← Lex Fridman Podcast
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The following is a conversation with Paul Rosolie, his third time on the podcast. Paul is a naturalist, explorer, writer and is someone who has dedicated his life to protecting the Amazon rainforest and celebrating the beauty of the natural world. He has a new book coming out in a few days titled Jungle Keeper that you should definitely go pre order now. It tells some intense stories about his time in the jungle over the past several years, building up to a few epic recent events including a new full on extended encounter with a non contacted tribe that we discuss in this podcast. Both the book and audiobook are great. I highly recommend it. If you would like to support Paul and his incredible team in their mission to protect the jungle, go to junglekeepers.org you can help with donations or by spreading the word or checking out the gala that Paul is hosting in New York on January 22nd. In a few days they are doing all they can to help raise funds for the mission of safeguarding as much of the rainforest as possible and I think it's a mission worth fighting for. The Amazon jungle is one of the most special and beautiful places on earth. As an aside, allow me to look back briefly and mention something that I've been struggling with a bit. For context, I traveled to the Amazon Rainforest with Paul a while back. It was an adventure of a lifetime with lots of crazy twists and turns. We did record a podcast out there, literally in the Jungle, episode 429 if you want to go check it out. It was awesome and we also recorded a bunch of disparate footage of the journey just for fun. And I would still love to somehow put all that together into a cohesive video in case it's interesting to someone. But I've learned just how difficult it is to organize and edit a pile of chaotically recorded footage like that. So let's see if I can pull it off. But in any case, this kind of raw vlog style video is something that I would love to be able to do more of as a way to celebrate amazing human beings like Paul and others, including everyday people who I meet on my travels. So I'll keep trying, tinkering, learning and I ask for your patience and support along the way. Now back to our regular scheduled programming. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or@lexfriedman.com Sponsors it is in fact the best way to support this podcast. We got Perplexity for Curiosity driven knowledge exploration, BetterHelp for mental health, Element for Electrolytes, Shopify for Selling Stuff Online, Fin for customer service, AI agents, Miro for brainstorming ideas with your team and masterclass of course for learning. Choose wisely my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. I try to make them interesting, but if you skip and there are in fact chapter markers that make it easy to skip after you listen to this part, please still check out the sponsors. And I should say that a lot of folks said they still listen to these sponsors because of the personal touch, because of the human stories that I put in there, because of the random, disparate, chaotic thoughts that I throw in there. So for those folks, thank you. But if you skip, please please still support the sponsors. I really wouldn't be able to do it without them to get in touch with me for whatever reason. Go to lexfreeman.com contact all right, lets go. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H E L P. Help. They figure out what you need and match you with a licensed professional therapist in under 48 hours. I've been reading a lot about the history of psychiatry recently, preparing for this gigantic super episode on the history and the current state of the art across the board in psychiatry. And it's such a fascinating history. If it reveals anything, it reveals just how complicated the human mind is, just how difficult, how heavy, how important the chaos our mind takes us through on a daily basis. And I've always been a big believer that the sort of psychotherapy approach, talking talk therapy in all of its different forms is a really powerful method of exploring that. Anyway, BetterHelp is easy, discreet, affordable, available worldwide. Check them out@betterhelp.com lex and save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com lex this episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix. I take one packet. Usually I put it in one of those larger Powerade bottles, mix it up, put in the fridge and then drink it throughout the day. I drink several throughout the day, especially before and after an intensive workout where I know I'm going to lose a lot of water, a lot of electrolytes. I replenish if I don't do that, especially with the fasting I do. I mostly eat one meal a day and especially with extremely low carb diet that I eat basically zero carbs on most days, especially when I'm just in my happy focus place getting the electrolytes right. It just makes me feel good. I think that's anecdotally what a huge amount of people report online, especially if you're doing keto Carnivore. If you're doing fasting, all that kind of stuff, getting the electrolytes right is essential. Get a free 8 count sample pack with any purchase. Try it Drink Element this episode is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. Toby, the CEO of Shopify. Dhh, the whatever his role is at Shopify. I think he's connected to Shopify, but he's the great celebrator in chief of Ruby on Rails and of programming and he's been going wild on the Internet and I've been really excited to see it. It's really inspiring to see how evolving, how quick he's learning, how much he's building. And same with Toby, he just basically vibe coded, I think an MRI viewer. I mean it's just incredible that these people who have been programming their whole life are just 10xing their productivity and adding the fun back in it. Like a weekend project where you can build any random thing. And it's also really inspiring to me that this particular company has so much value at the very top, at the executive level, down to the developers, just the whole team, just so much value for engineering and it makes me excited to use the thing they're doing. In this particular case, Shopify, you can set up a store. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com lex all lowercase go to shopify.com lex to take your business to the next level Today this episode is also brought to you by FIN, the number one AI agent for customer service. 65 average resolution rate trusted by over 6,000 customer service leaders and top companies including Shutterstock, Synthesia, Clay, Vanta, Lovable, Monday.com and more. A lot of companies, they use it for customer service and they use the incredible specialized niche do one thing right. AI agent that is provided by FIN to do the customer service. And clearly AI has a big role in automating certain aspects of that, but it's not easy to do that well. So I'm really glad there's a company like Fin that's focused on just this and making sure it's done extremely well. It's built to handle complex multi step queries like returns, exchanges and disputes, delivering high quality personalized answers just like your best human agent. Go to Fin AI Lex to learn more about transforming your customer service and scaling your support team. That's Fin AI Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Miro, an online collaborative platform. Its innovation workspace blends AI and human creativity to turn ideas into results. I'm really a big fan of the cutting edge of using online tooling for the brainstorming process, especially when it's collaborative. It's kind of interesting to see how different folks approach ideation or brainstorming or thinking through stuff. You know, me and Paul talked a lot about his journaling process. He writes a lot of stuff in the notebook. But at a certain point you have to convert that for archiving purposes, for sharing purposes, for collaborative purposes, you have to convert that to the digital form. You can't just have a hard notebook. I mean, the collaboration is really essential. And the Internet, and the Internet connectivity and, and services like Miro allow that collaboration to take place. So it's really when ideas spring to life is in the collaborative aspect, especially when there are ideas that have a chance to have impact. So help your teams develop great ideas into results with miro. Go to miro.com to find out how. That's M I R O dot com and finally, this episode is brought to you by Masterclass, where you can watch over 200 classes from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. Every time I talk about Scorsese, every time I talk about Terence Tao, because those are singular figures in human history, by the way. Terence Tao, very good Masterclass on mathematical thinking, but he's been pushing on all fronts, exploring all the different ways AI can be leveraged and utilized to do exceptional research level mathematics. He's made some recent announcements. I probably want to talk to him again at some point. He's just one of the most wonderful, brilliant humans I've ever gotten a chance to interact with. A person I've never gotten a chance to interact with, but I am a huge fan of. Huge fan of everything. He's great. In this world is Scorsese. Martin Scorsese, probably one of, if not the greatest filmmaker of all time. Just incredible genius. I can't as a director, as an editor, as a visionary, as a storyteller, all of it genius. So Anyway, go to masterclass.com lexpod to get an additional 50% off any annual membership. That's 15% off@masterclass.com lexpod this is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me me, ask questions, give feedback and so on. And now, dear friends, here's Paul Rosalie. We've survived a challenging time out in the jungle about a year and a half ago, and since then your life has increasingly gotten more Intense. So you've achieved the incredible feat of saving now more than 130,000 acres of rainforest. And the goal is that you're working towards is protecting 200,000 acres more and doing so while facing extreme danger from narcos, narco traffickers, so called cocaine mafia, in an escalating drug war. This is insane. These are new developments. Illegal loggers, as we've talked about before, gold miners and the incredible recent encounter with a non contacted tribe. And we'll talk about all of this. So your new book, Jungle Keeper, opens with the killing of two loggers by the warriors of a non contacted tribe, the Mash Kopiro, in August 2024. And then you reveal that you had your own dramatic encounter with the tribe two months later in October 2020. If I may, let me read the opening of the book. Far out on the western edge of the Amazon rainforest, deep in the Peruvian jungle, a pair of loggers plunged their chainsaws into the buttressed roots of an ancient ironwood. An ironwood, or shihua wako, of this size is a giant among giants. An emergence sentinel that reaches heights of 160ft, towering over the rest of the canopy. I've read that many are over a thousand years old, by the way, as an aside. And you've found ones that are 1200.
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Years old, incredibly old.
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Anyway, you continue. This particular tree has started its life as a tiny sapling in the great jungle. A story that began before the Spanish reached Peru, long before the United States was even a dream. At a time when Leonardo da Vinci was still honing his talents in a faraway part of the world. Through the Renaissance, the first and second World wars and the birth of our grandparents, this tree was out there, slowly charging upward, anonymous. Just one pillar among the billions of others. But on this day in August 2024, when the two loggers worked, this witness of the centuries came crashing down through the canopy with such cataclysmic power that it shook the earth. And then you go on to talk about how the shaking of the earth was felt and heard by the uncontacted tribe. So you go on to describe how these particular loggers were murdered by the uncontacted tribe of Mash Kapiro. What do we know about these warriors of the UN contacted tribe?
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We know that across the Amazon basin there's still perhaps thousands of clans of quote, unquote uncontacted peoples, people that are living in nomadic isolation in what remains of the intact Amazon basin and want to remain that way. And so what happened with these loggers was that local people told them, don't go out there, don't go into these territories. And what happens is that people that aren't from this thing with the jungle, people don't believe that it's as wild as the legends say. And so when they say there's Kalatos out there, there's wild people out there, these loggers from another region go, yeah, some story, we're fine, we'll go. We have shotguns. They don't realize you're dealing with a civilization of people that is still nomadic, still uses bamboo tipped arrows, still lives naked in the Amazon rainforest, has knowledge of medicines that we have yet to encounter or may never disc. And that they can hit a spider monkey out of the treetops at 40 meters. And so while you're using a chainsaw, they can sneak up and you will never know they're there. And so when that arrow passes through your body, you'll only have a moment to realize it before you fall over.
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A
And we're looking at something you posted on your Instagram. Yes. Which are the arrows that they use, which are bigger than you. So they're like six, seven feet?
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B
Six, seven feet. More like seven feet. And that's sharp edge, incredibly sharp. They cure it over the fire and they have a way of sharpening it. That edge of bamboo becomes incredibly like knife sharp. You can cut meat with it easily. I've done it. These arrows. Look, look at that. I mean, I'm five, nine. That, that, that's easily a seven foot arrow.
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A
Yeah. So for people who are just listening, this quote unquote arrow is really a spear. Some people would think it was a spear, but they're shooting this thing with a gigantic bow. That's crazy.
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B
Yeah. And so to be holding that, look at that. They even twist the fletching so the arrow spins in the air. They have incredible craftsmanship. And then you see all the little string on there is plant fibers that they've woven. And then this is them.
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A
Yeah. The warriors of the tribe.
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The warriors of the tribe. And so the fact that we're sitting here talking on microphones and that we have airplanes and cell phones and all the things that we have in the modern world. And there's still, we still live in this age where there's right now, at this moment, people living out in the jungle who have been there since before history is an incredible thing.
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A
Let me look this up on Perplexity. What are the technologies we modern humans have at the Mash Ku Peira? Do not. It's just interesting to think about the kind of technologies we take for granted. Energy and power, obviously, all the electricity generation and grids and batteries and solar panels and electric motors, metals and materials mass produced. Steel, aluminum, advanced alloys, plastics, composites, glass, concrete, all of those things. Tools, of course, and the machinery, the infrastructure of roads and bridges and buildings, and the weapons of war. Everything but the spears and arrows that they have. And the medicine and biology, of course, they probably have complicated medicines that they have developed for their own that are available within the juggle.
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B
I mean, that entire list is. No, no, I mean metal. Think you have to be able to excavate into the earth and forge metal. These people don't even, as one of the local anthropologists said to me, a Peruvian anthropologist, he said, you know, people think of them as Stone Age tribes. And he was like, they don't have stones. He's like, they don't. So they don't know that water, they see water that they drink, they don't know that water freezes because they've never seen it. They don't know what the water boils because they don't even make clay pots. They just have their bamboo and their string. And so they're living an incredibly simple life. So all of that, I mean, even a camera is a miracle to them. It's like. Yeah, you have to bend your mind to even understand how far back they are. It's like looking into thousands of years ago, like Stone Age.
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A
Well, they hear the sounds of the chainsaws, the sounds of machinery in the distance. I wonder how they can possibly comprehend what that is.
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B
I think they view it as like a demonic destructive force. And when I show you the encounter that we had, we got a few takeaways. We left with more questions than answers. But one of the things that they were able to communicate across the language barrier was why are you cutting down the trees? They don't like it.
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Yeah, that represents to them the danger that the outside world brings, the destruction that the outside world brings.
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B
They see us as the destroyers of worlds.
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A
So tell me about this encounter in October of 2024.
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B
So in order to tell you about that encounter, I think we need to orient people into where we're talking about. We're talking about this river that runs through the western edge of the Amazon rainforest that, you know. Well now after spending time there with me, to high tributary of the Amazon rainforest where, you know, you have the main river channel and then smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller tributaries and the smaller you get, the less trafficked they are. And so this river has remained wild through the centuries. And Even during the 90s, when there was a mahogany boom, where people went out for mahogany trees, there's very few people going up this river. And so 20 years ago, when I first got to the region, and people were telling me that there's uncontacted tribes out there, it was always in the realm of something. It's like people say, there's bigfoot or don't go there. It's haunted or something. It was like a tall tale almost. And even the peruvian government, at the time that I went to peru first, which was 2006, their official position was that the tribes are a myth. There's no such thing as the tribes. That was the official position. And you would hear these stories of people that got shot. You'd meet someone high up a river, four days upriver, deep in the Amazon, that had an arrow, and you'd look at this thing, and it had this mega gravity. And so, as we've created jungle keepers, and now we're protecting 130,000 acres of this river, we're protecting the plants and the animals and the ancient trees and trying to preserve the ecosystem and counting the butterflies and conducting ecological surveys. And what we've inadvertently found ourselves the caretakers of is the fact that these people, in order to continue living, have to remain isolated, want to remain isolated. That's their one mandate as a civilization. The tribes of the mashco piro. And so in october, we were, you know, as jungle keepers. Now we're working with the indigenous people. What we do is we take loggers and gold miners and make them into rangers and give them better jobs. And we try to protect the forest. And those people who live up in the remote indigenous community, they called us on a satellite phone, and they said, directors, you've been working with us and telling us you want to help us. The tribes are coming out. What do we do?
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A
So even they don't really know when the tribes emerge from the deep jungle what to do.
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They were terrified.
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What was your thinking when you got the phone call?
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When we got the phone call, it was a mix of, you know, we should keep, because we're over here, like, trying to get land concessions and doing all this important work. And part of me was like, that's. That can't be real. So we're going to keep, keep. Keep our heads down. Bigfoot is emerging from the forest. Yeah, sure, sure. And then, because we got the call, we hung up, and we said, okay, maybe tomorrow if they're like still there or something. And then it was crazy because it was, it was probably about noon and we had an important day of meetings. We had a meeting with the police, we had a meeting with the landowner. We were trying to do all this stuff for the conservation work. And then I got together with the core team of directors, JJ Mose and Stephane, and we said, wait, if this is real, we have to get there now, now, now. And so we dropped what we were doing, canceled the meetings, we put other people on the meetings. We got a boat. We called Ignacio, we called our most hardcore ranger who has been shot, who in 2019 was shot in the head by an arrow and still bears the scar. And he barely survived. And we said, look, this is going down. He said, I already know because the whole river already knows. And we said, can you get us there by tomorrow morning? And he said, look, it's a two day journey by boat, so no. And we said, is there any way you can get us there? And he went, I'll get you there. And so we got a couple sacks of rice, a couple cans of tuna, our dry bags, our tents, we got on a boat by 6pm and we started riding up the river through the night, through the night. And so two day boat journey that we're trying to flex in one night. And so I was at the front with the headlamp with the torch. And so the first few hours it was clear. And that comet, remember that comet that was going, there was that comet in the sky. I remember looking at the comet and going, Somehow I was like, this is it. I knew this was it. And the first few hours was clear and the stars was out and it was beautiful. And then it clouded over and the lightning started and then it just apocalypse downpoured. And from midnight until 8am it was just the front of the boat with the light. And it was just Star wars vision of just, you know, raindrops and galaxies and moths flying in my eye. And. And you people don't realize you can get hypothermia in the tropics, but it's like as you're going at night, Even if it's 80 degrees outside in the rain, in the wind at night, in a lightning storm, you're freezing. And so by, you know, 2am I'm convulsively shivering and we're using the crocodile eyes, the cayman eyes on the side of the river as cause it was so dark we couldn't see where we were going. So those shine back at you. So I was Finding the cayman eyes and then motioning with the light to Ignacio where to go. And he knew how to find the channel. We had to jump the waterfalls. We did the two day boat ride in one night.
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A
Nice.
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B
And we got there and we arrive at this community where and it's morning now and the howler monkeys are calling over the jungle and you know, the little naked children are all by the side and everyone's scared. And we get a hug from this guy Bacho, who we know, and they're like, come in, come in, come in. And they're like, the tribe came out yesterday that we saw a few of them on the beach and they're gone now. And so we collapsed, we fell asleep. Rained the whole day. That night we went out and we looked for them and there was this crazy moment where we're standing on this beach and their footprints were there and the local indigenous anthropologists was standing there. And we're standing at the edge of this beach, looking out into the Amazon beyond. And there's just all this wreckage. It looked like something very Cormac McCarthy. Just dark sky, iron clouds. And we're standing there. Everyone is waiting because at any moment an arrow could just fly through your neck. And there's people holding shotguns. And the anthropologist, this little guy is standing there in the front and he's going, nomole. He's going, brothers. There's only a few words that intersect between the languages. And he's going, brothers, we're here. We don't want to hurt you. He's speaking in the Yine language and he's saying, come out. And you can tell by their footprints. The trackers explain this to us. You could see it was just the balls of their feet. So right as we pulled up to the beach, they had run. So they were there listening to us. And he's going, nomole, come out. It's okay. Lay down your arms, we'll lay down ours. No mole. Just kept saying, no mole. And nothing happened. And we went back to the village, we went to sleep. We wake up the next morning and it's 5am and again we're trying to save the jungle. We're in a race against time to get these land concessions. And so my team, like Mohsen and Stefan, JJ couldn't come because he was in town actually signing paperwork and interviewing loggers and landowners. And also he didn't think that there was any chance this was going to be real because in his entire 50 something years in the Amazon, he's never seen them and so we're getting ready to leave in the morning. We had tents on the boat. And Ignacio comes up to me and he goes, you're my director, right? You're my boss. And I went, yeah. He goes, I need to talk to you like a friend. I said, yeah, shoot, shoot, go. And he goes, you'd be an idiot to leave right now. He goes, they're coming. And so he convinced us to stay. We pulled our tents off the boat. Stephan and Mohsen go off with their cameras. They start shooting people. These are monkey eaters and fishermen, the community that we're in, and everything's quiet. And I opened my laptop and I was working, just writing my book. And then it happened. Then you start hearing people screaming. Mashko, Mashko. And people are screaming and women are lifting children and running into the huts, and the dogs and chickens are going nuts. Fear.
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A
Fear.
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B
Fear.
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A
Because we should say, kind of the obvious thing is, as far as anyone remembers, any encounters, any minimal small encounters with these tribes have been violent, extremely violent.
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B
These tribes have remained alive because of their violence. Almost like the Spartans or the Comanches, they seem to have adopted violence as a first response to contact.
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A
Maybe you can correct me on this, but I read that in the late 19th century, early 20th century, there was documentation of encounters with these tribes by the private armies of the rubber barons. And those encounters were from the rubber barons armies perspective. Violent.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so maybe the lesson they learned, the uncontacted tribes, is that any interaction with the outside world is going to have to be violent because they have to defend themselves.
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B
Yeah. You had colonial missionaries in the 16, 1700s. Then you had the rubber barons, late 1800s into the 1900s. Just periods of extraction and domination and cruelty. And these tribes, their grandparents must have told them, when the outside world comes, you shoot first. That's the only thing that's going to keep you alive.
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A
Do you think the memory of that, those violent encounters is defining to how they think about the world?
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B
Yeah, because even in my lifetime there, in the 20 years I've spent in the Amazon, Ignacio was shot in the head. My friend Victor survived a violent encounter where they murdered somebody on a beach. I mean, they've shot numerous people. They've even shot people who were trying to help them. People, they're trying to give them clothing and bananas. They've just where they. They call it porcupining them, where they find a body on the beach with so many arrows that when they fall over, all the arrows are sticking up. And so they think and they'll do it out of curiosity, too, where it's like, hey, you're wearing a suit. That's weird. We've never seen anybody in a black and white suit. And then get a clothing. You know, the way Teddy Roosevelt would shoot a bird for science. They're like, they'll just. What? They just want to look at you. And so they're operating on a different. They don't have a moral system that we have or understand. They're just. They're truly wild.
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A
How does Ignacio think about them? Because they almost killed him.
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B
Yes. It depends on the mood you get him in. Because if you ask him one day, I asked him, I said, if you could see the people that shot you in the head, what would you say to them? And he looked at me with that Ignacio look, and he said, I wouldn't say anything. I would kill as many of them as I could. I said, okay. He also had a time where he was in a really remote guard station working for the Ministry of Culture. And they showed up, and he knew that they were going to kill him. And so he climbed up into the. The peak of the. Of the little structure there. And just like, you know, like a dog in a car, that greenhouse effect in the top at midday with the sun beating down. He was huddled over a mattress while they were walking on the deck moving pots and pans and looking at our items and artifacts. And he knew that if he was found, they'd kill him. But if he stayed up there, he was literally frying to death. He said he was soaking the mattress. He was. He could feel himself dying for two hours. He had to stay there. And he is constantly making this decision of, if I come out, I die. If I stay here, I probably die. He's like, probably die is better than definitely die. So he's terrified. And so as they're screaming mashko. And everybody's running and women are lifting children, Ignacio comes and finds me. And you can see in his eyes. You can see when somebody has that PTSD response where he's breathing heavy, he's moving behind trees, he's keeping me close to him. And he's going, look there. He has a bow. He has a bow. And we're looking up the beach and. And there's just this clan of naked men walking down the beach with these seven foot bows, and they're hunched over and they're pointing at us. They're going, look at that one. They're going, look, there's a gun there. And you can see them communicating to each other. And the butterflies are swirling off the beach. And you know, in these moments you go, am I entering a moment that I is this, is this a one way door? Is this, is this not something that. Is this an irreversible situation? Because there's an unfolding situation where they're coming at towards us. Are they going to attack? What do they want? Is there going to be. I mean, I am soaked in chills right now just talking about it because I remember standing there and going, there's no way this is real life. It's burned into my memory. Them walking down the beach and seeing them with the bows. And of course, you know, Stefan is up there just firing off pictures and Mohsen is down getting video. And the community that we're with, people had, you know, you hear shotgun shells loading home and them loading it, but they're also, they're getting ready. And there's this one guy, this anthropologist named Rommel, who has been the only person who has communicated with them peacefully. He did it in 2013 where he stood on the beach and he spoke to them. He knows enough of the local dialect that overlaps with theirs that he can speak to them. And so as they're coming down the beach, the butterflies are flying up and we're all waiting. And again, shotgun. You're talking, you know, how many meters? 30, 40 meters? I don't know. Accurate for an arrow. You loose a seven foot arrow that weighs nothing, you're talking about 300 meters, easy. They can shoot you from across the river. So Ignacio was like pulling me and he was like, down. He's like, you go down. He was like, you stay behind this tree. And he's like, you watch them from there. He's like, watch out, that guy has an arrow. He's like, he was watching everyone because you could see. He's like, this is how it happens.
- [33:10]
A
Did you think you might, this might be the last day you have on this earth? Were you afraid?
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B
I was, yeah. Yeah, of course I was afraid. I'm with my two best friends and a bunch of people that I work very closely with. And you're in the middle of nowhere and there's no help coming and you're with like, you know, 26 people and there's 50 of the tribe that you can see and you know that they're surrounding us. There's all men on the other side of the river. And then we had, we had guns looking back towards the jungle because we knew we were being surrounded. And so again, this is always the story of someone's uncle, brother, cousin tells a story that happened and now it's happening. And it's not happening in the shadows. It's not happening in the middle of the night. It's happening in broad daylight. They're walking out onto the beach. It's like the first time they saw the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. You're going, uh, there's no way.
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A
And you are kind of walking on the knife's edge of. And it's funny you say Stephan was taking pictures. Cause there's two ways to think of the situation. This is fascinating or this is extremely dangerous. And it's both. It is a nice edge. So you could approach it one of the two ways, like, if I die, I die. I'm gonna take some good pictures.
- [34:23]
B
But also we're there. That was also our mission. You know, as, as the directors of Junglekeepers, we're working with this community to ensure that their lifestyle can continue. And they're saying, hey, that's great. But as an indigenous community, we're dealing with these people that come out and raid our stuff, try and steal our women, that kill our hunters. And now they're coming out. We want you to see it. And so document documenting it as part of our job. We have to show what happened that day. And so those guys were shooting and then, yes, very seriously. It's actually so Mohsen's wife and I, we always joked about, like, oh, if the tribe ever comes out, like, you stand in front of him, like, you take the arrow. He has kids. And it was, you know, that day, it was like we were strategically positioning ourselves, being like, you know, you down, you cannot get killed. And it was, you start in those moments to go, okay, where will I be safe from arrows? Where can I run to the river? If they come over and you start planning, okay, if I jump into the river, I was going, okay, I got my bag, I have a can of tuna, I have a flashlight. I was like, if I jump into the river and float down and I live, I'm still days upriver. And so you start going through all these things, but.
- [35:33]
A
And of course, the Moscow Pira people are thinking exactly the same thing, probably.
- [35:38]
B
Well, the interesting thing is that they're initiating the contact, right? They are the ones coming out of the jungle and confronting us.
- [35:46]
A
And fundamentally that contact is they're at least giving peace a chance. It's. They're trying the peaceful contact first. Correct? Or is there a violent element? Like, what did you sense in the caution of them emerging to the beach fear.
- [36:05]
B
As they came out, you could see fear on them because the way they were hunched over, the way they had their bows ready, they were worried. And so they came and you know, Rommel is standing there as closer than any of us at the edge of. On one side of the river. And it was like, you know, shirts versus skins. It was two tribes looking at each other with a thousand years of civilization between them. And Rommel's going, put down your bows. Put down your bows and we can talk. And he's no mole. No mole. He kept saying, no more. He kept saying, brothers, brothers, please put down your.
- [36:36]
A
So nomoli means brother in a language that they might be able to understand.
- [36:40]
B
Nomoli means brother in a language that they do understand. And it's. And it seems like they refer to themselves as the nomolis, the brothers.
- [36:50]
A
So potentially that's what they call themselves as the tribes nomolis.
- [36:55]
B
Exactly. And actually the anthropologists that we've been speaking to post this event have been explaining to us that Mashko Piro, you know, piro is the. Is the group that they're from these various nomadic tribes. And mashko basically means like wild piros. And so the one thing we know they call themselves is nomoles.
- [37:13]
A
So at the end of this, we might converge towards the name of this tribe being nomole versus Mash Kapiro, the nomoles.
- [37:19]
B
Yeah. Seems like the most current or at least their self appointed identity is the brothers Nomole.
- [37:25]
A
Anyway, there's these shredded warriors on the beach.
- [37:28]
B
Yeah. With seven foot arrows. And we're all standing there. And so the, the first thing again, you just think of the peace pipe in the old stories. And the first thing is, let's make them an offering of peace. And so they got a canoe with no motor and we piled it with plantains. Just full of plantains, 16ft of endless green bananas. And then, I mean, the balls on this guy, the anthropologist, he gets into the river, takes the canoe, and it's the dry season, so the river's only about 3, 4ft deep at the channel. And so he walks this thing out, this one man walking in the face of all these warriors, and he takes the boat and he pushes it towards them. And they rush out and they start grabbing the bananas. And they're not going, okay, we will unload these bananas and use them later. They're my bananas. And you're grabbing your bananas and they're fighting and they're yelling and they're all grabbing and they're Grabbing them. And then they push the boat back. And he talks to them a little bit. And again, it's not a perfect translation. So he's, you know, he's saying, where have you come from? What do you want? Who's your leader? To establish these things. And they're saying things and they all sort of talk at the same time like a flock of birds. They're not. They don't have. It wasn't like one man speaks and there was no women. The women were. The women were nowhere to be seen. And actually, at one point, as we were preparing, I think it was while we were preparing the second canoe of bananas, there was a moment of absolute panic. And it happened when there was a noise behind us. And you just hear a bunch of shotguns swing behind us. And, you know, Mohsen goes down. I go running away from the river now because again, I want to see it coming if there's an attack coming. And I'm standing, me and this guy, we're sharing a tree as cover, and he's got a shotgun and he's looking back into the forest and peering through. And what was happening was the women of the tribe had come Silent foot, and they were just pulling the yuka out of the ground and taking the banana plants and ruining the farm completely. But they were raiding the farm behind us while the men were talking up here. So again, were they peacefully contacting us or were they like, hey, we need some food, so go make a diversion and take the food back.
- [39:44]
A
I mean, you really were surrounded.
- [39:46]
B
We were completely surrounded.
- [39:48]
A
So they could have murdered all of you, probably easily.
- [39:53]
B
We were outnumbered five to one at the least.
- [39:56]
A
Yeah. And it's probably fair to say that part of the reason they did, maybe they wanted peace, but part of the reason is they didn't know how deep this goes. They didn't know if you have backup.
- [40:06]
B
They don't know if we have backup. They also, they had questions. They were asking. Some of their questions were incredible. How do we tell the difference between how do we know who the good guys and the bad guys are? Because to them, all you outsiders are the same. So why. Who are the ones cutting down the trees?
- [40:23]
A
And those are the ones they know are the bad guys.
- [40:27]
B
The big trees seem to have incredible significance to them. They're significant to us in a different way, but to them, it's. It's offensive on an almost religious level to cut a big tree as if you're killing their gods.
- [40:42]
A
So there's a spirituality to the trees. It seems like that and so whoever's cutting them down is a source of destruction on spiritual, existential level.
- [40:52]
B
Yeah. Well, why would you destroy our home? I think they're right.
- [40:56]
A
Yeah. In a deep sense, the on contact, two tribes represent the deep jungle. And so if they're threatened, that means the jungle, the deep jungle is threatened.
- [41:08]
B
Yeah, I mean, they are the human voice of the jungle. And they, they're asking questions. They're also demanding. You know, they're clapping at us and they're waving and they're saying, send more, Send, send more bananas. And so they loaded up another boat and they pushed another boat out. And this time they gave them some rope. They all had rope tied around their waists, penises tied up, but they love rope. And some of them were wearing rope that they had made, which is brown or reddish. And then some of them were wearing rope that they had clearly pillaged from logging camps or the communities because it was modern nylon paracord. And they had this wound around their waists like a thick belt. And they took the second boat and that they had some, some rope and they had some plantains on there.
- [41:48]
A
So some of these guys might have been the ones that murdered the loggers. Could be from a couple months before that.
- [41:55]
B
Absolutely could be. But what Rommel said as he was talking to them, he turned to us and he said, you know, this group, he said, the other groups call me the grandfather. He said, this group, he said, I don't know any of these. He said, this is first contact. He said, this is the first time this group is talking to us. And you saw people from maybe 12 years old to what looks like 40, something like a, like a banged up 40 and no really old people and no women.
- [42:23]
A
So this is a particular clan tribe never contacted. Is there just from your memory, interesting aspects about the way they were trying to communicate? Like you said, clapping. I think it's from an anthropology perspective, from a human perspective, fascinating. How do you talk to people from an uncontacted tribe like this? So clapping, yelling, mean. It's interesting to know that there's not a hierarchy where there's a leader that represents or is that we know for sure.
- [42:52]
B
Before even coming to talk to you about this, we passed this through anthropologists and ethicists and people. And we, you know, we said, look, is it even. Can we talk about this? Because if you talk about this and you tell people there's these uncontacted tribes, people have misconceptions. They go, they're the last free people on earth. They're Living the real life. We need to go join them. We want to see them. We want to photograph. There's all this bad stuff that happens, and all these people want us to be left alone. So the last thing we want to do is kill the thing we're trying to protect and tell the world. But at the same time, they're speaking out. They're saying, stop cutting our trees. Leave us alone. And so if we're not successful in the Greater Jungle Keeper's mission of protecting this river, they cease to exist. And so advocating for these people requires us to have this conversation. It requires us to have this footage and to show the world and then leave them alone. In order for any of this to make sense, I have to show you.
- [43:47]
A
This footage, and this has not been shown ever before.
- [43:51]
B
This is a world first. I mean, up until now. That's the other thing. You know, we're sitting there this day, and, you know, the only thing you've ever seen are these blurry images of someone's cell phone from 100 meters away of the uncontacted tribes. And we're sitting there with, you know, 800 millimeters with a 2x teleconverter and, you know, R5s. And so this is as we're looking through the farms, anticipating the tribe coming. I'll put a little bit of volume so you can hear it, and then you can see. This is the moment. This is us running. When they're, like, they're out. They're coming down the beach.
- [44:26]
A
Oh, wow.
- [44:29]
B
Oh, wow. You see how many. These thousands of butterflies. But look at the way they move. Look at the way they point. Look at him with his bow.
- [44:41]
A
Wow. They're trying to figure out what they're looking at.
- [44:52]
B
Uhhuh. And they didn't know what the cameras are there. So this was the guys looking out the back. So he's. He's going, there's something back here. He could hear the women in the farm. And I'm looking in every direction because I'm going, which way is the arrow coming from? See, he has his shotgun. This is just like a farm shotgun. Even if he shot it, you have to use a stick to bang out the shell. But see, as they come closer, they start laying down there. See, he's laying down his bow and arrow. They understand, no mole.
- [45:23]
A
So these are. These are warriors. And the way they were at first moving, it really looked like they're ready for violence. And now they're all standing in a relaxed. Yeah, smiling. Are they smiling?
- [45:35]
B
Smiles come at some Point. I would say that one of these guys seemed like in a leadership position. He did most of the talking.
- [45:44]
A
What. What's with the different hand gestures? This. The holding your hand up to the face. All of the. This means something.
- [45:52]
B
All of this means something. Some had red smeared on their faces, some had yellow.
- [45:57]
A
Did you have a sense of hierarchy at all?
- [45:58]
B
Like the boss again, there was just these two dominant guys and, like, this guy and one other guy who looked almost like him. Like his brother. Yeah. Gesturing. Wow.
- [46:22]
A
This is incredible. Paul.
- [46:25]
B
You see the rope?
- [46:27]
A
Yeah.
- [46:27]
B
Some of that rope is.
- [46:32]
A
Yeah. I can kind of tell who the. Who the bosses are.
- [46:35]
B
Right. All right, so a few of the. But see, even that as he's pointing, we're going, what are you. What are you. What are you pointing at?
- [47:03]
A
You guys are nuts. You guys are nuts.
- [47:08]
B
You see as though they're rushing in. There's this desperation. They're hungry. They also.
- [47:13]
A
Is that in the water? Is that Ramo in the water?
- [47:16]
B
In this particular video, it's a guy named Ler. But, like, see, these guys, they're fighting over. It's not that we're all going to share it later. It's, I get mine, you get yours. And so what does that. What does that mean?
- [47:28]
A
Yeah, but here they're in peaceful mode now.
- [47:32]
B
After we'd given them. After we'd given them several boatloads of bananas, things did calm down. Rommel said to them, you know, look, we've given you what we can give you. We gave you sugarcane, we gave you boatloads of plantains. And so then there came a time where things were a little more relaxed. They were walking around. We were. At one point, we had a great moment where we'd given them the plantains, we'd given them the bananas. And he'd said, look, that's it. He said, we've given you what you asked for. You asked for bananas. We don't cut the trees here. All of us here are not tree cutters. We're indigenous people. And he couldn't explain who the hell we were, but they were like, we don't cut the trees. We're not the loggers. And they're like, okay. So then at some point, Ignacio went out and sort of started. He'd go like this, and they'd go like this. And he danced a little bit. They danced a little bit. And then there was this very human moment of just sort of joking.
- [48:31]
A
So even Ignacio warmed up.
- [48:32]
B
Even Ignacio warmed up once he realized it didn't seem like anyone was going to die that day. Things did calm down. It was a false sense of security. Here, I'll show you. There's a couple more things that are relevant here, though. Yeah, this is just them interacting with the boat.
- [48:49]
A
This is truly incredible, man.
- [48:52]
B
But then they don't have boats. They don't have stone tools. They don't. Imagine if you showed them ice, you know, they wouldn't.
- [49:00]
A
This is historic.
- [49:04]
B
I mean, it's the. I mean, you hear of Percy Fawcett encountering the tribes. We've heard of anecdotal accounts of the tribes. This is the first time that the tribes have been filmed. We can hear their voices, that there's a documented interaction happening. I mean, this. Now look how comfortable he's getting. He's so close. They asked him for his. His shirt, he gave his shirt. They asked him for his pants, he gave his pants. He was in his underwear. You see the shirt that's over his shoulder? Ignacio took off his Jungle Keeper's shirt and threw it to the anthropologist, and then the anthropologist walked it off and threw it to them. So over the shoulder of that uncontacted naked warrior is a Jungle Keeper shirt with the logo showing. So their second shirt, you just upgraded that guy's status in the tribe.
- [49:53]
A
He's going to be the new boss with that shirt.
- [49:55]
B
He's got a. He's got a dope ass polo. He didn't even have to order it. But, yeah, this isn't like the aftermath when things were calm. And then my sort of moment with this that really stuck with me was when Rommel said to me, he said, you know, they. He said, they're asking about you. And I said, what are they asking? I said, you know me. He goes, yeah, they're asking about you. And, you know, again, I'm not tall, but compared to the people in the village, I was a little bit taller and big shoulders. And he said, they said, you look like a warrior. He said, could you come forward? He said, show them that you don't mean any harm. He said, show them your palms. And so he pulled me up onto the beach. And this was right before they left. But see, I hold up my hands, listen, and they sang back. They're singing. They raised their hands. I raised my hands. Wow. And then. And then we were left with watching them walk off the beach into the jungle with everything that we'd given them. And they were gone. And so we went down river the next day, and the community said to us, okay, now you understand this is real. This is terrifying. You Felt that fear. You have a duty if you're going to protect this river, to protect us from them and to help us figure out what future they want, if they want to come to us, if they want to learn farming, if they, whatever it is, you know, that's, that's fine. But they were like, we need protection from you guys. And then in this video, in the beginning, I'm sort of narrating to the camera and walking around right as they're coming up the beach. But you see this guy right there in the blue shirt? That's George. And he was very friendly, very confident with this. He said, don't be scared. They're not going to hurt us. And the next day we went back to town. You know, long journey back to town, go to sleep. We wake up in the morning and we find out that the following early morning, our friends in the community had said, okay, the tribe is gone. We gave them all the things they wanted. We gave them sugarcane, bananas. We said, please come back. You're welcome here anytime. And George was driving a boat and there was people on the boat. And as they were going upriver, the tribe, 200 of the tribe ran out, surrounded the boat and they started firing arrows. And everybody else could hit the deck and get under the benches and hide behind bags of rice. George was driving and he was leaning back as he's driving, he's driving as fast as he can. And one arrow came in just above his scapula and came out by his belly button. And so he had that seven foot arrow tip through him. And so they pulled him out. And I saw the boat afterward and there's just horrific amounts of blood all over the boat. And he had to be medevaced out and somehow he lived. And we were able to help getting him a helicopter, getting him evac'd all this. But again, you just go, you know, these people came out of the jungle and they asked for bananas, we gave them bananas. And we in every way possible said, we mean peace. We want friendship with you. And then the next day, they attacked.
- [53:29]
A
What do you think happened? Why do you think their mind turned?
- [53:33]
B
Or.
- [53:35]
A
Maybe this has to do with the role of violence in their society. Maybe it's so integrated into how they interact with the world that they don't even see that as a fundamental shift in the interaction. I don't know.
- [53:52]
B
I don't know what to make of it. And the only thing I can think is that the way they hid the women from us, you don't know, for them, maybe we're not allowed to see their women, you know, or. Because the one thing that we got was that as George's boat and this other boat were going upriver, which is how they live. It's not like they were doing anything wrong. These people live in a community. Days into the Amazon, they were going fishing and so they came around a bend and I think they spooked the tribe. The tribe might have just acted defensively and said, we don't know who this is. The motors could have set them off, we don't know. But they shot him. And then the other thing is the thing with the necklace. I've asked anthropologists about this and their answer was that at this point they said, you know more than we do. But that. Yeah, because two of them had the exact same item around their necks. And it seems to be a Brazil nut. And then some sort of casing around the side. And it looked like animal teeth positioned in there. And it's like, what are you carrying? Are you carrying medicine? Are you carrying some sort of a totem? Are you? But both of them. And it's not a comfortable thing to wear around your neck. You know, a grapefruit sized bigger.
- [55:05]
A
Do you have a sense that that's a container or is it just like a totem?
- [55:10]
B
It seems like a container. They didn't let it get wet. They cared for it. The guy in this picture, so he's got this, this is a piece of tree fiber that he has it on. And then he's gotten his hands on Brazil nut sacks, plastic sacks from one of the farms across the river. And so they just take, they take. And one of them got a machete and he was walking as they were leaving again during that period where it got friendly, he was leaving and he had the machete and he was playing with the machete and swinging it at butterflies. And one of my friends, this guy Bacho, he goes, oh, he goes, deja Mimi. Machete. He's like, drop the machete. And the guy just looked at him and was like, yeah, come and get it.
- [55:43]
A
It.
- [55:44]
B
You know, it's like, yeah, you cross the river and see what happens.
- [55:47]
A
Do you think he figured out or they later figured out how to use a machete?
- [55:52]
B
Oh, they know machete.
- [55:53]
A
They understand.
- [55:54]
B
Yeah, yeah, they do raids for machetes. Okay.
- [55:57]
A
Yeah, they understand the power of a sharpened metal.
- [56:00]
B
I mean, it's a, it's a Excalibur sword to them, you know, but yeah, that, that one, that one has stuck with me because I go, what were they carrying? In there.
- [56:10]
A
So what are some of the questions? Like, if you can know everything, you'd want to know about them. So maybe in the space of communication and language. That's really interesting. You mentioned that. There's all kinds of calls, animal calls. So they obviously know how to fake animal calls.
- [56:26]
B
Yeah, they speak in. They can use animal calls with enough complexity that they can do basic commands. So they can speak in capuchin. They use tinamou calls. Some of our rangers were upriver a few months ago. This is long after this. This is recently, just recently. They were upriver and they found a trail, let's say nomole trail, a Mashco Piro trail. And it was Ignacio, of course, and he made the. There's like a secret whistle. They do this mouth. And he whistled out into the jungle, and he was listening and they whistled back. And so him and everybody on the team just ran back to the boat and got out of there. But it was like, at least they answered. They didn't just shoot. He whistled. They whistled and they said, out, and he got out. But it's like, we don't know. Where are the old people? Do they not survive? What are the marriage rituals? How is reproduction handled? There's one or two children in the Amazon that I know of who have washed down river on a log and been rescued by communities and then raised. And they either learn the native dialect or Spanish. And then, of course, at some point, somebody will go and say, what was it like when you lived with them? And the answer is always the same. I forget. They don't talk about it.
- [57:47]
A
So maybe we know that they value secrecy. I mean, when you're afraid of the outside world, you don't. Part of that is confidentiality. They all sign NDAs.
- [57:59]
B
There's some really good NDAs.
- [58:01]
A
It's understood. It's an NDA. You can't. There's no lawyers. There's only one way to execute the law.
- [58:09]
B
Yeah, it's either a really strong NDA or that it is savage, that they're living out there in the jungle and that you're eating monkeys and turtles and you're hungry for days on end and your wife might get stolen by another tribe, your baby might get stolen. I mean, imagine the bot flies and the things that they must put up with. It's just. I mean, what we experienced in, what, three days of living out with modern camping gear and headlamps and a sense of direction, and they're doing none of that. You could put us out there naked. A very different story.
- [58:43]
A
So, yeah, the brutality of nature, Warner Herzog comes to mind that they have to live in that. But there must be. There's something about the jungle that serves as a catalyst for spirituality. So they must also have a. A religious component, a spiritual component that probably unifies them. There must be an ideology they operate under.
- [59:07]
B
Oh, there must be. And there's many things they must have. They must have a belief system. They probably have amazing origin stories. It would be amazing to know what things they have accurately and inaccurately guessed about us, about the outside world. I mean, they've never, they've never heard of the country they live in or of World War II or any of it. And so seeing them come across the beach was surreal because it's like this aperture into history, by the way.
- [59:38]
A
I mean, you do have a certain look. So you realize, like them singing to you, your face is carved in some wood somewhere. And there's a few of them gathering around and like still singing about the great gringo with a beard.
- [59:54]
B
They probably drew this, like, he's got. Got hair all over his face and a huge nose. And they tell their children, and it could be anything.
- [60:00]
A
You could be like, to the children, they say, this is the monster you should be afraid of. Or this could be the, the most beautiful encapsulation of the outside world. It could be everything in between. You don't get to control the myths.
- [60:14]
B
You don't get to control the myths. Yeah, God only knows. But I mean, it's so interesting. So now, now in that 130,000 acres that we have, we know, and this is what we're. We sort of have to come out of the closet with this. Like we are now protecting these people. And the only way to do that is to make sure that they're not contacted, let alone that they don't get machine guns shot at them by the narcos or that crazy, you know, hippie gringos don't go down there thinking they're gonna, you know, join. Join the coolest commune on Earth.
- [60:48]
A
So how much of the land that they move about is within the 130,000 acres of rainforest you've been able to save? And how much of it is not. How much of it is in the extra 200,000 acres that you're trying to save?
- [61:02]
B
Most of the rest, most of that 200,000 that we're still trying to protect is territory that is theirs. And in order. People always ask me first, A lot of people ask, how could you buy the Amazon? They're like, that doesn't make sense. And it's like, well, well, bad news for you. Somebody already owns it and we have to buy it from them so that they don't log it. And so these landowners are going to sell their forest to the logging companies. Because owning 10,000 acres of the Amazon doesn't help you if you're a third generation jungle man. And now it's just something that's up there and you live in the city. And so they're going to contract either the narcos or the loggers or the miners to go out there and use it it and they'll get a little money and those people, when they see these people, will kill them, that's for sure. And shotguns and machine guns in the end will win, not to mention the germs.
- [61:54]
A
So all the money you're trying to raise and all the land that you're trying to save, it's all towards that, protecting the deep jungle. So when you buy up the jungle, you just want to let it be, let the natural ecosystem come back to life in the cases when it was logged or just flourish if it hasn't.
- [62:13]
B
Again, we're talking about the last great jungle. I always called it the last endless forest because this place is so incredibly remote. And then the other question I always get is people say, well, why is this river so important? And for my whole career, my whole time, 20 years in the Amazon, it's been that it's massively intact forest. Places like the ancient forest where the trees have never been cut. So it's forest that's been growing since the dawn of time. And thousands of species can be on a single Shihua Wako tree. And it's Avatar on Earth. You can see the sweat come off your skin and rain down and then drink it out of the river. And you're part of the chemical physical reality there. And so it's one of the last places that's untouched. This changed everything because we realized that along with the butterflies and the monkeys and the jaguars and the trees and the ecosystem, there's also a human culture that will in the next few years cease to exist, that will be exterminated if we don't protect them. And when you look back at what happened to indigenous cultures all over the world over the past few centuries, that they've been wiped out. We collectively now, because we know this, have a chance to undo all of the injustices that happened in the past by at least doing one right. By saying these people want one thing to just be left alone. Imagine if we Just protected the river. And then it's not that they're this thing that's vanishing from reality, but they get to continue living that way. And then if they want to come out and contact us, great. And if they want to continue living like this for the next 10,000 years, they can. And that's what we're working with now. It's become so much more important than just we're trying to protect the environment. It's like, no, we're trying to protect things like Yellowstone and Yosemite and the sequoias occur nowhere else on Earth. You protect the things that are unique and special, the crown jewels. And in both a biological way as well as an anthropocentric way, this has now become a river with global historic significance. Because this story is going to play out in the next 18 months.
- [64:31]
A
You're further and further, further trying to save more and more rainforests. And the mission is clear because there's just this deep jungle that's full of this incredible life. And now we know with uncontacted tribes, there's a lot of interests that, that don't care about the jungle, that are pushing and want to cut it down, want to destroy it. And the mission is pretty clear. You just want this whole territory to be preserved.
- [64:58]
B
Yeah. And that's what makes it so beautiful, is that this is one of those crown jewels. This is one of those special places on Earth where it's like a time capsule for nature, for human culture, for biodiversity, for climate services, for everything. And then I think people get overwhelmed with where you say, okay, we have to save the environment, we have to save the ocean. This is one watershed. It's 300,000 acres and we're already at 130,000. We've shown we can do it. The loggers are happy to turn into rangers. People all over the world have become Junglekeeper supporters. We have several thousand people that every month give us between 5 and $1,000 every single month. And that keeps the rangers going, that employs the local people. So it's not just making a, you know, drawing a line and making a park and saying, everybody, stay out. It's like, no, you have the nomoles, you have the indigenous people, you have. You have a future for the indigenous people where their kids don't have to worry about, like, eating monkeys. They can. They can be park rangers. And I get blowback from people right away where I say, like, and people can even come see it through the treehouse thing. And people go, oh, you're going to bring tourists into the wildest place on earth. And it's like, man, look at that jungle. And it's like that 300,000 acres of that. And you're talking about on a football field, we're talking about two blades of grass that we access so people can see it, which makes a huge difference. And so the fact that we can share it with people, that people. I mean, the amount of people that listened to look since the first time I came here and spoke to you, the amount to which you've made it possible for us to protect this place, the amount of spider monkeys and jaguars and giant anteaters and those ancient millennium trees that you've made it possible to protect, is monstrous. And so thank you, brother.
- [66:46]
A
It's been an honor of a lifetime to be able to watch you. I tell to a lot of people, there's certain people I'm glad exist in this world because you've educated me and millions of people about the beauty of the jungle and then how important the fight to save the jungle is. So if you're listening to this, you absolutely must go. Please donate or post about it. Share it with friends. Junglekeepers.org you're also doing a gala in New York at the end of January. So if you can please go and donate to help save the jungle.
- [67:26]
B
Yes, please do. And because our first conversation led to the first surge where people realized what Jungle Keepers was, and then because we got this surge of support, then we were able to expand our work, protect more acres. A lot of our major donors, a lot of our small scale donors came in because of that. And so these are people that went, wait, if Lex thinks it's a good idea, then we'll do it. And based on your trust, they came in.
- [67:50]
A
And so I guess also, I should say, it's not enough to speak and communicate the importance of saving the rainforest. You actually have to have incredible people that are making it happen. And we have talked and we'll talk about more about the dangers and the complexities involved of how to navigate everything. And one of the things and the reason I'm really excited about what you're doing is I just gotten to meet the team and just brings a smile to my face. Several of the people I know who are extremely competent, Stefan, somebody we've talked about, yes, he likes to take pictures of stuff. But primarily the thing he does incredibly well is run everything, organize everything to make sure that stuff happens and happens quickly and efficiently. All the kind of things that are required to make stuff like this happen in the complex environment that the jungle operates in. The sometimes lawless environment that the jungle operates in. So the team is incredible. Which is why when you sort of of connect them money, how does the money lead to the solution of the problem? It's the team, and the team makes it happen.
- [69:09]
B
I didn't know that people like Stefan existed.
- [69:12]
A
Yeah, me neither.
- [69:13]
B
You know, because when I met him, I. I just like, he's a beautiful, wonderful human being. I just, I'm. You know, again, I can. I can use a machete to catch a fish. Yeah, but like, his systems knowledge and his ability, I mean, his bandwidth is the size of a country. It has its own area code. It's. He's, you know, just like JJ opened the door of the Amazon and gave us that local indigenous perspective. I mean, yeah, okay, I told some stories about it, but like, Stephan came in and went, okay, you guys have good ideas, but you're both jungle guys. You're not helping each other. And running those systems and making the website and making it possible to connect the people that care with the indigenous ranger program and make sure the rangers have shirts and cans of tuna and that there's a person running the ranger. And these are things that I couldn't dream of organizing. I can't even organize my. I can't even make my bed. You know, I can't even get that far. I mean, caveman want fish. Caveman want fish.
- [70:10]
A
Watching you fish or hunt for fish with a machete is one of. One of the most awesome things I've ever seen. You're literally able to catch a fish with a machete.
- [70:19]
B
Yeah.
- [70:20]
A
So that's what you're good at. And then Stefan's good at everything else.
- [70:23]
B
Everything else. His, you know, the, you know, remember the most interesting man in the world. And they're like, you know, he once had an awkward moment just to see how it felt like Stefan's to do list doesn't exist because it's already done. You know, he just is just incredible.
- [70:36]
A
Quick pause. Bath break.
- [70:38]
B
Oh, 100%. I'm so happy about that. Yes, sir.
- [70:42]
A
And we're back. One thing I forgot to ask you is about the diet of the uncontacted tribes. You mentioned potentially monkeys and turtle eggs.
- [70:54]
B
Yeah.
- [70:55]
A
So, like, what do we know about what they eat? What's the source of protein? Do they eat monkeys?
- [71:00]
B
Oh, yeah. Their primary sources of food, I would say would be monkeys, turtles, turtle eggs, and small game like paca, the large rodent that's like the size of a beagle. Capybara Stuff they can shoot. They don't really fish. And we know these things because our indigenous trackers and our rangers find their camps. And so they'll find some of those little thatched structures they make on the beaches. And we see the bones. There'll be tapir bones, there'll be turtle shells, which seems like is their closest thing to a bowl. The day that we interacted with them, they did find a bowl. We saw them walking away with it in one of the farms, and then days later, we found it destroyed. So they didn't seem like they saw much utility in the bowl.
- [71:49]
A
It's temporary container.
- [71:51]
B
It's temporary. So they, you know, they kill it. They make a fire. They must be amazing at making fire. I don't know how they do it out there.
- [71:57]
A
It's very difficult because of. Everything is wet.
- [72:00]
B
I don't know how they do it. And I'm a really good fire starter.
- [72:03]
A
And it's tough in the jungle.
- [72:04]
B
It is almost impossible most of the year because everything is wet to its core.
- [72:10]
A
So you think they. They cook the meat?
- [72:13]
B
I mean, they have. They have to be cooking their meat from a parasite standpoint, from everything we know that they're cooking their meat, that we see it, that they've cooked it. You know, there's not a lot of excess berries. Things like berries and nuts and fruits. The monkeys and the birds and the bats are getting to those first. As soon as. I mean, that's what fruit does. Right. A tomato is green until its seeds are mature, and then it turns red to advertise Eat me. So that you eat it and then your gut transports that to somewhere else and it gets free transportation in the jungle. That happens so quick that we're never getting produce.
- [72:46]
A
In the book, you have a picture of a native girl on the Las Piedras having monkeys for lunch.
- [72:54]
B
Yes.
- [72:58]
A
It looks really strange when you have the monkey. Kind of looks just. It looks a little bit like cannibalism because it looks like a small human. I don't know what it is about. Well, I guess I do about monkeys. There's a human element to them, in their eyes, in their. In the form factor. But even in the warmth they bring to the interaction.
- [73:23]
B
Yeah, I was babysitting her, and she was 6 at the time. Dyra and her parents went out and we were left at camp. And they just said, you know, keep an eye on her. Make sure nothing eats her. And I said, sure. And she was like, hey, I want lunch. And I said, great. Well, what is there? And she pulls out this monkey head. And she was like, it's ready. And she starts pulling at the ear. And she's like, I can't get the ear. She's like, can you help me? So I pulled off the ear with my teeth, and then I gave it to her. And then we just shared this monkey head bed back and forth. And we're sitting there and I, you know, I took a few pictures of her as she's eating, and I have this video where I go, what's your favorite food? And she was like, monkey. And I said, not cake. And she was like, monkey. And she was like, pulling its lips off. And like you said, you see the teeth and the eyes and it's like sort of grilled in static agony. Yeah. And it looks like a tortured human. And she was just enjoying it.
- [74:13]
A
Let me look it up. On perplexity. How many people in the world eat monkey? Does it taste good?
- [74:25]
B
If it was prepared right, it would taste good, but they just throw it over the fire and then eat it. And so, I mean, even if you took a perfectly good chicken and did, that wouldn't taste great.
- [74:35]
A
There's no reliable global count of how many people eat monkey meat, but available data suggests many millions of people regularly or occasionally consume. Consume primate bush meat, especially in parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. I mean, she looks like that is her favorite meal.
- [74:53]
B
Yeah.
- [74:53]
A
Is monkey. Yeah.
- [74:55]
B
Yeah. We had a great time.
- [74:56]
A
Who are we to judge?
- [74:57]
B
Who are we to judge? I mean, have a tuna sandwich or a monkey face. Whatever.
- [75:04]
A
She's loving it.
- [75:05]
B
That's awesome.
- [75:06]
A
It's a good, big, adorable. Yeah. Now that some time has passed, when you look back at that encounter, which I really do think is historic with the uncontacted tribe, what do you think about what lingers with you?
- [75:21]
B
Honestly, I'm still processing it. I'll still find myself just staring off, sort of remembering it or looking at the footage, but it felt like the voice of the jungle was speaking. You know, these people are. There's that separation between humans and nature where we go, we have to protect nature. You know, it's like the fish that, you know, explaining what water is to a fish. We're part of it. We depend on it. And these are people that depend on it 100%. And as we sit here surrounded by technology and concrete and civilization, they're still out there right now. And the fact that we've been trying to protect their home without even really knowing that they were in it, because they're so elusive, it gives you perspective on where we came from and how far we've come. You know, I look at simple things. You know, you board an airplane or you take a picture and you go, this is a miracle. And I think having that perspective of having interacted with them, where you go, go, you know, how much work does it take to make this? If me and you were standing in the jungle and somebody said, you have to make this, how many years before we came up with this? How many rubber trees and where would we get the metal and what would we use as die, and how do we make the spring mechanism and figure out how to make it rotate?
- [76:48]
A
I don't know.
- [76:49]
B
I don't know. And it's like they are working with the bare essentials. And so it's an interesting reference point to start at in terms of how incredibly privileged we are. The other thing is, we have written, we have so many different types of text, and we have code and we have language and we have music, and we can communicate in all these different ways. And they have spoken word, they have oral tradition, and that's it. And so they're operating the way our great, great, great, great, great time, you know, to the power of what operated and persisting in modern times. And so I think for me, I come back to the world and I think it moves very fast when I see it, because I'm still stuck on whether or not me and you can drink out of that puddle and think questions of life, the big questions of life.
- [77:46]
A
Yeah, I mean, you're right. From the perspective of the uncontacted tribe, I think going from the technological world to the jungle, you realize the majesty, the magic of the biological system that is the jungle, that is nature. But from their perspective also, there is a majesty and magic to the technological world. The human created technological world of the pen and the computer and the light bulb, that too is magical. So sometimes we don't give enough credit to both the magic of the technological world, all the incredible things humans have been able to build, and the magic of the natural world.
- [78:35]
B
I mean, what we've been able to achieve. I think you and I and people that spend large amounts of time in the wilderness, especially somewhere as remote and fundamental as the western Amazon, have a different perspective on it. Because I think that when you're born in it, you don't necessarily have the framework to appreciate how far we've come. Because you go, yeah, I got on the train today, I checked my phone, I FaceTimed my mom, and you're like, this is all normal. It's like we found a way to take things out of the ground and mix them together into magic devices that can do anything. And it's mind blowing.
- [79:15]
A
There's a deep optimism to that. And you actually write in the book, which I really like, I think somewhere in the beginning, quote, given all the death and destruction I've witnessed, it would be easy to slip into the popular anti human narrative that we are a plague on the planet and there's nothing that can be done. But my career in conservation has given me a glimpse into an alternate narrative. I've met people who are proving more and more that something can be done. I'm talking about real heroes, people who have dedicated their lives to redeeming the evil that is capable of being waged by the human soul. People who are guarding the flame amidst the storm, proving every day what so many have forgotten. There is still hope. And that speaks against sort of the cynicism and maybe apathy and the view that humans are a destructive force in the world. That speaks to the fact that humans, with all the technological elements that we have created, can actually do a lot of good. I wrote in my notes here a quote from the great Jane Goodall. The greatest danger to our future is apathy. So caring about the world, having an optimism for the world, having a hope for the world, world is the way to help have an impact, help save it. But on that, I had to ask you about Jane. She passed away on October 1. Some humans in this human civilization of ours can open our eyes to the beauty of the world, and she is one of the best of them. And she's had an impact on your life.
- [81:00]
B
Maybe.
- [81:01]
A
Can you speak to the impact that she's had?
- [81:04]
B
I mean, when I grew up, you know, my parents, being dyslexic, I couldn't read for a very long time. And so my parents read to us every night, which was amazing considering how hard they were working. But they'd find the time to give us, you know, an hour of reading every night, whether it was Lord of the Rings or Sherlock Holmes or Jane Goodall. And so I grew up with Jane and being this figurehead of conservation and of adventure and sort of a living historical figure, this legendary person. And so then one time, right around the time that I've been going to the jungle for a few years, I got to go see Jane speak, I think it was at nyu. And, you know, sitting in the crowd, watched her completely amazed. And I had, at the time, my cousins had been telling me that I should write down my stories of stories of taking care of an anteater and stories of catching anacondas. And they were like, these are such good stories. And so I'd been writing them down, and I just remember after the talk, she did it at least an hour on stage. And then thousands of people lined up, at least hundreds of people lined up, and she sat there, and each of those people wants a moment with this legend. And so she has to take a picture, shake their hand. They say, you mean so much to me. She says, thank you. And then they move on, and they say, we'll send you the picture.
- [82:26]
A
Picture.
- [82:26]
B
Okay, great. And so I got my moment, and we waited in line for a long time. And I gave her this manila envelope with two chapters in it. And one chapter was Lulu, the giant anteater from Mother of God. And the other chapter was me, JJ And Pico out on the river catching anacondas and just talking about how amazing the jungle was. And I said, I'd love it if you could endorse my book that doesn't exist yet. And I felt like such a loser doing that. And I felt so stupid because I feel like everyone was probably asking something of her, and it's incredibly draining to talk to that many people, even if it is for a good reason. And 48 hours later, she got back and she said, this is incredible. I would love to write a recommendation for your book as soon as you find a publisher. And what happened with that is that Jane, the way I think of it is she waved her very powerful magical wand in my direction, and she had the incredible compassion and presence to actually. I mean, you know, after talking to that many people and being on the road 300 days a year and being Jane Goodall, this living legend scientist, to actually do something so mundane as look at some kid's writing. And of course, when I went to publishers, they said, who. Who said that they would endorse your book? Because everyone had said no. Every publisher in New York had already said no. And then after that, HarperCollins took me, and they said, well, if Jane Goodall thinks it's a good idea, then we think it's a good idea. And it became Mother of God. And then because of that, you know, jungle keepers, Dax. Everything else was stemmed from that. So had Jane not been the legend that she is, truly in every moment, my whole career would never have happened. Which also means that those thousands of heartbeats and thousands of acres in the Amazon wouldn't be protected, because we never would have started Jungle Keepers.
- [84:18]
A
And she did that not because, you're special. She did that to everybody.
- [84:22]
B
Yeah.
- [84:23]
A
And that. Just imagine the scale of the impact she's had because of that. And guess what, that you have a bit of that responsibility now as well. There's young people that walk up to you that way, and you have that responsibility of seeing them, of giving them a chance, seeing the potential in every single human being being that walks up to you.
- [84:46]
B
It definitely is. I would say that Jane's. We could do four hours on just Jane. What she did for humanity, what she did for science, what she did for women, what she did for wildlife, the amount of other people that she inspired and gave careers to, everything she did for me. But to me, that presence of mind, when you reach that level, to not be worried about your own travel and your own schedule and busy with getting some rest, and that she actually looked at it, has informed how I operate. And indeed, like you say, at this point, as strange as it is, people will stop me on the street and say, hey, I watch your videos every night with my kids. Or someone will say, how do I get your job? I've been watching you for years, and I'd love to help conservation. And so it's made it so that I follow her example, where it's like you stop what you're doing and you pay attention, because you don't know that might be the next kid that's out there saving a river or the next person that makes an innovation that makes it possible to clean rivers or whatever it is, whatever their dream is. But Jane was in the hope business. She always said it, that not losing hope was key to staying in the fight, and that we live at a time when that apathy is a poison peddled by the darkness. They're trying to make you feel disoriented and apathet and scared and fighting back against that and having conviction and passion and fire and hope are the only way that we're gonna fight that. And she understood that. And she spent her whole life spreading it, guarding the flame against the storm and tipping her candle to others to light them. I mean, she just. That was her whole thing.
- [86:31]
A
What advice would you give to young people how to do that? Those young Pauls sitting there, I mean, your life story is just incredible in that way. You've taken the leap into adventure, into the unknown. What would you recommend they do?
- [86:50]
B
I think the thing that I try to communicate to them. And again, my inboxes are filled with people. I'm from Finland, I'm from Spain, I'm from Georgia. People saying, how Do I get your job? How do I get out there and do it? And it really is just that. It's that you throw yourself headfirst into adventure and you just do it. And I remember. Remember hearing people say that thing like, you know, if I can do it, you can do it. And it's like, I remember thinking how hollow that sounds, because I'm like, yeah, you're on a talk show or you just wrote a book and you're going, you know, these titans of their industries and innovators saying, like, you know, oh, if I could do it, anybody could do it. But now that we're protecting all this rainforest and that I've lived with the animals and met the tribes and that it's becoming this global movement, you know, I didn't have a PhD. You know, there's that quote that someone less qualified than you is living your dream life and has your dream job right now. And I am the poster child for that because I went there with, you know, I failed out of high school and started taking unmatriculated college classes and going to the jungle with my friend JJ and just doing it for the sheer love of it for years, almost a decade before anything surfaced. And the other thing is, there's not even a path. Path. There was no path ahead of us. There was no, okay, you go to school, you get trained in this, and you're going to become a this. I went there and it was like, you're never going to be a conservation biologist because you don't have the grades, you don't have a PhD, you don't have family money, you're not going to be able to protect rainforest. So I said, all right, well, then, selfishly, I just want to see it. And then I ended up getting trained by the indigenous people. And what happens so many times. And you could use, I think a restaurant example is the best one you could use, where you might start washing dishes, but at least you're in the restaurant. And then at some point, the manager's gonna need you to help with restocking and da, da, da. And then at some point after a few years, you're gonna be helping the new guy. And at some point after a few years, you might end up being the manager. And at some point, you might end up being in a position where you're starting your own restaurant. That's the only way to do that. You can't just search it on a computer. You have to go sweat and bleed and do it.
- [88:59]
A
And that said, especially if you fall in love with the journey that you take on, it's full of difficult periods. I think you said somewhere this just seems to be the nature of it, that there's going to be pain, there's going to be suffering along the way. You have a really nice post that I recommend people watch about just this. When people ask for advice that the hardship, the suffering, and I've seen how much you care when I've seen you just in your face. When you see a tree being cut down or you see the fires, there's real pain there in your heart and you have to carry that. And so the post is, how honest can I be? What do I tell these kids who message me asking how they can do what I do? It's not David versus Goliath. There's no sword or sling that can hold back a dragon this big.
- [89:59]
B
Big.
- [90:00]
A
You're going against the current of global economic entropy and human apathy. Swimming against the current is tiring, a great way to drown every day. We don't win, we lose. And when we do, worlds burn. The more you know, the more it bleeds. The heartbeats all stop when the flames come through. Constellations of species turn to ghosts and we're the only ones saving them. Cupped our hands around a candle in the howling darkness and people want to be inspired. Keep that social media going. Keep it up, you're doing great. They want to know we're winning and we're done. A lot of winning, but not right now. We're getting slaughtered. We're at that part of the story. We're almost at the end game. We can think positively, as positively as we want. Thoughts and prayers won't stop a chainsaw. And the motor that's carrying us against the current towards the miraculous goal only when there's gasoline in it. As soon as that stops, we drown. We drown. We can take the warm light from all of those who help and not let it bother us that there are people who could buy planets, claim to care. At some point you realize what's really happening. As a kid, you'd rather be Aragorn. You don't want to actually carry the ring. Not when you learn what it's going to cost. Even if you make it. How can you explain to Sam why you can't get on the boats? Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. It's that time of year again. Here come the flames. Whatever it takes. It's coming. And people should watch the video that goes along with this. But that speaks to the pain, the difficulty, the challenge, the suffering involved when you're faced with a possibility of destruction. That's the other side of the sword of caring for something deeply.
- [91:58]
B
Yeah, we've watched a lot of forests burn. We've pulled a lot of animals out of the flames. Yeah, I wrote that at a time where we were just getting hammered, man. Funding wasn't coming in, there was miners. It was just months and months out in the jungle alone. And yeah, it's a Thom York track that we've just been listening to again and again and I was just so low. There was then there was a huge new invasion where they just burned the whole side of the river and just, it's never going to come back. And it's part of the forest that I loved and I knew the animals there and it's, it's gone. And so we have to live through that on a weekly basis, at least a day to day basis. And when you take on responsibility for something like this, you go to sleep thinking, yeah, if we don't do it, then worlds burn. If we don't save it, then every time you said the sadness that surrounds a happy moment. Well, it's like, how am I supposed to go to a party and talk with people about anything? Or how am I supposed to even go to sleep when, if we don't succeed at what we're trying to do, if we don't outrace the chainsaws and the roads, then those trees die, those millennium trees, and we're the only ones out there protecting them. And when you see that black scorched earth with nothing left, it's just ashes on the ground and all the cacophony of life is silenced and it's just this horrible violent silence. It makes you sick. And so, yeah, there's a lot of weight that comes with that where. We're not theoretically doing something, we're black and white practically doing it.
- [93:53]
A
So that's the other side of the advice to young people. Oh, yeah, well, it's not going to be easy.
- [93:59]
B
No, I mean, when they, so they say, how do I get your job? It's like, well, well, you don't want my job and you don't want the bot flies and you don't want the dengue and you don't want, you know, don't even inquire what a normal life looks like. Like, you know, I lived out of a backpack for 20 years. You know how many monkey faces I had to eat because there was no other food? Like, seriously, you know that just that shot, just being alone on the boat, in the river and how many days the motor didn't work and you sleep out there and you get rained on because you don't have any protection and you have some leaves over your face and. And then you go home, got a job and everyone's got kids and everyone's happy and they're like, what are you doing down there? Trying to save the rainforest. They're like, sure. And now we're at this point where I cared a whole lot for a whole long time. We've had rises and then we've had falls and we've had wins and then we've had failures. And the last few years, we've had this rolling success of people finding out about our work and coming in and we start to go, wow, we've protected 130,000 acres. We might actually be able to do this. And so there's that moment in 300 where they show Leonidas and they say, even the king allows himself a moment of hope that this might be okay right before they get slaughtered. And someone very dear to me recently said, in celebration of where we've gotten to, that if it happened in any harder of a way, it would have actually killed you. And if it had happened in an easier way, it wouldn't have been so divine. And that slapped me in the face because it was like, man, it has been so hard, but look where we are. We might actually do this.
- [95:42]
A
It just has to be that way. Speaking of which, another complexity in all of this. You write about in the afterword of the book, about the narco traffickers that have moved into the river basin. They're not the loggers that we've spoken about anymore. They're growing cocoa for cocaine and they're building airstrips. So tell me how this came to be.
- [96:15]
B
Like you said, the loggers. Our whole life on this river, when loggers come in, JJ and I would walk up to them and say, hey, what's up? And sit down with them and have a beer or share a meal and talk to them and ask who their father was and if we know them and then hire them. And they're friendly and they are, in a way, brothers.
- [96:36]
A
Jj, they're the same. They come.
- [96:39]
B
They come from the same people. They're simple, local people. They're not evil. They're just people who usually have a kid and a wife and they're looking for work. And so they work with the chainsaw because that's what they know. And they work for $30 a day, if that's that, in very challenging, harsh Environments. And so when we see clearings, I would always go with the drone and fly it over clearings. We'd get some intel and then we'd go bring that to the police. And the police, you know, jungle keepers supports the police at this point because the Peruvian government has a hard time with resources trying to manage Amazonia. And there's, you know, when you're three days from civilization, getting cops out there is not the easiest thing. So sometimes we'll lend boats or gasoline or logistical support. And there was a moment in March, several hours upriver from home base, and I'm with JJ on the boat, and I fly the drone. And there's this big new clearing, and I flew the drone over, and we lower the drone. And a few times I've had people come out and wave at the drone or say, like, get away. And we're out in the middle of the river, just sort of idling, staying in one place. And I lower the drone, and I see these little huts, and we're saying, okay, this is a big clearing. I'm snapping images, snapping images. These people are on the boat with us, these visitors who had flown in. And I have my local team, and all of a sudden, people come running out of the houses, and they run straight to their boats, and we're already above where their boat is, so home is in downriver direction. They get in their boats and start chasing us, and we start driving, and we're going at full speed. We have a 60 horsepower. They had a 40. And we're driving up these. We're just doing this chase now. And our guests, who are gonna be potential funders, you know, at one point, the father looked at me and he goes, hey, this whole, you know, running from the Pirates of the Caribbean thing, he's like, it's getting scary. You're scaring. You're scaring us. He was like, can we. Can we? Like, what are we doing? He goes, when are you gonna put the drone down? And I'm flying the drone at full speed to keep up with the boat. And I just crash landed the drone on the side of the river near a big tree. I just said, fuck it, we'll get it later. And I was like, this is fine. This happens all the time. They get mad, they chase us. It's no big deal. And I smiled at him. And JJ's smiling. He goes, it's so bad. And he's smiling. And J.J. looked at me, and the smile fell off him like a mask. And he looked at me and he was like, this is not good. And we kept going up river, and luckily there was a camp of police that we've worked with quite a bit. And I went to a friend of mine, and I remember we got off the boat. I shook his hand. He said, what's going on? I said, look down river and there's a boat tearing upriver towards us. And he did three things. He. He got the rest of the guys. They armed up, they got on the boat with guns, they put ski masks on. They got ready for combat. They told us to get down. He also said, hey, turn on the Sat Link, call for support back home. We turned our boat around, and as soon as the narcos, which we didn't even realize that these were narcos chasing us, we thought we were looking at loggers. When they saw the guns and they saw us face them, they turned their boat around and they went back downriver. So we got escorted downriver. And I remember shaking his hand, my friend, and saying, thank you for saving us today. And telling the other guys, they did a good job. I said, get back upriver. We'd been brought home safe. This is hours later. I said, good job. Thank you so much. And they went back upriver. And then that night, I'm sitting at the station that you know, and I get a phone call from Stefan, and he goes, pick up the phone. And I go, I can't. I'm in the middle of a conversation. He goes, picking up. Pick up the phone. And my friend, who I had just shook his hand a few hours ago, they went back upriver. And as they were unloading their boat and washing off in the stream, the narcos did a drive by and shotgun, straight to the chest, shot him in the chest. And so all of that enthusiasm, and we're protecting the biodiversity, and this is so great. There's people from around the world. It's like that scene in the movie where there's just a montage of success and hope and acres and winter gunshot. And I could still feel his hand in my hand. I just shook his hand. I said. I said, no, you can't. You not. I said, is he okay? He said, is he okay? He said, he took a shotgun straight to the chest. And they're like, he's dead, okay? And so I had to go out to dinner and not show the guests anything and just smile and laugh and talk to them about, you know, whatever and keep that in, which felt very, very difficult to do. And so what happened? As you said, the threat level escalated, and we didn't know it. The narcos had come in and started realizing that there's so much wilderness here that they can operate and there's no police. And then when we flew the drone, they got mad. So we realized this. We communicated with our. With the police, and they said, oh, yeah, these are narcos. Now we realize this is part of the serious, like, drug mafia. And then I had gone back with the incident that you're referring to at the end of the book. I had gone back to New York again to speak to donors, to try and get this work to continue. And you know how it works. We're at the station, and then you go to that little. Little logging town, and then there's a road. And so our. Our pickup truck had come in on the road, and JJ was supposed to come down, get in the truck, and drive back to the city. J.J. was on the river and went, I forgot I was supposed to get more stuff at the city. He goes, you know, I'll go. I'll go tomorrow. He went back up and he sent the boat driver down and told our driver Percy, who was waiting with the pickup truck, said, jj's not coming today. Go back. Back and come back tomorrow. Percy starts driving down the road, and he sees a tree across the road. This is a single lane road through the jungle. There's nowhere else you can go. And men with guns come and stick the pistols in through the open windows, gun against his head. They pull him out and they go, where's JJ and the Mirta gringobola drone? They said, where's that shithead gringo that flew the drone? And if either of us had been in the car that day, they would have killed us. And we know that because they took his wallet. They took his phone. Our driver, Percy, they thanked God they didn't hurt him. But they sent a message to us. They said, let them know. They said, we missed you this time, but we'll get you next time. They said, we're going to get you. And so when JJ called me, he called me, and he was howling. He just had the. That adrenaline and that emotion of that it almost happened. And so that changed everything. And so since then, we've been. You know, it's not counting butterflies and taking ecological surveys. It's that there's a drug war being fought on our river. And now when these roads come in, we can't just go out and meet these people anymore and go talk to them because they are actively looking to shoot us. They know our names. And then, as if all these other things weren't enough indication. The police intercepted a phone from someone they arrested. And on the phone in the WhatsApp chat, it said, if you see JJ or the gringo, anyone in our network, please kill them. You'll be rewarded. So we both have a hit out on us, and life on the river has changed. At the moment, we don't. We can't. You know, I can't just go out walking around and swimming and driving my boat. And it's like you have to be looking over your. Your shoulder at all times, and you can get as trained as you want with a pistol and sleep with it under your pillow. But the way these people work, they'll catch you when you're least expecting it. They'll wait till you're at a cafe in town. They'll wait till your motor doesn't work on the side of the river. It'll just be a quick one, and they'll go. And so that feeling, on top of the weight of protecting the ecosystem and the animals and the race to tell people about it and do all this, it's like, now we're actively being hunted when we're there, so.
- [104:55]
A
And this is very directed at you and jj.
- [104:59]
B
Yeah.
- [105:00]
A
So they really don't care about the others. This is. They understand. Are you afraid? What's it been like living with a real fear of being murdered at any moment. Moment?
- [105:21]
B
I wish I could say I handled it better than I've been handling it. Like, I wonder how people in war zones do it. I wonder how some of my soldier friends that I have immense respect for did it when they were deployed. Because for me, once this happened, it was, you know, every phone call now, I think, did something happen to jj? You know, every time I go to sleep, my dreams are that I'm being shot. And it. I just. It just. It just. It really threw me. It really, really affected me when JJ called me.
- [105:54]
A
The.
- [105:54]
B
The. The way he was just. He was just shouting. I don't even remember what he was saying. He was just. He was just shouting. They almost got us. They almost got us. He was so, you know, terrified and angry and.
- [106:06]
A
And.
- [106:07]
B
And so, yeah, it's.
- [106:08]
A
It's.
- [106:08]
B
I. There was a day not that long ago that I was swimming in the river, and I was just in the river right in front of the stairs at the station, and a boat came around the bend. And I remember thinking, do I run? Do I go underwater? Do I hide? Do I. What the hell do I do? I didn't have a gun near Me, I didn't have the security people were up the stairs. It's like you go, holy shit. And it's not the danger of. If I jump on an anaconda, it might kill me, or if I climb this, I might fall. These are people who want to kill you. You. And on top of it, you have the. You know, the. When you see your. When you see what your friend looks like after three days of floating in a river, what a body looks like of a person you used to know, that's very viscerally terrifying because there's the. The tragedy of that. That person lost his life, who was younger than I was. You know, he's like. He was a kid. He was in his 20s. And then. Yeah, it's just. It's very hard. It's very hard to do anything because you're. I mean, like right now my hands are sweating. It just. It affects me. And even in the daylight, if I can go, you know, it's fine. This is part of the thing, you know, this is the adventure. People deal with this all over the world. You can talk yourself tough and then in those quiet moments, you know, that, that 4:00am thing, you wake up and you go, fuck. You know, why am I sweating? Why did I just have those dreams? Why is my heart racing? It's like you just have to. It sinks its way into your subconscious and it's just not what we signed up for. You know, it's like we wanted to just protect this beautiful place. And this is this whole new threat. We're not trained for this. We're not. We're not a. You know, we're not police or military. And it's like we've now seen violence on a scale that we were very unprepared for. And so, I mean, just two days ago I was, you know, on my way to you and my phone rang 9 o' clock at night and it was JJ and it was like I had a. My heart was jackhammering. I had to pull over because I was going, what news now? Did we lose another bunch of acres? Is it a new road? Did somebody die? It really scatters you.
- [108:21]
A
And in some sense it's a twist that you didn't ask for. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the fight you're fighting, which is protecting the rainforest. But because of it being pristine and quiet and away from civilization, it also becomes a place where you can have airstrips. It becomes lawless in a certain way because it's so far away from Civilization, Yeah.
- [108:47]
B
It's the only place that they can operate with impunity. There's no police out there. And so they saw us helping the police and they went cut the head off the snake.
- [108:58]
A
Snake.
- [108:59]
B
And that. Chico Mendez, Dorothy Stange. The list of people that environmental defenders that are assassinated in the Amazon every year is huge. There's endless examples of it. It's staggering. I forget the exact numbers, but it's like every year we lose. There'll be local leaders who are trying to stop an oil company or a drug cartel, and they just shoot them because they know that that one person that's able to rally that support, who has that voice, if you just shoot them, usually, it'll end the thing and then they can go back to doing whatever the hell they want. And so right now we're working very closely with the Peruvian government, and people assume that a Latin American government is automatically corrupt. But what we've found is that these are really good people that want to help their citizens. And the police have been working very hard to stop the narcos, to protect the local indigenous people. Because, you know, with the narcos comes human trafficking with a team of male narcos that are out in the woods making drugs. They want prostitutes. And how do they get prostitutes? They go steal girls from indigenous communities that don't know anybody better. And then there's reports that the narcos have made contact with the uncontacted tribes. And of course, they're going to shoot machine guns at them. They're not going to have a little shotgun where it's a fair fight. They're going to mow them down and the uncontacted tribes are going to have no idea. That's why I posted a video of me in the rain saying this is endgame. Because there was a new road that was coming off the north of our territory above the ancient forest they had jumped over, because we stopped it at the ancient forest. They've gone above the ancient forest. Now they're trying to cut down to a new area. And so it looks like this. Like that. Yeah. So there's the Trans Amazon. Stefan made this map, of course. But you see the area that we're trying to protect loosely, so that we don't give away anything. The loosely the area that we are protecting. So the light green is the 130,000 acres, and then this metastasizing network of roads just reaching out and trying to get in. And so they're trying to come in from the north where that arrow is they're trying to come down. And so the police are fighting them along this. And it's a full on drug war right now. And so stopping that, securing this northern boundary. And so when I again, just the power of what we have. When I posted this, I asked Stefan to make show people the road and where it's going to go. We posted this video and said we have to protect this 100,000 acres right now. And all appears uncontacted tribe territory story. And just from that one post, we got $150,000 in like 48 hours. And we bought this concession, we stopped that road, but now they're up here and they're trying to come down. So it's like. And this is the thing again. You said it's great. Yes. You get to be an adventurer and you get to live in the jungle. Sure. But it's like there's this mission impossible thing where it's like you might get lucky enough to pull off your psychotic mission, jump your motorcycle off the train and parachute down and stop the bomb before it goes off. Great. How many of those do you get? And we're having to do it every month. And if we. That's the thing. These amazing people that are supporting the rangers allow us to patrol and protect this. Because once we have this land protected, the interesting thing is that the, the police can go into any of the light green areas. If anybody's there, just arrest them. They're on jungle keepers land, they're out. And eventually that land will become national park if we're successful. The problem with the land that's not is it's a gray area. It's the middle of the Amazon. Are they allowed to be here? Do they really have cocaine? Because they'll plant papaya for acres and a little bit of cocaine behind it. They'll put the sacks. They're sneaky. And so they have to build a case. And it takes time. And then the road comes in and in that time then they'll knock off a police officer. And it's like if we were just able to get this. Tomorrow, tomorrow the whole problem gets solved. We could give the police two more boats and then they could do all the patrolling they need.
- [113:18]
A
So the mission is clear.
- [113:19]
B
The mission is very clear. And the problem is that right now we've been playing defense and sustaining losses. And either we need to inspire enough people that the donor program goes through the roof. And instead of having several thousand donors, we have 50,000 donors and we again move, raise. What is it? We need $20 million to save the rest of the corridor. We'd raise $20 million overnight with enough people. Or we need one of these people that has the resources to come in like Batman and just go, I want the park named after me. And I'm just going to come in and give you the 20 million. And then we do it tomorrow. And then we make a documentary about how we saved a river and the tribe and the monkeys. But right now we're. We're. Right now we're begging on the side of the road for enough change to buy bullets so that we can stay alive.
- [114:13]
A
So these narcos, there's a kind of distributed network where a bunch of them are pretending to be farmers so they're holding onto the land. And then maybe they start planting cocaine on the land. Land slowly, and then they build airstrips. Are they trying to stay under the canopy with the airstrip?
- [114:35]
B
It's brilliant. First what they do is they subsidize the poorest people. And they say, go up this river, turn left at the tree and just start there. And they're like, here's a few grand. And these people are like, I never had a few grand before. They're like, buy gasoline. Here's a chainsaw. Go clear some land. They send these people up there, and then when they show up a year later and these people have made an illegal farm farm out in the jungle. They go, hey, we need a safe house. Remember that time we gave you the gasoline and now you live here, you're gonna work for us now. And so they're kind of a friend of the people, like that. And they have safe houses all over the jungle. And then when the bosses come to collect what they're growing out there, I mean, the police busted a narco operation that was in the middle. In the middle of the jungle. I mean, you know, hiking to the ancient forest, like just days into the jungle, these people are going on foot with sacks and stuff, stuff. And the way they do their airstrips is you think the canopy of the rainforest is 150ft tall, 160ft tall. And if you clear the interior of the landing strip, the trees are still meeting overhead. And so you can't fly over and see down. Which is the same reason we didn't know about the road that was going to the ancient forest, because overhead the trees are meeting. So you're not going to see it on satellite. You're not going to see it from a plane. And these pilots, these bush pilots fly in and they'll just duck in under the canopy, land their plane, load up and then they fly out. Out. I mean, expert pilots.
- [116:02]
A
So it's impossible to detect.
- [116:04]
B
It's almost impossible to detect. We're working with people now. You know, it's this arms race. You know, they were going, okay, there are drone programs. I talked to someone that has a different type of drone. You know, a 16 foot drone that like uses the thermals to climb up and has solar panels on the wings and flies for two weeks at a time. It's like a glider that recharges itself. Itself. And it'll keep constant imagery. So we'll get almost up to the moment data on disturbances in the canopy and it's like, well, that'll be a first hand alert system. But then we got to get the police out there, which as you know, a two day expedition by boat. And it's the only way. And so the local police force there may be dedicated, but putting people on a multi day expedition to go get shot at in the jungle is nobody's idea of a good time.
- [116:51]
A
You understand? Have you researched into this whole other world of drug trafficking, cocaine trafficking? How big is the operation here? Looking at perplexity, Multi thousand ton, multi billion dollar global industry.
- [117:06]
B
I mean, globally, it's a monster.
- [117:08]
A
Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and they move north and east through the Americas, the Caribbean, the Atlantic to reach major consumer markets. Yeah, this is a machine fueled by a lot of money and a lot of brutality. Number of cocaine users worldwide is about 25 million people. Users, Users. So there's a market and when there's a market, you're going to find the way. Quick pause. Bath and Brick. All right, and we're back. And me as somebody who is afraid of heights and I've got a chance to interact with you a bunch, you're in some sense fearless and I've watched you climb a lot of trees. You've helped me climb a tree. And there's this wonderful part of the book where you talk about finding the tallest tree in the forest you knew at the time. And that was something that you passed and thought was impossible to climb. And you talk about climbing it. You take us to the experience of that. And that leads you to seeing the Mist river in the rainforest as the sun rises. I was wondering if you could talk to the story of that both for. At least for me, but even for you at that time. The terrifying process of climbing a tree like that for the first time with JJ at the bottom cheering you on and what it felt like to see.
- [118:44]
B
The Mist river that Tree. You've met that tree. She's a good one. Her base is at least as big as this room, and she's probably about 160something feet tall. And so when you're looking at these giant buttress roots going up, which I'd been doing for 18 years at that point, and I'd always said, man, if I could just climb it. And I never had the rope skills. And I developed as a rock climber, I was working on strength and I trained, trained for it. You know, it wasn't. It's like most things, it's not. You can't just do it. You know, I'd gone and climbed up, you know, 30ft and gone. No way. You know, the, the. The trunk of the tree goes vertical for about 70ft before branches even come out. And so there's just this one big vine. And JJ and I did it at, I want to say, like 4 in the morning, like really early. The howler monkeys had just started. And you start climbing with the rope up this one vine. And you have to. It's not a technical climb. It's a strength climb. You have to gorilla up this vine and it's all back strength. And so I did it. No shirt, no shoes, straight up. And JJ had the belay device. And so every like 30ft, I would put in a piece of webbing and a carabiner. So then you go up another 30ft and you put a piece of webbing and a carabiner and you don't know what you're going to find. And you're going up in the dark, dark.
- [120:06]
A
And so when you say it's a lot of strength is involved. So there's very few places to rest. You're essentially just lifting the whole time.
- [120:13]
B
You're lifting.
- [120:14]
A
Exhausting.
- [120:15]
B
Extremely exhausting. Like, I really trained for a long time and there is no rest. You have to. The only rest you get hurts. You'll have to cling to the tree and your, your feet are. Are smeared against the bark and you're holding on with your toes if, if anything. And if you fall, you know, if I put a. If you're climbing up, it's basically trad. Climbing. If you're climbing up and you put a safety, which is, you know, piece of rope with a carabiner, and you put my rope through that again. As you're doing that, it's dangerous because if you fall, you fall. Then I do that. And then you climb up right before you put the next one, you're going to fall double. So if you climb 30ft, you fall 60ft. And so your head's going to smack against the side of the tree as you're climbing. You don't know if you're going to reach into a wasp nest or if there's going to be a venomous snake.
- [120:57]
A
And there's by the way, in those trees a lot of those. A lot of those.
- [121:01]
B
And it took me over an hour just to get to the branches the first time. And it's just again, full exertion, everything I had. And then you get to the branches are above you and each of the branches is the size of a mature oak tree. They're just, you know, these huge branches, big, big, big branches inside, thick as a minivan. And you're, you're climbing up this straight tree that's like the World Trade Center. It's just huge. And then I had to traverse around the tree on vines. And then finally I get up into the crown of this tree tree. And then from there I called down to JJ and I just see this little speck of light, you know, 85ft below me. And then I climbed up to about 120ft, which is up here.
- [121:38]
A
And I sat there and you're doing all this still in darkness.
- [121:43]
B
We're doing all this in the pre dawn light. And so when I got up there now the howler monkeys are going and the jungle's starting to vibrate and you can hear the first macaws starting to chirp and everything's starting to turn on. And in the evening east, the sun is coming over the jungle. And so the sun, the first rays, get line of sight to the canopy of the jungle. It starts lifting the mist off the canopy. All of that moisture starts coming up. And I'm sitting on this branch at 100 something feet above the ground, with dark jungle below me. And all of a sudden I see the river. I see the mist river I'd always heard about. They say that there's a river above the Amazon, an invisible river, river that has more moisture in it. More water is flowing above the Amazon than is flowing in the Amazon. And I'd heard this my whole life. And you think like, okay, the fact that there's a molten core of the earth or that black holes theoretically exist, it's just like one of those things, you're never going to see it. And in this moment on this tree as sweating and just ripped apart and bleeding. I was sitting up there and I saw the mist river and it was flowing over the canopy in the golden rays of the morning, and the macaws start taking flight. And there was monkeys below me that were looking up, and you could tell they were confused. They're looking at me going, what is that? And I just had this absolutely incredible moment. I wanted to. You know, it felt like. It felt like you're seeing God. I wanted to. I wanted to share it with everyone. You know, I felt. I felt. I felt guilty afterwards for having had a moment like that. But it felt like I had done this insane risk and, you know, risked falling out of the tree or getting strung up on the ropes. And of course, it's just me and jj, so if something goes wrong, no one's going to help you. And being out there on that branch felt suicidal, because even then, if you fall, it's a giant swing back to the tree. But the beauty that I saw up there was so intense that it sucked the air right out of my lungs. I had tears in my eyes. And I'm just watching this incredible process flow over the earth. This legendary thing that I'd heard about that science described, and now I'm seeing it with my own eyes. It felt like the gift of the tree.
- [123:57]
A
And you write now in the branches of the greatest tree in the jungle. I watched as the Mist river caught the morning rays, illuminating golden currents swirling as it rushed over the canopy like a stream from heaven. In the troughs and basins and lower areas, the river was deep blue. But then, as it flowed up and over the taller trees, slow rapids washing over the canopy. Canopy. The Mist river became ignited, electrified in the gold magnificence of the sunlight. Scores of birds flew up in and out of the churning currents. The life and breath of the Amazon was flowing from north to south along the basins of the Las Piedras over the jungle. My God. My God. I thought of everyone I loved, of every creature contained in the leafy distance. The jungle itself was like a great being, a monstrous leviathan of warm green might. I wanted to call down to JJ and tell him to find a way up. I wanted my mother to see it. I wanted the world to see it. The light filled my eyes, and I found myself wiping away tears. You know, I should take the small tangent of saying the obvious, but the thing that needs to be said is you're a fucking great writer. Greater.
- [125:17]
B
Thank you. I mean, come on, that's. I'm just describing what happened, but.
- [125:21]
A
All right. You mentioned macaws as part of the process of the jungle waking up. I read that, you know, when you first started in the jungle, that's kind of your job is to studying those and me as a fan of monogamy and birds. So macaws are beautiful, but they're also monogamous creatures. They scream at each other quite loud. What are some interesting things about them, among which, by the way, you write how important the ironwoods are to their well being, to their life. Yeah.
- [125:55]
B
I mean, when I went down there, that's like I said, for young people, if you want to get out there, go do it. I agreed to stay at the station and do six hours of McCall research every morning. So you'd wake up before dawn and go sit and just stare at the side of the river and the macaws would show up. And like you said, they all scream and bicker at each other. That's just how they talk. It's very, it's very, very loud and very, very harsh. But they do love each other. They are always. You can actually hear when you walk through the forest, I know what the sound of macaw's giving affection is. They make a certain kind of sound when they're just preening each other's feathers and taking care of each other and just nuzzling. And then there's a different call altogether when they're yelling, yelling at other macaws or saying let's go. And you start to learn macaw language.
- [126:43]
A
What have you learned about relationship and successful marriage from listening to macaws scream at each other in nuanced different ways that you're talking about?
- [126:53]
B
Well, I guess.
- [126:56]
A
Never mind. You could skip that question.
- [126:58]
B
It's interesting to see two animals sticking by each other's side and they're both raising a chick. And at the bottom of the stairs at the station There is a MacArthur macaw nest in an ironwood. And the relationship that you mentioned is that in the jungle there's a limited amount of macaw real estate. And those are all ancient ironwood trees at least 500 years or more. So they have to be, you know, thick, thus again, car thickness or bigger. And when a branch falls off, it creates a hollow. And the macaws use that to reproduce. And because there's only so many nest sites in the forest, only about 17 to 20% of the macaw population reproduces in a given year. So they have a slow replacement rate. And macaws are one of the things that people come to the jungle to see. And so along with gold mining and logging and all these extractive things in our region, ecotourism has been great. It's given the local people jobs as guides and cooks and chefs and carpenters. And so macaws are a huge part of that because it's one of the last places where you can see these flying rainbows over the canopy. Or when you're on a branch from one of these trees and the macaws fly under you and again they'll fly by. You just hear the wind in their feathers and they'll look at you over their shoulder. What? And just keep going, just loud and they'll just keep going and then they'll join up with other macaws and they fly across the horizon. And it gives you this sense like you're seeing something from the dinosaur times. It just looks like wild jungle and there's nothing human in sight and there's just this savage canopy to the horizon and just these beautiful birds flying over. They're just magical.
- [128:43]
A
You have this Instagram post with an anaconda around your neck. So I mean there's a million questions, maybe you can talk about that experience, but also, how did you not die?
- [128:55]
B
So as you know, we've been studying the habits of Eunectes marinus for quite a while. The lowland green anaconda is the largest, heaviest snake on earth. And I've been practicing a lot for a long time. And this is the biggest one we've ever physically caught. This was just under 20ft. It was 19ft, some something and you can see she's in the middle of shedding. And the other interesting thing with her is that she had blue eyes because she was in the middle of shedding. And the scale over their eyes turns blue right before it comes off of their head. And so I've never caught a blue eyed anaconda before. But if you look at the size of my head and the size of my hands, you start to imagine that thing's head is bigger than a Great Dane's. It's huge. And so the power on that, when we tried to lift her to measure her, we wanted to bring her up out of the stream and get her over to the side so you can straighten her out, measure her. And again we're just trying to take some simple data points and then release her. And she at one point she just decided to flex her body and you just see 10 people fly this way and then she flexing the other way and 10 people fly this way. And every time that mouth would open, she would just open the mouth and try to, she'd just reach back and she'd just be like, just let me do it. And you know that if she gets purchased, once they get purchased, they just, they wrap you so quick and they'll just, they'll crush the life out of you like you're a bag of chips. And if you've ever seen a mouse in a mousetrap, when the mousetrap goes down and the eyes come out, and when snakes. Anybody that's owned snakes and fed them mice knows this. Sometimes if they catch it right, the guts will either come out the back end or the front end. So I'd imagine that the same thing will happen with a snake, you know, that's that big, that's bigger than. Bigger than I am, or.
- [130:40]
A
So they have a process when they purchase it. They want to bite, just to hold, and then they sell.
- [130:46]
B
But again, all she wants is to be let go. To her defense, this massive snake, we named her Millie for the data entry. She just wanted to go on her way down the stream. The comments on this are hysterical, people. This is the worst example of white people shit I've ever seen. I mean, Snoop Dogg shooting, shared it. Some one guy, one guy goes, he goes, he goes, congratulations, you've touched enough grass. Go back inside.
- [131:15]
A
Yeah. Somebody said, interesting use of free will.
- [131:19]
B
Yeah.
- [131:20]
A
And I, I saw kill popper007 commented, and maybe you can tell me if this is correct. Anacondas are ambush predators. If you approach them, they will usually try to flee. It will not register us for food. There's other reasons too. This is in response of how did Paul possibly not die from this? There's other reasons too, but this is the main reason. They're pretty much apex at that size, so their fear isn't as prominent. He was calm, so the snake was calm. It's insane to do and still risky, but he might actually be the most qualified anaconda handler on planet Earth. Paul is one interesting cat. That hugging emoji, is that accurate?
- [132:06]
B
Yes. At that size, they're apex, so they're really not thinking about defense. They're just like, get off me. If I was to hurt her, like, just like. If I was to like touch you in the arm with a needle, you'd react. If I was to do anything that hurt her, which I'm not doing, she would turn around and bite me to say, go away. But they also, they don't want to bite because their recurved teeth make it very difficult to detach. And also they're putting their head then at the source of the danger. It's not a good calculation. And so the giants. And I've had the privilege of interacting with four or five anacondas in the 20 to 26 foot range. And all of them have been very leviathan like. And they just. They don't want to move. They don't want you to. They just want to keep going. And he's 100% right on all of that stuff. I don't know. I've caught 90 something anacondas at this point. Many of them have been massive. Then there's the one that me and J.J. didn't get at the floating forest because it was bigger than we could tackle, Bigger than my hands. I couldn't touch fingers. But every single one of them has chosen flight over fight. Only the little babies and the smaller males get snappy. They'll come back at you like a normal snake and just. If you grab their tail, they'll try and just bite you and then go. But these big females, you know, they're like dragons. They're like these big legendary things that live in swamps. And the only reason they've gotten that big is because they have a reliable prey source. Source. In a secluded place away from humans. And they've been there for decades, just pulling things down to hell and eating them. And, you know, oh, and the other thing, I mean, look, I have a team with me, you know, so.
- [133:44]
A
So there's people holding the. Yeah.
- [133:46]
B
I mean, let's be real here. I would never do this if I was out in the jungle by myself at night. Doing this would be suicide, 100%. Because for every second like there that I'm going, oh, I'm in the water and she's over my neck. Yeah, okay. And if JJ wasn't there to jump in and unwrap her. Yeah, then I die, 100%.
- [134:05]
A
She's continuously wrapping.
- [134:07]
B
She's continuously on her back saying, come, come in here and let me. Let me arm bar you. Let me squeeze the guts out of you. She's just going, let it happen. And moving slowly, moving really slow with that assurance of. Of power where she doesn't need to try and tap you quick. She's going to get you a van.
- [134:27]
A
Although to push back on something you just said, having known you long enough, let's be honest, you're saying I wouldn't be insane enough to do it. I think you would be. I mean, there's. There's a line of insanity, and you, my friend, walk that line masterfully so far. So I think there's. When you're able to sense the animal, whether it's crocodiles, caiman, or anacondas, and maybe radiate a sense of calm. I've seen you be able to go into some dangerous, from my perspective situations and make it seem like it's not dangerous at all. And maybe when you become one with the ecosystem, maybe you're not a threat to it, and maybe that's why you can survive. I haven't been able to make sense of it, really.
- [135:23]
B
Look, I would say this in the case of elephants. If we ever end up in Africa together, I can get incredibly close to elephants because I've spent enough time with them where so far, every time I've been able, it's always been a mock charge. And you can be one with the elephant and learn their language enough that you respect their boundaries. And you also show them that they're not like, this better be serious, because you're either gonna have to kill me or you're gonna have to just turn around and go back to eating. And you can have that exchange with them. And with smaller snakes, I'll be careful. And whatever else I can tell you with this, that when you have both your hands around the anaconda's neck, I truly, I mean, I have been known to surprise myself with the decisions I make, but this alone would lead to death 100%. It's like laying down in front of an 18 wheeler with it in neutral. It's like it's going to roll over you. This is going to turn into anaconda handcuffs with this thickness. And then that is going to wrap you with this thickness, and then six more of those are going to go around your body and you will get squeezed and you will turn into goop and she will not. And like, just like that guy said, she probably is in defense mode and not food mode. So she'll probably just neutralize the threat and then go back to sleep.
- [136:48]
A
I have to ask you about the floating forest. And you write about Santiago once again, beautifully in the book of the time when he told you the stories and when your mind and eyes were still fresh and maybe skeptical and more leaning towards the western world point of view versus the jungle point of view. Santiago's eyes were glowing in the darkness. He watched the orange embers spark upward to join the celestial river of stars that arched across the night sky sky as if the memories were written there. He squinted, his face as wrinkled and weathered as an old map of the world. Vast experience whispered in the firelight, as ephemeral as the breath that spoke the words, but powerful enough to latch on and sink down into some deep part of me. This is Pico saying, papa, tell me about the anaconda on the black water stream dream. And he tells the story of that. He talks about it big and having horns. And you write once again masterfully about you at that time having doubts, it sounds like, but now more and more of the things you've seen of the jungle and the things you sense you have not seen yet. All of those stories seem to be true. The one he was referring to may be 36ft long, this big. He shows it. He says that the floating forest is the place you need to go, gringo, if you want to be liberated of your doubts and skepticism. So tell me about the anacondas you've encountered in the floating forest.
- [138:33]
B
Well, the thing he's describing there is that he's saying they found an anaconda that had horns. And in that moment, we were all hanging out by the side of the river, and I said, that's enough. I stood up. I was like, come on. I was like, there's no anaconda that has horns. And if I've Learned anything in 20 years of living with the indigenous people in the Amazon is that they're not wrong if they say there's a tribe of naked people with arrows out there, they're right. They're right, and they know what an anaconda looks like. So if he says he saw an anaconda with horns, horns, he saw something that ain't a normal anaconda. And a smaller version of this played out recently where one of the people that works at the tree house, he came and he said, I found a snake, and it was in the water tank. And he goes, and it had green spikes on it. I said, there's no snake that has green spikes. I said, congratulations, you're an idiot. And I made fun of him. And I said, I know all the snake species that are here. I said, no, none of them have spikes. There's no snake that has spikes coming off of it. And he said, no, it had long spikes. He said, the snake is this big and it had spikes this long on it. I said, there's no snake with spikes. Until finally he came and he got me in the night, and he goes, the snake with spikes is there. And I said, well, I'll get out of bed for that. Let's go. And I said, and I guarantee it's not going to be there when we get there. And we got to the water tank and I shined my flashlight down and sure as shit, there's a snake in the there. And it's got thousands of green spikes coming off of it. And I could see the snake head and then all. And the spikes are coming completely perpendicular out from its body. And for a second I really was having this out of body experience. And then the snake saw us, got scared and swam. And all of the, all of the spikes collapsed onto its body and became smooth. And then I realized snake had been living in the stagnant water for a while and developed alpha algae that was growing off of it. So when it was sitting still, all the algae would settle out. And so if you look straight down on it, it's a water snake that has algae growing on it. And so it does look like a snake with spikes. He's not wrong. It was, it was a water snake. It was some sort of helicopter. Yeah, but there's always an answer like.
- [140:45]
A
That where it's, it's, it's.
- [140:47]
B
They're not wrong. So when they tell you something like there's an anaconda with horns and multiple people have seen, seen it, you make an expedition there. If somebody said there's giant ground sloth in this one valley, I wouldn't be like, they're extinct. I'd be like, where you start to listen. I mean, after the tribe walked out of the forest, you could tell me, I mean, that day, if a Tyrannosaurus rex walked out behind them, I would have been like, makes sense.
- [141:11]
A
Let's go to the floating forest. Do you ever think about what creatures are in there? I just had a conversation with Michael Levin at Tufts University. He's his biologist who creates biological life forms in the lab, but is also studies all kinds of weird, what he calls unconventional intelligences on Earth. And he speaks about that from a perspective of just understanding the incredible intricacies and weirdnesses of biological systems. So, you know, the soup of organisms that's there in the floating forest is probably, probably incredible. You ever, you ever think about, like, what kind of weirdness is there?
- [141:55]
B
Yeah, I mean, along with giant snakes is animals that are existing in an ecosystem that's isolated. Right. And so the Tepuis, you know, like in the movie, up those Venezuelan cliff jungles where it's like those straight like, like Angel Falls. And up there you have this allopatric speciation occurring where these isolate communities are departing from whatever's down there. And so on the floating forest, you have this very unique ecosystem where there's animals living on grassy islands, there's animals living in the tops of palm trees. And so in that nightmare soup that exists beneath the rafts, there's probably insects and I mean I've seen lizards there that we have been unable to identify. There's things there in the, I mean I can't imagine the, the, the, I don't think the decay is going to happen. There's not, probably not a lot of oxygen in that water. And so I mean, I brought a few scientists there and they've all just been like, this is, this is, you know. Yeah.
- [142:54]
A
How do you even, how did this form?
- [142:55]
B
We've brought hydrologists there and they're like, how the hell did this thing form? And then, you know, trying to study what, what, what creatures live under that is, is, is amazing.
- [143:05]
A
But the, the big anacondas, it's interesting because they, they truly are the apex. So they're unbothered, bothered. They're not really using their power for anything.
- [143:15]
B
No. And I'm sure if I bit her, she'd turn around, kill me.
- [143:18]
A
Yeah. But in a bored kind of way. Like it wouldn't even. Yeah. It would just slowly kill you.
- [143:23]
B
But I wonder if once she killed you though, if she'd be like, you.
- [143:28]
A
Know, just like take a bite.
- [143:29]
B
I mean, if she, I mean bite. They swallow. Right. So like once you collapse your, your shoulders, it's like, you know, if you killed a perfectly good hamburger and it was like in your hands dead, you'd be like, you know, maybe I'll, maybe, maybe I'll try it.
- [143:42]
A
I mean they need the calories.
- [143:44]
B
Yeah. And then take a six month nap.
- [143:48]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It's truly incredible. Majestic creatures though.
- [143:52]
B
Yeah. This is, look, I love this picture. Just like, again, not just, just the size, just I, I, I want you one day to feel the. Because they're, and again, the wild ones are not like the cap. The captain ones are soft from sitting in a cage their whole lives. These guys guy's been flexing every day.
- [144:08]
A
Yeah.
- [144:09]
B
So that it's like, it's like you're hitting steel cables. Yeah.
- [144:13]
A
Even if it's just being chill, you can probably get a hint of the power it's capable of. Right.
- [144:19]
B
The one good thing about those really big ones is that when they do strike, it's like a, it's like being in a fight with like a, a big fat guy. It's like, it's like that, that haymaker comes from way back here. And you're like, oh good. You're like, I'm gonna duck. And you get down because like they're like, they open their mouth and they're like, they start, they start accelerating yeah. And it's pretty easy to either get out of the way or, like, you know, get it right before it hits you in the face. Usually again, that if you ever mess that up, just like the haymaker from the big guy, it's over.
- [144:50]
A
Your level of knowledge and comfort of snakes is incredible. I think they sense that. I mean, I've just seen you with snakes. They must. Because they must sense in you the camaraderie. I don't know, you have a way of speaking to animals and about animals, like, there's zero danger when, from my outsider perspective, it seems like a lot of them are full of danger if you're not communicating to them correctly.
- [145:19]
B
With snakes, I think it's more of a. The highway is dangerous. You can drive safely. I know what I'm doing. So I'm working with a snake that can't envenomate me and is small and so I can allow it to freak out. And then if I can get it into my hands and warm it up and it goes, oh, it's nice in here. And of course, like you said, I'm not scared. And so the snake is going. They are very sensitive to that. And so he's going, okay, this isn't so bad. You can chill them out. But I don't think snakes have any camaraderie. I think that whales, monkeys, elephants, I think that they can sense. They can say, okay, this person's trying to help me get out of this net, that I'm going to relax and not kill them. I think that then, very much so, you have that dynamic.
- [146:02]
A
Speaking of somebody that does have camaraderie, there's this incredible video on your Instagram that people should go watch where the spider monkey was drowning and you jumped in to rescue.
- [146:13]
B
Sure. So we're coming down River. It's seven o'clock in the morning. So I'm cold. I'm always cold. I'm sitting on the boat and I'm wearing my warm, you know, I'm wearing whatever. I'm sitting on the boat. And JJ's like, Look, Spider monkeys. And I go, great spider monkey in the river. Like, that's normal. And JJ's like, no, she's having trouble. And I was like. I was like, why is she having trouble? They swim all the time. And he goes, no, he goes, you should help. And so the boat. The boat comes around. Then sure enough, what you can't see in the video is that the river was so full that there's these little whirlpools and currents and she was trying to get to the side. And again, all the animal righteous people are very quick to be like, let nature take its course. You know, let the monkey drown or she doesn't need help. You're interfering. Sure, sure, sure. If you were actually there, you would know something, and that is that she did need help and she was drowning. Her head kept going under. And so I saw that J.J. was right. And so we pull around. I took off whatever I could in the moment, jumped in with the paddle, because now here again, I trust monkeys. But I don't want her to bite me. She is going to be scared. So I thought instead of, there's two ways I can do this. I can grab her by the neck, right? And like, animal control her. Grab her by the neck and the tail and take her out of the river, which is going to be scary her for.
- [147:23]
A
For her.
- [147:24]
B
And instead I thought, I know spider monkeys so well. I've raised so many of them. And when you raise them, they curl up to your neck and they'll like. If you have an orphan spider monkey whose mother got shot by poachers and you're taking care of her before we bring them to the animal rehabilitation experts, they'll curl up on your neck and they go. And they'll just talk to you in your ear. And so I feel like I know a little bit of spider monkey, a broken spider monkey. And so I. I pull up next to her and I give her the paddle, and we're in this rushing river and we're moving at 10 miles an hour downstream. And I tried to give her the paddle, and she smacks it away. She was like, no, get away from me. I don't know what you are. And then she keeps swimming. She goes under again. I give her the paddle. No. And then she puts a hand around the paddle. And that moment that you had paused on, she looked back at me, and she looked at me like, yeah, right there. She looked back and she registered like, oh, this is.
- [148:16]
A
Is.
- [148:17]
B
This is another animal with a face.
- [148:19]
A
Boobil. Just listening or you need to go watch the video. You guys are just looking at each other and she's looking at you. It's so cool.
- [148:27]
B
She looked right at me. But then she went. She went, no. She was like, whatever you are. No. And she went to go back in the. She was like, I'd rather die in the river. She was like, I'm so scared and I'm drowning. And she looked at me, she got scared, and she jumped back in. And then I lifted her up And I went. And I started talking in spider monkey. And she. She just. Then, like, the next moment, you see it, she just goes, sure. And she just. She wraps her tail. You see her tail is around the edge of the paddle. She puts her hand around it. And then I lifted her. And then because I'm taller than she is, I lifted her out of the river. And so now, instead of manhandling her like a raccoon, you're catching by the neck, she's holding on in her spider monkey way to the paddle. And she looks back over her shoulder. She looks me. And I'm sitting there. I'm over there talking to her in spider monkey. And she looks at me, and you hear her. She goes. I can't do the sound she makes, but she does this. This. Whoa. She makes this spider monkey sound like. And she goes, fine. And then she's looking off the front end of the paddle as she's looking at the jungle, and she looks back at me, and she's like. You could just tell. She's like, I have no idea what's happening. But she accepted the help. And the difference is, is that it's because I spoke her language in this case. And I know that that would sound. That would be one of those stories that people would nail me on every time if it wasn't on camera. You can see the moment that she makes direct eye contact with me and goes, okay. And then as soon as we get to shore, she jumps off and runs off into the forest.
- [149:50]
A
So, I mean, to me, just watching the video, so amazing, because she's looking at you, like, real.
- [149:55]
B
Yeah.
- [149:55]
A
You can. You can see that there's an actual connection.
- [149:58]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [149:59]
A
That there's, like, communication, like a social. You know, the way humans. When you. When you're maybe saving a human being that's drowning or something like this, there's that. That. That connection is beautiful to see, man. And then I read a little bit that spider monkeys have. They're very intelligent, but they're especially socially intelligent. So they have. They have social connections with each other. So they. They understand what that means. They understand what another entity means. So you speaking it's in a broken language probably is really important and a powerful way to indicate that, wow, you're in network like a foreigner. But like, yeah, in, like.
- [150:43]
B
It's like you're in a foreign country and someone goes, helping, helping. And you go, okay, sure. Like, you know, you're not robbing me. You're helping. Right. But no, they're incredibly. I'm telling You. I've had orphan spider monkeys so many times. And they wrap their tail around your neck and they hug you, and you realize that that connection that they have with their mothers when they hold onto them in the cat canopy, you shoot the loggers, shoot the mother, and then I'm taking care of this baby. They hold onto you. And they need that love and that connection more than they need food. If you put food or you put warmth of a body, they'll choose the connection over the sustenance.
- [151:24]
A
Yeah, they really value the touching, that connection.
- [151:27]
B
Very tactile. They're very loving. They wrap their long spider monkey arms around each other. They're very much like us. They hold their babies. When it rains, all the spider monkeys will get together together and they'll kind of huddle up and they'll pull leaves down and they'll all huddle up together. When it's cold out, they get close. It's very cute.
- [151:46]
A
Yeah, that's true for a lot of. I mean, they're distant relatives, but that's true for a lot of our relatives. The apes, the chimps, all of them. They have this intricate. They're different. Sometimes more violent, sometimes more loving. But social interactions, it's cool. It's cool that way.
- [152:01]
B
Yeah. I mean, them. You expect it from them. They're practically us, you know, to me, it's when other animals show. You know, the times that I've been on a trail and a jaguar has walked by and just been like, what's up? I keep walking and it's like, it's kind of cool of you not to eat me. Like, I appreciate it.
- [152:18]
A
Has that happened to you?
- [152:19]
B
Yeah. I thought somebody was walking on the trail behind me, and I was doing a camera trap, and I put my finger up and I was gonna go, could you walk any louder? And I had my finger up and I'm crouched. Cause I was doing a camera trap. Jag walks by, and he literally was just like. Like just kicking leaves, just like having fun. Mouth open with a. And he just walked by and he looked at me, just went. So. Never broke stride. But like dead ass. Eye contact with the. The bottom teeth out. And that jaguar look of just like, hey. I was like, okay, now I'm gonna have a, like, full meltdown. Your system. You start sweating, you're like, whoa. Because they're also so beautiful when you actually see a jaguar and it's like bright yellow and the teeth and the. The. All the muscles and it's.
- [153:01]
A
You know, what do you think you comm. Communicated to the jaguar, that it didn't kill you?
- [153:06]
B
No, nothing. The jaguar was making the decisions. I didn't do anything that. That like saved my life. He was just going somewhere and because he's the king there, he just went.
- [153:18]
A
Yeah. Probably also not threatened.
- [153:19]
B
Not threatened. I don't know.
- [153:20]
A
But I think there is something to you see, you're just taking for granted the things that you're putting out into the world. You're probably radiating quite calm, or not calm, but non threat.
- [153:32]
B
No, certainly non threat. I also smell like an animal when I'm in the jungle, right? I shower in the river. I don't use deodorant or shampoo or any of that stuff. So I don't smell. You know, you can just imagine to animals that have a smell that's like four times as good as ours, that, you know, just your deodorant, just your conditioner, just whatever other products, the determination detergent on your clothes smell that. We smell like Times Square. We smell like a fire alarm to them. You know, they're like, what is this thing? It smells very foreign and scary. Everything's scary. Speaking of scary, the jaguar was kind of friendly. He was like, sup? It's almost like he'd seen me before on the trails. So he was like, oh, it's just you. The one time I stood on the forest floor in India with a wild tiger and nobody else was there. The thing that the tiger did that was so unnerving. And again, a tiger's back is. You know, they're so much bigger than you think. It's like four jaguars. They're so big. She wouldn't look at me. And it was terrifying because now I'm going to do this to you. She'd look over there, then she would look like this. She'd look like that. And never eye contact, but it was like, you're as important to me as a stick. And you know when you see two fighters square up and it's all about the eye contact and everything, trust me, you look through a person, person, you pretend they're not even there. That tiger insulted me on such a profound and disarming level that I never forgot was just like, you matter as much as a sparrow. You're just not one of the things that I care about. She just was looking around and carried on doing. And she was like, I'm going to walk this way. And I was just like, holy shit, I'm going to run. It's just profound insignificance from this. This God of an animal with Paws the size of dinner plates. And it was like, man, if she does, I don't want her to look at me because if she looks at me, I'm gonna probably. That's the end. Yeah.
- [155:30]
A
It just shows how much more powerful she is. That's probably the, the most terrifying animal on earth.
- [155:38]
B
Yeah, yeah. And the rocks, paper, scissors of land predators, I don't. I think like polar bear and tiger got to be the most scary.
- [155:45]
A
Yeah, yeah. Polar bear.
- [155:47]
B
Polar bear is pretty scary. With a polar bear, I don't think they're as fast as tigers, but I don't think you're gonna go fast on and. Yeah, but I mean, like a tiger, it's like you, you can't outrun it. If you climb a tree, they climb better than you. If you get in a car, they could smash through the door. It's like no matter if a tiger decides it wants you, pretty much nothing. But even if you had a gun, even if you had like a 9 millimeter, ain't gonna stop a tiger that.
- [156:09]
A
Wants you in the jungle. Have you ever felt in danger? So putting the humans aside, was there animals you've talked about that humans are really. And we've talked about how the humans are the source of danger.
- [156:22]
B
Danger, yeah.
- [156:23]
A
Is there. You often speak about animals as, you know, a source of beauty and wander and elegance and grace and all these things which they are. But I'm sure you've felt danger.
- [156:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, I'm very aware that a hornet's nest can kill you. They'll kill you.
- [156:45]
A
Oh, so the little guys.
- [156:46]
B
The little guys suck. You know, you, you. I always think, like when we were going through the jungle, one machete, whack. And again, people don't realize how dense sense it is. You try to run, you get hung up on vines, you trip you, you fall onto one of those trees with the black spikes. And then while you're laying there dealing with all that, they're just stinging you and your body goes into anaphylactic shock and you die instantly. It's like you just. That can very quickly just take you out.
- [157:09]
A
You're right. I mean, the biggest, you know, you're speaking of spikes, the biggest danger is not even the spikes. I mean, the spikes just because it creates open wounds and then that can lead slowly infection to infection. So it's really that it's the biggest danger?
- [157:21]
B
Yeah, in the Amazon. I mean, again, I've never heard of a human directed violent jaguar in our region. They just don't attack people. I'd say Mosquitoes are the thing that come after you. The snakes just want to be left alone, Even the venomous snakes. Again, the bushmaster, I grabbed a bushmaster. I grabbed an 11 foot Bushmaster by the tail and he turned around, he lifted up to about this high off the ground. And if you could translate what he said, it was just, don't make me do. Just said, make my day.
- [157:51]
A
See, but that's the thing. You. You speak snake language.
- [157:54]
B
And then I put the tail down, okay? I was like, I'm scared. Sufficiently scared. So the problem happens when you don't know what you're doing. So I'll give you an example. You want a dangerous animal story? I'll give you one. I was walking one time, and I was trying to be responsible. It always happens when I'm trying to be responsible and get into trouble. Trying to be safe and you fall down. I'm trying to be safe, and I'm on the side of the stream and there's elephants on the other side. I'm in India. There's a deep, like a 1212 foot thing and then a stream, and then on the other side there's elephants. And I'm walking and I'm like, I'm gonna sit in a tree and I'm gonna enjoy these elephants. I'm gonna make notes in my book like Jane Goodall. Yeah. Then I came up against a cement wall, and it was the back of a male elephant. And in India, it's a male elephant that's been harassed and had fire thrown at it and God knows what else. And he. I don't know if I translate what he said. He turned around and he just went, what the. The. Like he just looked at me like, how dare you? And then just went. Just smacks apart. The tree turns around. And then that elephant was trying to kill me. That was not a mock charge. I threw off my backpack, zigzagged through the woods. He broke apart trees. If I had a GoPro on my back to show you what I saw of just the. The shrapnel and devastation of this thing just bashing through trees. And again, every bush that I encounter is a possible tree trip. Every vine is a possible hang up. And then if they get to you, he'll step on you and crush you. And so I threw myself off the edge of this cliff, rolled down into the stream, and the elephant got to the edge of the cliff and almost fell on me, got to the edge of the cliff and did one of these, and then came back down on his hind feet. Picked up a stick, threw it at me, and the stick just smacked down next to me in the stream. And I remember I gave him the finger because it was like, I'm alive. Just stormed off into the jungle.
- [159:43]
A
There's nothing like an elephant.
- [159:44]
B
There's nothing like an elephant anywhere. There's a. I loved. I loved the guy. I loved listening. I was so excited when I put on your podcast with the dinosaur guy, because he was like, when a baby is born, he was like, it learns, you know, elephant, giraffe, T. Rex. And I was like, holy shit. You know, along with, like, banana, water, sky is blue. And somehow you're like, in these initial things in your first few months on on Earth, these are the characters you're introduced to. Like, how the hell did T. Rex get there? They don't even exist anymore. And it's like, yeah, it's. It was so. It was just such a fun. And I could hear your. I could hear you smiling through the mic as I'm listening to it. And I was like, oh, this is gonna be a good one. Yeah.
- [160:20]
A
I mean, the dinosaur world is. Is incredible, but, like, the fact that you have such a predator, evolved with such a gigantic jaw.
- [160:28]
B
Yeah.
- [160:29]
A
So much destructive power is weird.
- [160:31]
B
And then. And then he broke my heart because he was talking about how the T. Rex and Stegosaurus, he's like, all the books has them together, and he's like, they're nowhere near each other. They did not exist anywhere. And I was like, I want them.
- [160:44]
A
To battle with each other.
- [160:45]
B
Yes.
- [160:47]
A
Speaking of elephants, I feel like we'll be up to an adventure at some point after all this chaos is over. You think back in the jungle, Africa, India.
- [161:00]
B
I think I would love to show you a herd of truly wild elephants in the African jungle. I think that us going on. I think going on a boat trip through the Amazon, not a hiking one, where we're going through some really. There's areas where you can get permits to go through areas where no one's allowed to go. They're completely protected areas, and you can just go for a week through areas where the animals have no idea what a human is, and so you can move through it. And so it'd be a little bit more of a. A. An enjoyable experience, not a survival situation like, go with JJ in a boat and just travel through the Amazon. Hey, maybe we protect this river. And then the river's knocked from north to south, and we just, you know, raft down with boat support.
- [161:45]
A
Like, you know, it's really incredible to see how it's all connected. I mean, the river, it's the thread that connects the whole story. And so it's nice to see how it all is connected. And that's why us starting in the mountains is also really nice to see where it begins. Begins. But it keeps going, the story keeps going.
- [162:03]
B
It keeps going. We, we did start in the mountains. An epic first day together.
- [162:09]
A
And hopefully people get a chance to see that video. So I gotta ask you about the writing I, I mentioned. You're incredible writer. What's your writing process like for this book? Jungle Keeper for the Mother God for future books you're writing? What are you like a Stephen King? Do you have a drinking thing that you go to some dark places in the basement? Do you write every single day? Do you wake up? Do you take little notes here and there, like your notebook? There's a bunch of doodles, a bunch of writing. What's your process like?
- [162:45]
B
I try to journal every day for a number of reasons. It's accountability. It helps me keep track of. Track of. It's fun to see your hopes and dreams. It's fun to record the mundane moments that we all forget about. And that might be like cooking in the kitchen with your mother. That might be a fun walk you had with your dog. Like little things that you just, you think you're going to remember everything, you just don't. And so I have piles of notebooks. I have just piles of piles and piles of notebooks in my, in my room. And when something happens, I write a down. And if a cool story happens, I will write down. Or if I find a leaf from an extinct tree, I will make an etching of it. But as anything that happens that I find remarkable in any way, either from my own personal memory or for writing, I'll write it down. And then when I go back to it later, A, I have a very good memory. And then B, the facts are there, there. And so when something happens, like you rescue a spider monkey or something happens that's remarkable in life, you get to spend time with someone that you haven't in a long time and you get that feeling of like, oh, that's why I'm such good friends with them. You write these things down and then it's always there. And so I feel like whenever I don't journal that I'm missing out on keeping my life and my memory memories. So, yeah, I don't do that Stephen King quote about like, you know, amateurs wait for inspiration. And the professionals, we go to work every day and he's like 10 pages a day. Whatever it is. I don't do that. I write when I feel like it. And I like to. You know, I'll start thinking of, like, oh, this is a perfect way to, you know, start this scene. Because, like, the moment this happened, I felt so intensely. And if we bring people in, and I'll just be in a car or a boat or something, and I'll just start thinking about it, and I'll go, this is just. The thing is you got a carpe diem. And I'll go, okay. And then I'll go, okay, where. Where did that happen again? I go, okay, I'll go to that page and I'll go, okay, so what exactly that happened? Then you get the laptop, and so it's brain to paper to laptop, always paper in between.
- [164:58]
A
But how do you go desperate notes to the. The final thing? Because you have. I mean, it's difficult to convey through words the experience. And you do that with. Wow. So is this, like. Do you edit a lot? Do you iterate?
- [165:15]
B
That's where Stephen King was, right? Cause I look at writing, like, sculpting. You have to have something to sculpt. And so when you're thinking of a story, again, a lot of. I mean, I love listening to great storytellers, and I actually love listening to bad stories. Just like I like watching bad movies to see what they did wrong. When you listen to someone that starts a story and they have you hooked from the second that start. And then you were like, wait, but how did that happen? Why was that happening? What happened next? And they keep you going and they drop the information perfectly. And so every now and then, you figure that out in that moment of inspiration. So then I have my facts written down here. And then I'll. You know, I'll. I'll do an outline on a page or something, but then I have to get it all out of me with a pen. Then I can move to. And I'll almost close my eyes. I'll almost just close my eyes and write the story out. I just need to. You're making the. You're. You're literally making your clay. And so. So, like, you make the shape of the thing before you. And then editing is the giving it details.
- [166:16]
A
So you do take passes like.
- [166:17]
B
Oh, editing.
- [166:18]
A
Oh, God, yes.
- [166:19]
B
I mean, dozens and dozens. That's where writing sucks, when you're finishing a book. And I'll never do that again. So what I'm doing now is this last book. There's so much that it Covered. And I was in the jungle and it'd be like hiking for 10 hours a day, dealing with narco traffickers, all this stuff. And then I'd have have to edit at night. And it was like, this is no way to live. So now what I'm doing is I'm writing chapters, as I feel like writing chapters. When something amazing happens or something remarkable, I go, this is going to be its own chapter. I write it, edit it, and then I send it to my sister, who's an expert editor and has lived more in literature than most people live in real life. And she'll let me know if it's good or bad or needs to be tweaked or moved along. Whatever it else I get, when I get it back from Hertz, it's probably marked up. And then what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put those aside. And then the next time I want to write a book, it's not starting from scratch on 300,000 words. It's just here, it's ready. Much easier.
- [167:21]
A
What kind of books do you think you might write in the future?
- [167:24]
B
Well, there's Mother of God and now there's Jungle Keeper, and then I'm already working on Endgame, because there's so much that has happened. I mean, I think I told you when you were there, but there's a whole chap. Right before you came came, me and JJ went to the back end behind our river, to this horrible part of the Amazon that's 10 times more lawless than where we are. And instead of having no people, there are people. And you want to talk about Amazonian no country for old men. It's the oil companies and the missionaries and the newly contacted tribe. There's something called the. There's a people called the Nahua people, and they're recently contacted and they've been ripped out of the forest. And they're standing there, there with their little bows and arrows. They're tiny people. They're standing there. The nomoles are tall, the Nahua are small. And we saw brutality in this horrific, horrible. It's like sicario. It's just absolute lawlessness. I remember the moment JJ looked at me and he said, we both think of ourselves as tough, I think until we get in these certain situations. And he looked at me and he went, we're not so safe. And we looked at the people around us and we're at this, like, side of the river port, eight days up this river, and you could tell that everyone that Was looking at us, was making a calculation about how inconvenient it would be to kill us at this moment and how much money. They're like, camera, watch, clothing, backpack. And they're like, that's a nice backpack. And, like. But you could tell they were just shopping. And JJ and me were like, we're gonna. You know, where are we putting the tent tonight? I was like, we're not staying here. And then I was like, maybe we should stay here. I was like, I don't know what to do. And then. And then one of the little Nawa people came over to JJ and was asking for food, and he made the mistake of explaining money to them. They'd never had money before. And so he gave them a piece of money and was like. Or, you know, a couple coins. And he was like, oh, if you just go over there, there's, like, a man that'll sell you something, and then you can eat it. And the guy was like, bow and arrow. And JJ's like, no, no, no, no. Give him this and he'll give you food. And at point one worked. And then JJ got sworn by, like, 60 of these little tribals, came in, and they all bows and arrows, hands out, and JJ was running with all these, like, half naked people behind. And just that. That whole saga right there is like. I was. That chapter is going to be called river of the Dolphin, because everyone we met on the river kept telling us. I'd say I'd have my. I'd have my camera with me, and I'd go, are there dolphins here? And they'd go, yeah, there's dolphins. Dolphins. And if you one be careful because they'll pull you under. I went, okay, weirdo. To the first guy. Yeah. And then we got to, like, you know, eight hours further upriver, met the next guy, and I had my camera out, and I'm like, hey, are there any dolphins here? And he goes, yeah. He goes, if you any be careful. He's like, because they'll grab on and pull you under. And I was like, what? And then, like, four more people told me the same things. I was like, okay, yeah.
- [170:15]
A
The lesson we learned in the jungle, you know, horned anacondas. Believe them.
- [170:19]
B
Believe them. So apparently on that river, they were all trying to be good Samaritans and war warn me about the clear and present dangers involved with amorous dolphin encounters.
- [170:29]
A
So stylistically, I mean, that is a bit Cormac McCarthy.
- [170:33]
B
Oh, he would have loved it.
- [170:35]
A
There are people you draw, like writers. You draw inspiration from, like, that I mean, you're very close to him in terms of, like, you, like, plug in every once in a while. You jump around stylistically.
- [170:46]
B
Actually, I do. I do. It depends, because sometimes I want to sink in and flex a little bit, which I don't think people really enjoy, but I enjoy, enjoy it. You know, like, talk about the. You know, just use all those flowery words and make these beautiful metaphors. But what I'm finding more and more is that it's modern readers aren't really looking for that. They want easy read and that for my style of storytelling people really enjoy and tend to thank me for more of an Anthony Bourdain style where you're like, so we found ourselves on the side of this river and we knew we were in danger, the reason we were in danger. And you just start telling the story. And you know what? Forget the. Forget that. Maybe once every two pages you can throw in one of those beautiful little zingers. But it's like no one wants to watch you flex.
- [171:31]
A
But also sometimes you go even more than I don't think Anthony Bourdain did. Like Hemingway, like, minimal. Like, no, like word, period word. Like that. That's another way to flex. That I really like that you do sometimes is just like less and just power and the spacing, the silences, the unsaid is what does the driving.
- [171:54]
B
I mean, that's what's so arresting about. You read like For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the air was crisp and the water was sweet and the wine was good and the afternoon was warm. And you're like, I know what that's like. These are not complicated sentences. But when he puts them together into a paragraph, you go, oh, yeah, I want to drink wine out of leather, you know, and lay by the side of that stream. It sounds so beautiful. And so sometimes, you know, I mean, just look at that. Look at that fire cracking on the. On the horizon there. And it's like sometimes the only way is just these simple statements. You know, writing's beautiful. I love writing. I love reading it.
- [172:32]
A
Have you interacted with LLMs much? Doesn't, you know, AI systems, chat, GPT? There's a bit of a scary and a sad aspect to the fact that they can generate language extremely well, but something is missing, and it's very hard to put your finger on it.
- [172:51]
B
My question to you is, I can pick out with stunning accuracy when someone sends me a message and they've passed it through ChatGPT. I know somehow I could tell, and I don't Know how I could tell, but I could tell. I don't know if that'll. That's one of those things, like the images, like we're at the point where we can't tell anymore almost. I don't know if that's going to go away or if, like you said, there's something like. One of the things that F. Scott Fitzgerald does so much is he describes the moment of, you know, like, he describes these incredibly human moments with such crystalline accuracy that you go, it must have taken you a month. You must have studied life so much to be able to. To put those. String those words together. I think in a book he writes about someone screaming with such abandonment that at the highest register, her voice wobbled and cracked. And you're like, oh, my God, I know what that sounds like. And I wonder if. Because you can say, write me the Jungle Book, but make it sound like Cormac McCarthy wrote it. And it'll be like the jungle was dark and stern and the boy was. It'll do it. And it's amazing. My question to you is, at least right now, what are we picking up on? On something as simple as a text.
- [174:12]
A
Message is very difficult to define, but it's important to keep thinking about because it's like, what makes us human.
- [174:20]
B
You reassured me recently because I called you and I said, you know, I said. I said, I come out of the jungle and all anybody wants to talk about is AI. And I was like. And like, everyone's like. It's like people are walking themselves into the Matrix and asking to be hooked. You know, it's like everybody. Everyone's just obsessed with this topic. And you were like, man, human art and human literature is going to actually become so valuable as this other thing happens. And I expected the opposite answer. I thought you were going to be like, yeah, man, this really is. We're taking off and everything's going to change. And you were like, man, real artists are going to become more appreciated as.
- [174:58]
A
More and more compelling and effective bots appear on the Internet. We're going to value that less and less, I think, and we're going to value in human interaction more and more. And so, you know, artists showing art at galleries versus on the Internet, meeting in person. And actually, it's going to force people to be more authentic and real and raw with each other. That's going to be the valuable resource.
- [175:26]
B
I mean, I think already, AI aside, I think that in today's world, I think that everyone's so. I mean, like, movies have become so polished like, there's no, like, weird quirky stuff. There's no risky stuff anymore. It's all very, very curated. I've almost stopped watching movies. And I used to love movies, but it's like, it's fun when they take risks, when they're messy, when they're real. Yeah.
- [175:51]
A
I think Hollywood, Hollywood stars, Hollywood movie making process has become less and less and less popular. Popular because of that. So I can't wait for movies to be reinvented. Independent film, just raw, edgy, dangerous, all that.
- [176:05]
B
And like, all the actors we like are in TV shows on various streaming platforms. It's like they've all just gone home. Like they're not there. Like, I was like. I literally was like, man, I was like, I miss movies. What happened to movie? I'm re watching all the old movies that I like. And I was. And I was like, where? Where is everybody? Yeah, what are they doing? It's like they all have a TV series on Blue, Blue or something, you.
- [176:27]
A
Know, and it's like, fuck, yeah, I think I'll come. The. The raw, the dangerous, the edgy.
- [176:33]
B
What we just described is almost perfect for. There's a scene in Dead Poet Society where Robin Williams makes them open their books. And the first page of the poetry book is like, how do you identify a good poem? He's like, a good poem can be. And he makes a graph and he's like. By the subject of the poem and then the accuracy with which it's described, and you can tell whether or not it's a good poem. And he reads this and the whole class is sitting there bored.
- [176:54]
A
And.
- [176:54]
B
And he's like, now rip that page out of your book. And they rip the page out of the book. And then he's like, now stand up. And he's like, now describe something. And he makes him bleed it and like scream it. And. And it's, it's. It's almost exactly what we're describing right now. It's like, yeah, you can turn it into a graph if you need to, but it's something way messier than that. Yeah.
- [177:12]
A
And Robin Williams, the person, is a perfect example of the complicated, beautiful human. I miss him often whenever I see clips of him come up. It's just. Yeah, I can't. I still to this day can't make sense that a person like that can take their own life. Somebody who's brought so much joy to the world. It scares me, man. It scares me. I'm scared of my own mind in that way. You know, he could be at the top of the world.
- [177:49]
B
But he had an illness.
- [177:52]
A
Yeah, that's what I understand, dude. Life is a roller coaster, and you're living through it.
- [178:00]
B
As scary as that. Robin, like, you can go down the Robin Williams hole. I'll give you this. My very close friend, My friend Gleb, he has a story. He was in New York City as a kid, and he saw Robin Williams walking down the the street. And he went up to Robin Williams and he went, oh, my God, it's Robin Williams. And Robin Williams was like, yeah. And he goes, can I have an autograph? And he goes, do you have any paper? My friend was like, no. He's like, I'm 11. Like, I'm 11. And Robin Williams was like, go get some paper. And Robin Williams's manager or somebody was with him, and he was like, robin, we don't got time. We got to get up there. And he was like, hold on. He's like, I told the kid I'd give him a thing. He'll be back. And my friend, like, heard this as he's like, please stay. Please stay. His whole life depended on this thing that he ran into, like, a diner, grabbed a napkin, ran back out onto the street. It took him a few minutes. He said Robin Williams was sitting there, and he said his irate manager was there just being like, come on, let's go. Let's. Rob waited there and signed the napkin for him and, like, actually. Actually did it with a smile and a wink.
- [178:59]
A
And, you know, yeah, man, this. You could bring a lot of joy to the world. Never forget that. All those little interactions. I love it. I love it.
- [179:08]
B
That was another one of the Jane's amazing quotes that I couldn't reproduce. But it's just that you don't realize the degree to which the things you do each day matter, even if it's just to the people around you. And it's like you are to the people around you their entire life experience, if they're your kids, your parents, your partner. So, yeah, the things you do. And if you can manage to put that extra energy where it's to the point where you do put a little magic on it, where it is fun. You show up home with something that you got, you know, play with the kids in a way that surprises them. I had a friend, a good friend of mine, this guy Vinnie, he told me, I called him, I said, what are you doing? He said, oh, I have a whole plan set up. He goes, it's supposed to be really good stars tonight. He goes, I'm Putting my kids to bed. He goes, I'm putting my daughter to bed. He goes, I'm going to wake her up in the middle of the. The night. He goes, and I'm going to have a candle. He goes, she's never seen. He goes, and I'm going to take her up to the roof to go stargazing. He's like, but I want her to sleep. And he's like, you know, remember when you were a kid and you would, like, wake up and it's like he was curating a magical experience for her to see the stars and like, you know, like making, making warm tea and like all. And it's like, man, you can just, you can make it so great.
- [180:19]
A
Jane Goodall is the reason you met this guy.
- [180:22]
B
That's right.
- [180:22]
A
You've continuously spoken really highly of him. And he gave me this book that he has recently written, Echoes From Eden. Signed it.
- [180:32]
B
Yeah. Dax A, saved my life and B, is the example of what everybody wishes. You know, Dax made an amazing company, amassed an amazing fortune, and then said, I'm going to use it for good.
- [180:44]
A
He's given a lot, a lot of resources, a lot of love, a lot of effort to helping the Amazon rainforest and the environment in general. And he's one of the only guys I know who has a sexier beard than you.
- [181:00]
B
He's got me beat big time.
- [181:01]
A
I think he wrote, thank you, brother, for your love of the wild. This book is about the heroes fighting in the front line for nature. Together we can protect Earth's last wild places. Speak soon, Dax.
- [181:16]
B
He supported all these initiatives and he was working. He went to the Amazon with Jane, he supported Jungle Keepers, supported the Sea Shepherd. And so he really went out and said, okay, what are the environmental projects that are doing the most good and where do I want to put my resources? And it's like everyone always whines about that. Like, you know, like, how come the. These guys don't. And it's like he did and he got a lot done and that's. And then he went and visited all those projects. Sea turtles and, and, and, and Indonesian orangutans and working with Jane. And so then that book is, is like sort of a state of the union on where conservation's at. And there's a lot of knowledge about what, what different. How all the different strategies. It's so different. Protecting sea turtle eggs versus trying to save a river in the Amazon versus Jane's sort of global message of hope. And then he has a guy in there who's trying to save a specific part of I think Sumatra. And it's like just amazing stuff.
- [182:08]
A
The Congo.
- [182:09]
B
The Congo and this. And then he actually took the time to go to these places and see the operations on the ground.
- [182:15]
A
And you're still working with him.
- [182:17]
B
Yeah, well, that's sort of the.
- [182:22]
A
You.
- [182:22]
B
Know, the way it happened in my life was the one time I quit conservation was right around the time Covid hit and I was going through a divorce and I'm like 30, some 32 years old and I had no job, no Nothing. JJ was, JJ's mom had Covid, Don Ignacio, the shaman had Covid. Pico's leg was coming off. It was like nothing was working. Nobody could go anywhere. And I called Mohsen and I was like, I quit. I was like, we're never going to go back to the jungle. The loggers just went out and we're tearing down everything. I just said, there's nothing. I got nothing. And in absolute black depression, I called him and I said, I quit. I'm going to go get a job. I said, I guess I'm just, I guess I've been like jungle Peter Pan and it's time to grow up. And I was really embarrassed at the time that I did that. And then I spent four days just laying in bed just with no idea what to do. The only thing I can do is this. And I had talked to Dax months earlier, told him my plan for protecting the river, for making a ranger team. And he'd been looking over the budgets and spreadsheets and everything and seeing if this was real. He was still forming age of union. And then four days after I quit, quit, the phone rings and it's Dax. And he goes, hey, I looked over the budget, by the way. He goes, I'd like to make a 10 year commitment to jungle keepers. He goes, let's go. And of course he had no idea what I was going through. And he was just like, let's go. And it's like going from that depressed to that inspired and that single conversation, you could get the bends from that.
- [183:58]
A
Yeah. And it's not just the money. Is that somebody believes in you?
- [184:02]
B
No, it's that he believes. It's that we can. And money's, you know, that money means tuna cans and gasoline and being able to buy shoes. It's like we never had those things before. We're just living in the jungle, watching our bodies decay. And he was like, no, I know how to run a company. And so I can tell what you guys need to run an organization. And he did that and then has stuck by us. And he came weeks ago. He came not that long ago to the Amazon, and we took him around and he just. He looked around, he went, I've never seen people. Because when he started, he said, you guys remind me of a startup. He said, you're a mess. And that was really right before Stefan had come in. And so now he's seeing ranger teams and boats going up and down, and we have complex systems and a donor program, and all these things are working well, and we're actually making progress, and we have annual reports and all this data. And he's like, yo, you can. He says, people have donor fatigue where they donate money and they don't know where. And he goes, here. He's like, they can see what's happening. And so having someone like Dax in your corner is a good miracle, really. In the book, it's going to sound. Again, it's going to. A lot of the things that happen to me in my life sound like bad writing. You know, in the movie, when they're like, they got the gun against their head and they're on the ground and you go, they're not getting out of this one. And then, like, someone bursts through the door and saves them. And it's like that just happened too many times to me. And it sounds like bad writing, but it's. It's. It's really good life.
- [185:32]
A
Since you mentioned Stefan one more time, one of the things I forgot to mention, one of my happiest moments in life, and I had many of them in the jungle with you, is just talking late at night after Ayahuasca, funny enough. Chatting with Stefan and Dan and you and giggling and just talking about life and everything. And Dan is the guy I have to give a shout out to to. You should go follow him on Instagram. Life with Dan. He's an incredible wildlife photographer. I've seen him. He's worked quite a lot with you. He has a love of nature, a love of the wilderness, a love of beauty, and is extremely good at taking pictures, but just goes to the edges with you. He's the only guy I've seen with the. With the. With the two giant cameras to be able to follow you into the dark, darkness.
- [186:25]
B
Well, Dan, first of all, that picture I showed you where I'm in the tree, because I told you the story about with jj, where I climbed the giant tree. Well, this is years later, I climbed it with Dan was there. And so he flew the drone up and so got me in the tree. But what Dan's a really good example of is like, you're saying, what would you say to the kids? It's like, Dan listened to our talk. Our first podcast was living in Singapore, and he's like a young filmmaker, signed himself again. Just get out there. He signed himself up to come on a Tamindu expeditions with my company, and he showed up on the thing and sure enough, their boat broke down. And I was off doing jungle keeper stuff, and someone was like, yo, their boat broke down. So we show up and I haul their boat, and he comes up to me. He goes, I'm such a big fan. He goes, I just wanted to say hi. I said, oh. I said, well, great. I said, hello. I said, well, let's get you back on the river. And then someone came up to me and they said, he's a really good photographer. I said, everybody's a good photographer today. I said, that's great. Amazing. We have Stefan and Mohsen. I said, what else do we need? And then someone I trust was like, hey, listen, look at his stuff. It's not normal. And then I watched a few of his videos and I went, holy shit. And I went, would you ever think of coming down for a few weeks to film? And at the time he was like, no, no way. He was like, no way. And like, he was like, so amazing. Then, like, now we're bros. Now we film together all the time. But he put himself in the position where he has the skill, the insane skill. I mean, some of his things where he's tracking shots of a. Of a. Of a white wing sparrow over the. Over the water, where he's in the boat with an 800 millimeter lens getting these insane shots. I mean, he's just abs. I've never seen a talent like him with a. With video.
- [188:13]
A
But wildlife photography and documentary filmmaking in general, it's not just about the competence of being able to pull off a difficult shot. It's like the patience required and like the discipline to just sit there and wait. I mean, when we went out into the jungle, he waited.
- [188:33]
B
Yeah. No, I mean, like, even I'm looking on this page. That shot of the. Of the emerald tree boa there. He got up before dawn to wait for the sideways light because he wanted to. He had a vision of lighting the snake from the side and then the macaws coming off the clay lick. How many days at the clay lick till he got the explosion of macaws? And I mean, I'm up in the tree and he's on the walkie talkie. And then it's also. Your lenses are going to fog. You have to be able to hike and do everything everybody else is doing. And your job, I mean, the. Dude, it is.
- [189:05]
A
You attract a lot of incredible people because you're. Because the mission is clear and there's just like, there's a vibrancy and energy to the whole thing. It's exciting. That's why. That's why it's the best. People come to work with you, come to hang out with you.
- [189:18]
B
It's become an amazing team. I look around at the people and I go, how did this. How did this happen?
- [189:25]
A
But it is getting more intense and dangerous and so on. I have to ask you, the thing we've talked about. What do you think you'll do when you're getting older? This is pretty intense. This is pretty insane. Where do you see yourself years from now?
- [189:40]
B
I want to protect this river. We have to protect this river in the next year and a half or else we'll lose the chance. And so either I'm going to have first book, I got to the Amazon and it was wild. Second book, we built this amazing organization and we got so close. It'll be like those movies, like Blow, where it's like, for a time it was amazing and then at the end, it's not so great.
- [190:02]
A
A great movie, but, yeah, great movie.
- [190:03]
B
Movie. But, you know, and that's what. So, you know, and I'm. I'm writing this story as it happens and. And you know, Endgame might be written by somebody else or we just got really close and then it all fell apart. But. But we're 130,000 acres of the way. If we make it to 300,000, I think I'm calling it now. I think what's going to happen is enough people are going to learn about this. It's going to tidal wave. We're going to make an amazing documentary about how we protected the wildest place on Earth. And then I would love to have a few kids get a PhD, teach. Teach other conservationists around the world how to do this, to save really wild places. Keep inspiring people, keep writing books, keep going on expeditions. I don't have any problems with that, I can tell you. I can't do this much longer because the pressure of wondering if it's going to be okay. Okay, I've used all of it that I can. My Lord of the Rings analogy of like carrying the ring, it's like you can only do that for so long. And so I'M actually very excited to. I need to know that it's safe. I want to know that. I mean, those. I mean, that monkey that I rescued out of the river now, you know, the toucan Lucas, who comes back to visit us. Lulu's grand. We just saw a giant anteater not that long ago with Dax in the jungle. And like, I know these animals and I'm responsible for protecting the home. And it would be so amazing to bring people to the treehouse and show them this amazing place and put out documentaries. So I have no problem imagining a transition period. I would like to not be. I'd like to transition out of Blood diamond and go to more of the, you know, the sort of the professor role after this.
- [191:47]
A
You mean like Indiana Jones type of professor?
- [191:49]
B
Yeah. Running from the tribes. As long as it doesn't go supernatural at the end, I'll be very happy. That always kind of let me down.
- [191:59]
A
Well, thank you for giving basically everything you got towards this mission that you're doing, and thank you for being who you are. It's been an honor of a lifetime to be able to call you a friend and to have this conversation, brother. This is the third time we've spoken. I think we'll talk at least 10 more times. And I think I speak for everybody in saying thank you and please don't die in trying to save the rainforest.
- [192:31]
B
I have to say thank you to you because our first conversation changed everything. It really did in this story. It brought so many more people onto the mission and I think also lifted me up because as we often acknowledge, this can weigh you down. And I often do get weighed down and I lose hope myself. And then I get lifted up by moments like that where someone I'm a huge fan of and who I respect so much reaches out and goes, do you want to come to Austin and do this podcast? I do, and I respond to Lex fucking Friedman podcast. But, you know, you've really, really changed the narrative and allowed this to be a reality. So.
- [193:19]
A
And everybody go pre order Jungle Keeper, the book available everywhere. And if you can donate on junglekeepers.org now, this is an important mission, an ultra competent team, and this is such a beautiful part of the world that I really, really, really hope we protect. So thank you for talking today. And now let's go eat.
- [193:46]
B
Thank you, brother.
- [193:48]
A
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Paul Rosolie. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And once more. Let me say thank you for everything. Thank you for your support, thank you for the love, and thank you for listening. And I hope to see you next time, Sam.