 2:36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, some of the people that were there in the beginning that were like, hey, kid, we'll help you start the organization. You realize they're not people that necessarily should be involved. And so we, you know, you cycle through those. Now at this point, like, who's managing our field teams? Because we're the directors and founders and I have to be doing this a lot of the time. You know, and JJ's the only, so it's, it's, it's interesting. What we do is we got down to the core team. And that's, that's necessity of operations. Like, you know, Stefan is running all the different departments, keeping track of finances, all of the outreach. When we get contacted for podcasts or when we have a new opportunity, a new donor, and a lot of times he's, he's pointing me in the right direction. He's going, yo, go talk to these people.

• 2:37:22Speaker 01

  Or he'll get on the phone and go, these people, they want your time and they shouldn't get it. They're not, they're not real. JJ's the only person who knows how to walk into logging camps and he could even do narco camps, I'm sure, if he wanted to. He walks, so I watched JJ. So there's JJ with his chest out and then there's JJ, he did another thing that, talk about the gun to the face. We had guys pull out guns and they were, there were loggers and this, this meeting didn't go well. And we were like, yo, you guys can't be here. And again, they're like, click clack, you sure? And we were like, all right, look, we're not trying to bless you. But like, we're not trying to start shit. We're just telling you, you can't be here. And then there was like this sort of moment where I was like, are they gonna let us leave? And JJ, JJ did this thing where he, he's, instead of being like, yo, you can't be here, he sat down.

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  He relaxed against the log and goes, guys, I'm not fighting with you. They have guns. He's laying down now. He's fully exposed. And he goes, I'm not fighting with you. He's like, I'm just telling you that you can't be here. He goes, honestly, he goes, I'll cook you lunch. He's like, I'm, I'm just, I was just letting you know. And so he like brought the temperature in the room down.

• 2:38:28Speaker 02

  That's smart.

• 2:38:28Speaker 01

  He's like, we're not trying to fight. He's like, seriously? He's like, why don't you guys, why don't you guys come down? He's like, I'm just gonna tell you about why we're here. And it was like his, his brilliant, so only he can do that and he knows the local dialect. And then, um, you know, I apparently have the ability to speak and tell stories to the degree that'll get people to pay somewhat attention. And even though I couldn't make it through school, I can't read good, but I can write. I learned how to tell a story because I was read to when I was a child. And, and so the book has actually been a huge tool in terms of getting us people who understand the story. So there's all this random stuff. Somebody could watch this whole conversation and go, okay, so this guy rescues monkeys

• 2:39:13Speaker 01

  and follows JJ. And it's like, but in the book, it makes sense. In the book, it's like, okay, why did I end up in the jungle? How did I end up in the jungle? And then it goes through sort of all those moments of like, maybe something's starting fail. Maybe something's starting fail. They just, they just destroyed 10 new acres of forest. We failed. There's narco's, we're all gonna die. We gotta figure that out. And it's like, how did we go from two guys with bare feet and a machete and just a log to ride? It used to be me and JJ, we, for a while, we didn't have a boat. So we'd be out in the field station, we'd get dropped off. And then we'd like, when your tomatoes start to turn black and your rice starts to go uh, moldy, then you run out of cooking fuel because we'd go up with one thing of propane. And he'd be like, we gotta go back to town.

• 2:39:57Speaker 01

  We'd be like, oh shit. We don't have a boat. And then we'd sit by the side of the river for like two days. Like, there's no boats, no boat's gonna come by this, like this time of year when the river's high. And then we'd get a big log coming by and be like, yo, let's go. And we'd throw all our shit in a bag, swim out to the log and we'd both get on the log. And we'd just be sitting there for hours, sitting on a log, just going down the Amazon. It's like, those two dudes thought they could start a major organization to protect an entire watershed and reach people all over the world. And one of my goals was, aside from protecting the biodiversity in the watershed, was I suffered when I was a kid, thinking that the world is ending. Like, I was, I was so depressed and like, I, I used to cry at night. I'm not even kidding. I used to cry.

• 2:40:41Speaker 01

  My mother used to have to sit on the bed and I would be weeping because I'd just read about the fact that, that, you know, this one species of Galapagos tortoise was gonna go extinct. Or that the Congo was being ripped apart and gorillas were surrounded on all sides and soon the mountain gorillas were gonna go extinct. And it just, it just drove me crazy to think that we were willing to let the other organisms that we share this world with just die. Those penguins, just let them die. And so now, as, as the director of Jungle Keepers, the ability that, that parents reach out to me, I get DMs all the time where parents go, hey, we give $5 a month to Jungle Keepers and I show my, my kids your feet all the time. And I tell them, we're saving the Amazon. Because they are.

• 2:41:23Speaker 01

  We found a way for those people to directly help JJ on his crusade to protect the Amazon. And I didn't have that as a kid. I would always be sitting there on the rug, on my elbows, watching. And then David Attenborough would go, everything you just saw is about to die. And you go, fuck, man.

• 2:41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:42Speaker 01

  And so we're just, we're just trying to undo all that. And it's super, super exciting.

• 2:41:46Speaker 02

  Does JJ have sage advice? Like, when you talk to him about like life and interpersonal stuff, does he ever give you, like, just wisdom that you're like, whoa?

• 2:41:54Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 2:41:56Speaker 01

  No, JJ likes to, he's like me, he likes to learn through experience. While he is such a, such an expert at the jungle, he's still very, very much human. And, you know, we, we kinda, he, when I was, I was 18 and he was 32, so, so that's like our, our age gap. And, and we, we've seen each other go through all the phases.

• 2:42:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:16Speaker 01

  And so I think that life-wise, it's not like he's some sort of a wizard.

• 2:42:21Speaker 02

  You describe him like Yoda.

• 2:42:22Speaker 01

  Like, I'm expecting Yoda. He's like Yoda of the jungle who's still very much a human, though. You know, like, yes, he has this knowledge. And I guess you could make that comparison to so many other things. You could be like, oh, this guy was a great president, but, you know, went through all of these struggles as a human. And it's like, you're describing one part of, yes, he is.

• 2:42:43Speaker 01

  There's a chapter in the book called "The Rarest of Species." Because how many local people learn to speak really good English? Not that many. How many local people learn to speak really good English and work with scientists for years and years? And so become naturalist scientists with an indigenous background? There's no one else. He's a unicorn. He's the only one.

• 2:43:05Speaker 00

  You mentioned a guy that passed away. I think his name was Santiago.

• 2:43:09Speaker 01

  JJ's dad.

• 2:43:10Speaker 00

  That was JJ's dad? And he was like the OG?

• 2:43:13Speaker 01

  He was a really OG. That dude, that dude. He lived out in the Amazon until he was like 86.

• 2:43:20Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:43:22Speaker 01

  He was still, he'd still come in with the axe in his hand. He'd be like, "Yeah, I just killed a pig. You guys wanna have a barbecue?" And I'd be like, "Yes." The first time I met him, we were all sitting around and JJ had brought me to his mom's house. He's got like 19 brothers. He brought me to his mom's house since Santiago. Santiago is a busy man.

• 2:43:39Speaker 00

  Bro.

• 2:43:41Speaker 01

  And we found out why. We were all sitting around and it was like a cold day in the jungle. So everyone was like huddled up. It was a Sunday morning. We're all like drinking soup and stuff. And JJ's mom comes in and gives a slap on the head. And JJ's like, "So, uh, we're thinking of taking Paul to the anaconda place." And his brother's like, "Oh shit, we should, but we should ask dad if it's okay." Cause we, you know, and JJ goes, "So you're gonna meet my dad?" And I said, "Great." He goes, "No, no, no. You're gonna meet my dad." And I said, "Great, what about..." He goes, "No, no, no. He's got a big dick." And I was like, "How does this matter?" He's like, "No, no, like you're not ready for it." And I was like, "But how is this..." He goes, "No, no, no." He walks around naked. And I was like, "And he's coming?" He goes, "No, he's coming right now."

• 2:44:22Speaker 01

  JJ's dad walks in with this fucking cannon hanging to his knees. And he's like, "Ah, he's like, 'Good, mucho gusto.'" And I was like, "Hey, good to meet you." And like, the man just hangs.

• 2:44:32Speaker 00

  It wasn't even his hand that you shook. It wasn't even his hand you shook.

• 2:44:37Speaker 01

  But it was like, this dude was such a jungle swagger dude. He's like, "What clothes?"

• 2:44:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:44:43Speaker 01

  You know, and then he's the guy that said, "Yeah, you can go. Take him." To his sons. He was like, "Take him." And he was also the guy that said, "Take him to the floating forest." Cause then we came back and we had pictures of like snakes this big. And we were like, "Look at us. We caught these giant anacondas." And he goes, "That's anaconditas. Little fucking anaconda." Nothing you did was tougher. We were like, "We saw, we saw a peccary getting eaten." He goes, "I've seen tapirs getting eaten. They're like triple the size of a peccary." You know, and you'd be like, "Oh, we saw the uncontacted tribes." He would say, "He told the stories," or he'd be like, "You know, I negotiated with them. You know, I gave them a hat and they gave me an arrow on the same beach." Like, you know, this was a guy that had lived in a different era.

• 2:45:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:45:23Speaker 01

  And so everything that we thought was tough, he'd be like, "Come on, get the fuck out of here." He once cut open his arm and then they killed an electric eel. And they removed the nerve that they say makes the electric in the electric eel. And they put it into his arm and then they sew it up with army ants. They have the huge pincers. So you let the army ants bite the wound. And then you twist the body off the army ant and it sutures the wound. And so they took the magic nerve out of the, out of the electric eel, put it into Santiago's arm and then sutured it with army ants. And so he would always show me his arm and he would go, "This arm." He'd go, "It's harder than ironwood." He'd go, "Así se va."

• 2:46:06Speaker 01

  And he lived out in the Amazon on his own. Even like at the end, he was like, he'd just be out there. We'd go out into the jungle and he'd be like, "Yo, what's up?" "We working on something."

• 2:46:14Speaker 00

  He'd be there already.

• 2:46:16Speaker 01

  He was, he lived out there in a shack. And he had been a police officer. He had organized the communities. He'd done major social work. He'd worked against the drug cartels. But he was a jungle man and he was made out of pure sinew. And he died at a family like barbecue, basically. They were having a family day and they got on the boat. And then they were like, "Let's go back to the shack," which is like 30 minutes upriver. And he was on the boat with his grandchildren and the whole family. And he was just like watching the sunset and just laid his head back.

• 2:46:46Speaker 00

  Get the fuck out of here.

• 2:46:47Speaker 01

  And they were like, "Abuelo."

• 2:46:50Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:46:50Speaker 01

  And so he went out. He just went from healthy to asleep. Strong, never, never sick.

• 2:46:57Speaker 00

  Did you go to the funeral?

• 2:46:59Speaker 01

  No, I showed up the day after the funeral. I didn't know he died. JJ, uh, JJ, I think they had gone into, I think at the, at the pace things went, I didn't even know. I showed up, I went, "Where's everybody?" And they went, "Santiago died." I went, you know, you, you get this news. We, they, we don't, I don't think they had time to be notifying people. It was just, it was such a shock. Nobody expected him to go.

• 2:47:23Speaker 00

  And what is their relationship with death like? Like what, like, do they have anything locally, like a customer philosophy that, that helps with that, that transition?

• 2:47:32Speaker 01

  Nah, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. All I can tell you is they're way, they're way more, it's way more part of life. I just feel like, you know, some of the people we've lost over the years to various things. You know, Santiago was a different thing because he was this figurehead. He was, he was the godfather. But when you lose someone in a tragic sense, the, the rate at which they sort of go, "That's really sad. You know, we'll miss him." And then like kind of move on. It's like, we don't do that. You know, I come from Italian Catholic people, like, "We're gonna make them really, we're gonna mourn. This is a problem, especially if it was a young person."

• 2:48:15Speaker 01

  And, and, and we take it very differently than they do. Whereas like sometimes we'll lose someone down there and they're like, you know, "Hey, life's dangerous."

• 2:48:23Speaker 00

  Is it common, like more common than we would deal with?

• 2:48:27Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, working with narco traffickers and falling trees and rivers, it's a little more common. You know, we, if anything goes wrong here, you have an ambulance show up in two minutes. Like you're as safe as you can be.

• 2:48:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:48:39Speaker 01

  Living in society here. I mean, I, I come here and, you know, sometimes I actually feel like, I'm like, you know, in the jungle, you feel your, your, your calluses getting thicker and your skin getting tighter. And your, your feet get, you know, harder against the ground and your senses get sharper. And then like, when I come back, aside from the, the shock of landing in JFK, which is always horrific. But then after a while, I start to go like, "Man, I woke up today." And like, I walked from bed to the car, to the thing, to the thing. And I'm like, "I didn't hardly use my body." Like, you start to feel the atrophy. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. And I'm like, "I didn't have to carry a motor today. I didn't have to swim across a, a river."

• 2:49:19Speaker 00

  Does it feel unnatural?

• 2:49:21Speaker 01

  It does. It does. And I mean, I told you, I still have the dirt on my boots. I just got in the other day. And, I mean, I was sweating all day long. You know, you, you, I was jumping in the river because you do morning, morning work back to the station, try and eat something. And then I was like, "I'm so drenched." Jump in the river, which by the way, you know, popping the shirt off to, to, to go for the monkey. I get that a lot where people are like, "Oh, how come you always got your shirt off?" And I'm like, "Because you know how inconvenient it is to just sweat through a shirt? And then where do you wash it?"

• 2:49:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:49:53Speaker 01

  And so I'm like, "Yeah, I'd rather just not have a shirt on."

• 2:49:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:49:57Speaker 01

  And then put it on after 5:00 PM when it gets a little bit less hot. That's it. And so I'll take the, I'll take, I'll take the, uh...

• 2:50:06Speaker 00

  None of us would wear a shirt if we look like that, Paul. None of us would.

• 2:50:11Speaker 01

  You come to the Amazon with me.

• 2:50:12Speaker 00

  None of us would wear a shirt if we look like that, Paul. Shirts were made because we don't look like that.

• 2:50:18Speaker 01

  Is that why we wear shirts? It's not a weather thing?

• 2:50:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, she's got a fish in her pocket right now.

• 2:50:26Speaker 01

  That's what it is.

• 2:50:27Speaker 00

  It's just unbelievable, man. You got, you've had a remarkable life. I'm sure you get told this every single time you've had a conversation with someone. I really hope you achieve this, this dream. I'm so curious what you will dream up next. It's not often the people with grandiose dreams get to achieve them. But like, what happens when your life's work gets accomplished?

• 2:50:47Speaker 01

  If this works, if we create this national park, when we create this national park, we're getting, it's happening. It really, it really is. Enough people know about this. 20 million is not that much to ask. We're on the final stretch.

• 2:51:00Speaker 00

  You got this.

• 2:51:01Speaker 01

  And when we do this, this blueprint of where the local people, the wildlife, where we're giving loggers a better life, you're solving the problem.

• 2:51:09Speaker 00

  You spread that.

• 2:51:10Speaker 01

  So then you take that blueprint and you export it to the Congo, to Indonesia. And you start saving rivers all over the world and empowering people and then becoming like a conservation consultant. And by that point, I do find it hard to believe that someone won't come out of the woodwork and go, "Here's a $15 million endowment. Go help." You know what I mean? Like, we just got, so right now, the main thing, this is important, right now... The reason I was down there is that we have a road right now. They're coming up from the north because we have a lot of the corridor established. We're protecting 160,000 acres of land. We're about halfway. They have a road coming down from the north. And so they have bulldozers and they have chainsaws and they have surveyors and they're

• 2:51:54Speaker 01

  coming down into, towards where we're protecting. They're not there yet. And there's a few parcels of land there that we could get. And it's about 40,000 acres right there that we could just protect. And so we're calling out now for funding to try and get that. Someone reached out who had read the book. And she said, how much do you need? And we said about $4 million to buy all of this land immediately. Like this is like by the end of the year, emergency state. And she goes, I'll give you a million. She goes, but I want to do matching. She goes, it'll be more powerful. I can give you a million, but I'm only doing it if it's matching. And at first I was like, what's the logic there? Like, why wouldn't you just give it to us? And she's like, no, no, no.

• 2:52:35Speaker 01

  If you tell your audience that if they give dollar for dollar, I'll match, then you get $2 million and you're halfway to stopping the road. And we've already talked to the landowners. We can get that land and then the road has to stop. And it protects everything we've done. Whereas if the road comes through, all the work we've done over the last 20 years.

• 2:52:54Speaker 00

  Just came over.

• 2:52:55Speaker 01

  And so that's what we're dealing with is that I have to raise $2 million by the end of the year. We have a million dollars. So there are good people out there with the checkbook that are willing to help.

• 2:53:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:53:04Speaker 01

  And then they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But now, now, now see if the people actually care.

• 2:53:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:53:09Speaker 01

  And that's my job. And so the stressful part of this is like, when you fail, the losses are devastating. Cause you lose parts of the jungle that are irreplaceable. Millennium trees, thousand year old trees with species sometimes that have never been described. And then the victories are so exciting because the people come through. People from all over the world making these little donations and a lot of raindrops makes a flood. And then you go, wait a second, my faith in humanity is restored because all these people want to save the monkeys and then, and then the butterflies and the ancient trees. But it's like, we gotta keep doing miracle after miracle. And it's like, now we're running for the end of the year. And it's like watching Mission Impossible and be like, holy shit.

• 2:53:51Speaker 01

  He just jumped a bike onto the train, da, da, da, killed the bad guys. And it's like, yeah, yeah, but he can't wake up and do it again tomorrow. And that's the problem with what we're doing right now. And that's why I'm like, I just, I'm hoping that someone with the right resources comes in and goes, for 20 million? Let's just get this done. Save it now so you don't have to keep. It's like what we're doing right now, what I'm doing by writing the books and by doing the social media and all this stuff, I'm begging for the tools to do my job. And what I want to do is just do my job. There's enough work of surveying this land and working with the locals and managing the team and then living on the Amazon. And then it's like, we have to be like, guys, can we please have bullets so we can win the war?

• 2:54:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:54:32Speaker 01

  And the beautiful thing is that so many people have come forward that now there's thousands of people in the Jungle Keeper Network and they can give to us, support the local people who are protecting the jungle. I'm just the, the American mouthpiece. And the cool part is with the people, that those kids at home that are donating to us. And then when they grow up, we say, come to the treehouse and see what you protected.

• 2:54:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:54:55Speaker 01

  It's dope.

• 2:54:56Speaker 00

  Paul Rosolie, ladies and gentlemen. Make sure you check out the book. We'll put the link in the bio where you guys can donate, man. Thank you so much. That was fucking amazing. This was fun.

• 2:55:06Speaker 01

  This was fun.

• 2:55:06Speaker 00

  What a life, brother. That was awesome. So cool, dude. Unbelievable.

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