Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Paul Rosolie on Surviving Tribal Warriors & Amazon Cartels

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

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

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

Good to get here. So you were like off the plane, off the plane. Off the plane, off the plane. Look, I still got dirt from the Amazon on my shoes. Dirt in your timbulins. That's crazy. Vibos. Vos. Don't get me in trouble. That's it. Yeah, no, I just got off. It's like culture shock getting back here.

I mean, I'm living in a place where I'm like chopping wood, carrying water, looking for fish. And you come back here and you're like, shit's so easy. Yeah, yeah. You're like, I can use my thumb to get most things done. Yeah. I'm like trying to figure out how to, you know, it's just very different. We offered you a coffee. You're like, I'm okay.

We offer you a water. You're like, I'm okay. And then we said Diet Coke. We just threw it out there. Ooh. Delmer bullet. You said the DC is the one thing you miss in the gym. The fridge cigarette, man.

We don't have them. We don't have them. In the Amazon, you're 4,000 miles away from the nearest Diet Coke. They got Coke Zero. And, you know, most of the time we don't have refrigeration out there. So even if you have a Coke, a sad Coke, it'll be warm. Yeah. We'll get there later.

But when Lex came down, I know he loves Coke Zero. And so I put two in my bag secretly. And I was like, at our lowest moment. Did he have an emotional response or was he, Lex? We were almost dead. We were almost dead at that point. So I pulled him out and he just went, fuck.

It was the only liquid we had for days. So it was like we were surviving on it. It wasn't like a celebratory moment. We had to live on Coke for a while. Why the only liquid you had for days? I thought you could go straight out of the river. Yes. And so the problem is, okay, okay.

So there's a, you know the kid into the wild? Yeah. So that guy. Right. Huh? You got eaten by a bear? No, no, no, no, that's crazy, man. That's different, different, too. That's the Werner Herzog documentary.

Into the wild is a kid who burns his security card and goes, lives in a bus. Okay. He crossed over, I believe, if I remember, he crossed over a river and got into the wilderness where he lived in the bus. And then it's from what I know is that then he wanted to cross, when he was, like, starving, he wanted to cross back over the river, and it had changed volumes. And, like, one day you can wait across the river. And one day, it's not possible.

And that's what happened to us and Lex. And the reaction I got, because I told the story on Joe, the reaction I got was people like, yo, fuck you for almost killing Lex Friedman. Everybody loves Lex. And they're like, you know, how could you be a survival expert? Never claimed to be a survival expert. You could survive. I could survive.

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

Yeah. But we weren't finding streams. Mountain Valley, Mountain Valley. But we were too high up in the watershed so the streams weren't starting until later. And after a few days and you're sweating, picture being in a sauna all day long, all day long. Not carrying any water with you. Well, we drank all of our water in like three hours. You can only carry so much.

fucking water. And Lex is about to die and you've been holding two coats. I just remember we were going to bed. We were going to, we're getting into our tents. It was me, Lex and JJ and we're like, yo, we're kind of, we're kind of fucked. And like Lex was like looking at a puddle. And he goes, can I drink that? And I was like, no, don't drink

that puddle. Yeah. And he was like, you know, like, we're all like splashing a little bit of water, like gross water. It's like puddle water on ourselves just because we're so hot. And we're like, okay, we'll just get in our tents with like no food. no water. And then I was like, I do have these coaks. And it was like, we just like drank them. It wasn't like, yeah, we got there. It was just like, drink the coax. Like, open tomorrow like, you know. Plus, like warm Coke actually tastes like gasoline. It's delicious when it's cold. And then when you, when you drink it when it's warm, you go, no.

Yeah. Yeah. Whoa. Okay. I love survival content. Which is hilarious. I've never camped. I grew up in the city my whole life. I've seen very animals. You grew up in the city or Queens? East Village. You can text me at 2 a.m. I'm like, why are you awake?

He's like, I'm in the Arctic. I'm surviving in the Arctic. He's watching an Arctic video. I go to sleep to somebody surviving in the snow every night. There's no bullshit. I put it on. I wait for them to do their little hot tent

and they usually make something. Maybe it's outdoor boys. Once he starts making the bread and he puts them honey butter, I can go to bed. That's my bed time routine. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. Okay. So my question, but I've never

done it. My question is, of the three of us, what are the chances of us surviving in the Amazon? Like if I left you there? Yeah. Like, I drive you on a boat into a deep part of the Amazon, walk you out five miles away from the river, and then leave you there and say, I'll come back

in a week. Yeah. Are we together in this hypothetical? Yeah, all three of us are together. Okay. Yeah. If you had headlamps and machetes, you might be able to, you might be able to, like, make it a week on pure starvation. but if you don't know how to hunt food,

which if you don't have someone native like I did to teach you, you're not going to make it far. It's like being dropped in them. And I know people that are so native that I've had to explain this to them. But, you know, if you get dropped in the city, and let's say you got dropped with no cell phone, no credit cards, no cash and no, like, prior knowledge of, like, stores will give you food. There's, like, crosswalks.

Like, you wouldn't get very far. You'd be on the street. You'd be sleeping on the street. Yeah. You know, you wouldn't even be able to take a shit in New York City. You're like, it's an emergency, please. And you're like, no. Yeah.

They're like, no. Yeah, like, sorry. It's probably easier to take a shit in Amazon. Yeah, right? Because you've never been camping. Yeah. So you've never taken a shit in the woods. Never.

Never. I've taken shit in the ocean before. It comes out easy. You just go, boom. Come on, bro. Except for. You jerk off on carpets at a hotel. That's inside.

Yeah. That's how it gets there. The black rights is in it. Okay. Okay. So, so, okay, so you, first of all, I'd be happy to share this experience with you. Yes. If you ever want to learn how to shit in the woods, you just call me up.

I'll take you upstate New York. Yes. We could do this. We could do this like this spring. Or we do it for the fall. Shitting in the woods is one thing. You got to learn how to, you know, eat some people are pants off. Some people are pants around your ankles.

You know, and you get there. You just got to not pee on your shoes and not, not, you know, because sometimes you get a log that falls. Oh, and it falls on your ankle or something like that. Exactly. Because what you want is for it to fall backwards or forwards. You don't want it to fall on a shoe. Is there a strategy for that, Paul? You got to wag backwards a little bit.

You got to throw it back. You got to throw it back. Hey, why does Paul twerking all this? Yeah, so you got to do that. But now the Amazon, like most things, the Amazon is extreme environments on Earth. So when you're shitting in the Amazon, all right, when you're shit in the woods, you're like, all right, I got a balance. So you're like, cool, I'm going to balance, all right? So you're like, cool, on my feet are wide enough apart.

And you're like, I got this. And you just, you can like, chill. You hold onto a tree maybe? I've done that before. You could hold onto a tree. And you're like, we've got to be careful with. I'll tell you about that later. I can't just pick those up.

In the woods so you can chill. You're dead in the woods. You're like, you're like, oh, there's a deer. And you're like, there's a chipmunk. You can look behind you, whatever. some people lean against a tree some people hold the tree jungle is different

first of all you probably have jungle gut right so you're like I gotta go now you know you're like you're sweating yeah yeah you're like right this got to happen DC withdrawals yeah you're not you're not gonna worry about this because it's coming out

oh you worry about spray now you're worried about spray yeah the other thing is human poop is some of the most nutrient rich poop in the planet right like a varied diet they want it man they want that shit is delicious I want my scalp

they're coming in and they're like that's the best shit in the world and so first of all who is they who is they Paul who wants it

who wants it the most the animals all of them okay so I can't I've got to get back in that position in a second but so you have

sand flies you have sandflies you have mosquitoes you have a variety of other types of like red flies green flies, other flies, you've got wasps.

Now, wasps are carnivorous. They land on you and they want to eat your skin. That doesn't really hurt, but the problem is if the wasp goes up your sleeve and stings you, it's a pain in the ass. So the moment you pull down your pants, now your arms are sunburned and a little bit banged up, and so your skin is thicker, right? Got great arms, by the way. Thank you.

As soon as you pull down your pants and expose that white, white ass, we all got. They're like, yo. Not to mention. Now, Let me explain this. Your balls are just hanging out there in the tropical fuckland. Like there are mosquitoes now all coming and they're like lots of blood.

And so they're going for it. So what you've got to do is break off a stick. Okay. And you've got to be doing this. Constantly. While you're going, yes, because the flies and the mosquitoes and everything, they're coming for you. Right?

And some of them, like, they'll, like, the flies have no respect. They'll fly like up your butthole. Like, they will do anything. Oh, wow. And so you really have to have this game good, which means you have to have your balance game good. And you can't do this because there could be spikes on the ground or a venomous snake. So you can't just just relax. A snake.

Then, assuming you have brought toilet paper. Let's just assume that, right? That's a big assumption. It's a big assumption. But let's say, like, you know, you have a headlamp, you have a machete, you don't, you bring some toilet paper. Because if you start talking about jungle leaves, you think poison ivy's bad. You could wipe your ass with something you never get better from. Oh.

You know? It's a tough injury to explain to it. I have no skin on my ass shitting every time I shit I get a life-threatening infection I should get AIDS well it's way for my ass and so as you're doing this right

and then you gotta this is where it gets complicated because you got a two-hand it because you have to be guarding the jewels right? Okay and you've got to do a quick wipe because now you've been we're doing this work long enough

that there's an army of mosquitoes and they're big Big mosquitoes going around you, and so they're hitting you. Wherever you're not paying attention, it's like fighting a pack of dogs. If you're over here, they're biting you over here. And so the mosquitoes are all over you.

So as you slap, you're also throwing weight, so you might fall over. Yeah. And so the worst part, though, then, is that the dung beetles, dung beetles the size of a golf ball. Picture a minivan that's bright purple and can open its wings and fly.

It makes no sense. Size of a golf ball, and they're really awkward flyers, and they come in, and they'll, like, smack you and if my friend got a scratched cornea because one day had those like rhinoceros things on the front and it hit them in the eyeball. And so

they go it's that, the purple one right there. You see that big spike? So they want your poop. Right? Really bad. They're going to roll it up into a ball and they carry it away. Okay. They roll it up into a ball and they're like, got it. Take it away. And so you've got the flies and the mosquitoes and the things and you've got to manage to squat and wipe and defend yourself from a whole army.

It's a big deal. So you just don't want to do that. The guys in Amazon really don't understand the joy of taking your shit at home and just avoiding your responsibilities. Yeah, scrolling. Scrolling, reading a book. Yeah, reading a book. Get a hammeroid. Yeah.

Why not just wear like an adult hamper? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, man. And then, you know, the squeeze one out in the river down there, I feel like again, something's going to take that opportunity. Well, what about the people that pee? And then they get, like, a thing that flies in their urepan. The candor fish.

But I think it's been like three people. and all the human history. I'll take my odds. I'm not risking that. That's three too many. That's three too many. What do you do with toilet paper? What do you do?

You just kind of munder up and leave it there and let the jungle. Stick you in the ground. It'll be gone in 20, 20. It'd be gone in 10 hours. I mean, if you put a dead body in the jungle, it's gone in 48 hours. Completely to the bone. How do you know this?

I told you guys. He's a Italian for Brooklyn. My people. My people. I told you guys. Stop doing mad. And stop thinking too much. You don't want to know.

Stop trying out to the episode. So when did that happen exactly? Don't pinch it on me. They did try to kill you, though. All right. So tons of people down there have tried to kill you. It's not just the animals. Have you ever thought it's you?

Sort of like looking in the mirror type of shit? Yeah. Who am I? No, I mean, that's, look, most of the people I work with down there we make friends with the natives we've started jungle keepers together

we protect all this jungle that's why I do what I do this is you and JJ famously right yes I met JJ when I was 18 yeah and he sort of took me under his wing and he was like I know everything about the jungle I know the medicines I know tracking I know the animals and I was like I know how to catch snakes

that's the only thing I know that you don't know and he was afraid of snakes he was terrified of snakes and he was like you can teach me snakes and I was like yeah I can teach you snakes and he was like fuck off he's like you're gonna touch that snake and he's like none of us would touch that snake and he's like you pick it up and let it bite me and be like this is a harmless snake and he'd be like how do you know so all of them are afraid of snakes all of them are afraid of snakes because their interaction with the jungle is very much based on like a utilitarian sort of view like you know can I eat that that or that is that wood good and it's like if you find a wood that's like pulpy and not very strong they're like oh that that that's crap But mahogany and Kaoba and Kenea, they're like these woods. They know everything. They know what the sap does. If there's medicinal uses, you know, how to age it.

You know, crazy shit that we could never know. They're like, there's one time we cut down a tree. This huge tree, this huge tree that I saw these guys cut down this tree because they needed to build a bridge and this tree goes down. I want them to cut this tree down and they cut it down. And I cry when trees go down. And you're talking about a centuries old tree. It's laying on the floor. floor and the logger looks at it and he goes, ah shit.

He goes, I didn't realize what day it is. He goes, we can't use this wood. This tree's fucked so they start cutting another tree. And I went crazy. I grabbed his chainsaw. I was like, fuck you. You just took down a centuries old tree. What do you mean?

You can't use the wood. You use that wood. And he goes, it will not work. You can't build with that wood. Why not? And he goes, it's a new moon. I was like, what the fuck? Does a new moon have to do with it?

I was like, I don't do mumbo jumbo. I'm from Brooklyn. I was like Western science. Like the wood is there. build with the wood and J.J. saw me fight with the guy takes me aside and he goes, listen, he goes, you're not from here. You don't understand. Every moon cycle, there's this one insect that reproduces. And if you happen to cut down a tree when they reproduce, their larva will go into the wood at that perfect moment because you've

destroyed the tree's defenses. And then in like a year that wood's going to be destroyed. So if you go build like the scaffolding for a roof, you're done. Delapit. You're done. So like that's where like if you're not a local, if you don't know the jungle, the secrets of the jungle, you're not doing shit.

What percentage do you think you know now? Like if you compared yourself to a JJ and this is like a vocabulary or a fluency, like the jungle's a language. Where are you at with fluency? If JJ's like Novak Djokovic, I'm like... A female tennis player.

What? No, what? What? No, no, no. They play just as good. They play just as good. good. They're really good. Yeah, yeah. If JJ was like Novak Djokovic

or the best female player, I'm like the best guy in like your hometown. Wow. No, no, it's massive. Like he grew up. He grew up without shoes till he was 13 years old. Like he grew up where they had to get a howler monkey or a fish for dinner or they starve. Like, I've been doing this for 20 years and I've learned as much

as I can and it's a privilege. but there's things in there that you can't even like we'll be walking no i'll give you a better one one one day we're sitting there and i was like j jay let's go fishing and he goes yeah yeah yeah we should go fishing and like you know he's got a couple of gray hair you got glasses on now and he's sitting there reading the birds of peru as you do and he's like oh the tanagers and the flycatchers and i'm like j jay can we go fishing before it's like nighttime and he goes no no no we need bait and i went yeah and he goes find some bait and so i start i start looking on the ground whatever else like looking for worm. There's no, it's just sand under the leaves in the Amazon.

So I'm looking for bait and you can't find any. You know, you find like a big Katie did or something. You try and grab it and it'll bite you. And so I hear Jajun, he's just sitting there going, I'm like, this motherfucker's just sitting here killing time. Uh-uh. All of a sudden then I hear, on the other side of the deck, I hear, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. And I look, and it's this grasshopper making this sound with its wings. And J-J then makes the sound again. and the grasshopper keeps coming closer looking for its mate. No.

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

And he's like got three hooks. He's got a small hook, medium hook, large hook. Takes a small hook, takes a dumb fish out quick. puts it on a larger hook, pulls out a piranha. this big, cuts the tail off, it puts it on a large hook, throws that in the river and ties it to a tree. And I was like, why don't you tie it to the boat? And he's like, because the boat has a solid beam there. He's like, if that pulls on the fishing line, it'll break it.

He's like, he tied to a tree. The tree will do this. And it'll tire the fish out. And sure enough, this tree is like, whoo, you got to fish this big. So he, like, worked his way from grasshopper to piranha to giant catfish that fed 10 people in the span of a couple hours. So that's the type of shit It's literally a language If you were to get

Like is there an age cut off Like if you were to move there when you're five years old Like you could become a local But if you move there at 25 It might be harder for you to become like A native in the sort of It's also how much time you spend there You know I know a lot of

People who have spent significant time in the jungle And like you know When I was starting out Like I was a kid that had terrible grades I'm severely dyslexic Didn't do well in school, dropped out of high school after a sophomore year and just went to the Amazon. And like, I started learning from JJ and like the rate at which a person can absorb,

like the people that come down and do research and they're wearing like big boots and they're wearing long sleeves and they have like a bug net over and they're learning from other researchers that they're learning academic facts about the jungle. And with him, we'd be like, I'd be like, JJ, you think there's anacondas and that song? on people like I don't know I'm like pop his shirt off me like let's go find out though we'd be up to our next and I remember the first time I did it and I was like 18 and I was like are you sure this is okay and he was like think so it's like I never went looking for anacondas before and I was like like you know like I'm like what in this nightmare soup is going to

crawl up our pants yeah like I was like are you certain that there's not like some sort of water bug that's going to burrow into our skin I mean there is whoa but just no Fear? He doesn't have fear. He's a, I mean, he's, he's pretty fearless. Even, even when we've dealt with people that are dangerous, one of the first times I saw him defending land. People had come to cut some trees. And I just remember him. I was like 18 and brand new there. So I was like, I'm not going to say shit, right? I'm just going to stand there. Is this his property? His was his property at the time. It was before we started jungle keepers. He just was like, I'm going to protect this. And I was like, with what? And he was like, he's like, I just have a dream of protecting the wildest place on earth. Because my home, my village, they killed all the animals. They cut all the big trees. He's like, so now I've gone out to the wildest place and we're going to protect it.

And that's where I met him. But when people came, you know, it's like a boat of like vagrant migrant hunters. And they walked down this trail and he was like, let's go. He's like, we got to go get these guys. I was like, get these guys. And we show up on these guys and they all got fucking shotguns. And JJ, no, no gun walks up to these guys and goes, Get off my land.

English? No. In Spanish. Okay. And they're like, you know, click, clack. Fuck yourself. No. And he's like, get off my land now.

And then like, as they advanced on us, I just was like, I was like, well, you know, how do we fight them? Yeah. Like we have two machetes against like five guys with shotguns. And I was just kind of like standing there. I was like, you know, whatever, whatever happens next, you know? And he put up such a, such a, such a, he was just like, back my land. they bitched out they turned around i mean what do you they got to shoot them most people don't want to shoot yeah for them it's not worth the hassle exactly they're getting paid to do that job they're like

we'll go find a different trail yeah but still out there if they did shoot us they could drag us into the jungle leave us there and in two days nobody'd ever know we existed how much of that happens do you think how many people are killed out there and it's just you just get devoured by the jungle well first of all i mean a native people there's lots of people that die in the amazon and all kinds of creative ways. But in terms of like the narco-trafficking that's happening right now. Or the tree harvesting or any of the other?

The tree harvest thing, I mean, I've heard, I've heard all the stories down there in 20 years. I mean, somebody gets cut down by, you know, landed on by a tree. And I'm talking about trees three times as thick as this room, like huge trees. You know, they'll cut it and they'll be looking up at the tree they cut.

And as it's going down, they don't realize that it's tied by a vine to the next tree back. And so that tree comes and just mousetraps an entire group of people. Whoa. It takes down an acre or a forest on top of some people, and you just don't know. You're like, oh, yeah, we cut the tree. It's going that way. Timber and you're like, damn, this is wild.

And then, like, an acre comes out. It's not one guy. You're talking about, like, ten guys. You're talking about everybody's dead. Whoa. I was just climbing on a tree two nights ago with my guys. And, like, the branches, you know, you're talking about, like, six foot thick branches. And if this tree had fallen and we were exploring the canopy of a tree on the ground,

at night, but there's all these orchids that grow nowhere else but in the canopy, 160 feet off the jungle floor, and they don't exist down here. And so there's different species up there. 50% of the life in a rainforest is in the canopy, not on the ground. And so it's one of the least explored things on our planet. And since the Amazon has so much biodiversity in it, this is like undiscovered species, undiscovered medicines. And when you're walking down there, you're this big, you're on the ground, and the canopy's

up here. So like if you get lost It's not like you're lost in the Rockies You go to a mountain top And you're like should I go north or should I go west Now you're at the bottom of a green ocean So you're like where the fuck is the sun You know you're like looking around for it

And it's like there's no way out Is that what it feels like being underwater? It can It's interesting metaphor for it It feels like you're under the ocean In a sort of magical way There's these giant trees Over you

It's a very cathedral like experience Right These giant beautiful trees, you know, and there's sort of like light hitting the tops of them. And you see like spider monkeys up there. And then these tremendous trunks coming down and you can interact with them. But just like a skyscraper, you can't climb up that because it's sheer. Yeah. And then if you're in true old jungle, the overstory is so big that the understory can be pretty open.

And so you can kind of walk around because there's not much light. So not much can grow. Exactly. Like less than 3% of the light. that hits the jungle, makes it to the jungle floor. Oh, wow. So what can even exist on the bottom? Well, like, you see that picture.

Like, that's the bottom of a tree. Yeah. And, you know, there's trees. But you see, it's not dense, dense. Yeah. I hate that picture on the lower left. See, that makes me... Oh, my God.

That makes me sick. Where is this? That's probably Brazil. Yeah, you mentioned Brazil a lot in terms of... Yeah. I work in Peru, but Brazil has 60% of the Amazon within their territory. And it seems to be that they're a little bit more... How do I say?

say it, they're less strict about conservation over there. That's what it feels like from listening to you. It seems like, it seems like there's, you know, it depends who's in charge. Fluctuary's based on administration. I mean, but that's everything. Yeah. You know, in the U.S., they're like, we're going to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and then the regime changes, and they go, we're not going to drill in the Arctic Wildlife

Refuge. And then they're like, we're going to drill. And I'm like, all right, shit. Yeah. Like, can somebody please just hold some continuity? Like, when we make it a national park, just put it all. like Teddy Roosevelt would be rolling in his fucking grade. He would come out and wreck shit.

He'd like, you're going to touch Yosemite? Yeah, yeah. He would come out, the rough rider. Yeah. You know, I mean, you think you protect this stuff forever, and that's why in conservation they always say the victories are temporary and the losses that are final because you go, oh, great, we protected this group of rhinos in Africa.

Ten years later. And then, like, some poachers get in there and clean out half of them in a night, and you're like, we thought we protected them, and then they got through the fence. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. What type of tech you're using to, like, not get lost

or stay in communication with people? Well, we have now, the old days, it was, that's a great question. The old days, we used to go, so you see this is this windy, windy river right there. This one? So in the old days, we used to go up that for two whole days. Two days of just that. Let me understand us.

So up that means you're in a boat. You're in a boat. You're in like a 30-foot-long canoe with a sometimes of the roof sometimes not. Okay. And you've got a motor on the back. And you're just trudging along. Are you just going up that?

So you do 10 hours. You stop on the side. You make camp in the jungle. You do another 10 hours. Then we'd get to our research station where JJ had set up this project. And so out there, we didn't even have a generator. We'd have to bring double A batteries for our headlamp.

And every night it gets dark at 6 o'clock. And every morning it gets light at 6 o'clock. It's the equator, right? so you have 12 hours. And so you basically stay in the jungle as long as your food lasted and as long as your battery is lasted. Because if it gets dark and you don't have light,

you've got a problem, especially out there. Because if you get lost in the middle of that, you literally can't take one step. Like I've had a headlamp when I was my first year down there. I was like, JJ, I'm going out. You know, you grow up in school with rules. And I got to the jungle and I was like,

this is like Pirates of the Caribbean. I was like, I'm going out. I was like, I'm going to go on some adventures. I want to risk my life. You're 18 years old and you're like, fuck yeah. And so I went out there and I was like, I'm going to discover some shit by myself. I went out.

And then at like 2 in the morning, my head lamp dies. And I'm going like this. You can't see your hand. And if you take a step, you could step on a venomous snake. You could step on spikes. The noise you're hearing is of all the frogs. And so I have. I had to just sit down and like curl into a ball and like pull some palm fronts and just sit there like this and like put my shirt over me and the mosquitoes are biting you through the shirt but at least they can't get to your face because you like turtle up and I sat there like that until morning and I was so messed up.

I was really messed up after that and so I never let that happen again. Now it's different. Now we have a major organization. We have 160,000 acres. One of the verge of making a national park. So now we're professionals. So now we have like Starlink and we're able to communicate. Now I have 80-something Rangers that we need to coordinate.

And so we have to have Starlink at the different bases so that we can communicate through the jungle. But how didn't that experience early on? You're just like, yo, fuck this. Go back home. Because there's a scene in the Shawshank Redemption when they're sitting on the roof and like the guards and the prisoners crack the beers and you're like, I want to be there. And you're like, I don't, but I kind of do. Yeah. And it's like when you're suffering and you've been in the rain for six hours and then the tropical sun bakes you until your skin's peeling off and all you have to eat is the head of a wild boar that you shot yesterday.

There's something where you just go, man, this is so fucking wild. Especially in today's world where it's like minority report like Big Brother, like Terminator beginnings. Out there, it's still the real world. It's still the real world and it reminds you that. And like the mountains and the ocean are these constant things that you can. return to and the jungle is like this this this giant organism this godlike force and it's like you just go you know what civilizations rise and fall whatever's on the news cycle right now these this this ecosystem has been has been speciating for 55 million years it holds medicines it's it's the heartbeat of our

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

And so you're like, I've got to cut down a tree. And I'm going to float on this tree all the way back to civilization. The only thing I said wrong there is you can't cut down a whole ass tree with a machete. So what you do is you wait for it to rain. And then the rain pulls a few of the closest trees to the river into the river.

And then when you get the flood, you swim out, you jump on a log. And then you take that motherfucker back to civilization. So you've taken a floating log back to civilization? I've covered hundreds of miles on a log I'm talking logs I'm not talking about like a little log

I'm talking about like a school bus size log that's like 90 feet long and what's cool is at the at the canopy side half of the thing is down half the thing is up right so you can actually climb up onto the upper branches and like stand up there like you're on a pirate ship and the thing is so big like a small log

you do this right I don't know. These logs are so big that it's like an ant on a log. Like you don't influence its roll or tilt. And so you could just walk around on this log. How deep is it, though? I mean, these are like turns that you have to make. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the scary part.

Because if you hit into something, your ass goes flying forward, his own seatbelt. So you've got to be very vigilant. And then the scariest shit ever is when you're riding a log and it hits a shallow spot and it goes like, that was on a log one time and went, and then the river starts lifting it. And so you're like, it's just terrifying.

And what about when you sleep? Like, is someone manning it throughout the night? Like, what happened? Or do you dock? No, no, no. I've never, you can't, I've never logged through the night. I feel like you'd fall in the river. And the other thing is, if there's one log, there's more logs.

And I'm very, very scared of being held underwater or even worse. Like, if you have a leg hang in on it and a lugger one pinch. No, no, no, no, no. I don't want that. Guys, important information. Street Fighter, October 16. You're all buying tickets right now. We're stopping the pod, going to buy tickets, selling every single showtime out opening weekend.

And the weekend after that, and the weekend after that. After that, also back in the lab on tour this fall, Indianapolis, October 23rd through 24th. Alabama, November 6th through 7th. Cleveland, November 13th and 14th. Raleigh, I think that's sold out December 4th and 5th. Columbus, December 11th, and 12th. We will see you guys at the Andrew Sholes.com. Also, guys, I'm coming to a bunch of cities as well at the end of this year.

This weekend, I'll be in Dallas, Texas, the weekend after that, or two weekends. I'll be in Charnley, Arizona, and then I'm going to be in Pasadena, California, San Diego, California, Detroit, Michigan, and then Salt Lake City in the New Year. You can get tickets right now with Mark Gagnon Live. Alex? And guys, cancel comedy is back. October 29th at Chelsea Table. We have a full night, happy hour, show and after party.

It's all included one ticket. Costumes are encouraged, but you will be giving the comics material. See you guys there. Our Fantasy Commission says for him it's all about the friendships. Cute, Kevin, but I disagree. Like with Bet365. I get paid the second my team goes up big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends.

No hard feelings, Kevin. Just faster payouts from Bet365, The home of winning early. Must be 19 and older. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you were someone you know is concerns about gambling,

visit connects ontario.ca or call 1-866-5-3-1-2,600. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, sleeping. Because I'm curious about survival and most of my survival videos are around sleeping. You've yet to describe a way

where sleeping feels comfortable at all. And you're out in the Amazon for... You're out of the Amazon. for months at a time, whatever. But I imagine there's a place that's a little less Amazon-y where you sleep more comfortably

and then there's a version where you're like deep in the bush and then that's less comfortable, right? Yeah, yeah. What's the most comfortable sleeping situation? So I built the world's tallest tree house because I would, it's the ALTA, ALTA, Alta Sanctuary treehouse.

You know, I used to make it to the top of these trees and you see there's a thing called the invisible mist river that's above the Amazon. 20 trillion liters of water a day get pumped off off the canopy And that's the whole lungs of our planet thing And I would see it every day Get the fuck out of it, but I would see it Is this real? This is real

You can stay there, like you can book that Like people come and stay there That's why I built it was to share this with the world My whole thing is I want to share this all with the world How many stories up is this? It's 110 feet at the deck So you're 11 Story 11 stories up

Yeah so when you wake up, you're like eye level with spider monkeys and harp eagles and howling monkeys. It's great because at 4 a.m. when it gets purple in the east and the east is that way where it's blue in that picture. Yeah. At about 4 a.m. it starts getting purple and you hear the last of the night frog start to like peter out and then it's it's like God goes to the switch in the universe and just goes and it becomes morning and the whole jungle just starts tuning its instruments and everything starts going and the howler monkeys start going and you're like, the day is coming. And you're like, the day is coming.

And the sun is coming up. And you're standing up there and you're like, I'm here for the first day on Earth. And it's like the universe is being created. And then when you see the macaws flying across the golden mist that's rising in the east off of the greatest display of life on our planet in the universe, you just sit there and you're like, every morning, every morning. So being able to share that with people. So there's a bathroom, a bedroom, you got toilet, Wi-Fi, everything you need up there.

That's comfortable. I'm out here glad I've been, bro. Yeah. Yeah. You're in a good life. You say what's the most Yeah.

After 20 years, have I not learned to turn to you guys? The building right now is not even half. Like, where we're sitting right now. Really?

Is, I mean, this is probably, what, 40 feet? If you're standing on the fire escape, you look at it, it's 40 feet. Yeah, we're only 40 feet up. Scroll down a little. I want to see if there's one picture.

See that, the stairs. That's people like, how do you get up there? that. And then the bit that you just if you zoom out again, the bed. See like there's a comfortable right there. Down, down, down. Bed. Like, you're comfortable up there and so you're protected. It's got a veil on it.

It's like a wedding night. Well, that's a, that's a mosquito net. I wouldn't say that in the marketing. Say, say veil. Say wedding suite. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a wedding veil. Yeah, it's beautiful. Okay, so this is. That's the comfortable. This is the most comfortable that you can be. Yeah. Now take me to you're just camping. You pull over the side of a...

This is what you like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the stuff I live for. Okay. This. We're camping. All four of us. You're taking us.

Please pull up the video. There's a thing where leaf cutter ants eat my tent. I'll tell you this story. I get in my tent. Brand new tent. Okay. When Lex left the Amazon, he's like,

I'm never going to camp again and take my tent. So this is a tent that's been used like once. Take this tent and we're on this like little mini thing. We just go out to, yeah, yeah, yeah, this. Let's just watch this and I'll tell you about it. There's about 10 million leaf cutter hands on the nylon. Holy shit. It's cutting leaf-sized holes out of my tent.

It means everything else in the Amazon is coming into my tent. I just woke up because there's a leaf cutter hand using its pincer jaws to bite my ear to try and carry off a piece. This is what camping in the wild is. Sometimes you put your tent in the wrong place and the leaf-up lands and the gods of the jungle beside. It's going to be the worst night ever. This is one of those nightmare nights, man. Get the fuck out of here. Tarantula?

Yeah. Like everything in the jungle decided to come into the tent that night. Nah, bro. So that was not fun because you're trying to just sleep. And usually you zip your tent and the jungle's out there and you're like kind of clean. A little bit of sand gets in. That night it was raining. And the leaf cutter ants decided.

Like I had like 10,000 probably 100,000. because they go in lines. They actually will clear highways through the jungle. They'll push the leaves to the side. So they make a trail. And they just, I was in the way. And they were like, we got to move this tent. So they started taking apart piece by piece.

Yeah. And then when they got to me, they started trying. Like, they literally, I woke up and I was like, whoa. And it was chomping. Like, they can cut your ear. They can cut you. So is there no way to have a night's sleep when you're? No, that's, I mean, again, that's the, you said, what's the best?

What's the worst? In between that is a lot of nights where you're like, you hike all day, you're super sweaty. It's not especially fun getting in a tent if you can't jump in water. A lot of times there is water to jump in. It's great. Why? Because the water will cool you down.

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

Yeah. I hope to be the person that can give this to you. I don't know if I'd let anybody else do it. Especially camping like upstate. It's like kind of. You go up to the cat skills or the Adirondacks, you can get beautiful spots. And because it's a little chilly, there's no bugs. Right.

There's nothing that's no jaguars. There's no uncontacted tribes. There's no poachers that are going to, you know, no one's going to show up. You're good. Take us to the uncontacted tribes because I think this is something that like maybe it just taps into the colonizer and me. Wait, what? What do you mean about that? No, I'm joking.

No. But like, the idea that. there is a group of people that it lives somewhere and has no clue about external existence. Is that what the uncontacted tribe is? Or are they aware of us? And they are just operating completely off the grid. The government doesn't really pay them any attention. What does definitionally uncontacted tribe mean? Great question because it's actually the complete sort of like wrong term. When people say, it came out, I was like, you know, we had an encounter with an uncontacted tribe. This is a, I can't think of another example of this, but it's like, that's what they've been called.

So that's what we got to call them so people know what I'm talking about. Indians, kind of. That are actually Native Americans. As an anthropologist, like, stop calling them uncontacted tribes. He always bothers me. This guy, he'll like, DM me. He'll be like, stop calling him. I'm uncontacted tribes.

And I'm like, what do you want me to call him? And he's like, people living in voluntary isolation nativo. And I'm like, dude, get out of here. Just go home. They're uncontacted tribes. Yeah. And there are people that we think, right? Because you have tribes in the Amazon, like in the Ecuadorian Amazon,

where they've become very modern but maintained their native culture and that they're business owners. They have like great ecotourism things, so they're protecting their jungle, but in like in collaboration with the modern economy. Kind of fire. Right? Yeah. Like we still wear feathers at times.

We can still walk barefoot in the jungle, but we're also pulling it. a few million a year to protect the land that is ours. If our kid wants to go get educated, they can take advantage of that. Maybe they come back here, help us protect this area. Exactly. Is that kind of best case scenario? That is the best case scenario. They use their natural heritage and they continue their way of life.

You can't replace that knowledge, right? Yeah. Thousands of years of knowledge that's coming down, you know, I can show you how to log in to Instagram in two seconds. For us to understand what JJ was doing about calling in the, the insects or for them to know the difference between 5,000 different leaves that all look the same. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but this one will make your mouth numb so we could pull a tooth out. And then I go, how does it look different than this one?

Show me. And they're like, oh, come on, you got to taste it. And I'm like, so you know the taste of all the leaves. And they're like, yes. And they're like, you don't. They're like, silly, silly gringo. And you're like, okay, you guys are just beyond me. So you have these tribes that are modernizing in a controlled way.

You have communities and tribes of people that are getting obliterated, which is unfortunately the norm. You know, the outside world comes in. A road comes in, you know, disease, alcohol, an inability to sort of learn this abstract concept that money gets you food and that you can no longer just go to the river and get your food. You've got to get this other shit and give it to someone to get your food, but then you've got to find a way to get more of that shit. It doesn't actually make that much sense in the jungle. Yeah. And so there's that. It's very difficult to transition.

We think that what happens, at least my belief with the uncontacted tribes is that around the turn of the century, rubber boom, there's this horrible period of destruction. I was researching a little bit of that, but yeah. And so there were tribes that said, look, we're not going to be burned at the stake. We're not going to be your slaves. Yeah. We're going to go out there and we're going to defend ourselves. They were like the Comanchees.

They were just like, he ain't going to get us. And so they went out there and they got their six foot bow and arrows and they're, you know, anybody that comes. So then they're telling their kids, any of the outsiders show up, kill them first. Because they're going to kill you. Fair. I imagine the first introduction was not that bad. The first introduction to wood. Meaning like when the rubber, whatever, people came over, the uncontacted tribes meet them and they're like, hey, this is pretty sick.

I've never seen other people before. And then all of a sudden the rubber people came and they were like, well, we're going to be. need you guys to get the fuck out of the way. We're probably going to kill you all anyway. And then you change your energy when someone comes around again. Like Mark was in before the pot, he's like, when aliens first come, if they're chill, we're pretty excited about it. If they act crazy, the next time aliens come... Then we don't contact the tribal. Then we don't contact a tribal. To me, that seems pretty reasonable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it seems pretty reasonable. What was the North Sentinel thing that you said? Oh, yeah, that's great. North Sentinel Islands, like, they're known for being violent and very territorial and very defensive to us. But there was originally contact in like the late 1800s where British explorers went down there. I'm sure you know the story better than I do. But basically they went down there and they kidnapped like five or six of them, brought them back to England, a bunch of them died from disease and they like repatriated one or two of them. And then from that point forward they were like, hey, these people come in, they abduct our people, they kill our people. Anybody comes, it's on site.

So we just kill anyone that shows up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a very human thing. We can understand that. I understand that. And that's why they're still alive, by the way. Yeah. The only reason they're still alive.

And so a few years ago, the Sentinel Island people, some dipshit with a little boat, little rowboat, he got over there and he was like, I got a Bible. And they were like, we fell for that one before. You don't think the last people came with a Bible? I mean, that's hilarious in my, I mean, he just thought, you thought. Yeah. And so these uncontested, so you're saying like, oh, the first time, if you read Columbus or Pizarro's journals.

They showed up and the Native people were like, here are textiles. Would you not be stoked? I'd be stoked. They were like, you guys are amazing. Like, look at your ships. They were like, yo, you want to talk? They're like, you got women? We got women. We can talk. Ours have long tits. Yeah, we've got different types.

You got blue eyes? And so, and so the reception from the native people always seems to be rather friendly. Until. And it's the fucking conquistadors that are like wrap them up, burn a few of them, and it's like,

dude, what were you doing? Immediately. I think Columbus even wrote in his journalies like, the people are very friendly, the very nice, and they're easy to enslave. I think it's like basically what he writes. It's like, bro.

Yeah, it's horrible. It's absolutely horrible because he could have made friends. Easily. They would have helped you. Their whole colony fell apart in the Caribbean. And had they had the native people there,

they probably would have done way better. Oh, interesting. And so the rubber boom, these rubber barons went down, and here's the thing, the only way to get latex out of the jungle, which we needed now for the Industrial Revolution, hoses, gaskets, tires, everything.

The latex was only in the Amazon, in the jungle, in the rubber trees. And Henry Ford tried. He was like, I'm just going to plant Fordlandia. I'm just going to make a plantation, a giant one of rubber. So I'm going to get it all. Wouldn't grow. Leaf blight killed it all. So then they were like, the only way to do this is to get the native people to do it.

And so they would go down there. They'd be like, you all are going to go get latex all day. And they were like, for what? Oh, that's my boy right there, top left. He got shot in the head by one of those arrows. And so, anyway, what they would do is, they would burn these people and then be like, you'll do it because or else we're going to Game of Thrones you.

We're going to, like, flay you. And so the uncontacted tribes were like, that is not going to happen to us. And so they went out there. We're going deep. And if you come, it's on. Then it's on. That, yes, she's not on the list.

Oh, so this person got shot in the head. Yeah, he's. He's... Is he alive? Alive? He's very alive. A tech, I'm WhatsApp him all the time. Wait, wait. But he's shot in the head? He's one of my rangers, yes.

He was trying to communicate with an uncontacted tribe. Whoa. What was that? Yeah. And, um, major distractions. Huge distractions. What did you bring up the milk for him, right? Talking about the rubber tree. I'm trying to find a boy.

He's trying to go. Just trying to make contact. If you type in Paul Rose Ignacio, I don't know. I'm sure like, I'm sure it comes up. He's a local guy who was in charge of managing an interaction. And this detailed story is in the book. And he was... Jungle Keeper, by the way, available.

Everywhere books are available. New York Times bestseller. No big deal. Continue. Yeah. A lot of blood required to make that book. Oh. Shit.

Who's blood? Mine. Still out, Leslie. Still out. Yeah, the conquistador I'm just saying we got it in our mouth A lot of my blood got spilled to be able to tell those stories But Ignacio was trying to peacefully interact with these uncontacted tribes

And they shot him in the head and he almost died With what? With the arrow that he's holding in that picture They have six foot arrows We would call him spears Yep Right and they can hit a spider monkey at 120 feet straight up So hitting a guy who's standing there is pretty easy.

You're not going to miss. So they hit him in the head. He was trying to get away from them because they were, you know, they're getting more and more agitated. And they, he dove under the river as they're going for him. And he came up and looked back. And he said he saw it coming straight into his eyeball. And he said, you know, in the electron hyper speed of the moment, he like moved his head. And it just went, psh, just hit him on the side of the head.

And the bamboo ripped. and it like took off, like made a big flap on his scalp. And so he blacked out and then he had to get helicopter evacked. They were able to like CB radio back to the government, even though they were four days from the nearest, like, port. And somehow he lived. Bless you. I mean, he could have bled out easily. He was.

I have a picture of him. So in the book. Wait, you're with him when this happened? No, no, no. This happened in 2019. Okay. But then me and him were together when we ran into the tribe. and he was the one that was keeping us safe from getting shot.

He was the one telling us. All right. So look, look, that's him shot in the head. I mean, bleed out, man. That's him on the stretcher. Yeah, it's just a puddle. Yeah, that's the scar right there. And that's the scar, exactly, yeah.

Okay, so you meet the uncontacted tribe for the first time. Yeah. Are you aware that you're in their territory? Are you like, yeah. This is great. Please. I need you. I need this.

I need this because I need this. okay i uh no because in in january we sort of like came out and told the world we were like hey we saw this because it was a year before that that we saw them and you you have to understand so jungle keepers is trying to protect a whole watershed because jj told us to right can you tell what a watershed is the watershed is like you know think of of of a of a of a amazon basin is a watershed. The Hudson Valley is a watershed. So all the little streams that are flowing into the Hudson are part of this watershed. Is that watershed from the Andes? In the Amazon? Yeah, the one where you are. Yeah, it's perfect. So you see, basically all roads lead to the Amazon, all rivers

lead to the Amazon. So everything that's coming off the Andes there is coming down and eventually traveling thousands of miles across the continent that lead to the Amazon, which flows out into the Atlantic Ocean. Holy shit. So it all starts over here. Yeah. So if you throw a tennis ball in the river, it's in Rio or not wherever the fuck it down. But, you know, hypothetically it doesn't get stuff. It looks like lungs. That is crazy. It does.

It looks like the inside of our lungs. And it is the lungs of our planet. Yeah. Okay. So take us there. So you're uncontacted tribe. So we're trying to protect this whole watershed, right? So this is an important part of what I do.

The reason I write these books, the reason I come up here and talk to everybody is because we're trying to save a part of the Amazon. Can you show us real quick where it is by like where the watershed is? My water? Yeah. Yeah. Type in Madre de Dios, Peru. Okay. While he does that, so you're trying to say this.

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

dot com's website that's where we found it um there right there see oh no that's that's that's a that's a that's the second worst map we just we just go to satellite images on maps that's easier yeah okay so you see right above where it says in the red madrididios yeah there's a long river right there that line says Alta sanctuary tree house right there oh that's you now we go copy yeah that's that's where you go so we're trying to protect that whole watershed now the very headwaters are already in a national park which is great so you don't have to worry about it we don't have to worry Ideally. Now, we're trying to protect the lower part because you see this, see that yellow line?

Yep. Trans Amazon Highway. That's the IMF and the World Bank in Brazil and China coming together and going, let's get their resources out of the heart of the Amazon. Fuck. That's the parasite. That's like that's the death metastasizing into the jungle and try and draw it out. And so that's come right past us. And so there's all these logging off shoot roads that are coming towards us.

And so the land that JJ and I used to explore that used to just be jungle, just green, You see it looks like it has smallpox now. You see that on either side of the road. You start getting these people clear stuff. Oh, wow. And so, man, that's the circuitous way of saying. We're trying to protect this river. And the uncontacted tribes live in the upper reaches of this river.

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

And they were like urgently. And we'll kill you if you don't give them to us. Like it was a problem. Like it was urgent banana emergency. Is there a native tongue or they speak in Spanish? They're speaking a language that nobody speaks. So they're just describing banana. Nobody knows what they're just describing it.

I need things. I need this in my mouth. Paul is you. You got to handle that one. These tribes are terrified. Get in the fuck. Give us the bananas or you're all dying. No, so the people,

the communities that we do work with speak the Yine language. Yeah. And the Yenai language is similar enough to what the Moshko Piro or Nomole people speak. That is a rough translation. You can get there.

And I always make the comparison that I've been an Italy and I speak enough Spanish. And I'm like, I don't really speak Italian, even though I'm Italian-American. I'm like, I speak Spanish and they're like, I know what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. You need a bathroom. Yeah.

And so. So they need bananas bad. They need bananas bad because they're still hunter-gatherers. They're living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. How many people roughly show up? Fuck me. That day. I don't want to get the numbers wrong because I know what happens.

People watch my shit more closely than I do. I don't know. It's like 100 or like 5? I want to say like 100 because there was numerous people out on the beach and we were, the anthropologist was like, put down your bows, put down your weapons and they're like walking in on us. Like, I mean, they came from up the beach. I'll never forget it because I got chills down my spine because it's like the thing you never think could happen. You're worried about Jaguars.

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

And you're like, am I still safe? No. You're like, are they about to come in here and just wreck the village? Like we don't know what's going to happen. And there's your two days from police, right? So you're not in society anymore. You're out in the jungle. So you're out past the boundary of civilization.

So whatever happens happens. It's the Wild West. So if they decide to start shooting, it's like you start going, how many shotguns do we have? How many working, should we start going? How many working shotguns do we have right now? Right here, right now. And they're like six. And you're like, holy shit.

You look across the beach and you're like, there's 55 visible people with six foot arrows. And they're carrying packets of more of them. And you're like, we are outgunned like 30 to 1. And so, you know, the anthropologist is going, please put down your bows. We are not enemies. Nomole, brothers. No moly. He kept saying, no moly, brothers.

And so then they indicated that they were like, we want food. We want bananas. Like, no joke. They want bananas. And we pushed a boat across, which is exactly what Ignacio was doing when he got shot in 2019. And so they very carefully. piled up a boat with bananas and pushed it across and they like jump on it you might be able to find this video type in poor rosy on contact they tried to i don't know if it's just up there i don't know

but to either youtube or something but there might be a clip of it but there's a moment that they all hit this boat and it was i mean it was so surreal i remember that day trying to trying to be super present and it's weird you get into that meditation thing where you go how do i be super present Like, how do I? I was, like, looking at it, and I was, like, rubbing my eyes. And I'm going, I'm looking at these people are right there. But it felt like historic. There it is.

That's them coming across the beach. Yep. And they're pointing at us. They're like, look at this. So they're wearing rope around their waist. Sick haircuts. They look like hipsters. Yeah.

I think they had, like, one machete in the whole group. So they would grab the front of their hair and just cut the bangs. Oh, wow. You know, so these were the guys that had put down their bows. There you go. the spot right there it's coming wow and so when they get them what you're seeing here is this sort of it's not like they're grabbing the bananas and they're like cool we'll divvy them up later and we all got bananas now they're they're they're like my banana's my banana you're banana oh

notice though they're not sharing necessarily the urgency otherwise they could just grab the boat and chill what are they why are they grabbing them like that that's that's that was that like changes your heart when you see that you go what are they doing and then you go I hope to give the boat back. Do they? They did. They did because they wanted more bananas. Oh, wow. And did you have anymore? Well, we gave them all the bananas and then the scariest part was like, you know, we're all focused very, very forward. We're looking at all this. Yeah, that guy, he got his hands on a jungle keeper shirt. So these naked people have been in the jungle for centuries, no clothes. That dude gets a first shirt and he's got a jungle keeper's logo right on

So he's walking off into the jungle and I was like, man, he has no idea. And the reason I said I need to tell this story is because since then, you know, you had these people come out and they're like, how could you exploit these people by publishing their images without their permission? Well, you know what? Since the book came out and since that footage came out, we were able to protect 20,000 acres of pristine rainforests where they live and they'll never know about it, but they're safe now because we protect them.

And because people all over the world saw that footage. And so we got to keep them safe. Like let them keep living like that. And if they want to come in, they can come in. That's their choice. But if they want to stay out, they should be able to stay out. And the problem is that the loggers, the gold miners, the narco-traffickers will come in and kill them. You know, the Bose and hours are scary until you have an AK-47.

Like, it'll straight up be, like, I guess the biggest threat to them is loggers coming in and just actively murdering them to take the land. So the logger is, interestingly. enough. Lagers are mostly really chill. It's interesting. You know, it's like your parents are like watch out for drug dealers and then you're like, they're my friends. I don't know any

drug dealers. My buddy Steve sells weed. Exactly. Exactly. I've never met a scary one. They're just in my dorm. And like, so like the loggers tend to be local guys that are working for their families. And that's who we turn into the Rangers.

Because, like, JJ will be like, yo, my brother Pico was a logger. Like, let's have him drive boat. Great. Awesome. And like, you want a better job? And then you realize, wait, they're not bad guys. They're friends we haven't hired. Yeah.

100%. And that's sort of, that thing is sort of the higher message here. It's like, there's a way to fix all this. Like, the world doesn't have to be ending. Like, we're smart enough to fix a lot of these problems. But like, the biggest threat to them, narco traffickers. Why? What happens with the narco traffickers?

Because the narco traffickers are going out. into the jungle, into the wildest places. And so this is an interesting problem that we never anticipated, because when I went out there was the wildest place on earth. It took days to get there. Nobody could get there. And then, you know, about two years ago, the Narcos showed up. And they, you know, we always heard, you know, stuff comes in legend first, then it comes

real. You hear these uncontacted tribes out there. And you go, that's bull. It's got to be bullshit. There's no way that's real. And then they walk out of the jungle. You're like, holy shit. And then they were like, you know, now there's narcos.

And you're like, how are there narcos? Where are they going? They wait for that bend in the river. They cut the trees back into an airstrip. And so they get a long bend in the river and then a turn as they cut an airstrip back. So they lower the plane, fly right over the river and fly under the jungle. So then you have the trees at 150 feet. And so no one's able to surveil down.

Otherwise, you'd be able to see it there's an airstrip. You can't see through the trees. Hold on. Yeah. The air strip that they're cutting is under the trees. Is under the tree line. Yeah. So the plane uses the river as like the beginning of the landing strip as the entry point.

This is on some like Tony Stark shit where the... They're smart. They got submarines. Okay, so the plane lands, but the plane also has to exit, right? There's definitely no pictures of this. No, no, no. The plane does not have to exit because you go down, you fly under the trees. Turn around.

You have a hallway, exactly. You go to the end, turn around, and then fly back out. Holy shit. You know, the problem with this is the narcos go in, and they are not local loggers who are trying to feed their family. These are professional drug traffickers, killers. And they know if anybody messes with their business, they put them down. And so when they, you know, they'll hear about the tribes,

and they're like, because they're usually coming from other parts of the Amazon. And they're like, look at all that green jungle. They're like, no cops are going out there. Yep. So we'll go out there. So they do the work to get out there. And then they find out there's these naked people out there. And they're like, well, we'll just kill them.

And nobody's going to know. And no one's going to know. And so that's a horrific thing. And we've been working with Peruvian authorities to stop that. But the most significant thing that we've done is just get, you know, we're, the other thing is people, people go, I'll get these questions or people go. I'll say, like, we just protect. We just bought 20,000 acres of the Amazon that's now protected. And people go, you can't buy the Amazon.

it's just the Amazon. I'm like, listen, the Proving governments cut it up into logging concessions. So what I've figured out with JJ is, we buy it before it's destroyed and add it to what we're trying to make is this national park

that saves the whole watershed. You're never going to make everybody happy, Paul. It's always going to be somebody's content. You could literally be Mother Teresa trying to save the Amazon with rainbows surrounding you and angels and they'd be like, fuck you. You hear me the same about Mother Teresa.

Yeah, literally. They're like she's terrible, yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah, that's the thing. It's almost like you just kind of convince the people that you can convince and get the support that you want and then just accept it. You also got to understand what the internet now so much is not even real. Some of those criticisms could be coming from cartels. Cartel groups that are lobbying against you protecting territory that they would like to exploit. Same thing with the logging companies.

I would be shocked if billion dollar corporations are not. spending hundreds of thousand dollars in bots and fake accounts just to put out hit pieces against anybody getting in their way it happens all the time in every other industry why wouldn't happen here i agree with you except for that the guys that we're dealing with on this level i i think they're the guys that sell it to the guys that sell it to the guys like these are the they're doing a thing they're doing the highways in amazon yeah they're actively lobbying you embarrass the government because you're like hey i'm going to protect the thing you were supposed to protect yeah yeah yeah the government doesn't love it

Yeah, so interestingly, I was talking to the Peruvian minister of interior. Forget what it was. We're sitting there and he was like, I love gold mining. He's like, because it makes a lot of money. And I was like, you realize gold mining destroys the forest? And he's like, he looks at me and goes, yeah, but what do you want my people to do? He's like, they got to eat. And I was like, listen, if you destroy that forest, your people are going to eat for three years while they wreck everything you can see and turn it into a like a wasteland, like dune.

You keep that forest, you establish ecotourism, you do carbon credits, you make European countries pay you to keep this habitat up. You have water now. And you have rain and you can do agriculture. Your country continues to have resources as the rest of the world falls apart. It makes you long term. It's like investing. You don't have it today. You've got it later.

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

It's the way things work. If there's land, people are going to build on it. I see this in the U.S. People inherit land. And then they're like, well, if I make subdivisions on it, I can make a couple million. And then I'm out. And it's like, well, then the capitalist entropy is always to destroy the nature. Also, if you're like a democratically elected politician, you've got to prove that you've done something good.

And if the economy looks good for two years, because you've been selling gold mining rights, all of a sudden, people like, well, no, you know, most people don't live in the Amazon. So the people in the country are going, that's been pretty good. The economy's humming. They don't realize that what's happening. Now, as far as the narco economy goes, like, why are they choosing this place? It seems so difficult to survive. Because no cops are going to show up. But what are they doing?

Are they growing? They're growing and turning it into cocaine. And then they take it down the rivers and they take it out. They figure it out. So the hub of the operation, like as far as like the- It's a small operation. Growth and processing is all done out there. Yes.

And then once it leaves the Amazon, it's already packaged ready to go. Oh, once it hits that highway. Forget it. Forget it. Have you ever come across these like packaging and growth sites? So I have not come across a packaging. I've come across growth sites. I've never come across for actually making it like a lab.

I've come across them transporting it. And I've come, you know, I've seen the guys with guns on. on the boats but I at the time I was coming down river after a multi-day solo and I was just in this little yellow raft a pack raft and I had my my my my backpack and they pulled up on me and they're like what are you doing out here and I was like I picked up my camera I was like I'm a photographer and they were like where's your guide they're like what are you doing if you're you're you're a green go foreigner because where's your guide you look like special ops bro I'm not going to lie well this is the problem and they were like fuck you you're innocent where are you and I was like what

could I was literally my Spanish was good enough at the time I was like what could I possibly do to you I was like I'm going that way you're going this way I was like I got no problems I was like also I've been out here for a week you guys got any cigarettes and they were like we got you they threw me some cigarettes I was like I'm cool I was like oh we're good yeah you know

but they their first reaction is like we'll just we'll just turn you to juice yeah I mean if you're an army fatigues yeah you say that narcos is new like within the last one to two years so what's to stop them from attacking you guys. Well, they have.

They've, they've me and JJ, and really, really now the rest of the team. Like two years ago, no, two years ago, a year and a half ago, they actually tried. They actually had people on a road stop our pickup truck, and they came in with guns

that just happened to be a day that I wasn't there and JJ wasn't there. And they pulled the car over. They pulled their driver out at gunpoint. Fuck. They took his cell phone and wallet, and they literally were like, yo, just tell them we didn't get them today,

but we're going to get them next time. So hit out on you, full hit. Full hit. And so, you know, now when we're down there, in the old days it would be like me on a boat with a motor, looking for frogs and snakes. And now when I go down there, there's 10 security guards waiting at the airport

to escort me to wherever I got to go. And I can't go anywhere alone. Like, unless I'm really in the interior, anytime I'm on a road, like there's no more like going to a cafe in town there's no more driving my boat on the river none of that there's got to be three guys at least three guys of me at all times that are armed no fuck because they would do a hit even in town on you especially in town just sitting there and there's more concentration of people so then you know someone goes yo aren't you look into that you know that

bearded italian guy with the fucking nose and they're like yeah yeah there's not that many of them here and they're like yo get down here right away and they're just you know what does it take for them to walk up behind you while you're sipping an espresso and just, you're done. They're on a motorcycle, they're out. Yeah. I think it's time to work from home, my guy. Is there a way to negotiate with them?

Like, we can't put a, we can't take like our legal system and apply it to the beginning of time. So is there a way to just be like, hey, guys, like, I'm not going to interfere with who you guys are doing. I'm just in conservation. Like, I'm not looking at your direction. Don't look at mine. There's a, the problem I have with that is, you know how Batman doesn't use guns?

Negotiating with people that are selling drugs to people and bringing human trafficking girls into prostitution and murdering the uncontacted tribes. Me being like, we'll be cool as long as you don't shoot me. They're bad guys. Yeah. And like we're not, we're not. They're not going to operate in good faith. No. And what we're trying to do is build this now.

National Park that protects the indigenous people that are earning an honest living. And there's no, like, inclusivity stops at murderer drug. I'm not saying clutum. I'm just saying you getting killed would ultimately hurt this region. Yeah. Far more. Yeah, but working with the Peruvian authorities to find a way to bring the law out there. Like part of what Jungle Keepers does now is we work with the Proving Authority.

Because people go, oh, there's South America. they're probably corrupt. They're on board, huh? They're on board. They're like, look, we want to make our country better. Yeah. And they're like, we want to go out there, but that's two days. We don't, our department doesn't give us the gasoline, and we don't have the ammunition,

and we don't have enough handcuffs to get 50 different narcos. And so what we come in is we go, look, you guys got everything you need. Go out there and get them. And so they pull the narcos off the land. They do it however they do it. And then we go get that land, add it to the reserve. And then that's more land that's safe for millions of animal heartbeats, ancient trees, the uncontacted tribes, everything.

And what's cool about this project is that, you know, a lot of organizations are trying to protect the environment or like the ocean. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, where does that start or end? And so with this, we're trying to protect this watershed, right? And so there's a start and a finish.

If there's a success line, there's a finish line. And so if we can protect the watershed and the Peruvian government agrees, they said, okay, you did all the hard work. We sign it into legislation. This is protected. protected it. Is that?

We had a success. So you get them off the land, you take their land, and then what do you do with the agriculture that would be growing over there? It's medicinal. I don't know what you're talking about. Why you're asking some questions? I'm seeing stuff starting to add.

I'm going to questions. I just want to know if you've been to the any of the indigenous people's like homes. Like have you pulled up to like their village? I don't even know what you call it. Is it like a town? Indigenous or uncontacted?

No, no. I guess either or. Uncontacted, I'd be dead. But the indigenous villages. Yeah. What does it look like? You know, they usually do a platform, and it's a lot of times it's a thatched roof, very simple, no walls. And so I, when I'm down there, I live the way they do.

Like, you know, like an A-frame, no walls. So even when I'm living comfortably, at base, I'm living in a, in a situation where, like, when I sleep at night, birds, bats, jaguars, whatever, can all come in my. room. What about mosquitoes? How are they handling mosquitoes? They a lot of times make a fire at night. I mean, people have... But you can't make fire over there. It's difficult, but they know how to do it. Got it. You haven't figured out some type of paste you can make to... There's mosquito repelling, but half of the mosquito repellent that we used, they just like it better. Oh, really? Yeah, this picture... What the mosquitoes like? They prefer? Can you pull up the picture of a little girl eating a monkey head?

Because I had to babysit for this little girl, and we were living in the outskirts of an indigenous community. And it was like time for her to eat You know And I was like what do you got And she opens the pot And there was a monkey head Whoa

And she just starts pulling There she is Dair she's adorable Yeah yeah And so she just started eating Oh wow She started eating that monkey face And she was like I can't get the ear off And I was like well I'll do it for you

And it's like now we're both sharing This monkey head You know And she's Unless she's eating a turtle She dug into that turtle man She loved that thing What's the wildest shit

That you've eaten we would be surprised by. None of it probably shocks you want. Monkeyhead. I would say that takes the cake. That's Indiana Jones shit. I never anticipated that. You know, and again.

Yeah. Oh, my God. What is the audio? It's a Yenai song that this woman was singing while she was so. Oh, no, she's getting in there. Wow, that's beautiful. Like, yeah.

Oh, she's getting in there. Oh, yeah. Look at it. Nah, bro. Yeah. Yeah Yo, Al Why are you laughing

She's a culture She's a lot of You know the monkey's neck She's also She's not even eating like The nose or the She's getting into like the underside

Yeah Like pulling out the Good part Yeah she is She's getting the good part I mean I've heard that Yeah There you go

She's adorable Get it But you know she's tough too Because she'll take Like a giant grub This big What's a grub? Like a grub

A larva of a beetle You never seen Lion King? Like the Lion King where they're sucking Like Puma and Timon where they're sucking down the grubs It's under a tree law It's a big old slug thing What's he been? I grew up in the city, guys

I did too We also I didn't have that part of line Yeah, grub in the city Yeah, that's all like grub in the city We didn't have Lion King in the city We didn't make it Moulon

I was watching Moulon guys All right guys Let's take a break for a second Because therapy is important But it can be expensive Take it from me I've been a therapy many different times in my life.

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code space 80. Also, let's just be real. ZipRecruiter is everywhere. You can't escape it. You hear it on business shows, sports shows, and even on this show. And why are they everywhere? Because great candidates for your roles are everywhere. These people are just like you. They're in their cars at the gym listening to shows like this one right now. And when these candidates hear all these ads, it increases the chances of them going to ZipRecruiter. and responding to your job post, so ultimately you meet them sooner. Of course you can't meet them unless you go to ziprecruiter.com slash flaring to try it for free. Once you post your job, ZipRecruiter's matching technology finds the top talent quickly,

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You hear another ZipRecruiter ad soon enough. Now let's get back to the show. Also, very important to note, I told you guys this from back in the day, that Man City was cheating rats. when did you bring this up I brought this the first time we're talking about football soccer I said they were Cheating Rass

when we were in Manchester doing shows I said they were little cheated rat You're such a United fan Isn't he? He is such a you have such a Manchester United First of all I haven't chosen my team yet But like I at least respect it Oh he's an Arsenal guy

You think so? Yeah I mean I mean I you know Definitely something might say Some might say I mean let's check the standing Oh they're the number one In the Premier League right now That's convenient

for me to root for whoever's on top. That's what I'm saying. I'm a Nick fan at my soul. And you're going to go for Arsenal at number one? It's hard. My point is the Knicks would never do what Man City did. Ratt up. But if you've root for Man City now, you're going to be able to ride them all the way from the bottom.

Yeah, but they were rats. I'm a New Yorker. I can't be a rat. Yeah, it can't be a rat. Come on. That's like rooting for Brooklyn. Come on. Come on.

Come on, man. You're making me a net spin. Yo. Yo, that's so true right there. If you're a New Yorker still rock Actually, I respect you if you're a New Yorker still rocking with the Nets Because you were a Nick fan your whole life And you had to watch the greatest summer of history

They got KD and they were like, oh, I love the Nets. You're a loyal little bitch All you Nets fans out there, you little loyal little bitches But yeah, it seems like Man City is probably going to get relegated So what are the chances? Well, this is just total from Kalshi's like their general EPL relegation market, which had been running since the beginning of the season. And Man City jumped up 30%.

Nah, they can't relegate. They're second in the table right now. You got to relegate the rats, man. You can't rat yourself. What do they do wrong? No, they've used their money smart in one. Do you even know what the allegation is? Is that what they're accused of them?

They're accused of being super good with money. I'm, I thought that was taught in them. I thought, wait a minute, I thought that was talking them to do that. I don't know. Why do you think them? Is that the Army? The Spos. Disposed, Army.

Are they good at that? That's what people have said on Twitter. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, if they're only accused of just spending their money wisely, then I might have to jump on board. Yeah, I guess you have to check it out. But it looks like they're going to get relegated. Yeah, they get relegated.

They might not even be a team. Cities at 66%, but Man's cities at 35%. Man, shout out Coventry City, man. We rock with you, bro. We rock with you. 100%. Not a set of braces in that city. You know, that feels north, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What part of England is that? I think their crest actually has some teeth on it. I don't know. I mean, that would be a fire crust. Yeah, also Ipswich. Yeah, Ipswich and whole city. Man.

Yeah, dude. Anyway, respect, man. We got to get back to the pod. Our fantasy commission says for him it's all about the friendships. Cute, Kevin, but I disagree. Like with Bet365. I get paid the second my team goes up big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends.

No hard feelings, Kevin. Just faster payouts from Bet365. The home of winning early. Must be 19 and older. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you were someone you know is concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca.

Or call 1866 5 through 1,2600. 2,600. Terms and conditions apply. And you're from New York. Why the jungle? Like usually you do bad in school, you go to the military. Yeah. Why the jungle? That is a great question. Nature versus nurture. I don't know.

I just remember from being about three, and my parents, we moved out of Bay Ridge, we went to Jersey. And I think part of them, they both wanted trees and nature. And on the weekends, I was like, take me to the stream. You know, I would be lifting rocks looking for salamanders. I've always been very connected to animals. I mean, the anacondas, the monkeys out of the river. I tend to have elephants.

I tend to have animal encounters whether or not I want them. And they, like, I've rescued so many animals. And so even as a kid, this thing was there where we'd be walking. And I'd be like, my parents are from Brooklyn. And I'd be like, do you see that snake in the tree? And there'd be a six-foot black snake in a tree. And like, they'd never seen anything like that in their lives. and they're like, who is this kid?

You know, I'd be like, look, there's a red-tailed hawk. You know, and just spotting things. And that was, I think that that's what happens with kids, though. Then you see what gets a reaction out of people. And so part of it was my innate love for it. And part of it was like, all right, I think I'm good at this. And they nurtured it. They thought it was cool.

And then they were like, look, my mom was a big, like, no TV. Get out the house. Yeah, get out of the house. And also just you're not allowed to watch junk. Like they're like, you can watch like David Attenborough Stever, or like old black and white movies. Yeah. Classy stuff.

And so I grew up on Steve Irwin. He's someone that I don't think anybody can really criticize. Steve Irwin, Jane Goodall. Those are two people you never hear. They'll find a way, bro. They'll find a way? I hope not. I think what they said about, what is it,

what they criticize Steve, that he's like handling the animals rough or something like that. This is, this is after the fact. These are people that I was on a... Bunny Huggers. They're bunny huggers. I was on a podcast called a Mutiator podcast a couple of weeks. ago and they're like they're hunters right these are like guys out west at hunt that's their primary interaction but i didn't realize like all of the conservation area in the u.s they're the ones managing it

the people you know eating drinking green juice on the coasts and advocating for the the rights of turkeys they're not the ones making sure that like BLM lands are this is bureau of land management by the way you tell him tell him different stickers but like you realize you know, these guys, yeah, they're taking a deer or an elk, but they're also hypervigilant about how those populations are doing. Hypervigilant about making sure that the

politicians don't put roads through those areas and that those ecosystems continue and that there are trout in the streams. Yeah. And so there's that juxtaposition of like, yeah, we hunt, yeah, we fish, because we care. Yeah. And actually, those ecosystem services

that come standard with life on earth, they only get messed up when people stop relying on them. Like if we all were eating salmon out of the river, we'd be like, do not fuck with the river. There was a, I think you were talking Alex about it, but it was about a, some sort of like ranch. I'm not exactly sure it was where they had rehabilitated and like started to breed like rhinos or something like that. But you could also hunt on the ranch. But it was done in a way, like you couldn't do with rhinos.

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

Life is a momentary stasis. The jungle is just a meat grinder. It's just, and so then you come to treasure life. And so what, and then let's go back to the spider monkey on that. But the thing that like when I have students come, we have student groups come to the Amazon. And one of the tricks I'll play on them is it'll be like, guys, we're all eating vegetarian for a few days because we only care about nature. And after like two days, you'll get, usually it's one of the guys first. I'll be like, yo man, he's like, I need some meat.

You know, like, yeah, you do. Yeah, I know you do. And they'd be like, how do you, you know, hey? And I'd be like, oh, I eat lots of meat. And I'm like, you guys want meat. You're going to have to kill a chicken. And most of the kids are like, we're not doing that. I'm like, do you eat chicken every day?

Yeah, you want someone else. And you bring in a chick, pooh, pooh, pooh, but, oh, he's cute. There's one girl. She was like, I can't watch this. And I said, what are you studying? And she goes, I'm a veterinary student. I said, you know what you're going to do? You know how many dogs you're going to have to put down as a veterinary student?

I was like, you watch me kill this chicken. And she was like, I can't. I was like, you're going to have to change majors. Yeah. You know, and it's so quick. You know, you put a chicken's head on the log. You calm them down. Give them a drink of water.

And then you just take a machete and go whack. There's no suffering. There's no period of discomfort. Yeah. Lights out. Yeah. And so as long as it's done really ethically and learn that that's how you eat. Yeah.

We're so disconnected. Or eat avocados the rest of your life. Whatever you want to do. But even those, you know, I don't know. I just think that Daira over here eating a moment. As shocking as it is to eat a primate, right? It's not super appealing that face. But I do think that there is almost a sacred beauty about being connected to our ecosystems

and we've become so disconnected to the point that people think that it's bad to like to hunt an elk. And in this country where we have part in the ecosystem. We have ecologists working with the government to say we're going to make sure that we're not depleting this population and in fact what we're going to do is keep it at the carrying capacity where it's doing good. And then you have people be like, that's terrible. I just, I don't do bunny huggers. I got a jungle to protect.

I have one mission in life. I don't concern myself with anything else. And if they have a problem with it, they should come out. They want to go talk to the uncontacted tribes about not eating turtles. Like, I understand like hunting if you're going to actually consume the animal. But what about just game hunting? So I don't like trophy hunting at all. But in Africa right now, there's a lot of land.

This is like one of those truths that whether you like it or not, a lot of the land, like you're saying, that it's protected for wildlife, is either phototourism or game hunting, sometimes both. And so the places that I've worked in Africa have been hunting reserves where they don't hunt the rhinos or the elephants. Yeah. But things like zebras and water, Buffalo and things.

You're talking about people paying 80 grand to hunt a buffalo. No one's going to pay 80 grand to take a picture of a buffalo. So you make 80 grand on an old buffalo who's messing up the younger buffaloes. But that's an important distinction, at least how you said it, is like the ecosystem isn't exactly balance because there's security and safety there. So you have certain populations that start to like fluctuate an age. Older buffalo is hanging around, not giving the younger buffaloes the opportunity to like create. They're prides or whatever families. They're just, they're over the hill.

They're on their way out. They wouldn't be taken out by a predator that might not exist in that capacity there. So there's a version where you can make the argument that you are ethically game hunting these animals. The other thing is a high-powered rifle is going to kill an animal like that. Yeah. Right. Hard shot. A team of hyenas is going to rip them apart.

You know when you see the animal like looking backwards as they're pulling its guts out? And it's like, dude, you know what? I'll take the 357. Like, I'm cool. And so look, that one's complicated. I think this is way above the pay grade of bunny huggers. You know, like understanding like eating a trout is like where we start the 101 level. The complexities of like big game hunting than other one.

And so like you mentioned this before and I don't want to miss it because it's important. But when I pulled that spider monkey out of the river, people, said two things. They said, A, there's no way you were speaking, Spider-Monkey, and I said sure as hell it was. You didn't trust me until I spoke Spider-Monkey. And next, people were saying, well, why? Most people were like, thank you.

Right? Like, save the Spider-Monkey. Some people were going, why didn't you, how could, why don't you just let it die? Bro, you've got to get a dating app just to put that picture up, bro. The damage that that picture would do on a dating app? Go back to that. Mad, Mary. Mad, Married. I know you married, but

I got the one I want. I know you married, but God! Henry Cavill helping a monkey out of the river. So that's better than a fish pick? I feel like that's what a lot of guys go with. You don't need a fish pick. You're dragging a monkey out of the

fucking river. Yeah, of course. Can't get that wet. Can't get that shirt wet. We got to save the answer, my boy. Small fucking threw the monkey in like two seconds before. A peep game. Mark made a great point.

point, Mark, which is like, sometimes you'll see these, you should say it, but about the nature docs where they're like, you can't. Oh, yeah, we're talking about it before. I thought this is a great point. But there's nature docs. There's one I can think of specifically where there's a big, like, pit in the Arctic, and a penguin fell in and got stuck. And the penguin's trying to climb up and it slides back down, tries to climb up, slides back down, and film crews up above, and they're filming it. And then the narrator comes on, it's like, due to our contract with nature, we don't intervene. and we leave this penguin to die.

Cut to black. And I'm on home with my wife and my son. I'm like, what? You let the penguin die of starvation and exposure in the middle of a pit? And it's like we're a part of nature, to an extent. We are. In my mind, if I'm there, and I would like to believe this film crew did not let the penguin die. And that they're like, okay, technically because we're filming permits, we have to save this.

And that they went in there and launched them out of the pit. Well, there was one where they did that. There was a whole colony. You saw that one. There was a whole colony. It was like several hundred penguins. And whatever reason, like the way that they got down to this area was too steep to get back up. And they just made a decision and they filmed it all and they carved steps into this thing.

And they saved the whole colony. Far. But like, again, this could be AI videos that I watch. But is it not abnormal that like if a certain animal sees like a baby version of prey that they won't kill it? Or they just tear it up. That's a weird, like, like, like found a feather. Glitching. He's back.

What kind of birds are you killing? Do you have any chickens? That's a weird one. There's a few examples of that where like a lion will kill a gazelle and the baby will be left over. And then it's like, maybe this baby's okay. And then it'll kind of take care of it for a few days. But I think that the thing of leaving animals, here's the thing. If you're interrupting a predation event, for example, if there's let it go.

Let it go. Then don't, do not intervene. And no matter you're saying is like if some hyenas are attacking a zebra No matter how brutal it is. It is what it is. I watched a cheetah and her cubs rip apart an Impala

and she was pregnant so she couldn't get away. And what they did, the cheetah caught the Impala and then she let her cubs practice on it to kill it. Wow. And so they didn't kill her quick. They distanced it out. They dismantled her. And then they went for the soft bits inside. It was like, we were

sitting there watching it and it was like, you're getting like drunk watching it. It was rough. But like with a spider monkey, I said to people like, dude, it was just going to die for no reason. Yeah. Like there was, what you can't see in the videos. It's like, it's all these back currents and whirlpools and I lifted her up. You know, I could have just like animal controlled her

and like grabbed her by the head. But I was like, she's a spider monkey. So I lifted her up by the kayak paddle. And she was like, you know, at first she was like, no, and jumps back in the river. And then when I lifted her up and I started going, oh, which is kind of their little language.

You can see she looks at me. She goes, oh, really? She goes, all right, cool. She was like hanging on. You can see that part where she looks back at me. She's like, what? And so I had this amazing moment with her. Just like right there, right there, right there where she looks backwards.

Right there. She grabs it with her tail as well. Well, her tail is the coolest part of a spider monkey. Yeah. And so at this point, I'm going. Just kind of, and I'm going. it's okay, it's okay. And then she looks at where she looks back at me,

she's like, what? Like, what's happening here? Like, how did I get out of this river? Look. She's like, what? Wow. And she's like, this is worse, this is better than drowning. Yeah.

Yeah. No, are they any threat? Like a spider monkey? No, no, no, they're good. Okay, so right here gets off. And then she's back up. She goes back up into the tree. Is there any recognition?

Yeah. You stabs you up? Yeah, is they like, thank you. It's not dankless, these spider monkeys. Spider-Moggies got a crazy story, though. You're not going to fucking believe what just happened. So I was drowning. This naked, ripped monkey jumping.

Okay, you got to tell us about the Anacondas, man. So that was the thing. JJ, JJ was like, look, I know everything about the jungle. I'll teach you about the jungle. He's like, you got to explain a bit of snakes. And so I started showing him snakes. and I started showing them bigger snakes, and then I started going, but where are the anaconda?

So you're aware going into the Amazon, obviously, that the biggest snakes in the world are the anaconda. And they exist in the Amazon, and they're kind of like things of myth and legends at a certain point, right? Yeah, we've seen anacondas. Yeah, you see anacondas, but then there's anacondas. And how big are the anacondas? A normal male, I'd say, is like nine feet, nine to 11 feet.

You know, big snake. Okay. Not going to break the bent. You know, a big female. You see that picture of me right there with the... Jesus. There. That's like a 15-foot snake.

That's not that big, though that's AI. And then some of these females, reptiles have indeterminate growth. Like, we grow to a certain height, and then that's it. Like, we usually just get fatter. Snakes and crocodiles will just keep growing, as long as you keep feeding them, as long as they keep living. And so fishermen know this. you'll get like this giant catfish that'll find this perfect spot and it'll live there forever. Crocodiles will do the same thing or they'll find a backwater that just there's a good prey source

and they won't move. They'll get shrewd. They'll stay alive because they're careful. And the big anacondas, they'll go far from people on a swamp. That's the floating forest that we found with this floating vegetation over this deep swamp and there's trees growing from the bottom of it. See if you type in floating forest. And, yeah, see the down, down, down, right to the drawing, yeah. So I tried to draw what it was like when we tried to catch one of these snakes, and it was so big. And so the trees are coming up from the bottom of this lake. Can you stand on them?

Not on the trees, but there's floating grass, floating grass on top of the lake. And it can support you. Good enough. Now, the interesting thing is, if you're a snake, it supports you perfectly. Right. Because your weight is distributed. Yeah. As a human, you're walking like this.

this and you're like straight down nightmare soup stingrays piranha crocodiles diatoms it's all kinds of stuff swimming in there's black water down there but the big anacondas there real big anacondas there and so the biggest ones that we've caught get like oil drum size and the thing that we're that you know at first it started out as us just going looking for anacondas and then it became us realizing that there's not a lot of scientific data on how many anacondas are there. Are we losing anacondas? Are they an endangered species? We have no idea.

Because no one's going through the swamps to do this. You know, birds, you can sit on the side of a river with binoculars and be like, they're 14 parrots. That's very good. Anacondas is like, yo, let's get in the swamps up to our necks at two in the morning and go looking for dragons. And it's like, you've got to be out of your fucking mind. I mean, and I say that some of the times that we're out there, we look at each other and we're like we shouldn't be here. You said two in the morning?

Yeah. So you're going when it's pitch black. That's the only chance you have with that? It's not the only chance. Or you could go at like 9 a.m. when the sun gets over the trees because then they're, you're walking through this tall grass. And what you look for is bees and butterflies really like salt. And also when the snakes shed, they have a scent and the insects like it.

And butterflies especially will go. So you're walking through the grass and you'll see like butterflies going to this one spot in the grass. and you're like, and there'll be an anaconda just, you know, curled up. Crazy poetry. Dinner table-sized anaconda. You see these pretty butterflies. You're like, this is gorgeous. Next to the apex predator and dragon on the grass.

And you know what the crazy thing is? I've caught 90-something anacondas, seen double that. And even a snake this big, you go up to it. And you're like, we got to get this snake. We're going to be on the front cover of National Geographic if we get this one. And we're on all this floating vegetation. And you're like, if this thing turns around, we're all going to die. and we go to try and restrain it so we can measure it and study it and the thing just dives down just dives down

that picture i was showing you i once jumped on the back of one that that carried me over the floating grass and she was just trying to swim she was just getting to the edge and going down never even turned around could have you know with a head this big like a great dane she could have turned around and done anything she wanted to but it they're they're pretty peaceful We're learning that they're not ambush predators the way we thought they were. They actually do travel through streams through the jungle to hunt other animals. We found one, again, butterflies and anacondas. This is this weird thing.

The blue morphos. Me and JJ were tracking peccary, which is like the pigs, through the jungle. And this point he's just teaching me to track. And so we're just running around barefoot through the jungle. And we get to the stream and he's like, you know what? We lost them. Here's the tracks in the mud. This is where they cross and he's like they're so far ahead of us.

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

Oh no. And this anaconda has one of the pigs. He got it by the jaw, bent it in half. And the sound I was hearing was the spine breaking as this anaconda just constricted the life out of this wild boar. And I'm standing right there. And we got one picture of it. And it's like, you don't think you're ever going to see this shit in real life. Have you had them attack you?

Anacondas? No. They don't attack. Not attack, but like wrap around you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first one I ever caught around that time, the first one that I ever got, I clamped hands on it. Because the way, you know, if you want to get control over a snake's head, you grab it like this, and then it can't, you know, I'm talking big, big snakes. They can't. You got them right behind the head. You get them too far back.

They're on your arm. So I got this big snake. I'm like, I got it. This is great. And JJ's running full steam from like 100 yards down. And I'm like, I got this snake. And then it wraps my arms, clamps them together. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, change. And then it went over my shoulders. And now it pulls me to the ground. And so I made this mistake. I went after the anaconda, grabbed her by the neck, and she went, well, I'm going to remove the threat. Come here. Like someone doing jiu-jitsu, it's like, come here. I'll get in my guard position and invite you in here.

And then she just started crushing. And so it was hands, and I was like, I want to get rid of this snake. Couldn't do it. Now I'm in the handcuffs. And then she goes around my shoulders. And then she's pulling me like this. What's the sensation of just being crushed? Well, I just went, holy shit.

This is how I die? I was like, my mother would fucking hate. me for dying this way like voluntarily jumping on a dangerous animal and and every time you breathe out you can't breathe in again and so i had this sudden thing of like and we've been breathing since the moment we left our mothers and so you breathe all day long all night long and then you never think about and then you suddenly denied breath and the finality of going am i i'm like i know i'm about to die and i'm about to die and right as i my kind of clavicle is just about the but I was hearing it go.

And then JJ comes and just, like, tackles me down and pulls the tail off. And then his brothers kind of unwound me. And I was holding on. Yeah, they saved my life. And I never made that mistake again. We do this with a bigger team now. The mistake was you going alone. The mistake was me going in alone.

That was stupid. I was, like, 19. And my defense. But didn't you, like, tried to get swallowed by an anaconda? Yeah. And voluntarily? Voluntarily. And the reason was I went to, at the time, I was, you know, I don't know how to say.

It was like 25 and I was getting a little bit of attention for this shit and living out in the jungle. And then you get these emails or phone calls from like producers. And they'd be like, yo, jungle guy. Like you want to do something like a show. Careful. And that's the thing though. At that age, at that age you got stars in your eyes and you go, I want this. Yeah.

And you go, I want that. I could do like what Steve Irwin did. And you start going, I could do this. You know, and then you get in rooms with people. And they're like, man, we've never seen anybody like you. Like, shake my hand, sign this contract. And pretty soon, they're going to ring or buy. They said, if you dress up in this suit that we're going to make and try and get swallowed by an anaconda,

you'll have a platform on Discovery Channel to tell everyone about this jungle that you want to protect. And so it's not. worth going into more than it was bullshit it was fake I got Hollywooded really hard it was a disaster probably took five years off of my career knocked me down which was great because I learned those people that say like get make friends with failure this was a great one yeah I got a little bit starry-eyed I tried too hard too fast got smack down for it yeah and then I spent years back in the Amazon back to basics I kind of had to exile to India for a while it ended up I got to live with a herd

of elephants for a while. Like I had to really reenter and sort of re-ask myself the question of like, what do you want to be? You're trying to be a TV guy that shows people, animals, or you're trying to save a river and do something meaningful? Is it really about the heartbeats or is it about you being a famous wildlife guy? And what makes that change and when do you realize that change? This is in India? No, no, no, no. This is when when when I was back in the Amazon. It's like the first time, you know, you can run around and have adventures and jump in the water and climb the trees. And that's great. Who's it helping? You know, and it's, it's, you got to decide what character are you. And I always think this when you get, when you get someone that's

like following the rules and they're like, you got here five minutes late, you can't come in. And it's like, what character did you want to be? Well, at my cousin's wedding, we were at Fordham University And I remember they wanted to take pictures in this one building. And security guard comes in. And he goes, you guys can't be in here. Get out. And they were like, yo, it's our wedding. He was like, I don't care.

Get out. And your car is. And he was yelling at them. And my one friend went over to the guy. He goes, buddy, buddy, buddy. Come here for a second. He goes, it's their wedding. He goes, they're going to be out of here in five minutes.

He goes, who do you want to be? He goes, did you want to be this guy as a kid? And the guy just went, no. And he went, I'm sorry. He goes, guys, finish up. He goes, but, you know, in like five. minutes to get out of here so I don't got to deal with it and it took him down a notch but it's like you know do you want to be the guy that's polluting the river do you want to be the guy that's

killing the nice bright do you want to be the people on which side of the avatar movie do you want to be you want to be with the blue people or do you want to be with the people shooting them yeah and we get to decide that and so the first time that i saw my jungle that i'd come to love with my monkeys and my jaguar, these animals that I've come to love and see as almost like neighbors. You wake up in the morning, you're like, oh, the macaws are out, you know. There's the spider monkeys and, like, you know, you wave to them and they, like, pee at you and stuff. And it's like, you have a relationship with them. Yeah.

And the first time you see jungle just leveled. And the old trees that you walked under are smoking on the ground. Like fern gully. Remember that movie? I don't. Same concept. It's just, it rips your heart out. It rips your heart out.

And then you go, I don't really have a choice. It's not a choice anymore. You go, no one is going to do this if we don't do it. At that point, we were the only people out there. And so I said to JJ one day when we were standing there just with tears in our eyes and black ashes all over us, we've been trying to save whatever animals we could from what had been a beautiful, pristine area. And I said, there has to be someone we can call who can do something about this.

Like, isn't there, someone has to stop this? and he looked at me and he goes, he goes, look up river. I look up over him. He goes, look down there this way. He goes, you see anybody else? And he really meant it. He said, no one's going to do anything unless we do it. No help is coming.

So we made jungle keepers and we started, and this is why I said it's great that I got smack down. It's great that I didn't have a television career because at that age I would have ruined it. I would have been such an asshole. And so it's it you know This forced us back into the Amazon to make us You know make this Basically you know Rubbing sticks together we said okay

How do we get our first ranger? And he was like Let's just go talk to some loggers We went and talked to the loggers and we said Who owns this land that you guys are cutting down all these trees on And they're like so and so and we're like cool We went and talked to so and so and we said look How long you know how much money how long how much land And the guy's like you know 7000 acres

You know like a hundred grand, whatever you want. He's like, but it's going to be, we said, we'll pay it tomorrow. And I'd been raising money from doing this stuff, doing publicity books. And we paid the guy. And then we went back to the loggers on the ground. So now we own the land. We went back to the loggers on the ground. We go, so you guys, how long you've been out here? And they're like, dude, we've been out here for three months. And like, I got a leg infection. And like, my kid is sick. And like, there's nothing to eat. And like, the trees are dangerous. And we're like, yeah, you want a better job?

They're like, we'll give you jungle keeper shirts, and you get a boat, and you're going to be part of an organization, and we're actually going to start protecting the forest. And you know, the first question they asked us was, they go, do we have to leave? And I said, what do you mean? They go, we don't really want to leave. They're like, we love it here. I said, you're cutting down the trees, but you love it. And they're like, we got to feed our kids. And we were like, let's get you guys signed up.

And that's how jungle keeper started. And then once 2019 came and the Amazon was burning, and then I sort of. got another shot when I released this video where I was screaming in the Amazon being, I'm like, you fucking people don't realize every day. I just lost my mind on my phone. And I posted it, and it went mega viral. Because I just lost it. I just lost it. I'd never swore. I'd never sworn on Instagram. I'd never, I was like crying and sweating. And there was animals dying behind me. It was 70 foot flames. And I was just like, welcome to the fucking Anthropocene. Because it's like, dude, we're losing the Amazon rainforests. They're talking about life on

earth being in danger. All you have to do is not cut down trees. All you people to do is nothing and everything will be okay. This is the fire right here. That's the video. And why is it burning? Because people set it on fire. Why? The Amazon doesn't burn.

Look at that. Look at that. That's the shit that I can't stand. That's the shit that breaks my heart. Yeah, you were saying... Why do that... Farnment. Space. Oh, just for formally. So they're wasting some of those trees. are worth like 100 grand, 300 grand a tree, so those mahogany trees.

Yeah. And they waste it. They cut it down so that they can like farm papayas. There are people from other parts of the Amazon. These aren't the local people doing it. Is it like foreign investors? Are there people from other countries buying this and being like, yeah, burn it down, plant papayas, grows?

There's that as well. Where we are, it's a lot of just like migrant people coming in from Venezuela, Brazil, other parts of Peru. And they'll just burn 10 acres. Now again, you have a highway that was never there before. You have new roads that were never there before. And I'm talking about in human history.

And now they're coming in and they're burning parts of the jungle that were never accessible to humans. And so this is what I keep telling everybody. We have the chance to save the crown jewel of nature on our planet. Just like Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, they went in and they saved Yosemite and Sequoia. And now Sequoia trees are the most incredible thing, the largest trees on Earth, and they're safe. And we all get to enjoy them. we can protect one of the greatest natural treasures we have on this planet right now, if we can do it.

And we've been asking everybody for help. We need about $20 million to protect the rest of the river. That's it. That's not that much money. No. To protect 500,000 acres of forest, no, it's not that much. I'm shocked at some, like, billionaire that, you know, has a boner for nature doesn't just cough up that 20 to you. Yeah.

And, you know, what's been more effective is what we, Eventually, we had more people coming. Me and JJ are really good at catching fish with our feet and navigating the jungle. We needed people that knew how to make an organization, how to do the website of it. I've never used a spreadsheet. I don't know what that is. And so the guy Stefan, who became part of our organization, he figured out, okay, and this was interesting before the first time. So 2019, I got this big hit of publicity.

And so I had had the discovery thing, got knocked down. 2019 I'm still on my own but now I got really like viral famous for this video and I was like you got to help me and like millions of people contacted me I had no way of doing anything I didn't have any way of taking their donations I didn't know who was good and who was bad there was a lot of bad people coming out of the woodwork to try and take advantage of me people wanting JJ's number people trying to ask me if I and you know do you want to be unnaked and afraid and all this kind of shit and all I wanted to do is protect the forest and I said the analogy is like I put out 10,000 fishing lines with 10,000 hooks

and everything bit. Boat capsizes. Yeah. So interestingly then we get a few more years to build and now it's like 2023 and out of nowhere Lex messages me and he goes, do you want to be on this podcast I do? And I was like, the Lex fucking Friedman podcast. Yeah. And so we kind of knew that this was going to be a big moment.

A big moment and we got the website ready and we made donor portals and we'd become a 501c3 in the U.S. And so now we started this, we did the podcast and people loved it. Yeah. And all of a sudden we got donations and then we started protecting acres. And then as you get momentum, everybody roots for the Yankees. Once you start doing well, no one was there when you were barefoot machete days. Now all of a sudden you're like, we're protecting 50,000 acres. We are the jungle keepers.

We're not baking it until we make it anymore. we're really doing it. Yeah. And so now we have this organization, and I tell people, this is the most crucial moment in history, in world history, because we've had World War I, World War II, there's, you know, civilizations rise and fall. There's never been a time when the entire environment is being attacked.

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

you do realize we could kind of, we could stabilize out. Is tourism helpful? In the way that, you talk about these like safaris and things like that, this in Central Africa, it helps the economy. Is it helpful for someone to get on a plane and fly here to experience it? Very much so. And so when I met JJ, he was trying this and it wasn't working. And now with the exposure we've gotten, what we do is, for instance, that treehouse, the Alta treehouse,

Alta Sanctuary Treehouse. We built it to share the canopy with people. Well, we didn't realize how it was how magical it was. And so like families were going to come up there. And that then along with providing conservation rangers that we could be like, hey, do you know how to cook? Jump in the kitchen. And we're going to send you to chef school. And then you can come back and cook professionally. Boat driver, boat driver, boat driver. You guys can guide who's good at birds. and all of a sudden you're employing 35 people to run this tiny little lodge. And if the jungle we're saving

is an entire football field, I'm talking about like a dime-sized area that we use for tourism. So people, like, how could you bring people to the wildest place? That's terrible. You're ruining the... Shut up.

We're using this much of it, a dime size on a football field. And we're bringing people to show them how beautiful it is, employing all these people. And so then the indigenous communities, the ones that we're in contact with, They go, oh, wait, we don't want a road.

Like, we don't want like a McDonald's. We don't want to become narco-traffickers. We want to be with those guys. And we're all having fun, showing people beautiful blue butterflies watching the sunrise over the thing and sipping coffee. And suddenly you come up with a sustainable future where the local people win. The wildlife continues to thrive. The ancient trees grow higher. And everything's okay.

And it's like, we just need people to, we're so close. $20 million. What we do right now is we have people, like people come up to me. they give $5, $10 a month. Some people give like $100 a month. People all over the world. And so I'll help you in the airport on my way here. And somebody stopped and they were like, yo, I'm a jungle keeper.

And I was like, no shit. That's fine. And she's like, yeah, she's like, I've been giving $5 a month for the last two years. And I was like, well, we're halfway to make this national park. We're going to make a donation on behalf of this podcast. We got that. I appreciate that. But also we're going to put the link there.

So anybody else watching. If they feel motivated, that'd be absolutely awesome. Yo, 20, you can do. I thought it was going to do with just the people. I don't know, no, no, no. You kind of got to leave with 20. 20 is very doable. 20 million to protect the wildest, most species diverse place on Earth.

It's not that much to ask. People spend 20 million on a new cafeteria. It's like not that much money. And with social media, with podcasts, if you reach, I mean, you get 20 million people to give one dollar. That's the thing. Forget if you get people to donate, you know, a mocha, Chino Starbucks, when people get. You know, I drink river water. I don't know.

Orange Moka Frappuccino, whatever they're called. I don't know. It's possible. No, it is possible. I think you're going to do it. And you're going to do it. We're working very, we're risking our lives to do it. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second.

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Cute, Kevin, but I disagree. Like with about 365, I get paid the second my team goes up big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends. hard feelings, Kevin. Just faster payouts from Bet365. The home of winning early. Must be 19 and older. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you were someone you know is concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca or call 1866 5 through 1,2,600. Terms and conditions apply. Speaking of risking your lives, can you take us through this? Okay. How fucked are you? This is the Paul Rosley scale. We're all in the Amazon. We come across a Jaguar 1 to 10. How

How fucked are we? You can also elaborate on the 1 to 10, but how fucked are we? All right. The answer is going to shock you. Okay. There's a Jaguar right there? Right there. You are 0% fucked.

Really? Jaguar's going to sit there and look at you. Jaguar and give a shit. Yo, I was checking it. This is a camera trap, okay? This is a remote camera that takes pictures, right? I'm on the trail and I'm setting this camera trap up and I'm doing my thing and I'm opening it, checking the batteries, checking the settings.

And I hear footsteps behind me, right? And it's good that you guys got plants here. for this reenactant. This is perfect. Okay? I'm sitting right there where I just was. A Jaguar walks by like this. Just goes, so.

Keeps walking. I was within five feet of a jaguarian. Do they not see you as prey? No, they don't care. Plus, we smell like shit. We smell like shit. Yeah, we smell like shampoo and deodorant and all this stuff.

Toothpaste. Not all of us. Yeah. Not all of us. I got a natural. It's a natural. They're a little bit. Glad to know he'll be in first.

I'm bathing in the Gowanus. So they wouldn't eat us at all? No. In my entire... In the region, in the Madre de Dios, I have never once heard of a jaguar attacking a person, not once. Now, what if we fuck up crazy? Like, we're all out there and Alex goes, guys, look what I found.

Holds up a baby jaguar. I'll go, where did you get that? He goes, oh, I found it. And then I'll send you here. I would do something like that. 100% fucked. 100%. That mother jaguar.

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

But you would have deserved it. So just fun. You had a comment. Black Cayman. Black Cayman. What is that? Black Cayman, again, middle of the day time, it's the biggest Cayman. It's a

You know We have smooth fronted came in We have spectacle came in Like I'm lacking Go to that picture The butterflies Bottom center Bottom center

Look at that I love this picture Look at that That's the Amazon for I'm telling you The butterflies They want the salt That comes in the corners

Of your eyes Oh wow Yeah And so they And like look They're by the nostrils And by the eyes And they're fighting for position

Crazy Yeah Are we fucked For one to 10 We're swimming Okay, so you're swimming in a lake at night. Yep. And there's a 15-foot black cammon, you're toast.

Okay, 10 out of 10. Okay. Green anaconda. Again. The 50-50. If you're walking or you're in a boat and you see a green anaconda sitting there and this green anaconda is taking in the sun and she just ate a big capy bearer and it's a normal day, 10 out of 10 safe.

If you're messing around in a swamp, filling a pot and washing. and you're a little drunk and you do this regularly and you're in a deep part of the Amazon and that snake is hungry? She's going to grab you by the face, drag you down to hell, and all your bones are going to be broken and then she's going to swallow you and you're going

to decompose inside of her. Nice. Have you heard of stories where people get eaten by my friend's father got swallowed by one? Also, cool side quest with this is that anacondas will try to eat turtles, like big land turtles, like tortoises.

And we found the bones of a 16-foot anaconda. And in the center of the ribs was a huge tortoise shell with nothing in it. And I wasn't this forensic with it, but JJ was like, you realize what happened here? I was like, what? And he was like, the anaconda swallowed the giant tortoise. And then the tortoise, it wasn't crushed to death because it's a tortoise. and then it just sat there just digging inside the anaconda until it tore up its stomach and the anaconda died

and I was like how did you even think of that and JJ was like this is obvious just like he did this thing and I write about this in the book is one of my earliest lessons we're walking and he sees some sand and there's jaguar footprints and he stops in this beautiful day

there's butterflies flying through these cathedral ceiling emerald green and JJ goes tell me what happen here. I go, what do you mean? He goes, it's like the morning newspaper. He goes, tell me what happened here. He goes, read the ground. I said, okay. I said, well, there's Jaguar footprints, and he's like, great. And there's Jaguar footprints with the toes down right by the edge of the water. I said, oh, the Jaguar drank. I know the Jaguar drank. He goes, very good. He goes, keep looking. And I like, and then I was like, look at this. And it's like a big log of Jaguar shit.

A big one. And then we pick it up. It's a whole. hard log. It looked like it hurt coming out. And so he picked the hair out and he goes, what kind of hair is this? And I was like, red brocket deer. And he's like, yes. And I was like, I got it right. That's pretty good. Yeah. You're at like level four now. I'm doing good. Yeah. But then I'm about to fail because he's like,

so what else? I'm like, what do you mean? What else? I'm like, the Jaguar drank after eating a red brocketeer. And he's like, what else? And I was like, I don't know. Long story short, he shows me that there's two different places where the Jaguar drank. and one of them has like bits of leaves in it and one of them has little bits of water still in it which means it just put those impressions and just left you know it's like somebody leaves a teacup and it's still smoking

and we were like whoa so it's like you're saying he was just here and I said well wait they walk so why would the jaguar be here yesterday and today and he was like think and I was like he killed a deer and he's eating the deer and then he came here to drink drink and he took a shit and then he came back and he's still right here and he's like yeah and he's like and look at that and there's these vultures right there and they're not looking at us

they're looking at that way and he's like so the jaguar's right over there so tall fucking lower wow and I was like you and that's what he would do he would sit there he sit there and just be like tell me what's going I love these I love Bushmaster's storage just like a guy just like a Bushman like out there just like finding it's my favorite thing it's like reading the jungle

Yeah, like reading the junk. It was like, you hear dumb things who are like, oh yeah, the Native Americans, they can see where the moss grows and they know, like, it's true. Is it really? Well, I mean, look, the story I just told you, you know, any of us would walk by,

not see the Jaguar Prince, maybe see the poop, not know what it was from, whereas he sees a whole story. And it's evident to him. So as he's walking, you know, you think of like the Terminator Vision where it's downloading all this information. Like, I'm like green,

tree, water, rock. And he's like, that's a capirona tree. He's like, those are, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And he's going through all of this stuff with all this indigenous thing. He's like, there's an ayahuasca vine. And he was like, there's the type of plant that does this.

And we're over there getting 2% of that information. I'm like, oh, that's a blue morpho. Like, that's a, you know, whip snake. Do you have other specific stories of like things that we would all miss that they are able just to say, I know exactly what this is and it actually was useful? Wow, I mean, there's so many things like, like I was on a trail with Ignacio on a horrible, long expedition, and he saved us from actually, these are not the uncontacted tribe on our river. We'd gone to another part.

And he just put his hand on my chest one day, and he's like, we're done. We're going back. And I was like, what do you mean? What are we doing? What are we going back for? And he was like, he like, I never would have noticed it, but there's an X of sticks on the trail. And he goes, that's their way of saying, don't go farther. Oh, shit.

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

It's like having a gate on your property. It's like a stop sign. What's farther? What's farther? Yeah, what was over there? Their territory. Oh. Yeah.

No, that was like their gate. That's their front yard. They were gently saying. you go past here. It's on. And fair game. Second Amendment. Castle doctrine. Castle doctrine. What about the indigenous people? Like any

spirituality, brew ha stuff? Yes. Now we're talking. Now we're talking. That's what we want to hear about. Because this is Peru, you know? It is Peru. Yeah, everybody, you know, I don't know what's going on in the last two years. I'm like, I work in the Amazon trying to protect the Peruvian jungle. Ayahuasca. Do you do ayahuasca? I did ayahuasca in Brooklyn last week.

Paul, Paul. Funny you mentioned that. Alex did ayahuasca in some guy's house in New Jersey. Was he a shaman? No, actually, they were from South America. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you assess his experience just through a few questions? You described as a Bushman.

Wait, I don't want to assess his experience. I'd like to hear about it. Mark said that he did ayahuasca the way you should have done iwomen. She's just in the house in New Jersey. Yeah, she's a medicine woman. She's been doing it from, she's from Columbia, like she's been doing it, and her family's been doing it for like decades and decades.

And so she like travels and does this and spreads the medicine, as they say. I think that's, I mean, that sounds like you're doing it with someone that's legit, and that's important. My only assessment of that, not that I have any right to assess. anything, is that my guys, my shamans in the jungle would say, if you're not doing ayahuasca

in the jungle, you're not really doing ayahuasca because it's from the jungle. And because they still can't, out of the, I think it's 15,000 just tree species and then all the other vines and lianas and plants, that if you calculate, you know, they say every time you mix a deck of cards, that combination has never existed before which I find mind bending but if you look at the combinations of all the plants in the Amazon coming up with the two plants that you have to mix together to make ayahuasca they can't figure out how it happened you would need many more centuries and millenniums for that to happen so they say that it really is a gift from the gods of the jungle to us so that we can blend into the spirit realm and that's why my guys are I mean these are indigenous guys they're

very, very hard-lined on that. If you're going to do ayahuasca, you must be in the jungle so that you can feel it move through you. And when you listen to them sing, they're singing about the Anaconda, the great Anaconda carving the rivers, and they're singing about the stars becoming butterflies, and they're singing about the ancient trees and the life cycle going back. And so it does move through you in a very interesting way where you can almost feel the jungle. So I can't speak to not doing it in the jungle because I can't imagine it.

But I'm sure it's still a powerful experience. How many times have you said? I've done four and I'm retired. Oh, really? What? I'm good. Yeah. I met God. And I don't want to say, you know, I said the next time I do it, I'd like to be dead. Is there a number of times God's like you again? You didn't get the message? Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. It's kind of like New Yorkers with people. pizza, right? They're always like, I'm in New Yorkers. The only place you can eat pizza. We never stop eating pizza. No, New Yorkers are like you only eat pizza in New York.

If you go anywhere else, it's not a real New York pizza. It's kind of like Ayahuasca in the jungle. It's like you can only get real Iwaska. I thought we were still on the God thing. No, no, I mean, we eat pizza outside New York, but yeah, we judge it. But we judge it. We judge it. There's no. Yeah. And it's kind of like your guys down there being, you know, the territorial with

the ayahuasca. But you know what? It's like, you're right. It's exactly like that. You're right. It's exactly like anything else. isn't the real deal. And like, I get it. I really do get it. But, you know, for us, we usually do it outdoors in, you know, in the jungle. And, like, the first, you know, you drink it.

You go, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. And, like, they're singing, and there's candles in the jungles. Wow, wow, wow. And then all of a sudden, you're like, and you're when the sounds get really louder.

And it just, it's, look, it's exciting, but it's a roller coaster that I think I'm good on. I think I've explored everything I need to explore and now I really want to stay up here. Yeah. How do they utilize it culturally? Is it like, oh, once a month we do this? Is this once a year? Is it around certain holidays? It's definitely around healing. It's definitely around making it through hard times. For outsiders, the shamans that I know that I work with, they help people addicted to drugs they can't get off of. Oh, really? Yes.

Because they'll put them down for like a week. They'll be like, you're going to be drinking dieting, they call it, for a week. And they'll just keep, you just keep drinking. As a detox, essentially. As a detox. And also, apparently, you know, the spiritual implications of being on something that's that powerful can help you to beat addiction in ways that nothing else can. Holy shit.

I've heard this with I began. I knew a guy that was addicted to heroin. Yeah. Went to Amsterdam because it was like medicinally legal for this specific treatment did I begin and never relapse on heroin again Wow. Yeah. Yeah. He said that's super cool. A horrendous experience, but saved his life because he was like, I'm going to go try this thing. If it doesn't work, I will come back and end my life. Whoa. I'm saving his life. All right. So little shift. Indigenous people living in these ruse with no walls.

How are they like, how are they fucking like, where does everybody here? This is a great question, yeah. And is it kind of like, it's the sounds of the jungle? Yeah, it's all good. Do you try to mimic the frog so it blends in? Well, you want to find a girl that makes frog noises. Well, there's Sally again. Jay, you dog.

No, but like, is it more, is it more like accepted because everybody sees everybody kind of naked? Yeah, so one thing is. you know, every now then you'll hear that thing like, oh, there's a woman breastfeeding on a plane and passengers got upset and it's like...

That's the corny shit. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life. And down there, like, breasts are not, there's nothing to... Nothing special. We got them, they got them.

We got papayas, you don't, that's it. Yeah. They're used for children. They're hardly... And so, yeah, what I know about communal living in indigenous situations is like,

there's a lot of, like, easy hammock sex and... Like, like, the kids playing and they're just doing, like real acrobatic you know i think it's a lot of like spooning you know in the middle of the night and so like i do think they keep it toned down i think if you're gonna go if you're gonna slap cheeks like you gotta go you gotta go you gotta go deep so much of our like version of sex is probably informed by porn but like if they don't have porn then well i think most people like yeah that's

an expectation absolutely i think it like absolutely infiltrates like the western mind in america at least and like you're exposed to it so young that it becomes the normal Whereas out there, if they never seen porn, I wonder what their relationship with is probably so different. And then the way they conducted is probably different. Yeah. That's my assumption. I don't know. But it's definitely, it's not a big deal.

Yeah. It's not a big deal. But did you hear it the first time where you like, were you kind of giggling? Like, oh shit, they get after that. You know, I've always kind of been happy that, you know, you hear somebody getting some and you're like, they got it. You know, you're like, good, good. You fall asleep listening to the frogs. You know, like, yeah, you guys get it.

Oh, wow. Are the dudes, they're wearing like, kind of like, like, like, like loincloths? Just ask what does he want to ask? He doesn't know if they hang it. Is it hanging? Yeah. No. No, they tie it up.

The video you found, really? The video you found on my phone. It was the censored version. It was the censored version. But if you find the uncensored version anywhere, or I could show you on my phone, they, they tie it up to their stomach. That's why they're wearing the rope around. And I think So does it get caught on something

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

Protected. Yeah, I mean, that's like easy blood for them. They're going to go where the most blood is. And that's why they like ears. Mosquitoes always go for your ears. Yeah. And I think like a penis is just too much for mosquitoes to take. You're going to be constantly inundated.

I mean, I think this one's still a little bit blurred. be a better idea. Yeah, so little bit blurred. So the shaft they tie up, but the balls, they let go. The balls are out, which I, you know, again, I don't, I don't aspire to experience. I mean, I've done the waistband from time to time. Oh, yeah. We've all done a waste band talk.

I mean, I think we should try it. I think we should just have a day where you go, you tie it up and just walk around. I mean, certainly, you know, not hitting into branches and sticks and thorns make sense. Yeah. What about, like, jokes? Oh, jokes, yeah. What is their sense of humor? Like, all cultures have their own sense of humor, right?

Like, there's certain things that are uncomfortable, certain things that are naughty. Like, how are they making each other laugh? Me and JJ are in a stream one day, and he goes, ah, and I was like, what is it? And he's like, I know, something's wrong. And I was like, what is it? And I was like, I don't know, I think I'll be okay. Okay, ten minutes passes. And then he's like, dude, dude, dude, dude.

And he's like holding his dick. And I'm like, what? What? And he's like, yo, something's wrong. He's like, I got a huge boner. And I was like, now? In his stream with me? I was like, what's going on?

He shows me the bananas. And he shows me and it's like, and he's got this. I was like, JJ, first of all, well done. Yeah. It's like, second of all, that's a problem. And he's like, no, it feels like it's going to burst. And I was like, JJ. And he's like, no, no, no.

He's like, feel it. It's like dangerous. And I was like, and I was like, that's like a rock. Come on. And he starts laughing. And he like, pulls this huge fish out of his pants. And it's like, Dick jokes

It's like a lot of one Colts You're a little of a poking at all Yeah He said He said He's He was like

I got something He was like He was like No I can explode And in the tension of the moment Did you go behind it Like an an anaconda

I just grab it I just Controlled the head Grab it Grabbed the neck Yeah It starts to wrap around

Okay All right So it's a lot of dick jokes But see, it's that humor that transcends. Fart jokes. Yeah, like, fart jokes. Farts are funny?

Farts are funny. Because, look, when you're out on an expedition, you know, you're all sad and you're sitting there in the rain and someone just lets out like a trombone. You know, this melancholy. And it's like, we're going to be laughing about the shit when we're language. And you don't have to speak the same language. Yeah. You know, when we were across the river from the uncontected tribe, once it became clear. that they weren't going to kill us and that nothing terrible was going to happen.

There was a moment where this guy, even across the river, somehow he'd found a machete. They don't have metal, right? So he found a machete. That's like Excalibur. That's like GTA. Yeah. He's like, yo, I got a machete. He just jumped up through like three ages, bronze age from me.

And so he's walking and he's like swanging this machete as he's walking. And on my side of the river, one of the guys goes, hey, they have me machete. the machete as my machete. And the dude just looked and he goes, and he's like, you don't speak the same language at all. And he went, come and get it, motherfucker. And he smiled at us. He was like, oh man,

you don't need to speak the same language. He was exactly what he said. International. Wow. You want it? Come get it. What about things that you've brought there, like little things that they love? Is there ever a thing where like, you're coming back and they're

trying to think what it would be fucking phanta? a nerds cluster. Yeah, like a candy or something like that. I don't know. A cluster.

That sounds pornographic. It looks. It looks. Is that how guys that can't get laid? Yeah, exactly. What's like gusers,

dude? It's like a circle jerk to get that exactly. Just an insult. But like, is there some shit when they know

you're going back? They're like, oh, please bring me a belt. No, no, no, no. So let me think because I just bought

for two of my favorite guys Listerine strips I don't know no they seem like they got everything they need Two of my guys I just you know just to I don't bring anything I brought like I love New York sweaters Because like everything fun that you'd go Hey put these on and they're just like We did put on virtual reality glasses on JJ

Now we're talking That fucked them up that fucked him Where did you put him? No he was and thank God we weren't in the jungle We were in the office in town and he lasted about 15 seconds and he was like, nope. What was he looking at?

I have no idea. I have no idea. I walked in the room and I was like, guys, like, come on. He was like, I feel so sick. Have you brought JJ to New York? J.J. has done an... For a kid that started out with no shoes as a little naked Amazonian kid playing in the rivers,

he now, I mean, his English is better than mine. He's a scientist, he's a conservationist. He was named one of Time Magazine's 15. the environmental leaders of 2024. He was in New York last year we had a gala where we celebrated jungle keepers and tried to get as much donations as we could

and JJ was there and yeah so he actually got to experience snow last year. Oh! For the first time. Yeah he got snowed in at my parents' house upstate. We were all like hanging out and eating and my house is like five minutes away. And I have a Tacoma. I was like, we'll be fine. Getting the Tacoma and like the snow, the snow was two feet deep.

I'm like, I just had tires spinning on snow and I was like JJ, we're not going anywhere. And me and JJ have been in the Amazon for 20 years. All of a sudden, we're out there. He's like, dude, dude. And I was like, watch this. And I like paste him with a snowball. And he was like, yo, we had the most epic sort of snow wrestling.

What is his interaction with snow? What is the first interaction? He just, you know what? He started taking pictures right away. Does he, is he touching it? Is he, like, trying to understand it? Is he peeing in it? Maple syrup on snow.

Fire. Oh, yeah. Maple syrup on snow. I was like, guys, because they've made me taste so much stuff. I was like, here, I got you something. I was like, this only comes out of trees here. And I was like, we got snow. And I was like, try that.

And they were like, this is where it's at. That's a thing? Oh, hell. Canadians are all on that. Get some really, I'm not talking about like And Jamima, like the diner stuff. I'm saying, get some like Vermont maple syrup and just put it on snow. I mean, clean snow. Yeah, yeah, like.

Oh, I did not know this. Yeah, no, it's really good. Get some fresh snow. Yeah. And just pack it a little bit. And it's a snow cone. Oh, shit. It's amazing.

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

So good. It must have been cool showing JJ around, being like, you're in eye world. For once, I'm showing him something. Yeah. And the only thing I felt bad about was that they came in January. Yeah. And so everything's dead. But you take them on the subway?

Did we take him on the subway? Come on. I think, I don't know if he was on the subway. Being an a condo. I just remember him to, I just, we were at the Jazz at Lincoln Center, and I remember him walking around. He just, they were just walking around looking at the buildings. And like, you know, he just kind of grabbed me. He went, you know, I mean, the other guy, Roy, who we brought up, he just went, this is not the jungle.

I mean, the same buildings, you know, in their city, this little gold mining town. I mean, I think the highest you get is four stories. Bro, I grew up in New York City. First time I went to Chicago. It was the first time I went to another city that had a skyline that could rival New York City. And I was fucking blown away. Yeah. And I see these buildings all the time.

So I can't imagine someone's only seen a four-story building. And then a 12-story tree is as high as it's gone. Yeah. And then you just look up. Empire State Building. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah.

And like, honestly, for me, it's 30 rock. Because I've had to go in there a bunch to do, like, the interviews and stuff. And every time I walk in there, you walk in there and they have the mural in the front. Yeah, yeah. And, like, for me, who has spent so much in my life, you know, trading bananas for monkeys and trying to tie my shoes and find, like, oh, wait a second. How about that? They had to find the stone and plan the thing and get the eye beams, and they did this when? Yeah.

Yeah. And you just sit there and I'm like, oh, my God. It's sort of beyond comprehension. And so I think for them, it takes us so much work to throw up a research station in the jungle. Yeah. where we're like carting wood and chainsaws and people get cut and like so they're going they go how did this happen so is in the same way that you're so impressed with their knowledge and what they're able to do yeah are they having that same feeling are they blown away I think that the the things like the skyscrapers yes I think the

things like the way that we live they're like oh man like you guys don't have to worry about like you can just have a house and you don't have to worry about that someone's going to like take you. it clean water all the time yeah and they're like so you guys are safe like there's connecticut like you know they're like were they confused about anything or anything that they didn't like culturally well they i mean culturally i don't think so but it was just it really was that they're come from a really nice warm place and january is so brutal i was like just you promise me you'll come back in july yeah i was like we'll go to the beach we'll go hiking upshay upstate yeah like i'll show you like maple trees and oak tree like all my friends here

you know, go see a fox. If he got homesick, you could have just took him to the Bronx he'll be right at home. No, the Bronx Zoo. The Bronx Zoo Jungle World is part of the reason

I do what I do was I went there as a kid it's so, oh, you meant just take him to the Bronx. I heard it later. That's not what he meant. Wait, wait, wait, going to the Bronx Zoo is where you fall in love

with the animals? That's your first experience with them? It's one of the things. So I always loved that. I went to the Bronx Zoo, and so you get to Jungle World. You open the door, and no matter what time of year it is, just like steam and it's hot. And you're like, oh, whatever I'm wearing, I got to take it off. Because you're like, it's different in here.

And you hear like, whoop, and you just all this bird sounds. And they have, they have like frogs. And you're like, wait a second. Like, what's that? And you're like, you're looking and there's like, and then there's like an orange like tree kangaroo in there. And then there's a Malaysian taper. and there's a, they have one thing where there's, you know, there's a blood python. You're like, hold on, hold on, hold on.

There's all these incredible animals out there in the jungle, and you're like this feeling of jungle, like sort of jungle core. And then they have the wall of butterflies, and they have all these, you know, all these, and you go, it's all these colors and arrow frogs that are bright blue and orange and anacondas. And I just went, man, whatever this is, I want more of this. Whatever this feeling is, I want it. And then at the end of jungle world, what they do is to get you all hopped up on this beautiful stuff and they're like the life is everywhere everywhere you look there's colorful life and

medicines and animals more species and anywhere else and then you walk into like the end of the exhibit or might have been right before the gorilla exhibit and that the sound changes from frogs to you hear chainsaws and then you they have a video of trees going down oh wow and as a kid I just remember like you hold you know you're like don't cry don't cry don't cry in front of my parents and you're like and they're showing you this going on and they're like but the rainforest is dying and they have like a british lady being like and soon you know 80,000 football fields a year are like leaving and all the animals are dying and you're like what and then they they like show you the guerrillas and they're like they still here but they don't have long and like you could help them

and I was like sign me the fuck up I was like I want to go see them before they're gone and so I literally got charged with I was like yeah I love animals But I got charged with this urgency of like, wait, so you're telling me if we don't protect elephants could go extinct in our lifetime? Gorillas could go extinct in our lifetime. And so that's, you know, and then my mom would read us, you know, Jane Goodall stories. And you'd be like, you know, so this woman went to Africa and said, I'm going to, I'm just going to learn chimpanzee dialect and social structures and break all the rules of science and become this living legend of a, you know, it's like, so if she started off as a person who just. just went to the jungle. And I was like, well, if she could go to the jungle as a 20-year-old girl, back then, I was like,

shouldn't I be able to go to the jungle? And I'd be, like, sitting in like seventh period English class, like reading about Teddy Roosevelt. And they'd be like, Rosalie, detention, put down the book. And I was like, yeah, I got to go to the jungle. Damn. I was like, I can't do this. I was like, I want my life to be. I felt like there's people you hear about that have had a life where that meant something

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

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

didn't even move didn't get red ears stayed the same color he didn't move because he goes what are you gonna do it or don't do it and you can't fake that you have to learn that and so when you're a kid you go when the shit hits the fan and the river's flooding and the boat flips and everybody's gonna die do i scramble on top of the boat and save myself because you don't know yet or do i go help somebody else and risk my own life first and you have to be in those situations because we all think we would be the hero you would be the hero you go i would be the hero and it's like yeah yeah yeah tell me that tell me that when you're on the side of the mountain and the lightning is pounding the side of the mountain and you've got people over there that are still exposed you're going to go cross the open

the open part you're going to be a lightning ride fuck yeah like talk to me when you're in the river and there's all these swirling whirlpools you jumping in after that person can you swim that good or you just, you know, it's so, and I think that that was a major, I wanted to know which, you know, what are you made of? What do you have in you? And so then meeting people like JJ and you go, okay, so man's not scared of anything. Man goes, he didn't have a prayer. He goes, I'm going to go out to the wildest place on earth and I'm going to protect it with no plan. That's the other thing. I think that the people that get things done are kind of missing the screw that keeps us all in life. Of course.

You go like, oh, you know, reasonably, I mean, I could say the same thing for myself. When I started out as a kid was born in Brooklyn, grew up in New Jersey, went to the Amazon. I saw, I remember I came back from the jungle and like everywhere I went. I was wearing this tooth around my neck that JJ had given me. And everywhere I went, I was like, I work in the Amazon rainforest. My dad goes, you don't work in the Amazon rainforest. You went there once. It was like, calm down, hot shot.

And it was like, but it changed me so much that I was like, I'm going back. and I just told everyone like I'm going to save the Amazon. And it's like, you know what, though? You're 19 years old and you work at the YMCA for 1350 an hour. You're not going to save the Amazon. And so it's like you do have to be stupid enough to think you can do it. Absolutely. And then sort of smart enough.

Delusional optimism. And then with the grit to hang in there until you figure it out. And that's I've watched a lot of people join our team. And it's sort of like me and JJ start. it being like we're just going to save this thing and just started yelling it's like when you go I'm going to run a marathon yeah you know you just start telling everybody you're going to do it and you're like my fucking half you're pot committed people that join that fade out and can you tell when someone isn't built for it yeah I mean I some of the people that were there in the beginning that were like hey kid

we'll help you start the organization you realize they're not people that necessarily should be involved and so we you know you cycle through those now at this point like who's managing our field teams because we're directors and founders, and I have to be doing this a lot of the time. You know, JJ is the only, so it's interesting. What we do is we got down to the core team. And that's necessity of operations. Like, you know, Stefan is running all the different departments, keeping track of finances, all of the outreach when we get contacted for podcasts or when we have a new opportunity,

a new donor. And a lot of times he's pointing me in the right direction. He's going, yo, go talk to these people. Or he'll get on the phone and go, these people, they, want your time and they shouldn't get it. They're not, they're not real. JJ is the only person who knows how to walk into the logging camps and he could even do narco camps, I'm sure if he wanted to. He walks, so I watched JJ. So there's JJ with his chest out and then there's JJ. He did another thing that, talk about the gun to the face.

We had guys pull out guns and they were there were loggers and this meeting didn't go well. And we were like, yo, you guys can't be here. And again, they're like, click, clack, you sure? And we're like, all right, look, we're not trying to bless you. We're like, we're not trying to start shit. We're just telling you, you can can't be here. And then there was like this sort of moment where I was like, are they going to let us leave? And JJ, JJ did this thing where he, he's instead of being like, yo, you can't be here. He sat down. He relaxed against the log and goes, guys, I'm not fighting with you. They have guns. He's laying down now. He's fully exposed. And he goes, I'm not fighting with you. He's like,

I'm just telling you that you can't be here. He goes, honestly, he goes, I'll cook you lunch. He's like, I was just letting you know. And so he, like, brought the temperature in the room down. That's smart. He's like, we're not trying to fight. He's like, seriously. He's like, why don't you guys come down? He's like, I'm just going to tell you about why we're here.

And it was like his brilliant. So only he can do that and he knows the local dialect. And then I apparently have the ability to speak and tell stories to the degree that it'll get people to pay somewhat attention. And even though I couldn't make it through school, I can't read good, but I can Right. I learned how to tell a story because I was read to when I was a child. And so the book has actually been a huge tool in terms of getting us people who understand the story. So there's all this random stuff. Somebody could watch this whole conversation and go, okay, so this guy rescues monkeys and follows JJ. And it's like, but in the book it makes sense.

In the book, it's like, okay, why did I end up in the jungle? How did I end up in the jungle? and then it goes through sort of all those moments of like maybe something starting fail maybe something starting failed they just they just destroyed 10 new acres of forest we've failed there's narcos we're all going to die we got to figure that out and it's like how did we go from two guys with bare feet and a machete and just a log to ride you used to be me and jj for a while we didn't have a boat so we'd be out in the field station we'd get dropped off and then we'd like when your tomatoes start to turn black and your rice starts to start to go moldy and you run out of cooking fuel because we'd go up with one thing of propane and he'd be like we got to go back to town we were like oh shit we're gonna have a boat and then we'd sit by the side of the river for like two days like there's no boats no boats gonna come by this like this time a year when the river's high and then we'd get a big log coming by and be like yo let's go and we'd throw all of our shit in a bag swim out to the log and we both get on the log and we just be sitting there for hours sitting on a log just going down the amazon it's like those two dudes

they could start a major organization to protect an entire watershed and reach people all over the world. And one of my goals was, aside from protecting the biodiversity in the watershed, was I suffered when I was a kid thinking that the world is ending. Like, I was so depressed and, like, I used to cry at night. I'm not even kidding. I used to cry. My mother used to have to sit on the bed and I would be weeping because I'd just read about the fact that, you know, this one species of Galapagos tortoise was going to go extinct. Or that the third. Or that The Congo was being ripped apart and gorillas were surrounded on all sides and soon the mountain gorillas are going to go extinct.

And it just drove me crazy to think that we were willing to let the other organisms that we share this world with just die. Those penguins, just let them die. And so now as the director of jungle keepers, the ability that parents reach out to me, I get DMs all the time where parents go, hey, we give $5 a month to jungle keepers and I show my kids your feet all the time. and I tell them we're saving the Amazon because they are.

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

And so we're just trying to undo all that and it's super, super exciting. Does JJ have sage advice? Like when you talked to them about life and interpersonal stuff. Does he ever give you just wisdom that you're like, whoa.

Nope. No, Jay J.J. likes to, he's like me. He likes to learn through experience. While he is such an expert at the jungle, he's still very, very much human. And, you know, we kind of, he, when I was, I was 18 and he was 32.

So that's like our age gap. And we've seen each other go through all the phases. And so I think that lifewise, it's not like he's, some sort of a wizard. You describe him like Yoda. I'm expecting Yoda. He's like Yoda of the jungle who's still very much a human.

You know, like, yes, he has this knowledge. And I guess you could make that comparison to so many other things. You could be like, oh, this guy was a great president, but, you know, went through all of these struggles as a human. And it's like, you're describing one part of, yes. He is, there's a chapter in the book called the rarest of species. because how many local people learn to speak really good English? Not that many.

How many local people learn to speak really good English and work with scientists for years and years? And so become naturalist scientists with an indigenous background. There's no one else. He's a unicorn. He's the only one. You mentioned a guy that passed away. I think his name was Santiago.

JJ's dad. That was JJ's dad. And he was like the OG. He was really OG. That dude. That dude. he lived out in the Amazon until he was like 86 he was still he'd still come in with the axe in his hand

he'd be like yeah I just killed a pig you guys want to have a barbecue and I'd be like yes the first time I met him we were all sitting around and JJ had brought me to his mom's house he's got like 19 brothers he brought me with mom's house since Santiago Santiago was a busy man bro and we found out why we were all sitting around and it was like a cold day in the jungle so everyone was like huddled up

as a Sunday morning we're all like drinking soup and stuff and JJ's mom comes and gives a slap on the head and JJ's like so we're thinking of taking Paul to the Anaconda place and his brother's like oh shit we should but we should ask dad if it's okay because we know and JJ goes so you're going to meet my dad and I said great

goes no no no you're going to meet my dad and I said great what I bet he goes no no no he's got a big dick and I was like how does this matter he's like no no no like you're not ready for it and I was like But how is this? He goes, no, no, no, he walks around naked.

And I was like, and he's coming? He goes, no, he's coming right now. JJ's dad walks in with this fucking cannon hanging to his knees. And he's like, hey, he's like, good, much gusto. And I was like, hey, good to meet you. And like, the man just hangs. It wasn't even his hand that you shook. What?

It wasn't even his hand you should. It wasn't his name. But it was like, this dude was such a jungle swaggered dude. He's like, what close? Yeah. You know, and then he's the guy that said, yeah, you can go. Take him. to his sons. He was like, take him.

And he was also the guy that said, take him to the floating forest. Because then we came back, and we had pictures of like snakes this big. And we were like, look at us. We caught these giant anacondas. And he goes, that's anaconditas. He was a little fucking anaconda. Nothing you did was tougher. We were like, we saw a peccary getting eaten.

He goes, I've seen tapers getting eaten. They're like triple the size of a peckery. You know, and you'd be like, oh, we saw the young contacted tribes. He would say, he told the stories that he'd be like, you know, I negotiated with them. You know, I gave them a hat and they gave me an arrow on the same beach. Like, you know, this was a guy that had lived in a different era. Yeah.

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

He'd go, es S.S. Shiwo Laco. And though he lived out in the Amazon on his own, even like at the end, he was like, he'd just be out there. We'd go out into the jungle and he'd be like, yo, what's up? Be working on something. He'd be there already. He lived out there in a shack. And he had been a police officer. He had organized the communities.

He'd done major social work. He'd worked against the drug cartels. But he was a jungle man. And he was made out of pure sinew. And he died at a family like barbecue, basically. They were having a family day. And they got on the boat. And then they were like, let's go back to the shack, which is like 30 minutes upriver.

And he was on the boat with his grandchildren and the whole family. And he was just like watching the sun. set and just laid his head back. Get the fuck out of it. And they were like, Abuelo. Wow. And so he went out. You just went from healthy to asleep.

Strong. Never, never sick. Did you go to the funeral? No, I showed up the day after the funeral. I didn't know he died. JJ, JJ, I think they had gone into, I think at the pace things went,

I didn't even know. I showed up, I went, where is everybody? And they went, Santiago died. you know you get this news we they we don't think they had time to be notifying people it was just it was such a shock nobody expected them to go and what is their relationship with death like like what like do they have anything locally like a customer of philosophy that that helps with that that transition not i don't i don't i don't know i don't know all i can tell you is they're way they're way more it's way more part of life i just feel like you know some of the people

people we've lost over the years to various things. You know, Santiago was a different thing because he was this figurehead. He was the godfather. But when you lose someone in a tragic sense, the rate at which they sort of go, that's really sad, you know, we'll miss them. And then like kind of move on. It's like, we don't do that. You know, I come from Italian Catholic people.

Like, we're going to make them really, we're going to mourn because this is a problem, especially if it was a young person. and we take it very differently than they do. Whereas, like, sometimes we'll lose someone down there and they're like, you know, hey, life's dangerous. Is it common? Like, more common than we would deal with? Well, I mean, working with narco-traffickers

and falling trees and rivers, it's a little more common. You know, if anything goes wrong here, you have an ambulance show up in two minutes. Like, you're as safe as you can be. Yeah. Living in society here. I mean, I come here and, you know,

sometimes I actually feel like I'm like, you know, in the jungle you feel your, your calluses getting thicker and your skin getting tighter and your feet get, you know, harder against the ground and your senses get sharper. And then like when I come back,

aside from the shock of landing in JFK, which is always horrific. But then after a while, I start to go like, man, I woke up today and like I walked from bed to the car to the thing to the thing. And I'm like, I hardly used my body. Like, you start to feel the atrophy. Yeah.

Isn't that interesting? Yeah. And I'm like, I didn't have to carry a motor today. I didn't have to swim across a river. Does it feel unnatural? It does. It does. And I mean, I told you, I still have the dirt on my boots.

I just got in the other day. And I mean, I was sweating all day long. You know, I was jumping in the river because you do morning work back to the station, try and eat something. And then I was like, I'm so drenched, jump in the river, which, by the way, you know, popping the shirt off to go for the monkey. I get that a lot where people like, oh, how come you always got your shirt off? And I'm like, because you know how inconvenient it is to just sweat through a shirt?

And then where do you wash it? Yeah. And so I'm like, yeah, I'd rather just not have a shirt on. Yeah. And then put it on after 5 p.m. when it gets a little bit less hot, that's it. And so I'll take the, I'll take the, I'll take the, uh... None of us would wear a shirt if we look like that, Paul. None of us would.

You come to the Amazon with me. None of us would wear a shirt. if we look like that ball. Shirts were made because we don't look like that. Is that why we wear shirts? It's not a weather thing. Yeah, we've got a fish in his pocket right now. That's what it is.

It's just unbelievable, man. You've had a remarkable life. I'm sure you get told this every single time you've had a conversation with someone. I really hope you achieve this dream. I'm so curious what you will dream up next is not often that people with grandiose dreams get to achieve them.

but like what happens when your life's work gets accomplished? If this works, if we create this National Park, when we create this National Park, because we're getting, it's happening. It really is. Enough people know about this. 20 million is not done much to ask. We're on the final stretch.

You got this. And when we do this, this blueprint of where the local people, the wildlife, where we're giving a loggers a better life, you're solving the problem. You spread that. So then you take that blueprint and you export it to the Congo, to Indonesia.

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

We're about halfway. They have a road coming down from the north. And so they have bulldozers and they have chainsaws and they have surveyors and they're coming down into towards where we're protecting. They're not there yet. And there's a few parcels of land there that we could get. And it's about 40,000 acres right there that we could just protect. And so we're calling out now for funding to try and get that. someone reached out who had read the book and she said how much do you need we said about four million

dollars to buy all of this land immediately like this is like by the end of the year emergency state and she goes i'll give you a million she was but i want to do matching she goes it'll be more powerful i can give you a million but i'm only doing it if it's matching and at first i was like what's the logic there like why wouldn't you just give it to us and she's like no no no if you tell your audience that if they give dollar for dollar i'll make match, then you get $2 million and you're halfway to stopping the road. And we've already talked to the landowners. We can get that land and then the road has to stop and it protects everything we've done. Whereas if the road comes through all the work we've done over the last 20 years,

just came over. And so that's what we're dealing with is that I have to raise $2 million by the end of the year. We have a million dollars. So there are good people out there with the checkbook that are willing to help. Yeah. And then they're like, yeah, yeah. But now see if the people actually care. Yeah. And that's my job. And so the stressful part of this is like, when you fail, the losses are devastating because you lose parts of the jungle that are irreplaceable. Millennium trees, thousand-year-old trees with species sometimes that have never been described. And then the victories are so exciting because the people come through. People from all over the world making these little donations and a lot of raindrops makes a flood. And then you go, wait a second,

my faith in humanity is restored because all these people want to save the monkeys and then and then the butterflies and the ancient trees but it's like we got to keep doing miracle after miracle and it's like now we're running for the end of the year and it's like watching mission impossible and be like holy shit he just jumped a bike onto the train da-da-da-da killed the bad guys and it's like yeah yeah but he can't wake up and do it again tomorrow and that's the problem with what we're doing right now and that's why i'm like i just i'm hoping that someone with the right resources comes in and goes for 20 million, let's just get this done. Save it now so you don't have to keep.

It's like what we're doing right now, what I'm doing by writing the books and by doing the social media and all this stuff, I'm begging for the tools to do my job. And what I want to do is just do my job. There's enough work of surveying this land and working with the locals and managing the team and living on the Amazon.

And then it's like we have to be like, guys, can we please have bullets so we can win the war? Yeah. And the beautiful thing is that so many people have come forward. that now there's thousands of people in the jungle keeper network, and they can give to us, support the local people who are protecting the jungle. I'm just the American mouthpiece. And the cool part is with the people, those kids at home that are donating to us.

And then when they grow up, we say come to the treehouse and see what you protected. Wow. It's dope. Paul Rosalie, ladies and gentlemen. Make sure you check out the book. We'll put the link in the bio where you guys can donate. Man, thank you so much. That was fucking amazing.

What a life. This was fun. What a life, brother. That was awesome. Yeah. So cool. This was. Unbelievable.

My reg league goalie says he plays for the love of the game. You gave up six goals last week, Steve. Maybe play to win, huh? Like with Bet365, I get paid the second my team goes up big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends. Come on, Steve. Bet365, the home of winning early. Must be 19 and older.

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