Julian Dorey Podcast - #383 - “Massacre!” - Paul Rosolie on Uncontacted Tribes Video PROOF, Narco Mass Grave & El Dorado

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

SPONSORS: 1) GHOSTBED: Get an extra 10% off GhostBed mattresses at https://GhostBed.com/julian with promo code JULIAN. Some exclusions apply, see site for details. WATCH MY PREVIOUS EPISODES w/ PAUL: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-ICwfCgQ-Z1-iuvNkRtzDKsSzq3D_cOs JOIN PATREON FOR EARLY UNCENSORED EPISODE RELEASES: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Paul Rosolie is an explorer, author, award-winning wildlife filmmaker, and “real-life Tarzan.” For much of the past 20 years, Paul has lived deep in the Amazon rainforest protecting endangered species and trees from poachers, loggers, and the foreign nations funding them. PAUL ROSOLIE LINKS: - IG: https://www.instagram.com/paulrosolie/ - DONATE (JUNGLEKEEPERS): https://www.junglekeepers.com/ - BOOK: https://tinyurl.com/4rh6u2s8 FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY IG: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 0:00 – Intro 01:57 – Paul Rosolie, Amazon mission & saving thousands of acres 10:32 – Jungle injuries, venom cures & indigenous medicine 22:49 – Fear, mission mindset & being fully dialed in 31:13 – Obsession with the mission & life without screens 41:54 – Animals, bears, jungle instincts & culture shock 51:11 – Protecting 130,000 acres & Jane Goodall’s influence 01:03:08 – Nature storytelling, ecosystems & perspective 01:12:57 – Amazon scale, Junglekeepers & global movement 01:22:03 – Art, literature & meaning beyond the jungle 01:32:00 – Heightened senses, animals & forest awareness 01:43:46 – Narcos enter the Amazon & violence escalates 01:52:47 – Cartel threats, DEA alerts & rising danger 02:01:58 – Artisanal narcos, lawlessness & defender deaths 02:10:22 – Mass graves, drug routes & gold mining chaos 02:19:38 – Russian miners, wastelands & oxygen stakes 02:30:10 – Brazil, Bolsonaro & the Amazon’s tipping point 02:42:07 – Ecosystem collapse & survival of adolescence 02:52:46 – Motivation, loss & continuing the fight 03:05:16 – Uncontacted tribes & Mascho Piro encounter 03:26:34 – Communicating with tribes & unseen footage 03:38:12 – Inside the tribe encounter & Amazon myths 03:42:51 – Paul's Work CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef - https://www.instagram.com/joeydeef/ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 383 - Paul Rosolie Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So I get the phone call. The man who saved our athletes today is dead. Who runs these operations? They were Russian gold miners. I've driven up to the gates of that area. They call this La Pampa. That is where you find your guy with the AK-47. And you don't go past there.

We go in there and we're on like dune buggies going across this wasteland. And the Russian guy comes up to me and goes, you are Paul Rosalie. Yes? Yes. He goes, I'm just telling you. They know your name. They know that you raise money to stop them. They're all talking about the fact that you're here right now.

And do you feel fear? I wanted to see if that would ever register with you and it did not when I was down there. For a second, yeah, but again, that's no way to fight a war. 2024, at least 146 environmental defenders were killed or disappeared. If you can cause that shock letting people see a fucking body, they'll stop. My life mission is saving this forest. I don't care about anything else.

And it just so turns out that someone came back with pictures from way out in the Amazon where the Narcos had rounded up the uncontacted tribes and just shot dozens of them. All we have to do is leave the jungle alone and this tribe remains safe. When you have this moment of contact though, you come any closer to find those pyramids? We're not gonna talk about them. We're not gonna... Wait a minute, you can't just say that. Oh, I certainly can.

You have found something. Hold on. Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. What's the deal with the hate on the thumbs up emoji? Is this like an Amazonian thing? You're not allowed to use the thumbs up emoji?

All I can tell you. tell you is that if I send you a thumbs up emoji, know that, know that it's dead bodies and burning buildings. That's not good. It's not good. If somebody texts me, if somebody's really pissing me off, I will send them a thumbs up. I'll give you an example.

I texted my friend a thumbs up emoji the other day. He called me five minutes later. He's like, what's going on? He's like, is everything okay? And I was like, no man, I love you. And I didn't realize what I had done. I thought I sent him like a laughy face. And I was like, dude, I'm so, what's going to do it.

So sorry. So every time, like, that's something like my dad does. I'm like, yo, meet you at six. And he's not like, yo, great. Or he's not like, cool. He doesn't heart the message. He just goes, it's just such a, it's such a yellow thumbs up. It's just a fucking. The yellow thumbs up. It's just the middle finger of the new generation. I swear. Yeah. I don't know. Like my setting got changed in like 2014 to the black thumbs up. And I just have used that ever since. Well, mine is a white girl. All my emojis are white girls. Yes. Of course. You missed them when you're down on the Amazon. It's just the funniest thing is an upset white girl. Well, dude, it's great to have you back. This is round four. Yeah. It's kind of crazy to think about, yeah. It's kind of crazy to think about you and me sitting in my parents' house like three years ago. And now you're this international jungle keeper celebrity, but I'm very proud of you.

It all started at the Julian Dory desk. Well, there was about 17 years before that of you down in the Amazon. Yeah, but getting out to the masses, I don't think, I think it's safe to say wouldn't have happened if we didn't sit down. Well, it's cool and it's a nice part of the history of the podcast for sure because when I got to go down and visit you in May 24, that was a really, really special trip for me, not just because it was like the first trip I'd taken since I started doing the podcast, but literally because I got to see what you do up close. I always knew it was deadly serious. It was even more deadly serious than I could have anticipated. And also, you could see.

the small little ripple effects that happen when someone like you can come north of the equator for a minute talk to people about what's really happening and reach people because of the acreage that you're now able to protect down there so it's amazing to see it's been amazing to experience this week living through these things you know like when they call and said you know your book is in new york times bestseller i'm like man do you know how many years i spent living out of a back backpack in the rain. And so like it's just it's funny because everybody keeps going, dude, congratulations. It's like, it's like when you worked this hard, you're like, cool, next thing. And when you know that the forest is going to burn if we don't finish this, it's like, it's like

there's a feeling when when you get these things like, people like, oh, you know, you did the so-and-so show. And I'm like, yeah, great. More acres. You know, I don't for a second forget the reason we're doing this. I'm not, I'm not, but it has been cool and it has been fun and we have gone from a few thousand subscribers to almost double that with jungle keepers, which means people are all over the world seeing this and coming in and saying, we'll help. And I feel like years ago, the thing that people were, you know, the first thing people heard was, oh, an organization that's trying to save the Amazon, they go, we don't believe in organizations. We're jaded. We think all organizations are crooks. They're stealing. We don't know where our funding's going. And then we

started just publishing the funding, this is how we use it. This is what goes to Ranger Pay. This is what goes to land acquisition. This is what goes to admin. Done. And people can see it. And if you look at all the big orgs that you can name, you can go on the, nobody realizes you can just go on the IRS website and see exactly how they use their money. 90% of their money goes to advertising. And the rest goes to paying their CEOs $500,000 a year. And so we just didn't do that. We're just direct line. And so now I get to go on all these shows and be like, we are the most direct way to protect the Amazon. And nobody can fight me on that because the IRS says it. Also, he lives on like a wood floor with no running water, dead ass serious.

So, you know, if you guys are taking money like other organizations, I don't know where that shit's going, but not to you. So it's crazy. They make you report down to like the can of tuna. It's crazy. That's for the best. It really is. As you pointed out, there are so many organizations that take advantage of this. and it's well beyond just CEO pay.

They're straight up stealing money. And I understand why people get jaded, especially when we're talking about something that's half a world away, they can't see it every day. So you sharing it as aggressively as you do and then also being transparent with everything that the organization does is really important. Yeah. And when I look at what the, it's, and it drives me crazy when I see people, we had a guy recently, he reached out and he goes, oh, I just gave money to blank organization. I don't want to start a war. But he said, major organization that we've all heard of. He said, I just gave money to them.

And he goes, it's driving me crazy. I don't know where my money went. And he's like, and so he called me up. I'd cold call. I'd never spoken to this person in my life. He just said, I want to be a major donor. He said, major donor, okay. Got on the phone with him.

He said, what are you working on right now? I said, we have a narco-trafficking road coming down from the north of our territory. I said, we don't have the firepower to stop it. They're going to bulldoze the forest. We also can't protect the land until we own it. until we add it to the reserve. And he said, well, how much is the piece of land? I said, it's thousands and thousands of acres, but it's 200 grand.

And I said, we just don't have it right now. And I was just telling him because I was just telling him what we were working on. And he just goes, I'll write you check. He sent in the 200 grand the same week we bought the land. I flew the drone over the land, sent him a picture of just unbroken jungle from horizon to horizon. And I went, dude, you just saved millions of animal heartbeats. Thank you. And he went, I mean, he threw a party for his family.

He was just like. from the drone footage. Well, I mean, that's all he needed to see. That forest was there because of him. And so it was just, that was cool. And then these people come out and I get to meet them and it's fun. No, I've told people I think the coolest moment I had down there was when you took us all up river. Yeah.

They were like seven of us going up river. You're like, ah, shit. You guys want to take a ride? We got to go up. We'll be out for like 20 minutes. Then we'll come back. It's a long boat ride. We were like, fuck yeah, let's do it.

So you took us up just past where. the leaf cutter incident was we'll talk about that later but you took us up there we like go up this side embankment none of us know where we're going you do though yeah and we get through these trees and it was actually like a tragic sight you saw all the barren like trees that had just been freshly knocked down the pile of sawdust that was i don't i don't even know how many feet now i know where you're talking about yeah i don't even know how many feet high that was but it was at least 15 feet high and you see these literal like stations where they had this, which I've kept here since then.

Fresh tape measures. That's from there. Oh, shit. Yeah. Fresh tape measures. I keep this in the studio all the time from all the loggers who had been cutting this down. That's a logger. This is from that spot.

That's wild. And you could literally still see like smoke billowing off where the fires. Scorched earth had been. Like just their personal fires. And so all of us were speechless when we saw it because you were like, It was actually like well done without trying to be dramatic. It was dramatic because we were like, what the fuck did we just walk into? And I climbed on top of a sawdust and I looked out and I saw just all these trees gone.

I don't know acreage by eyesight very well, but it was a lot. And then you looked at all of us while we were all just staring at this and said, what you see here looks like a great loss. But this is actually a huge victory. Because as of yesterday at 1 p.m., thanks to many donations, nations from the grassroots around the world and from people like you who support this thing. You know, we now own this area. The loggers are out of here. And yes, this little spot sucks, but they were going to knock down like 100,000 acres back there. And now we're just going to use

the wood that they knocked down here to build a new research station right here, put it to good use and protect the rest of this. Let's fucking go. Yep. That was like goosebumps on me. So. Yeah. And there's a ranger station there now where we were standing. It's all cleaned up. The forest is regrowing. Again, you're not going to have ancient trees there for a while, but that's fine. There's macaws moving in. And the whole thing with that one was it was a, I think it was a 3,000 acre piece of land. They had deforested like five acres, 10 acres, maybe.

And they had built a road back there and they had a plan to deforest the rest of the 3,000 acres. And then exactly like you said, because of that one was because all of the individual people that give $5, $10, $100 a month. We were able to just go to them and just go, how long is it going to take you to log that 3,000 acres? And they're like, oh, the next like three years, we're going to be working. Next six years probably, we'll be working on this. And we just went, we'll pay you today to leave. They went, yeah. And then they're like stoked.

They're like, they're not enemies, they're allies. That's the coolest part. Is they like, really? And then once they get to it, they're like, great. They'll show you the cool parts of the land. And it's like, they like, they like the land. They love the land. They're also like, you know, those big trees.

Like, sure you don't want to just cut a few of them? And we're like, we're not in the business. Like, you don't get it. But you could, like, that's the thing. Like, people are, some people out there, there's obviously two groups. There's people that are actually evil. And you've talked about that before. But then there's people who are like making a living.

And this is who pays them. And if you give them an opportunity to join, you know, team USA or whatever you want to call it. And save the Amazon. Jungle keepers. Right. Join jungle keepers. But, you know, save the Amazon. They'll do it if they, you know, if they, you know,

can support their families and they'll do it happily yeah that's the important thing is they're they're totally happy to do it they're thankful because they don't have to cut down tree i mean it's so dangerous cutting down a fucking 160 foot tree yeah that's four times the size of this room and watching that thing fall i mean one time there's a tree falling and it was going away from me so i was like i'm safe it was my first big tree that i ever saw go down and i'm safe and it bent this palm tree down down down with it until that palm tree snapped and like a 15 foot shard came rotating back towards me. I've never been so scared in my life. And I turned as this 15 foot shard of tree is rotating.

It was like final destination. I was like, this thing's just going to cut me in half. And I started running. I'd been standing there barefoot and I like started running. And as I'm running, you know, those black spikes. Yeah, yeah. I felt my foot just go. And I felt all the spikes go deep into the arch tissue of my feet.

But I had to keep running. I just went, oh. You know where it's like it hurts so much that it like takes the guts out of you? You like you feel white and you start shaking. That really hurt. I'll bet it did. I've been really hurt. Yeah.

Somehow like you're not this guy like that has the scars literally all over your body. I don't know how. I mean, when I was walking through there, I got scratches. I could still see today. I was there for two weeks. Yeah, no, I heal like Wolverine dude. I mean, I have a fucking tiger bite right there. and I don't, it doesn't show.

I have a snake bite there. I have a huge crocodile bite right there. I mean, my legs, I almost chopped the kneecap off of my leg last year. And I have the stingray bite, but it's like, unfortunate. I actually wish it would be more fun to be like, here's my scars. Right. They heal. They heal really well.

So at least I have photographic proof of the injury. And then it just vanishes. Maybe it's the tree sap that keeps everything nice. Yeah, they got a sap for that. They got a sap. What happened with the tiger bite again? I was holding, it's funny because I actually wrestled with like a six month old like 200 pound tiger. Awesome.

And I was like just, you know, like you do with your dog, smack him in the face and wrestling with them and taking him down and doing all that. And I was, and then they handed me a smaller tiger, like a young tiger, a kitten by all measures. And I was playing with this thing. And they were like, hey, the kittens are more dangerous than the big one because the big one knows that like he'll inflict damage by biting you. And they're like also those baby teeth are so sharp, just like a puppy. They're like, they are so sharp. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I know what I'm doing.

And then it like was playing, playing, playing. And it looked me in the eye. It looked me straight in the eye. And it looked me straight in the eye. And it just bit straight through my pinky finger. And I stood up and there was a bunch of junk like wires and stuff hanging out of there. And I went, oh. And I just felt very hot for a second.

And I went, I think I'm going to get a drink. And then I woke up in the lap of this man and he was like, you fainted. And I was like, no, I don't faint. I was like, I'm fine with blood. He goes, you don't faint? He goes, yeah. He goes, why is your phone over there? And he goes, your glasses are over there.

He's like, you just yard saleed your shit. And he's like, you fell over. And I was like, okay. I was like, that really hurt. Was it worse than the stingray bite? No. It didn't hurt at all compared to the stingray bite. The stingray bite was the only thing.

only thing I can tell you is like I've been electrically shocked before and I think if you took an electrical wire stripped the rubber off of it and then intravenously shoved it up your veins and kept going. I think that's what it feels like to be stung by an Amazonian stingray. That's the other thing. People keep being like, oh, I got stung by a stingray at the beach and it was fine. This is not like that. This is a different thing. It's like getting stung by like, you know, a honeybee versus, you know, a giant tarantula hawk, like the, the wasps. It's a different, it's a different thing. I've never I didn't know that there was a register for pain like that. Most people don't think about their mattress until it becomes a problem.

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by going to ghostbed.com slash Julian, that link is in my description below, and using promo code Julian at checkout. That's Ghostbbed.com slash Julian, link in my description below, promo code Julian for an extra 10% off your order. Some exclusions apply, C-Sight for details. long did it last like three hours four hours it lasted like five hours and so when i got it i instantly knew it was also funny because i was filming myself i had my i was like oh let me get a shot of me in the waterfall for blah blah blah and then i i just you see me get i'm like oh god oh god and and then you just go oh god it's happening it's like there's nothing you can do it already happened you can't get away from it and then even in that moment i've been so trained to like no matter what's

going on take footage get footage of what's going on it's I like take out my phone and I'm like, all right, the worst thing ever just happened. The thing I've been scared about, stingray bite. And I'm like, and my friend comes up to me and he goes, there's no time. He's like, it's about to get so much worse. And I was like, what do you mean? He's going to get worse. It's like, this is the max pain I've ever felt.

And he was like, while you can still talk, we got to get you out of here. And I was like, what? I don't remember going from where we were back to the station. And it was like a 20 minute, 30 minute ride. And then it was up the stairs. I do not remember it. Was Pico driving? No.

Pico wasn't there. And then I remember waking up on the deck of the station in so much pain. And I couldn't even put my foot down. I could try rolling on my left, rolling on my right. I mean, I literally was like going, is there any? Because there's always a fix, right? There's always like a way out. You can always figure out something.

Like, oh, like this hurts. I could take a, it's like, it's inside you and it's traveling up your leg and it's going through your system and it's radiating through your head. and your leg feels like it's going to die of necrosis. And then I'm going, how many months? Because the last guy I know that got hit by a stingray, he got hit just like me in the foot. He didn't walk again for two and a half months. He had a systemic infection.

He spent time in the hospital. So like it took him out of the game. So I was sitting there going like, this is going to be a major part of my ear. I just like really lost time. So it wasn't just the pain pain. It was also the projected pain. And then JJ's nephew went and started scraping a tree with his machete, getting the medicines off of it. And then JJ's brother, William, also started to take me this other tree.

And then they went and they packed it together. And they made this this poultice of medicine. And they baked it on it. I had no idea this was going on. I was just laying on my back sucking Marlboro Reds two at a time. I had my emergency pack, which is just like oxies and marlores. And I was like, get me the emergency. No, I just had the sigs.

I did not have the other things. But they took the poultice and they put it on the arch of my foot. And the hot does feel good. That thing, that people are correct about. The hot helps denature the venom, like really hot. Like you burn the skin at the expense of denaturing the venom. And then that helps that it drew the venom out. So three hours, four hours later, I didn't know.

the only medication I had was ibuprofen. Oh. And I looked up, I know, but I had somebody look up how much ibuprofen you could take in a day without harming yourself. And it was like 6,000 M.G. So I was like, I just like took a pile of them, which instantly put me to sleep. And so I had made it through like four hours of pain. And then by the time I was like, I'm just going to take this mountain of blue pills.

I, I was, I woke up at like 9 o'clock at night and I was like, okay, the pain is back down to 10, you know, one out of 10 instead of a 10. instead of a 10 out of 10. Sounds like you got lucky on the other side of it. Got very lucky. And because they sucked the venom out. Yeah. It didn't get infected.

I didn't have necrosis. I didn't have nerve damage. It was indigenous medicine that saved the foot. Otherwise, it'd still be limping. I mean, all my friends that have gotten stung by a stingray, it took the months and months to heal. I was up on my feet the next day. Like walking around gently, like wearing flip-flops,

which for me is like being in a wheelchair. Right. that's still like it's great it's amazing that the saps can work like that it's amazing the saps can work like that and it's also amazing to me that they knew in that situation to like they knew exactly which tree to go to they were like they've done this before this has happened before they knew which two trees to get how to you know how deep to go into the bark and then how to pack it together and then they wrap it in a heliconia leaf and they they fry it on a pan and someone was taking footage of all this. I don't even know after. I don't remember anything. I saw a bunch of this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was

carried up the stairs by friends. They took such good care of me. That was that was one of those days where you look around at your friends and you go, yo. Thank you guys. Yeah, that's also, by the way, just so people understand, it's not like five stairs. You got to walk down like a quarter mile road and then you go up, I think it was a count it. It was like 105 or 110 steps straight up the side of a hill and then up the hill more and they're carrying you on like a wooden plank or some shit well i was on the wooden plank on the flats for the stairs i saw the footage later but i had i had arms over people and i was like i was like one footing it i'm talking i just don't remember it yeah so yeah that that was interesting but i'm again that's still not as bad as did you see the video where i fall off the

cliff no that we need to pull up that we need to pull up that is this is the most insane thing how long ago was this this was like april it is the most oh we gotta go way bad decision I've made in a long time I was driving I missed that pole I don't know but it's it just says big fall on the front of it and it's like a 60 foot

fall you're still in January Dief he posts a lot so Dief will get it but you start explaining them we'll go no just we're going down the river and there's like this new avalanche on the river so it was like this whole chunk of the river that had come down it was it was exposed clay and then so there's roots coming off the top

And it doesn't look that high. And I go like, it looks like it's like soft mom. I'm like, I got this. I can get up this. And I was like, Stefan, I'm going up. And he was like, you got this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, check this out. So I, I, all right.

Just play that shit. Oh, no, no, no. So look, I'm going and I like, yes. Yes. Yes. Very good, right? And I'm like, okay. Oh, you're like all the way up it. Oh, my God.

This is like 65 feet straight up. And now I got to get up the last bit, but the- Yes, Bob. The land kept falling away. So I'm pure on arm strength. I actually got a hand over. And then I just go flying down the mountain and look, Stefan's filming.

Look, whack. Oh. Oh, you're sick, fuck. The fuck out of here. I'm good. I'm not. I had bruised ribs. I couldn't sleep for two months.

I mean, at the moment it feels good. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, they say it's going to hurt in the morning. That if I just went a little bit farther though there's all sticks facing me I would have just been impaled The fact that that whole fall happened and look it's the first watch it's the first You don't realize but that top bit is 20 feet right so I fell vertically 20 feet and landed on my ribs Yeah look how small you can see it's so small so watch and when I go This is from far away you can barely see that you can barely see the impact but watch when the first fall right there whack

That just landing on the left side ribs was brutal. I really thought I was dead. I really thought as I was falling, I was like, okay, this is the ninth life. I was like, this one's it. I've never been able to figure out if you're a shining example of being anti-Darwinism or pro-Darwinism. Because like, in a lot of ways, you do everything to kill yourself, which says like, that's going to be Darwinism working. Yeah. And then in a lot of ways, it's like you know you're going to survive, because, like, you know, you're going to survive, because you're unbreakable and it's like, therefore I can do everything that everyone else can. So fuck Charles Darwin.

Yeah, I don't want to. I don't even go there. That was like, I do it. I don't do that. That's like asking the tightrope walker like, you know, do you worry about falling? It's like, no, no, no. It's like if it looks fun, you do it. Do you feel fear?

I feel fear of not those things, though. Like in that moment, I was like, this is awesome. It was all awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. Oh, shit. And then it was awesome again. you know? Yeah. So like I feel fear about like ideas.

Like fear is like, you know, the idea of being paralyzed or the idea of having to do more math homework at some point. I still have like back to school dreams. I really hated school. That's like a stress. Yeah. I'm saying like do you ever, and we'll get to some of the other stuff later about tribes and things like that. But do you ever have a, even if it's just a moment. where you're preparing for something you're going to do.

Could be something normalish out in the jungle that has some stakes to it. Yeah. Where you're like, oh shit, I might not come back from this. And that actual, like, quote unquote, gift of fear sets in. Yeah, yeah. I like that feeling, though. Yeah. Like, I remember being a kid and the light switch for the basement was in the basement,

not at the top of the stairs, where it should be. So you had to, like, run down the stairs and flip on the switch or else, like, the darkness would get you. And I remember being very, like, four or five years old. I'd be very scared of that, but I'd also be like, this is fun. And as an adult, you don't get that that much until you're poised over a crocodile and you're like, okay, when I drop, I'm going to grab this thing by the neck and it's going to be teeth and power. And if I mess up and it grabs a finger, it is going to twist that finger off of my body so quickly or my hand

that I will, this is an irreversible moment. So once I start falling forward and grab, whatever happens next is up to the writers of reality. And so it's like that, at that moment, I go, oh, shit. And I feel that fear. But again, that's a good fear. Or the moment that you're high up on a tree branch. And I was up on one of those millennium trees in the top, you know, skyscraper.

You can't even see the ground. And this camera guy is flying the drone. And he goes, dude, it would be epic. He's on a radio. I can't even hear him from the ground. He's on a radio. And he beeps in. And he's like, dude, it'd be awesome if you stood on that branch.

And I'm like, yeah. Sure. And I like stand up on the branch and try to like look like something. And then like a bee flew by my head and I was like, and like almost just fell 70 feet. I had a rope on, but I heard it was the same thing. That shot they show of Alex Honnold where he has his back to L cap.

I think this is the story I heard. I do not know that this for sure, but I did. I heard that the photographers are like, dude, it would be epic if you put your back to the wall. And he was like, uh,

and they were like, it's going to make a cover. And he was like, you never naturally, you never have your back to the wall in rock climbing. It's just not something you would ever do. Right. But that guy, though, they, he does not feel fear. Scientists studied his brain. And I think it was to correct me in the comments if I fucked this up off memory.

But I think it was like they measured his amygdala and it does not register like the same neuro firings. Straight up doesn't have like he won't start sweating. Yeah, you make a great spy. Don't do that. Don't do what? What if he is? What if he is?

What if he is? He's just a spy living out of a van and being fronting as a rock climber for years and years and years. It's just a wrong time to be putting this thought in my head, Paul Rosalie. The Epstein files keep coming out and they're worse and worse. Oh, God. I thought you meant like a normal spy. No. No.

No. Well, I wasn't saying like, I'm not, yeah. We're not going there without. Look, I don't know enough about the real world to even go there. You know, I'm jealous of you. for that. I love that you're like so checked out from the civilization crumbling that happens when halfway around the world when you're just there in the middle of the Amazon. And hey, I fully understand why you are when you're out there, you're just a little speck and the universe

is just right around you. It's very grounding. They say touch grass. It's like, we'll go walk in the jungle. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Dude, that was funny. Snoop Dog reposted a video, me wrestling with an Anaconda and the comments were great. But it was like, well, you know, of course it was all like, this is like the most extreme white people shit I've ever seen. And then the next one was like, bro, you touched enough grass. Go home. That's enough.

The comment section was fantastic. Well, you're like what I observed is that the reason I kind of asked you about the fear tooth is because I wanted to see if that would ever register with you and it did not when I was down there. But when I was observing you, like just kind of watching you in your element. You are just hyper present at all times. You know, obviously, like, we're not on our phones out there. That's a pretty common type thing.

Like, unless you're literally shooting a video of content, which that week you weren't really even doing. No. You know, you're not connected with that. But it was never like, oh, you know, it's 7 o'clock we're going to do this thing. It was just like, here we are right now, whatever it is, no matter how small of a thing it was or how like, oh, this is actually like a serious thing. Like, when we were looking at new areas where they had taken over illegally and stuff

like that, you were just always right there and focus. on what was in front of you. And I got to think that that's an environmental, just trained thing that you probably had that, but it got developed like crazy when you moved down to the Amazon. Yeah. And it's also something that I enjoy and that you can't have unless you have a mission and, you know, necessity. And so when you're doing something, I mean, honestly, it could be something as mundane as washing the dishes where you're like, I got to get this giant thing of dishes done. And it's like you kind of get lost in it for a while. And then you don't, you're not paying attention.

But when you're driving the boat and you're like, oh, there's a heron and there's the skimmers and like, oh, there's that came in. And you're just, you're just kind of observing and taking it in. That's the greatest state of mind you can be in because you're basically happy or at least you're neutral. And you're, you're taking an information that's relevant to you. Like I'm taking in data on the river, which again, it's not the important part. It's just, you're just driving the boat and you're doing whatever you're doing. And it's like that to me is is almost like meditation bliss. And so yeah, walking through the jungle to the day we went and saw the area that they were coming into,

yes, you're doing something that's hard and you're seeing something that's devastating. And you're trying to stop this thing that's very scary, but you're on a mission. And as long as you're on a mission, the human brain is happy. We are mission-based. We need to be on the, we need to be fishing, trapping, carrying water, chopping, chopping, figuring out problems and uh i've i've just found out that as long as i'm on a mission i'm okay and it's like when you're sitting they're going what do i do next and i think that's a problem i think that's what why everyone's so delirious with like politics and all of like the distraction crap that's on

the screens is because like first of all like i feel like 10 years ago but people wouldn't fall for it as quickly and i feel like in other countries in the amazon i feel like in the south even People are like, what'd you guys forget? There's the, what's the song where he goes, blow up your TV, move to the country, find you, Jesus, builds you a home. And it's like, I think it's a John Prine song, but it's like, it's such like a feel-good song, but it's like, blow up your TV, get out. Because as soon as you disconnect from the screen, I had a hysterical friend not that long ago who was yelling at me saying,

it was my responsibility to be more outraged. About what? I don't know politics Nancy Pelosi I have no idea and I said I said listen man I said did you know that did you know that there's only 6,000 cheetahs left on earth I said you know that there's there's almost 600 California condors because of conservation efforts I said I am so focused on what I have to do I said you think when Michael Jordan is at the NBA finals did you think he's thinking about anything else you think he cares do you think Mike cared about anything else that didn't have to do with a basketball no my life mission is saving this forest I don't care about anything else and I believe that saving this forest and fixing the environment is the most important thing that could that is the defining issue of our time right now and that if we don't do it we're the last generation is going to have a chance to do it so if I'm on that level of a mission civilizations rise and fall why the fuck would I care what some politician said to another politician it happens every week and it never stops and the whole tactic is to get you outraged

and I've noticed this even with even in the microcosm of my own social media I could post today we saved 5,000 acres of forest and like, you know, a small amount of people, 2,000 people will like it. It's great. If I show an elephant getting shot in the face, the most disturbing thing that will ruin your day and make you feel sick and hurt your heart, hundreds of thousands of likes, shares up, like people go nuts. And so I understand why the news does it.

It's a ratings machine. Bleeds, it leads. It bleeds, it leads. Which also, that's the other thing that is the best, if I literally bleed. Like every time I'm bleeding, it does great. But no, distress, distress cells. And so today it's like they've become, it's become because of, we've never had this type of connectivity before where everyone's on their phones and everyone has a TV.

And even when you're not on your phone or your TV, you get into a cab and there's a screen where you try and fill gas at the thing and there's a screen. And so coming from the jungle, I'm like, wait a second. Like, I'm like, guys, stop, like, stop it. I'm like, get out of my face. Like, you've got to stop at some point. And so, and I just, I just don't, don't know why, but literally I saw this distraught friend of mine was saying, the world is falling

apart and it's never been a worse time and everything is so distressing. I said, well, what the what's wrong? I said, open your phone. And it was like, the prime minister of the Philippines has been shot in the face. It was like, what's the next thing? A snow leopard has mauled someone in Cambodia. And I was like, what's next? And they were like, in Kentucky, like a building fell over. And I was like, what's next? And I was like, you just heard the bad news from an entire planet. I said, now let's try and experiment. Let's try and experiment. I said, shut your phone. We literally shut off his phone, which he felt very distressed. You could see, he was like, well, what do I do? How do I know where to go? What's going to happen next? None of us had phones growing up.

I said, look around you. Are any of the people dying that you can see right now? No. Are the trees on fire? The mountains falling over. Are the heavens splitting? No. Is there a race war happening around us right now? Nope. And so it's like you can just walk through the street and all of a sudden and everything's okay. Yep. I went to a, I went to, my friends have the food truck, the Pakalachian, and I went to this Southern music festival called the Rhythm and Roots. And there was every kind of per.

I mean, there was the cops, there was black people, white people, southerners, northerners, every type of person, you know, purple hair and piercings and everything, everybody, everybody having a good time. Everybody had even a good time. The only indication that there was even like a America problem was that they had sniper, on every rooftop, which as a person that comes from a cop family, I was very happy about. I was literally saluting all of them.

Thank you for keeping us safe. The last thing we need is a shooter. And if there is, shut them down. But it was like, I almost wanted to write an article about it where I said, wait a second, this is the America I see what's right in front of me. I'm watching cops sitting next to, you know, people, biker gang people. Right. Sharon and I, like, have an ice cream cones next to each other laughing.

like this is what's actually happening. It's only when you watch it through the screen that did you start going insane. And so, you know, that's why I stay in the jungle. You know that phrase, death by a thousand cuts? Yeah. We live in a world now where it's death by a cut.

Right? You can show something anecdotal, one thing. Yeah. In some place far away from you or whatever. Yeah. And that anecdote becomes the definition of whatever the thing is. So like this type of violence is happening

this type of community. Therefore, it happens in all the communities everywhere right now because I'm seeing this and it's so bad. And there's something very unnatural about us having access to that. And like in my job, part of my job, I do all different topics here. But one of the many lanes we have is we're covering things that are happening. And right now is actually an example of a time with these Epstein files where there is, there should be righteous rage.

Like if you don't waste your time with it. But like, it's awful. There's no other way to put it. It's one of the worst things I've ever seen. And it does need to be addressed because they're going to try to cover it up. That said, like I've always had this thought, like this theory, if you will. I call it the Wawa theory. So you remember back at my parents' house, like, I don't know if I ever did this with you,

but usually when I pick people up from the airport, we stop by Wawa. And so I was locked the way in the woods for three years, like three and a half years building the podcast. And so I didn't have a lot. Like, I would connect with people when they came over the house, and I didn't spend a lot of time, like, outside the house. So when I'd go to Wawa, this is when I'm seeing a lot of people. Yeah.

And during times where social media was flipping out at the highest levels about shit in society, I would literally watch the purple-haired girl hold the door for the 75-year-old dude with the nom hat. Yes. And they'd probably hate each other from behind a keyboard, but they were cool and smiled and said, thank you. That was incredibly well presented.

Thank you. I've done it before. That was great. I mean the Purple Hill girl and Nam has like that was like that was like you be like you practiced it um that was really good that's exactly that's exactly my point made more eloquently than I could make it uh I just so yeah it's very scrambling coming back and seeing everybody's delirious and I'm like could you help me save the Amazon and the other great thing about saving the Amazon is that it's all um nobody nobody nobody nobody disagrees with it like everyone needs to breathe air and drink water

and I would think it's like a 99 to one sort of thing where I think everyone wants there to be animals. Like there's probably some sort of Manson-like guy who's like rubbing pieces in his ears and like, he's like, nah, I want them all dead. That's probably that guy. But everyone else is like theoretically, yes, I wanted a world with his polar bears and elephants

in the Amazon right far as like, I think that's pretty standard we can all agree. So yeah, you know, it's nice because when I welcome people to the tree house or to the jungle. It's just all, everybody's a friend. Yeah. And the other thing is like, you know, some people are like, dude, you went to the middle

of the Amazon, are you fucking nuts? I was like, here's the really strange thing. And I don't say this to be like, you know, nonchalant about it. But you can't really explain until you get out there. I felt incredibly safe and natural in the environment at all times. Like, you weren't afraid of an an anaconda getting you. You weren't afraid of a jaguarial. where they want nothing to do with you the worst things you have to worry about are like a falling tree

yeah i mean also nobody's going to mug you you're not going to get hit by a car right you know scaffolding isn't going to fall on you it's like it is more safe out there statistically than it is when you're in your house i mean um i think driving is way more way more dangerous but the amazon just sounds people just don't want to get bitten by a bullet ant or stung by a stingray and they don't know that those things aren't everywhere in the Amazon. Just like you go for, I went for the first time and I was like, I hope there are snakes on every branch walk for six hours and not find a snake. Right. It's like sometimes when I'm guiding people, I'm like, they want to see a snake. And I'm trying to find a snake. Not that easy. And they blend in and they don't want to be seen. Yeah. You get them on the cameras,

though, a lot. You get crazy shit on all the cameras. Tell people about the cameras like you set up, because they're all over the jungle. It was amazing how many you had. Yeah. So I've been doing camera trap stuff for years and years, which is where you put out the little trail cam with a little memory card and you put those out there. And so they're watching quietly. And the trick I've learned is, A, make them lower than you think because a lot of these animals will drop their heads. Like a jag, even if he's, you know, tall, they'll drop their head when they're walking. And so you want this face level. So you put it a little bit lower. And you figure out where the animals move. You look at the game trails. You got to do a little bit of thinking like an animal to put

these things out. You could just stick it on the side of a trail. It's not as good. You want them coming straight at you. And so I've been monitoring the Amazonian forests with these trail cams for 15 years. And that was like one of the first things I had was I put together a compilation of trail cam footage that at the time I was like 20 something and it won a United Nations Award. And it was like no one could believe that in one spot in the forest, I think I had two cameras in this one little clearing. And there was over 2,000 videos of something like 60 species. And it's just this place There's all these animals. I called it an unseen world.

And that just goes on every single day. Puma's with their babies. For some reason, the mother Puma that lives right behind the station, she keeps having twins. Not twins, but she'll have like two cubs at a time. And so you see this big mother Puma walking out. And then like her son and her daughter are even bigger than she is. And so you just go, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's a herd of Pumas. Yeah.

That's wild. Like there's a herd of mountain lions walking through the jungle. And then we have, you know, the jags are big. The bags are thick. And you have tapers and we have peccary are back now because our forests are re recuperating from the logging industry thing that happened in the 90s, the mahogany boom. And so there's just there's just all this wildlife. And if you walk through the forest, you know this, you don't see a thing.

All the animals know you're coming. The deer are gone, the peckery's are gone. The jaguars watching you from somewhere else. The birds are off. You see footprints. You see footprints. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay J.J. calls it the morning news. The morning news. That's how he checks the news report. He goes, let's go see the news. He checks. He's like, oh, the jaguar came here. He's like, oh, the deer went that way. Nope, the jaguars following the deer. He sees who walked where. But yeah, we have just stacks on stacks of hard drives now of visions into the Amazon, which would at some point be so cool to do like a full-on documentary of look at what's happening

in this forest. But now this is only the floor of the forest. You've got to think you have 160-foot canopy. If you really wanted to do it right, if you wanted to do it like planet Earth level, you would have you'd grid the whole thing like a cube you'd do it like a rubyx cube of cameras in every direction and so you'd get like a 4d model of the 3d model of the whole jungle so you'd see where the animals are moving and watch them go into their hole and come back out the next day and that would be cool that would be super cool but right now we have the ground level perspective of we see when they cross the trails and you'll see you'll see a puma cross the trail and sent mark a tree and then you'll see the jaguar cross that same trail be like oh no no no my trail

When you say scent mark a tree, can you explain that to people? They'll spray urine on the tree and that is like a dog with a fire hydrant. Like a dog yeah and so with the cats they use urine and scat to delineate where their ranges are. And so the female jaguars know to stay off where the male jaguars are to keep their cubs away from dangerous males. The pumas which are, you know, feather weights compared to a jaguar that's thick and tough, they will stay out of the way. So the jaguans on everything and of course all the other animals. have great smell so they know where the cats are and how recently they've been there.

And I always say like the animals know what we're thinking to a degree, how stressed we are. Like an animal knows your intention of pose. Like if you walk, you know, when you're approaching deer, if you kind of keep your eyes this way and use your peripheral vision and you're like, all right, so the deer is over here. But I'm going to walk over here and I'm just going to keep my gestures and everything in this direction. It's like the deer will clock that and say, okay, well, you're not, you're not interested in me. they know and then the moment you square up to them jim gone and that's that goes for birds you know mammals whatever the only thing it really doesn't react is bears they don't have a very like a bear will go from

walking to charging without a lot of like this there's no there's no there's no transition period with bears it's really weird they've not really anything you can do from a strategic standpoint i mean you can make noise and be like hey bear you know don't get out of here but i'm saying like if a cat is interested in you they'll kind of clock you first you see them get interested where they're going okay you're interesting whereas a bear will kind of do this thing where they're like i'm eating berries i'm eating berries i'm going to kill you and it's like they go quick and so i've been i've been charged by a black bear and again it's charged by a black bear well i've done lots of stuff with a black bear yeah i've been i've been charged where were you charged by a black bear in new york

in new york they're all over the place but i mean like i was walking what you did tackle it well i was you know i had her around the neck And, no, I was walking on this trail. I was walking on this trail and she was walking on another trail. And so we came sort of like face to face on a V. And so she came and I came and then she just lifted her paws in the air and just went, boom. And that she did not stand up, it wasn't that dramatic. And she just lifted her paws up and went, boom.

And just a big exhale. And I went, okay, I see you. You know, I was like, cool enough. And it wasn't a charge. It was just to back off. I was like, I didn't mean to come that close. Did you have the shetty? In New York?

No, I don't walk around with a machete in New York. But there was one time that I was snowboarding in New York. And there was a black bear that got spooked by kids walking around. So the black bear was running down the mountain through the trees between the lifts. And I heard the people being like, black bear, black bear. And I was already snowboarding. So I snowboarded through the trees. And for a minute, for like for like 15 seconds, I got to snowboard next.

to a fully running black bear. And that was fun. That was cool. Oh, I wish you had a GoPro. Oh, I wish. I wish. That was sick. Yeah, no, that was great.

I have the video in here, and it's wonderful. And it's running, and it's running straight downhill, right? And it's running. Yeah. And you know how there's like, there's those, there's all the trees in between the different things. So yeah, he was just running through the center of that. And I was just like trying to keep up and trying to see where the bear was. And then I think of that moment where when you see it, it happens really quick.

You're like, oh, there's the bear. There's a big one. Because a lot of these New York black bears are not that big. It's like a super diesel raccoon. But then every now and then, every now and then you get that like refrigerator-sized black bear. Yeah. I'm out on that. You have your food source figured out.

And you've been doing it a long time. That's when you need the bear spray. Yeah. I used to think that worked like bug spray. Do you spray it on yourself? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I learned that's not.

Did you, did you really? No, I did not do that. Because that would sound, you'd be really, really messed up. Yeah. You'd be in the hospital, I think. Yeah, I remember my friend Chris back in episode 86 was telling me about using bear spray. I'm like, so you didn't spray it on yourself first? He's like, no, you'd fucking die if you did that.

JJ said, what was the story? JJ said that he, he, he sprayed, what did he spray on himself? He sprayed something on himself. I can't remember what it was. It was like bear spray or insect repellent or something that he didn't, he didn't know. He thought it was like deodorant. No, he maced himself. That's what it is.

Oh, he maced himself. When he was first guiding, he didn't know what mace was and somebody left it and he thought, oh, it's squirts. I'll just. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, to write this book, I had to interview him. Like, I sat him down and like, you know, like, with your friends, you don't like necessarily

podcast interview them. You don't do the deep dive. And like with JJ, I mean, we've been friends for 20 years. And I was like, wait, and you really need to know, like, how did the whole first part of your life go on? So, like, I sat down and listened to it. And he went through it. And it was like, I had had no idea. I had no idea how hard he had it.

I had no idea how raw it was. I just had no idea. And then it made me want to do this with like, you're like, why don't we do this with like our parents? Why don't we do this with our friend? You don't need to say, like, tell me. You have four hours. Download me. That was the one thing, bro.

You had him in town in New York. Oh, man. Yeah. We gotta do that. I really, JJ and I really, he'll be back. He's,

he's the fucking man. He's, he's one of those guys, like you would always describe to him and he's kind of like almost this magical figure, like the way you describe him and you're like, wow. And a lot of times when that happens, if you didn't meet that person,

it's like almost underwhelming. Yeah, of course. Because they've been, like, sold so hard. But it's very hard to explain when I met him, that dude has some of the most natural subtle but like lock on charisma I have ever seen in my entire life I was like whoa it all makes sense now because like you and him your person your interests are the same yeah your personalities are yin and yang

though and it's like this is why this works so well down here yeah now he it was funny seeing him in manhattan he he looked up and I went what do you think and he just was very great very quiet I think I think he was overwhelmed on a level where it was like, he was like, no, no, no, it's great. He was like, thank, thank you, thank you. And like, it was like a lot of, like, he would like go lock himself in his hotel room and just be like, I think for them it actually is too much culture shock. Manhattan. Sensory overload.

After living in the jungle, your whole life. I think they were stoked to see it. I think they were very happy, him and Roy. But I could see it on their faces that like after a few hours, they just, they were like, I mean, you're looking at buildings, like, we're used to it, but you, you, I mean, for me, like, I know how, you think, think of where I live. It's wooden posts with a floor and like an A-frame. That is difficult to build and maintain.

And then you look at like 30 rock. Yep. It's kind of beyond the, the, so to the jungle mind, it's a little bit overwhelming. I mean, that, yeah, there you go. It's amazing that man built that. Yeah. Right. And quick.

Those things shoot up. Look at that. Yeah, we're looking at the wallpaper over here on camera five for people at home. Shows Manhattan. But yeah, I mean, it's got to be cool, though, to bring him up here and him get to see, like, the launch year book and all the people who are so behind what you guys are doing. like almost you know on a mass scale put a name with the face right yeah no i mean for years and years he i think he didn't understand like you know he'd be like when i would leave he would go when are you coming back why are you know why aren't you here doing the work with us even if i left for two months

he would he would feel it and then him being here and seeing us talking to donors doing interviews driving around doing the thing yeah i said do you understand now i said do you understand what i'm doing when I'm here is non-stop all day morning till night and he went okay I get it and it was they got to see I mean the gala we had it was just packed with our donors and our friends and the I mean they did a huge tribute to JJ I mean without him none of us would be here and so he got to see him looking up at the screen you know I it's hard to read the emotion on his face but I think it was deep pride and uh trying to be stoic but I think it's hard to be stoic when you have a room full of 300 people people, basically giving you a lifetime achievement award.

And that was beautiful to watch. We also brought his son in. And then the craziest part was that after all that, you know, and he's watching me rush to ABC News and NBC News and doing all this stuff. And the book launch at Barnes & Noble was so cool because I told everybody at the start of it, I went, okay, I've given this book talk a million times. I said, but listen, this is the first time ever that I've stood before people. and I'm going to tell you it

at the end I was like I talked about JJ and the book and our time together in the formation of journalkeepers and I was like and he's here and I got JJ up on stage at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square and everybody just lost their shit it was amazing the people at Barnes & Noble were like trying to calm

us down they're like you have to stop they're like enough no more questions no there was just there was hundreds of people it was like a riot it was so much fun that's got to be so cool man that was cool Because like, when we're talking about the Amazon, obviously you and I have talked on episode 124, 192, and 193 in the past. But for people who maybe are hearing you for the first time or hearing about it for the first time, we're talking about, I think maybe the most magnificent place on Earth, a place that's 2.7 million square miles, which the entire United States is like 3.1 million, so it's almost that size.

And, you know, according to the stats, it provides over 20% of the world's oxygen. So it's this incredible, incredible place that also balances our ecosystem around the world. And you've done an amazing job explaining, like, some of the science behind that and how it relates to other continents in the past. But you guys have built an amazing, like, portfolio, if you will. It's a bad way to put it. But of 110, 110, 120, 130,000 acres. 130, yeah.

That you're protecting. And I think when we started, you were at like 30 or 40. Yeah. Something like that. Something below 50. Because remember I was excited when we got to 55. Yeah, I was after the podcast, the first one back in the day. So like, it's amazing.

Yeah. But at the same time, do you ever get overwhelmed at the scope that is out of your control that needs to be saved? You know, like, it's amazing that you're at 150,000 acres. But out of the millions of square. miles does that ever overwhelm you for a second yeah but again that's no way to fight a war you worry about the hill that you're taking you don't that's it again focus on this shot right that's it if you start worrying about every game that's ever going to happen anywhere ever in your whole life

then that's that's you're just going to scramble your brains and so we are focused on one thing right here fixing this problem saving the wildest place on earth and if we can do that then it's a blueprint that that we can use to save rivers in the Congo and New Guinea and all over the world and the model of that it's grassroots that we're using, it's from the people, that it's people all over the world giving $5, $10, $100 a month for the price of a coffee from Starbucks once a month, enough people doing that, we're saving the Amazon rainforest.

And that is, that's what's so cool about, and that's what is very satisfying about the book is that it's telling people how we formed it. Because I think at this point, people see, me and they go oh he's a conservationist he saves the rainforest yeah but at some point i was just a little kid that's right and i had a dream and it took 17 years of living out of a backpack in the rain getting infections getting stung by stingrays having no idea if we were going to make anything work and then now as the director of a major organization that is the most direct way of saving the amazon

rainforest it is my responsibility to give a hand up to the kids that are coming in the next generation because it's exactly what people like jane did for me jane good all jane goodall just changed my whole life yeah i know i know that she was important to you but she was she was an amazing amazing woman lived an amazing life man mm-hmm yeah and i mean when i was a kid she was sort of like a living historical figure like you knew she was out there somewhere but it was kind of a theoretical certainty like the the molten core of the earth or the fact that there's millions of galaxies it's like sure Jane Goodall exists somewhere doesn't didn't seem real because it was like there'd be like black and white photos of her and there's books and so she seemed myth mythical

and then there's a scene in the book that I described where it's like where I sat down with her and showed her the plan for jungle keepers and she showed me the plan that she was thinking of in in Africa you know how she planned on on saving chimps and saving this ecosystem and she was asking like what did her plan look like to do that that acres everyone just wants we need acres to protect acres humans are spreading like a cancer all over the planet and we have to stop that spread we have to we have to keep we have to keep at least half the earth as ecosystems so that we still have clean air and fresh water and all this other stuff functioning ocean fisheries yeah and she's very aware of that and that was her whole message

first of all that we're the last generation is going to have the chance to do it second of all hope and third of all that the children are going to be the ones that you need to inspire because The adults are already out there doing it. They're already the ones working the back hose, selling off their land, turning it into a development. It's like the children are the ones where you're gonna reach them and go, wait. Don't you care?

Isn't a stream more important than your portfolio? Isn't a stream for all of us more important than any one person making money off of it? And so she knew that, but it was beyond surreal to sit next to this living legend and drink whiskey and talk about how we're gonna save the Amazon. And she was very deliberate with going, if I give you the words, if I give you my endorsement for your book, she said, I love the book. But as Jane Goodall, she said, if I give you this, she said, I want acres.

She said, you're going to protect acres. And so she was giving me the Excalibur sword and going, you can do this, but I understand that I'm going to redirect the entire narrative of your life. And without her, there'd be no mother of God. without mother of god there'd be no junglekeepers without junglekeepers would be no dax it'd be no none of this stuff would have happened would be no acres and so she literally changed the course of my life because she took the time to read some chapters that i had written at the time where i was not an author i was just a student but mother of god was a fucking unbelievable book bro i mean like holy shit man it's wild it's a wild book but like the writing in that book yeah i don't know how you

taught yourself, but it is beautiful pros, man. Thank you. Thank you. No, I just had to read it. I just got to do the audio book for it. I had to fight for years to be able to do it. For Mother of God. Yeah, they didn't let me do it when I was a kid because they were like, you're a nobody. We're going to have a voice actor do it. Oh, fuck that. Yeah. And then now, now, now you're Paul Rosalie. Now all of a sudden you go back and you go, audible, I want to record my own book. And they go, Oh, sure. I also took screenshots of like 700 people that went, I bought your audio book, and I hate that you're not reading it. I came into you from podcasts. Why are you not reading your book? Just push all those chips over and be like, audible, now what? And then they were like, all right,

fine, you can read your own book. And so I had to reread Mother of God, which I haven't, you know, I haven't looked at Mother of God. Once you write a book, you don't go back and look at it in 12, what has it been 12? 12 years. 12 14, it came out, right? Yeah. And I was like, bro. I was like, why did you, who let this kid do this stuff? Like the solos and the close calls. And then it triggered back, you know, I think I remember everything. And then it's like, you don't really.

That's why I journal so much. You don't really remember everything. Yeah, you do so much. It's like, how do you even? Yeah, but I'm saying all of us. I mean, so many days go by that could be mundane days. I mean, just like the last few days. I mean, I just had a journal entry.

It was like, I had the most magnificent day. It was just like snowing, dogs, family nothing but it was like that's a treasure of a day no tragedies happened everything is going well right now it's like you you journaled that you know what i mean most most people journal only today sucked because of this she broke up with me blah blah blah you know it's like most people only panic journal they they like vent to their journal it's like write down everything good today i cooked for an hour with my mom she's still around today i did this with my kid he learned this for the first It's like, you know, just whatever it is.

It's like because then you end up forgetting most people and I have a really good memory. I remember to the day people go, how the hell do you remember this stuff? And I got this is the way my brain works. It's like my camera roll. I have access to everything that ever happened all the time. And which is not always a good thing because then I it's very hard for me to get past a grudge. You know like when somebody. Yeah, like once somebody sends you a fucking thumbs up emoji, you remember that.

No, I'm really, I'm looking forward to reading the latest one. Because like, I read Mother of God after you and I knew each other. So after we hadn't recorded. And I will say to this day, I've been doing this a long time. Now I'm coming up on six years. I've talked with a lot of fucking people. You're the best 30 to 60 second storyteller I've ever seen. And I think that's why your writing is unique in works because you find a way to maximize

each page into its own little trinket of like if I just open up the book like this, I read like that right there and I'm like, woo. Yeah. Okay. What else happening? The best 30 to 60 second storyteller. I do find I have as I study stories and storytelling, just like you go, okay, and Glorious Bastards is an incredible movie and they can take you through a 15-minute

conversation and you are riveted the whole time because of the subtext and you know what's going to happen. And then it's all going to explode. I have found myself in the presence of individual humans that have started telling a story where I'm going, I am in physical pain. I need you to get to the point. And I mean, I'll own the fact that I am a professional storyteller at this point. And I, there are times where someone will go, you know, so back when I was living on this street and then I had a neighbor, what was his name? And like, was it Bob or was it Joe?

Oh, that's the worst. I'm like, make it up. It doesn't, it's completely irrelevant to me. I don't care what his name was. You can call them whatever you want. And they're like, no, no, no, no, I'm going to get this. Hold on. You go, okay.

And then the story goes on and then changes directions. And sometimes I, you know, it's almost like when you get high and like all of a of a sudden you come back. Yes. You go, whoa, what was I doing? I was like, on a whole other trip. What story are you still telling? And it's like you do have to deliver stakes and then sort of like a punchline to people really

quick. Yeah. And it's like when you're catching an an anaconda, this is how you can mess it up. This is what happened. one time and then get the fuck out because people want to respond and then it's it's gratuitous of you to continue pontificating upon your story yeah and so some people are so desperate to you know oh my god i was mowing the lawn and like you know it hit this thing and like the blade was in it's like nobody cares to begin with and then and then to keep that story going for a long time the best storytellers

are the ones that are like dude i was mowing my lawn the fucking blade bent and then like this the next thing you know, like all of a sudden, I fell over and I was under the car. And it's like, and then you laugh. But you're like, one, two, three, done. You gotta be as brief as possible. It really is. It really is. And if there's a longer story, you gotta like notice comedians do this a lot where they'll

be like, hang with me, hang with me, like, trust me on this. You gotta like, you gotta like lead people in and be like, I'm, there's a reason I'm doing this. In this, I had to do this. I had this one part where I'm, they, I don't talk to the reader a whole lot, but with the floating forest. the giant anaconda. I'm like, listen, if you want to throw the book, I said, if you hate this right now and you're thinking this guy's full of shit, none of this is true and you want to fling the book across the room, I understand. I actually agree with you. I said, that's the only

story I'm going to tell you where I can't prove it with photos, but everything else, all the huge anacondas, all the tribes, everything else. I said the pictures are in this insert. What was that story? The floating forest in an an anaconda? I don't think you told that one here before. I've, 100% told it. Not on my show. Yeah, 100%. 100%. I remember doing this at your desk where I jumped on the back of the anaconda and I couldn't touch my fingers because it was so big. Oh, that one. 100%. Okay. I remember that. Yeah, yeah. But I had to retell that story in this because I had to be like, look, it was the discovery of the floating forest that led to the obsession with finding the biggest anacondas. And so it was like, I was like, listen, this is, because everything else in there,

the catching of huge anacondos, the tribes, the solos, the people being shot in the head by arrows, it's all, there's all photographic proof of it because to me it's a Pixar, it didn't happen. And I think I've told you before. I think I told you this before. My friend came to me and he said, I got attacked by a wild asslot. An osloat is like a dog-sized cat. Yeah. And I said, that doesn't happen.

That's not true. He said, no, I climbed a ladder. And the osloff followed me up the ladder. Like, bit me on the thigh. And he said, like, as I climbed up the ladder, this wild cat is climbing up the ladder to get me. And then I pushed the ladder and it fell over. And I was like, this is all bullshit. I was like, this isn't even a good story because it's not creative.

And he's like, I have the whole thing on camera. And every word of it was true. It's a fucking deranged ossella. Well, I had rabies is what it had. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He didn't get anything, did he? I mean, he went and got his rabies shots right after that. But, but, because we don't have rabies in the jungle, but you get loggars coming in from other regions, and their dogs can be carrying rabies. And then a vampire bat bites the dogs because there's lots of vampire bats in the jungle, which, which are, which is, if you ever wake up at night and your foot is just touching the mosquito net and they have an inch. anticoagulant in their saliva and they cut you with a it's so sharp their teeth that they cut you and you don't know it and then they have an anticoagulant and they lick you and an anticoagulant it makes your blood more water-like it flows quicker and so they can just sit there lapping up your blood while you're sleeping so if your foot touches the mosquito net you get a uh uh uh a vampire batted

and of course the scary thing with getting vampire batted is if that vampire bat the last animal that bit if that had rabies, then you're going to get rabies. And so while you sleep, you could die. It's a great invitation to join you down on the Amazon. Just you want to hang out. Yeah. It's cool to hear you look at the perspective, though, of what you were saying a few minutes ago about how you view your jump shot, right?

Bakers that you protect and what you do and what you were then getting at to me, the way I took it is you can use your platform and the results and the change. transparency of everything you're doing to be the inspiration to the generation that's of new paul rosalie's from around the world who are genuinely going to want to come in and not just be you know tourist trappers and and actually do something about it and go to places like the amazon or not even just the amazon but places around the world and my buddy Tommy g has a great quote where he talks about he can't boil the ocean but he can boil his pot and i always use that's cool and that's exactly what you're saying right there because if you do that

enough other people are going to grab their fucking pots come down to the ocean maybe do something about the temperature of it yeah i like that i like that a lot because that's the other thing that a lot of people that are concerned with the environment are so concerned with is they're concerned with the whole thing you're never going to again worry about the hill that you're taking right and again whether that's worrying about planting indigenous species of plants in your backyard so that the monarchs and the hummingbirds can migrate great Whether that's keeping our oceans off the East Coast clean, great. I mean, I was just on the West Coast last week, and I got to see elephant seals and Big Sur.

I mean, they're just thousands of elephant seals along the coast. They get huge. So they get up to, right? The males get up to 16 feet. 16 feet. 16 feet. Can we pull them off? With a, with like, I mean, just the giant trunk coming off of their face, 16 feet, 5,000 pounds.

you're talking about like the weight of of 20 adult grown men. Yeah. They are ridiculously big, but here's the thing. They're a great conservation success story because they were becoming extinct. They were saved. The beaches were saved. When you're out there in like that big sir area, there's not even boats in the water. It's just nature.

These guys are out there on like the side of the highway. There's the beach right there. Thousands of elephant seals all interacting. And there's a board. And there's like docents. There's like these old, there's like a couple of old men and women who are walking around with like, you know, we are the sea lion protector vests. And they're like, yeah, we come here and they're like, we tell people about the sea lions and how to protect them. And, you know, we pick up any plastic and the sea lions are happy. They're all like having babies. The males are

fighting. They're throwing sand up on each other. And then as we're watching the sea, the elephant seals, we climbed one of the hills and I see this bird. And it was so big that I went. There is only one thing that that could be. I said, I can't believe because I know there's only like 500 California condors left on earth, but I'm going, this thing has at least an eight foot wingspan. It has to be a condor. And sure enough, it was a California condor, which they almost went extinct. I think they went down to 17 individuals or something crazy like that because the lead poisoning from the carcasses that they were eating from hunting kills, they were getting lead poisoning. And DDT was ruining their eggs, just like what was happening to bald eagles. But now we went from below.

a hundred to up to over I think over 500 I think just below 600 individuals of the California condor bald eagles are back in the Hudson Valley when I was growing up you never saw a bald eagle it was like something that you wished you could see one day see a bald eagle once every three days when I'm home I know we were talking about unfortunately like if it bleeds it leads that's what gets people's attention but it is also critical to talk about it like when we get w's like this that's amazing you know and there's so many of them because that's the thing people come to me now and they go I'm so distressed especially especially young people they come to me and they go I'm so distressed you know I'm not eating meat

anymore and I'm not using straws and I bike to work and I you know and it's like bro pretty soon you know I don't wear any clothing that's sourced from plastic or or from another part of the world so I'm locally brink I mean at some point you're going to have to make yourself a TP and you're going to have to start and you know fishing you're like there's that thing where the guy goes He goes, I used to make music, but then I felt like a sellout. So I wanted to make my own drum beats and not use like a synthesizer. So I bought some drums.

And he's like, but then the drums, he's like, I realized I shouldn't be a sellout and I should make my own drums. He's like, so then I started stretching goat skin over the drums and I made my own drums. And he was like, yo, I actually shouldn't be a sellout and do that. So I actually bought my own goats. And then he realized that he'd just been living as a goat herder for a long time and not really making music anymore. Yeah. So you got to be careful how authentic you want to be. Yeah, you weren't a part of the Visco Hydroflass movement to save the turtles.

That's not your kind of scene. The Hydroflask movement to see? I'm not even going to get into it with you. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That and the pervert fellow you keep mentioning. We just just keep those off the...

Yeah, no, totally different topic. I just, I don't want to know. Below your line, shall we say. They seem below the bar. Would Madam Jane Godole care? Probably not Yeah But that's so talking about the sea

The uh The elephant seals Yeah There was Do you ever watch on Netflix The Our Planet series? Yeah Oh they do an amazing job with them

They're incredible I just watch one on plants And I was riveted Yeah They have like a Victoria Lily It's like this plant is going to be six feet across And it's like they show this thing unfolding And it's so beautifully filmed

That you feel like you're watching stuff That couldn't possibly be real I'm sitting there watching this documentary and it's almost what an amazing time we live in that we can see things that are filmed in such a way that you could never actually see it like that. Like if you went and jumped in a swamp in the Amazon and like opened your eyes, you'd be, you know, that you wouldn't see anything but they go there and they light it perfectly and they show you this thing crawling up through the swamp and pushing aside the other lilies and then opening up this giant. It's insane. Absolutely insane.

I would love to see you get involved. with them doing a series where they go through the whole Amazon and do that. Like, I know they've been to the Amazon before and at least one of the series was something. But, like, I forget there was some sort of estimated number you went through, and it's not even educationally possible to even know. But there's a crazy number of species that are completely undiscovered in the Amazon still. Like, imagine how many they could discover with their tools alone, you know? Well, I mean, I can just paint this for you really quickly.

So the fact that, and I want to look, actually, could we look that up, that you said, what's the area of the lower 48 states? I want to know that in miles. Because what I understood was that's like 7 million square miles is the, no. Should be 3 million. Yeah, I think 3.1 is all 50. And then 2.7 or 2.8 is a 48. I could be misremembering that.

So what is the square mileage of the lower 48 U.S. states? Yeah, I want to know that. because I think that that's three something. Million. 3.1. Okay. Now, what is the square mileage of the Amazon, the entire Amazon jungle, right?

I have a feeling it's going to be like 7 million miles squared. Wait, am I misremembering it then? I don't know. One of us is. It's been a while. 2.7. Oh, 2.7. No, no, no.

Dyslexia. I said put the 7 before. Still there. 2.7. So not much smaller than the size of the Amazon. So basically includes the river system encompasses, yeah. Basically take off like... Roughly 2.3 million square miles.

Take off Washington State and one of the Dakotas and you got it. Holy shit. That's the Amazon. That's what I'm saying. Imagine just in our planet where they go... Because, you know, how many countries is in? 16 countries or something like that? It's a single digit.

It's like eight or nine. Okay, either way. And one of them is Brazil, which is fucking enormous. 60% of the Amazon is in Brazil, yeah. Right. Right. So you go to all these different places. Yeah.

And you discover new species. They're using like fucking 40K cameras too. Yeah, no, I mean, look, I've been, I've been at this point, I'm just going to, whatever happens next, I'm going to do it myself. We're going to save the river. We have to save the river. So we have mother of God. This book is jungle keeper. And then we're going to have end game.

End game. 100%. I mean, because that's what we're in now. Once the, once the narco thing happened, it was like, okay. Once we realize the roads, the narcos, the lager is the thing. once the tribe came out and said okay like you know it's like once all of this came to a head we go okay we don't have much longer right we have to do this now the question no longer is can we save the forest the question is can we do it in time we're racing the chainsaws and the flames and the narco

traffickers we have our proof of concept we know that what we're doing works we protected 136 000 acres we've raised millions of dollars but now can we repeat that win three three times get to 300,000 acres because then the Peruvian government is waiting. They're waiting there with pens. Our lawyers have spoken to the Peruvian government. They said, if you can get the whole basin, we will sign it over into a national park. You just got to do it. And so it's like, that's why I've been telling people, it's like the more that this book gets out there, the more people read the whole struggle that JJ went through, that I went through with meeting Jane, with catching the anacondas, forming jungle keepers, how we got from point A to this.

That's why it's so important. Because this explains it with all of it. And that, with the publisher put, you know, Journalkeeper, what it takes to change the world. When they said that, that's not my subtitle. They were like, we're going to put this subtitle on the book. And I went, that's too heavy. You know, it's like every time somebody goes, hey, you're like, today's Steve Irwin. I'm like, no, I'm not. No one's like Steve Irwin.

You're not. Steve Irwin is the goat, period. And like, thank you for the compliment, but it's too heavy of a compliment to take. You can't take that compliment. And I said, that subtitle. I said that what it takes to change the world? I said, that's pretty heavy. But I think that my editor had a point in that it doesn't matter that it's saving the jungle.

It's the story of even if you have no idea what the path is, you have no idea where you're going. When I started, I had no, you know, most people, you go to school and you're going to become a blank. So you go to school for blank. And so it's like you can go learn a trade or learn a skill and then you can get a job. And that job will give you a paycheck and you'll have medical insurance. And so you have some security and you can work your way up then. You can pick a field. Whereas with this, all I knew was I love streams.

I love animals. I go to jungle. And then we see smoke on the horizon. And JJ's like, either you help us protect it or you go home. And so there was no linear path. And that's why I had to go and fail against the wall so many times and just eat shit. And then finally somehow. And then actually I got saved by a lot of people now.

I get these messages where people go, how did you know to keep going? I didn't know to keep going. I just was, I just, at some point, you've invested so much in the narrative that you're in that you can't change because you said so and because there's nothing. What are you going to do? Start a new career at third, you know, like I was just going to like come back to the workforce and be like, sign me up. I need to learn Excel.

You know, I'm going to trade in my machetes and skills and the tracking and all the local knowledge I've built up in the Amazon and just no, absolutely not. And once you come to know the forest and the trees and realize that nobody's, somebody's going to save them. It's like seeing a sinking school bus with children on it, and it's like there's no one around. You go, well, you can just keep walking your dog, or you can do something about it.

And to me, all of those reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals that are all over those branches. I mean, some of them I've raised myself. There are spider monkeys that I've pulled out of the river. There's two cans that I raised from death's door, and it's like, so I walk through that forest, and all my friends are there. I know where the big jaguar is,

and I know that came in that I call Kiara, and I know where Mr. and Mrs. Black Skis are the two birds that are always on the bend at big beach and it's like i know all these animals and i know these giant trees and at this point we are the only thing and i say we as in all of the jungle keepers everyone that's that's part of this thing now which has become this global movement we are now the only thing keeping that world green i want to show you this because this is my favorite picture in here it's my favorite and least favorite picture at the same time but it's the most important picture that picture the half half

the bottom one the bottom one all right so people can see it right there on the camera right yeah i mean i can also send you the jpeg of that but yeah that because that is the line that is what jungle keepers that's land we were able to protect because of people sending in donations and being part of the jungle keepers team and the black is just what we didn't have the funding to protect yeah period that is uh it's far as we didn't get to that's an unbelievable dichotomy man and it's that simple that is what we're doing we're keeping the the world green. It's that simple. I need to be. Okay. We'll be right back. Yeah, I've actually, I've been reading George R. Martin's original books of the Game of Thrones. Yeah.

Fucking amazing, bro. Like the creativity you get reading an amazing author like that is punchy and knows how to show the whole picture. It's like you can't, you can't get that anywhere else. No. And even just anything, anything, a beautiful novel. You feel the moment the magic. magic happens. It's like when you sit down to watch a movie, which never happens anymore, but now I'm going back and watching all the old movies that are good. But when you sit down to watch a movie and it starts and you're in it and you're like kind of in your real life and then the moment you get lifted off the ground and you're totally in the movie and you're not thinking about performances or camera angles. You're going, you're just like, oh my God. Yeah. The Joker really

is going to win. Like Batman. That bike is incredible. It's like you just that when you get lifted up, And with reading, it's the same thing, but it's a very different pathway in your brain. And to sit down. And this is what I can't stand as I can't stand watching, pass me that. I can't stand people watching people do this. They'll open a book. Yep. They'll open a book.

And they'll be like, one, two, three. There it is. What's this? Oh, oh, that's Katie. Okay. Hold on. One, two, three. What did my mom say?

Oh, my God. That's great. And I watched them do it. And then they go, okay, well, that's enough of that. and like I can't. What are you doing? Put the phone down in another room, go sit on a nice window sill or under a tree and read and make yourself to it. And also, and I hear a lot of people that one of the compliments I get on my books is people go, oh, it was a very easy read. And I agree with them. I like books that I can read easily. One of the great things that makes Anthony Bordane's book

Kitchen Confidential so great is that you open the book and he's like, man, in the summer 92 when I was working in this chop shop he's like you wouldn't believe how crazy this guy was and you're like this is conversational and that's great and when you open like you know pride and prejudice it's a little different you know you open some of those classic you open dickens different time different time different time where eloquent verbiage was was celebrated and you you know even the count of monte Christo those are big dense pages on a 800 page book i never read that it'll change your life change my life it'll change your life only thing is I'll tell you this um the first 300 pages some of the most incredible shit you've ever seen incredible like it means something it's important

it's like you know like how like Lord of the Rings you're like it's not just a movie it's it's it's kind of like a mythical bible um the count of Monte Cristo is the adventure equivalent of that you're like there's he he he gets sent to jail for by by his enemies and then unjustly sentenced to solitary confinement for the rest of his life by his enemies taken away from his girl and thrown in jail and you're like this is unjust it is horrible what is going to happen and the way things play out it is such an incredible story the middle the middle 200 pages drags quite a bit quite a bit so you get from the most exciting to kind of and then the end is pretty satisfying um it's kind of like you read that high school yeah i'm due to read it again i'm due to read it i'm due to read it i'm

do to read a lot of things again. But it's like, I mean, it's like I just watched Armageddon again. It's like the same thing. The first half of the movie is incredible. All the different characters coming up. The last half of the movie is Michael Bay blowing things up. So that's a lot of wind and screaming and sparks. And you're not even sure who's on what spaceship.

And it's like, I want to like this movie so much. You need the slow pants with the do-do-do-do. Yeah, or like, yeah, this is, you know. But, man, they made some good movies back then. There is something about with books and movies that you watch or read at one point and then years goes by and you pick it up again and you get a different thought from it. Like that, it's funny you say Lord of the Rings. I mean, I owe deep my thanks on that. I always cited the Lord of the Rings as like this movie that I watched as a kid, like these three movies, they were incredible.

I respected them, great actors. Peter Jackson did a great job. Not my kind of thing. And then I watched it, you know, towards the end of last year. And I was like, oh, wait a minute. This is a whole day. I didn't get it. Like, whoa, and it reopened the world to me.

And I've done that with books, too. Yeah. No, and I mean, also Lord of the Rings, one of the things, I mean, dude, I mean, I just watched rewatch Dead Poet Society. And it's as simple as you look at Robin Williams talking to them about poetry. And it's like he's so invested in poetry. And it's all about the boys in this school. there's no underhanded political messaging in the movie.

They're just telling you a story. It doesn't have a, you know, and with Lord of the Rings, though, there's, you know, you talk about Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones, almost every character is a monster. And if they're not a monster, then they're at least a bad guy that sometimes is good. And Lord of the Rings is the opposite, where it's like you have a bunch of innocent good people who are on a quest against absolutely, black, bad, evil, black and white.

They, I mean, it's literally, it's like, it's like World War II, easy. And you look at a character like Aragorn or Frodo or Gandalf. I mean, the fact that he's running at the end of the battles where he's, he's not even necessarily fighting as much as running with his staff and inspiring them with the light and like giving the energy out. You shall not pass. Yeah, and they did that so well. I remember when my, I remember being a little kid and my parents would read to me every night,

which is how I ended up being able to be a writer, even though I can barely read. I remember my dad would, I mean, he'd be up at four in the morning. He'd drive, be a teacher, drive all the way home, and then to put us to bed, they would read to us for an hour. And when we got to that part, to the Balrog part of Lord of the Rings, I remember it was like, you know, because you hear the booms, they're in the minds, and you hear the booms. And there's something big coming and the orcs are running. And he was like, guys, it's late. I'm really tired. we'll pick up on this tomorrow.

I was like, we will not. I need to know what's coming right now. And that, of course, becomes the most insane action sequence in literature. It's just the wildest thing on her. I remember hearing that for the first time and just being, for days, I wasn't okay. It was incredible. That's another thing I always pick up in our conversations. One thing I think you really seem to have hit the, I've never met your parents,

but the thing you really seemed to hit the lottery with is you had parents who understood you. Yeah. Right? and supported what you loved and what you wanted to do and, you know, saw all the potential in you. That's such a critical thing. Yeah, I mean, there's that T-shirt that says, you know, my mom says them special. My mom sure always did.

And they were very, very supportive since the beginning. I was such a weird little kid. Like, I had to raise praying mantises, and I was obsessed with foxes. And I had toy snakes everywhere. And then as soon as I got into, like, the double digits of. of eight, like 10 and older, I had real snakes everywhere in my room. And it was like, my parents were constantly yelling at me. Like, you can't have, I mean, it was just the upper limits. Like, you can't have a reticulated python in your bedroom. Like, it went from two feet to 14 feet

in the span of 18 months. This is not okay. Like, we'd have these fights. And I'd be like, but I love, you know, I love him. And I was just, I was just obsessed with that. Or I'd go into the woods and camp by myself at 12 years old because somebody let me watch, Legends of the Fall and I thought that I had to do that with my golden retriever. And I was just like, but they thought it was great. My mom's only critique was that she really wanted me to be to, to be an artist. She thought, I mean, I am. Oh, you're amazing drawing.

I'm good at drawing shit naturally. Like if I ever, I mean, I went to art school too for a period, but I just, I don't care. Like, I'm happy to be mediocre at it or like a little bit better than the average. I just, it doesn't, doesn't light me up. writing lights me up falling off of cliffs lights me up talking to people about this stuff has in the last month been incredible yeah that actually does light me up seeing people i mean we're at the point now where if i go to the airport someone is going to come up to me and i thought i would hate that because i'm actually weirdly enough an introvert when i'm not on oh i know yeah yeah like you've seen

me where i'm like i don't want you're not you're not a huge humans guy no yeah i like the people i like and the rest of them can fuck off. And, but the great thing is with this, because it's for a reason, everyone that comes up to me has been so positive. People come up and be like, yo, how's the toucan? And I'm like, what? You know, or like, I was leaving, I was walking through the airport and there was a security guy. And he went, move it along, move it along.

He went, I love what you do, by the way. And I went, I started, what did you just say to me? And he went, jungle keepers. He was like, I love junglekeepers. I was like, come on. And then the best one was the TSA, and I had the steel-toed boots on, TSA agent. And my wife was like, do you do not hit a TSA agent? Big black guy.

He goes, turn around. He goes, I got to search you. I said, all right. And he's going up and down my leg. And he goes, I don't want to find any an anacondas in these pants. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. And I might have been saying that to anyone. No, I went.

I went, you got to be kidding me. He goes, oh, come on, jungle boy. He goes, I don't want to find any other. And I just. I was friendly slap him on. The two of us were laughing her asses off and she was like, I still don't think you should have slapped him on that. I was like, it was friendly, right?

That's funny as shit. But he goes, it's been enough funny anacanas in these pants. Yeah, don't touch my third like, pal. Oh my God. But it's good, it's good. It's always been good nature. It's been great. It's good to hear that like you are appreciating that too because that's the effect.

Like, you're getting people excited about it. That's the biggest thing. It's like when people come up to me and they're like, oh my God, how can I go down to the Amazon to visit Paul? Or like, see what he does. I'm like, well, you're gonna go through that? Like, they have a whole program for that and everything. But it's not one or two people, dude.

It's all the fucking time. No, it's the numbers are wild. And that is what's so important. It's like, okay, so if you do A plus B plus B. If you add up the whole thing, if you go, okay, so the wildest place on earth is about to disappear unless we save it. But we found a way to save it because me and JJ met each other. And then we got joined by Mosin and Stefan and Roy

and all these other incredible people. And then we got that message out through Jane and through Mother of God, now through Jungle Keeper. And now all these people all over the world, a mother wrote to me a few, just a few, it was like last week she wrote to me and she said, my son is severely autistic, like nonverbal autistic. And he says jungle man. And he wants to see your videos because he enjoys the jungle. He likes the feel of the jungle. And she was like, it causes him so much joy.

And it's like, that stuff hits you in the chest. I also got one from, you know, like you get ones where it's like, hey, I'm just a kid. I'm from Finland. you're never going to see this, but I want to be a local conservationist, and I'm actually going to go on this expedition in my country to go do this thing with these people. And it's like, they message me and they're like, I read your book, I saw your podcast with Julian. I saw your this. I saw you that.

And they're sharing that they're in spite. And that's incredible. And that for me, that also is then a feedback because then there's times where I go, we're all going to get shot by the narcos or we've lost a few acres. That's really devastating. And like you get knocked down on your knees. you get the wind knocked out of you and it's like you've been on month seven of being in the jungle and you forget that the outside world exists and it just seems like everything is burning and no one

is helping and you get these messages and it's funny because they always start with you're never going to see this and i know you don't care but and i'm like i do see it and i do care and oh it's so cool yeah that's so fucking cool well before the break you had said something i want to come back to this where you were talking about all the different animal characters of around you, like literally, I say it purposely like that in your environment that you know, some of which you had rescued and raised, but other ones you just pass by all the time and they know you and you know them. A little bit of a stereotype here, but do you think you have like a fifth and a half sense

with animals? Like there's some sort of understanding on a micro level you have with them that other people just can't do? No. I think that everyone has some talents that. that are specific to them. And the most obvious I can think of as Michael Phelps. It was Michael Phelps a really good swimmer

because, you know, chicken or the egg, which by the way, chicken with the egg is stupid. It's done. Chickens branched off from the phylogenic chart, millions of years after eggs had already been in use by biologists. So it was like the dinosaurs. Egg came first. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's easy to answer. Right. So let's just shut that one down for good on. It happened here. Julian Dory podcast, Chicken of the Egg. We figured it out. Throw it in urban dictionary. get rid of it yeah um but i think that you know again did he become a really good swimmer

because he was had a massive wingspan and and and or you know which which which which way was it and and i think that with me i have spent my entire life i mean my dad do when i used to be five years old my dad used to he used to call me he used to call me eagle eyes because he'd be like how did you see that we'd be walking i'd be like look garter snake and he'd be like i don't see that and he'd be like i don't see that. And in the jungle, it's just become more and more and more and more amplified. And then when you're guiding for people, it matters. And then when you're trying to survive, it matters. And so you've, you turn that sense up and up and up and up. And again, the first time you play ping pong, you suck at it. And the ball goes everywhere. And then you get to the point, you got a good chop shot.

You can, you got an overhand. And you get. And at this point, I have this. Also, when you're tracking or when you're out in nature, you, you tend to, you look at the environment differently. you look at it like it's a TV screen, so you're not focused on any one thing. You just sort of, and so then irregularities pop out at you. And so if there's branch, branch, branch, branch, branch, loopy branch, snake, you know, matte-colored, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, shining scales, snake. You know, it's like you start to, snakes are so hard to see, which is why I'm obsessed with trying to find them.

But even as you walk through the forest, the birds, I always say the birds will tell you how fast you can walk. The speed at which you can walk is determined by the sound. of the forest. And that is because there's moments that you're walking through the forest and the sun is out and there's just spokes of light coming through and all the birds are chirping and there's bees flying around and it's the afternoon and everything's great. And then the jungle, 10 minutes later, all of a sudden it gets a little bit darker and all of a sudden the birds get real quiet and everything changes and it seems like there's not a thing moving. And is that because there's a weather

system about to come in? Is that because and sometimes you go, well, the birds over here are doing fine. it's just the birds over off to my left that have gone quiet. And it's like, well, is that because there's a jaguar walking through the valley right there? And everybody up here is still having a good time. But, you know, sometimes everybody goes quiet. And then you start to hear, you're like, it sounds like there's a stampede or freight trains somewhere just over the horizon. And you know that there is a thunderstorm of biblical proportions coming.

And so you're standing in the sun still, but everybody's quiet. And in the Amazon, there's individual clouds over. over different pieces. Just think of this giant field of green. And these clouds are just an individual. It's like motherships and, you know, an independent state. They're just over and they dump straight down. So if you're outside of that rain shadow, you're great.

If that cloud is moving and just soaking the jungle as it goes, you might be under golf ball size rain drops at any moment. You giving me PTSD, bro. Dude, it is, you know, that night. Yeah. The leaf cutter at night. And he goes, oh my God. I'm like, what?

I'm like, turn right towards it. but I can't see him. He's like, there are 10 million leave got to answer. Julian, you are next. They are right up. He goes, they are right up against your tent. And I'm like, what the fuck? Get him out of there.

It's like, Julian, there are too many of them. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. I left Diet right outside my tent. There's a candidate. Do you see it? He goes, oh, yes, the deed is right here. And I'm like, okay, Dan, I need you to grab that D. And I need you to spray it right along the edge of my tent.

And he goes, okay, I would do that. You're saving yourself. So, so you're coming. I'm like, look, you can not care less about that. He's living. I need to live. He's handling this well. He's a nature videographer. He signed up for this. Right, you're not. I'm Julian from fucking New Jersey.

And I don't fuck with ants. You're like, give that deed. So I hear him with the deed and I'm watching it because now I have, I put my headlamp on in there. So it's lit all right here and I just see a shadow. And I see him go along the edge. And he's like, and then he goes, holy shit. And I'm like, what? And he goes, the leaf cut of ants are unaffected.

by the deep they are swimming right to him like, fuck! No way. And at this point, Trevor just finally goes like like, like next to me, I'm like,

you think this is funny word next? And he's like, this is no one will ever believe me. This is the funniest shit I've ever heard it. This is South Park episode, bro. And I'm like, I'm glad my misery loves your company because you're about to get eaten

right along with me. Just gonna fuck out though. Why can't you leave your tent? I'm screaming Paul now. Paul has to be hearing this. I'm like, Paul! Yeah. Yeah, but just how quickly everything can change.

And so to answer your question, yes, I think I've developed those senses. I think that when it comes to things like elephants, where it's like at first, when I, the first time I met an elephant, I had no idea what I was doing. Again, elephant's not in the Amazon. We're moving our conversation over to other parts of the world now. But, you know, you learn, just like with the deer, you learn that as long as you're not looking, they're going to consider you not a threat because you're not paying attention to them.

So it comes down to body posture. just like with a dog when you go, they know what that means. You know, it's like you, you get ready, they get ready. And cats are very good at that intention of pose. And so, yeah, you just pick up all these little things. But the thing is, I'm always going to be the student to JJ, who is the master.

Yes. He grew up there. He grew up there, man. And I mean, I grew up in the woods, too, but he grew up without shoes until he was 13. That's part of what I, you know, when I interviewed him for the book, he was, you know, he was like, yeah, I didn't have shoes until I was 13.

I went, what? I never knew. You never told me that. And he said, yeah, we used to have to walk an hour through the jungle to get to the nearest school in the indigenous community. And like, you know, like the whole trope about like, like, my parents said, oh, just, you know, like my walk to school, his walk to school involved jaguars and anacondas. And then, you know, when Pico had the tree fall on him, he, when J.J.'s brother, Pico had the tree fall on him at 16, they had to sell all the cattle and cut a few trees and use the entire family savings to save Pico's life. And JJ got left in the jungle at age 14 for three weeks. They were like, watch the house.

And then the mom took the other brothers and everything. They had to go to school. The dad took Pico to Lima. JJ, as a 14-year-old, was left for three weeks in the jungle. He just had a machete. And he was like, every day I would climb this tree and look out over the river and wait for my parents to come back. And every day they wouldn't come.

And three weeks, picture as a 14-year-old. Everyone in your family's gone. Your brother is broken in half by a tree that fell on his back. The family savings are completely spent and you're just left in the middle of the Amazon with some chickens for three weeks. No shoes. I mean, I just had no idea. I had been friends with them for 20 years and I had no idea. So it was so amazing sitting down.

But when I walk through the forest with him, it's almost difficult for me to access how much he knows because I'll go, I don't even know what questions to ask. Like he'll stop and he'll pick up a palm nut and he'll be like, which one is this? And I'm like, I don't know. And he'll be like, open it up. And he's like, see there's grubs inside of this one. I go, how do you know that there's grubs inside of that one? He's like, you can tell. And then he'll go to a certain tree and he'll go, put your ear against the tree.

Put your ear against the tree. And there's sound coming from the tree. What's that? You see the bees nest that's up there. He goes, those bees make the best honey. And I'm like, but again, I didn't hear this. How did you hear it? And he's like, well, you know when you see this thing that this is, that this vine growing from this tree

means this. and it's A plus B equals C. And it's like all the things mean something. So he's not walking through just a mat of green. Everything means. So when you hear like Percy Fawcett and they were like the jungle is a brutal green hell and everything's trying to kill you and there's no food to be found anywhere, if they had brought JJ, they would have been fine. Perspective, yeah.

Yeah. For sure. That was another thing when you talk about JJ, William, Pico, Mario, you know, the whole family. How many total kids is there like 11 or something? Well, there's 19 brothers, including Alex, who was adopted, and then they've named me Armano No. Vente. Okay. So you're number 20.

I'm number 20. I didn't even know there was that many, but that's wild. But the thing that strikes me about the fort that I know is their level of happiness, man. Yeah. Their level of just pure bliss. And the best example, I mean, the guy that I just loved was Pico, because you're talking about someone who's literally missing a leg. He don't speak a word of English. I don't speak a word of Spanish at this point in my life. And yet there was a human understanding there. And this dude

like watching him work the boat every day with the hand and the one leg like down, which could probably that one like probably squat like 300 pounds. And he's like 60 years old. It's insane. But like he was just in his element. And there was nowhere on earth or no other job or no other thing that he'd rather that'd be doing than that. And it was just like such a perspective grabber because it's like, God damn, all the little shit that we worry about or say, oh, you know, we're unhappy about this or whatever. Look at this fucking guy.

What's my excuse? Well, the only thing with Pico is that he's had such a rough life that when he's driving the boat for us, it's so much easier than being a logger. And it's so much better than being alone. And he enjoys the playfulness of us. He does have that playful spirit. And so he has the contrast of that he's been through the worst,

the worst pain, the worst abject poverty. And so when he's working for us, he's like, man, I'm making bank. He's stoked. That was the only good thing that happened with the Discovery Channel thing when they came down was like, they said, what does your boat driver get paid a day? And I just went $100 a day for six weeks. And the boat driver gets paid. In the Amazon, the boat driver gets paid like $10 a day.

So I was like, when I told him, I was like, you're going to be making $100 a day, which is like $360 solace a day. for six weeks, he looked at me and he went, wow. How is that possible? I was like, don't worry about it. I was like, just if they ask you, just nod. God damn. Well, we've been putting it off, and I do want to get to it now because I've known for

months we're doing this podcast, obviously, and you were doing another podcast before this, so I didn't want to check that out and see what's what. I kind of want to be surprised by it myself, but you and I have had some baseline conversations over the past like probably 13, 14 months about the narcos problem but to go all the way there now that you're telling the story

and it's public let's just start at the beginning these narcos you speak of who are they associated with when did you first notice them and when did you realize it was going to be an enormous fucking problem the narcos

first of all in the entire time basically for the entire trajectory of this book it's like when I went down to the Amazon started learning from JJ. It was we were in deep wilderness. Then we saw the smoke on the horizon and we started protecting it. Then we started turning the loggers and the gold miners into conservation rangers. That was the start of jungle keepers. But we could do that because JJ could go talk to the

loggers and the gold miners and they were people that like friends of his brothers, friends of his fathers, local people who were just like my best option is to be a logger. My best option is to be a minor. We were like, you want a better job? And they were like, sure, but we could go talk to them. And so one of the things we would always do is fly the drone over and just sort of scout and see like how many of them are there. You know, because you do have to be careful, right? It's not without risk. You've been to the edges of some of these clearings.

And so on this, about about two years ago, we saw this huge clearing spring up overnight on the side of the river above the reserve, which was horrifying because we said, wait a second, how did this happen? We thought it was safe. And now this huge clearing, I'm talking about. about like six football fields long, along the edge of the river, which is devastating, burnt to the ground. And so we went up one day and we had JJ, me, some of the staff, we even had donors with us. And I fly the drone up over the canopy and then down into the burnt area.

And every time I fly the drone into a deforested area, the loggers do the same thing. The loggers see the drone and then they run into their huts. And they're just like a little corrugated steel huts or thatched huts. They will run into the huts because they know the drone has a camera on it. They don't want to be seen. They hide. They ran, this time we flew the drone. It gets down low.

People run into the huts. And we just, we passed where the huts were. We had just gone upriver of the huts. And all of a sudden the people come back out with guns. And so I have the drone in the air and this is like a really nice cinematic drones. You're talking about a multi-thousand-dollar drone and JJ goes, go. as they're running for their boat. So they're not running away.

They're coming at us. And so JJ's to tell, we told the driver, gun it. Thank God we had a 60 horsepower. They had a 40 horsepower. But they're coming behind us and I have the drone in the air. And we're flying the drone. And again, we have civilians on the boat at this point. Yeah, we have donors.

We're people that were coming. They wanted to see the land that they had protected. And so down where we do the ecotourism stuff, where the tree house is and like where you stayed, it's safe down there. We're talking about six hours. up river, a totally different part of the river. And so now we're all the way up there. And now we can't even go down river because we're above where the narcos were camped. And so we're driving up

river. The drone is in the air and the clients are picking up on it because they're like, hey, this whole Pirates of the Caribbean chase thing, like, what are they going to do if they get to us? And I was like, this happens all the time. They're just mad. They just want to yell at us. And like, you can see them with shotguns. Like, they're not joking. And JJ was like, oh, it's okay. He's like, this happens all the time. And then he looked at me and he was like, Not good. We're going as fast as we can. Drones in the air. And then, you know, I'm going, okay, this is, again, this is like a $5,000 drone. We cannot stop. So I race the drone ahead on the last 2% battery it had. I just found like a tree. I was like, I'll recognize that tree. Just crash the drone. Leave it. Forget the drone. We kept driving. And we had a, we'd been working with the Peruvian police to try and investigate this area where this huge clearing was. How helpful is that? You're so deep in the Amazon. We have been providing them with boats.

We have been helping them with gasoline. We have been providing as much support as we can. They don't have the funding, but they have the will to protect. And so we said, look, there's this huge patch of deforestation. We need you up. And it just so happened that they were up there. We've been working with these guys for weeks, become friends with them. And so as this boat is chasing us and we can't stop, we show up at an outpost where we have police that are friendly to us that are posted there because of us.

We get there and we go, look what's coming up river. And our friends, the guy Jonathan was running the team that day, he, you know, we get up there, we shake hands, everybody. They look down river and you see this narco boat coming up river straight towards us. And they were like, let's go. They got on the thing. They called back. They got on the Starlink. They called for support.

They all put on ski masks, loaded up, got on our boat. And then we turned our boat right around and drove straight towards them because now we're armed to the teeth. Now we outgun them. And of course, their boat turned around immediately and went down river. So we got a police escort. all the way back down to the station. Great. Now we're getting off the boat. And again, me and JJ kept the whole situation. Even though there was guns and everything, we were like, hey, look, we were just used extra precautions. We were just trying to keep it. We were totally, you know,

who wants coffee? Everybody wants coffee. Everything's fine. We can't go see the land today, but we could try it another day. You know, everything's okay. You know, professional faces all around. And then I shook hands with all the cops, you know, ski masks off now. I said, guys good job get back up river you only got you only got another hour to a daylight get back up river get safe thank you for saving our asses and you know shook jonathan's hand shook a bunch of other people's hands and uh they went up and then i'm at the station now where the staff is cooking for the clients and we're talking about how to protect the river and my phone keeps buzzing buzzing buzzing i'm like what you know i look at it and it's stephan again and again and again and again and

And I'm like, not now. Like, I'm working right now. I'm like hanging out with everybody. Stefan is the chair of your board. Yeah. Context out there. And he's like, right now. Right now phone.

And I pick up. And when the cops got back up to their outposts, they figured the action was over for the day. And they were cleaning themselves in the river. And they didn't necessarily hear it as the boat came around the bend. And then they see a boat coming around the bend. and it's got a driver and it's got another person and it still didn't seem like a threat

and then right as the boat passed them somebody popped up with a shotgun and shot Jonathan straight in the fucking chest. So I get the phone call. The man whose hand I just shook who saved our asses today is dead. So that day we realized everything changed. It had been

like 2022, 2022, 2023, 2024. It had been like this sense of success and building and we're going to do this and it's going to be great. And then if it was a movie, it was like this montage of hope and increasing capability and then with a gunshot that all ended all of a sudden we got plunged into danger land where it was we said wait a second what what like it hadn't even occurred to us that this was possible and then all of a sudden our friend is gone just period gone and now there's people on the river

and then in the preceding weeks the police happened to arrest somebody that was on the periphery of this and they confiscated his cell phone and his cell phone said, if you find the Mierda gringo Boladron, if you find the shithead gringo that flies the drone or Juan Julio Doran, if you find either of those

and you can kill them, we'll reward you. So then we had an official hit out on us. What goes through, now we talked about fear earlier. What goes through your head? Because like, this is a, these are the worst people in the world.

These are traffickers, you know? These are bad people. Okay, so this is the thing. These are like artisanal cocaine growers, right? So these are people that are out in the middle of nowhere and they go, well, it's really remote out there. And they're talking to their brother or their cousin or their friend and they're going, look, if we go out there, we could grow some coke for a few months.

You know, we can just cut down some forests. No one will know because in the middle of nowhere, we'll grow some stuff, we'll get a few bags of powder and then we'll sell it and it'll be bank for us. And this is the way they think. We'll just do it again next year. And that's their whole business plan, right? So they're desperate too. But in that narco culture is that violent streak where it's like,

if we get caught, we're going to go to jail and we're not going to jail, so we'll shoot you first. And so it's not like the loggers. The loggers, it's kind of like, it's more of an innocent sort of Robin Hood thing. It's like, you catch us, we get fined, we go to jail for two weeks, we come out. It's like it's much more. The thing is, the threat level increased and we didn't realize it. The cops didn't realize it. Nobody realized it.

And now we have a dead friend. And this is the end of 2024-ish or beginning of 2025. This is last year in April. April maybe. Oh, so you called me right after this. I didn't realize that because that's when you first told me about this. Yeah. Was like the end of April.

Yeah. And then weeks after that happened, you know, they basically said to me, they said, you got to get out of here. They said, you're way too recognizable. They said, even if we put you- Who told you that? The cops. I mean, then we had to work with the security team.

Then we have security. Now when I'm there, I have a security detail. To this day. Yeah. And is it the proving cops? Yes. And if I want to buy a banana, I have to be like, everybody up. We're walking to the market. Six people on either side of me. There's two other guys spotting. And so now I've gotten to the point where if I want to go buy a banana, I go, guys, could you just get me a banana. It's easier

than going anywhere because to mobilize a team of people in cars and things. And also it's just, it takes a fun out of going anywhere to be. That's got to annoy the fuck out of you. Not just annoy the fuck at me, but it's also, um, it's, it's, it's, it's also, um, it's, It's really dark the idea of that someone's going to come and try to shut you off. You might not even see it coming. That's horrifying. That I feel fear for. That is very scary.

And that fear was realized on the day that JJ, you know, the way we leave the station, you know, you leave the station by boat. And then you get to the edge of this road, this logging road. And then you take the logging road back to town. The logging road meets up at the Trans-Amazon Highway and then goes back to town. And so me and JJ all the time, we do it almost every, you know, once a week we go back to town. We take the, take the river down to the logging road. Our car meets us there, and then the car takes us back to the nearest city. And so I had just been told that I couldn't be in Peru anymore.

And so I'd come home. And JJ left the station and came down the river and reached the dirt road where he saw the driver named Percy. Our driver's name is Percy, and he has a toy, the Hylux. And so JJ went, oh, you know what? He goes, we should have gone and walked the trail and figured out the thing. He goes, you know, I need one more day in the jungle. Just, he just happened to change his mind.

And he said, you know what? Take the garbage back to town. Come back, pick me up tomorrow. And then I'll spend a few days in town. Made a last minute decision. Percy's driving our pickup truck down the road. And they had downed trees. They had cut some trees across the road.

And there was armed men in masks that put guns, pistols in the windows. they pulled him out and we have tinted back windows and he said that while he was on his knees they were like open the back get paul and j jay out they were fully intending on executing us right there and then when we weren't in the car they roughed him up and they took his wallet and they took his cell phone and they had him on the ground with a gun against his head and they said where's paul and jay j and he you know he said i have no idea who that is and they said don't fuck with us we know exactly who you are you know exactly who we are and they said just tell them they got lucky today they're not going to get lucky again So he came back shaking.

And when that news hit us, then it was, it got really ugly. How long after April was that? I don't know if you know, it was a month or two? A few weeks later. Are you worried, though, about them coming to the research station and where you are? No. And they know where it is. No.

Also, now at the research station, they would have to have a, they would have to have an army to get into the, you know, because we're very well protected now. We have, we have risen to the threat level now. But also again, the I mean, you have windows there, though, sure, but in order to get there, you have to come through the river and there's no other way to get there.

Right, right? There's only one way in, there's no roads. You can't walk through the jungle to get there. It's just not, they can't do that. And so at this point, we have a huge security team. We're still bringing tourists and everything. They're not after them. They're after me and JJ.

The threat level is upriver all the way up there. Right. And they're just saying if anybody sees that Italian, guy or that one Peruvian take them out. Who did the guys specifically who have been doing these things, these narcos, these growers, who do they work for? Like what syndicate?

They don't. They're like, it's like, it's like, it's like weed growers in California. It's like they're just doing it on their own, man. Well, I mean, they work for like the CCP sometimes now. Well, sure. I don't know what the, I'm saying like in the 80s. But like like the, I don't know what the current. situation is that delete that from the record i have no idea that's all right i'm just thinking about some guy in his

backyard with some weed plants i'm saying these people are just like we'll just grow and then we'll so they're saying they're growing will grow and sell to people that are real so they're kind of below they're not like the cartel it's not like the mexican this is a cicario but who so you don't know who they're selling the coke to no i'm not fucking DEA like they're we're and that's the sort of the problem it's like we're out there you know i'm a i'm a artistic writing kid who He wants to count butterflies and take pretty pictures. Like, I'm not, we were not ready for this. And now, now they're hunting us or they were hunting us.

I totally understand that. The difference here is these are people that not only have made explicit threats on your life, they have made attempts on it. Attemptively. And, you know, I'm not you, but I would want to know, like, are they, obviously is a bad example because he's not a rally more, but are they working for Pablo Escobar? Are they working for El Chapo?

You know what I mean? Like. We know that from the police. We have a certain amount of intelligence. We know that they're not working directly for anybody, that they are individual groups of people that just think this is a good idea. And so they are artisanal cocaine growers. What do their grows look like?

And you said they're upriver the grows, like five, six hours? Or days. Have you put a drone over to see where they're growing? We have. And then the Peruvian Special Forces has done it. They even like notified the American DEA because it was such a large hall that they got out. But they've also, as far as we know, they've cleared out the threat to the point that there's no narcos left on the river. It was like one, you know, like when you get a wasp nest?

Yeah. It was like a wasp nest. It's like they came in, they cleared forest. Think about it. You can't just do this anywhere. You have to clear forest to cut down trees that are 16 feet thick with giant chainsaws. There's a lot of work just to make a field in the middle of nowhere. So they were stuck in that one spot.

And so when law enforcement went in, they were able to clear them out, which they did. And so at the moment, the threat level has gone back down because it seems like these guys aren't completely stupid. And they went, oh, this area is protected. The cops are going to keep coming and messing up. So they've gone somewhere else. Yes. And so that's the good part is that it was for about a year and a half. It was really bad.

And right now, as far as we know, it's not as bad. Do you know if they're native Peruvians to the jungle itself back there? Or did they come in there? No, these are coming from another part of Peru entirely. So they could have been from Puerto Maldonado or something? Worse, no, they're from a whole other part of the Amazon. They're from like where the Amazon turns into the Andes. They're from- Oh, they're from all the way up there.

No, they're from all the way up. They're not from the jungle. They're people, they're people from the countryside, as JJ would say. So they're they are familiar with the outdoors, but they are not Amazonian natives. How? They're coming just to use the remoteness. The fact that we are past the edge of human, civilization on the planet. They are trying to use how remote it is. The same reason we want to

protect it because these ecosystems are thousands, millions of years old and have never been touched, they're going, well, it's so far past where anybody can get with a boat or a car. It's so inaccessible. We can do this and no one's going to catch us. But it just so turns out that this is within the area that junglekeepers is trying to protect. And it just so turns out that they're directly in conflict with the uncontacted tribes. And so the uncontacted tribes and the narcos, I was speaking to another anthropologist who you should have on the show, Kerry Bowman, his work is incredible. He does. He does work in another part of the Amazon.

And he was saying same problem. This is becoming a problem with these artisanal narcos. And he was saying that these people are so scared. They've come from another part of the Amazon and they come into the deep jungle. And so they don't know what these sounds are. Unlike JJ, they don't know what any of the sounds are. They don't know what any of the medicines are. They don't know what the rules of the game are.

And so when they hear that there's these tall, painted warriors that have a whole different code, a whole different language that have been out there for centuries, they think of them almost as mythological. Like they have beliefs where they're like, if you even see one, you'll die. Which is kind of true, because if they don't like you and you see one, they'll clever girl you from the side with an arrow and you'll have it through your neck by the time you realize what's going on. How long those bamboo tipped arrows?

Seven feet. Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah, they're huge. And so the narcos are terrified of the uncontacted tribes, which is in one way good because it keeps the narco activity under control and also a shotgun in the forest is not as effective as an arrow. Because a shotgun's range is less than an arrow's range. Really?

Of course. A seven-foot arrow? Can we look up how far buckshot shoots with any sort of efficacy? Because you shoot buckshot. I want to say like... already got it fucking machine 50 yards all right buckshot effect of the range is generally considered under 50 yards with peak effectiveness often cited within 25 to 40 yeah actually can you look up what is the range of a long bow arrow a arrow shot from a long bow do any your guys have like a r 15s no no okay

long bow arrow is going to be 200 to 300 yards it's not even close not even close not even not even close not even close and and in the jungle where you know buckshot's going to be hitting leaves and vines and tricks and things to actually shoot you know i might get a little bit of you but i'm not going to you know those arrows if they get you it's a whole machete going through your body you ain't gonna get up yeah i remember when we first met before you did the podcast it was august 2022 and you went down for the fire season yeah so i've told the story before but i texted you maybe like a week and a half to you being in there and i was up editing one night at like 3 a.m and you hadn't answered for like three days and then you got to a sat phone or something and you sent me like it was like a shuddering

like kind of like three paragraph text like yeah we ran into the uncockta or so and so ran into the uncontracted tribes took a bamboo through the temple yeah he's gone it's just like yeah fuck man yeah i mean it's i mean it's like the wild west but wild der yes there's no rules when you're in untracked amazonian jungle there's just the the rules are the rules of the rain and the rocks and the teeth like it's like the it's it's it's who's faster who's got bigger teeth it's just it's it's the original rules it's like it's like caveman times and how wide i'm trying to think the when you're going up madridadio's river the average spots that you're going up like across the way how wide is that 50 meters i mean our tributary yeah i'd say about right 50 meters to 80 right there's

certain points where the river is much fatter and then it'll it'll choke down at the turns and but in range oh 100% range meaning like if you spot them across yeah yeah and they're deadly accurate deadly accurate i mean one of my close friends um his father was shot through the stomach and the way it hit him it cut him across the stomach so everything fell out onto the floor it just perfectly opened him so in one second he was alive and fine arrow went by and all of his guts fell out onto his feet and so his son's was there with him and then they started noticing that the that the the animal sounds had been different and that there was multiple animal sounds coming from

multiple directions and the tribes were talking in animal sounds so that they hadn't noticed and then the kid ran for it and ended up living the father of course died because there's no way of putting but he's my friend I know him very nice guy all right back to Narcos for a second do you have like did you you have an idea of the range of like number that you were dealing with like how deep they went? No. At the time that that happened, it was very scary. I mean, again, we're running scared on a boat.

We're boating as quickly as we can. Afterwards, I mean. I know. I'm saying afterwards, even afterwards, it was like we have to start finding out. You know, we have to go to the police and be like, look, this is now beyond our hands. I mean, we can have rangers going around with boats and reporting to you guys when there's logging. And we have no idea how to deal with this threat. Right.

You know, and so it was really, we had to up everything about our operations. It became a lot more expensive to protect land because we have to do it now with, it's not just protect the land and stick some rangers on it. It's protect the land, stick some rangers, bring security. It's a whole bigger thing now. So this is horrible with the loggers. It's like sort of, it's, you know, it's like you're running a marathon and you're coming into the last third of the marathon and somebody jumps on your back.

It's like, there's just not what you needed right now. This is, and they're trying to, you're trying to, you're trying to, you're trying to stab you in the neck. It's like it's just not, this is hard enough the way it was. Now that they're hunting us, it has, it has truly become, you know, this was a dangerous job before that. The whirlpools, the falling trees, the vipers, the Amazon itself, the rushing river. Now there's angry people that want to kill us out there. And so, and if you look at the numbers of, I mean, again, this is probably a stat that we could pull up, but like how many environmental defenders are shot in the Amazon every year. It's many. This is an ongoing thing where people

will stand up for the forest, whether it's local people or people from outside, and then they will kill them. 2024 data in 2024, at least 146 environmental defenders were killed or disappeared globally with the vast majority of these occurring in Latin America. There it is. Like it's an ongoing, they know, they know how it works. Because there's usually a figure. head at the top of the organization like me or JJ and if you can cut the head off the snake also if you can devastate enough if you can cause that shock and awe of letting people see a fucking body they'll stop they'll leave also like what kind of i know it's in peru peru's a nation they have laws but this is so far beyond where the cops or military generally go like it's are there even

laws out there? I mean, technically. Technically, according to who, you know? Right. Again, if me and you are in Alaska and we are 150 miles away from the nearest police station, you know, and we're getting into a bad argument, what's, you know, the only thing that stops us is our own ethical framework, you know, or if we run it, let's, let's rephrase that because me and you is a bad example.

Let's say we ran into a bunch of people and they wanted to rob us. What's going to stop them from doing it? The only thing that's going to stop them from doing it is if we have guns sufficient to fight their guns. That's it. Because if they have more, even if we were loaded with pistols, they have shotguns, they're going to win, period. And so it really comes down to who's got bigger teeth and stronger muscles. It's like the original old school rules. And so we're days past.

I mean, I'm talking days by boat where you go drive for a whole day through the jungle. You don't see anybody except for animals. And then you drive for another whole day. And so when you get to those places in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. The bad guys have figured out that if they can go out there, nobody can mess with them. And so it's, it's, it's, whereas it used to be, I mean, and Mother of God, it was going on these solos deep into, you know, national parks that only JJ and the indigenous people have access to.

and going far, far up, but we knew that there was no people up there. You knew that it was just pristine jungle that had been growing for 30 million years. Now, on our river, it's like everything is coming to a head. Right. And then recently this is not like public knowledge, but, you know, someone came back with pictures from way out in the Amazon, and there was a mass grave where apparently the Narcos had rounded up the uncontacted tribes and just shot dozens of them.

And so now the narcos are realizing, just kill everybody. And so the thing is, the wildest place on Earth now has pressure from the narco traffickers, the loggers, the illegal gold miners, there's roads coming in. We are literally, we have this diamond, we have this beautiful emerald thing that we're trying to protect that's filled with millions and millions of animal heartbeats. It's the most incredible interconnected complex wilderness on earth. And we're begging the world to help us protect. it. And the only thing we need is the funding to finish it. We've already shown that we can do it. And so it's

just a race against time. Can we beat the bad guys to save the animals? It's basically Avatar. Can you, Defe, can you just pull up a map of Peru right now with like a topography mat so we can see like the green and everything? Do you roughly know the general area where that mass grave was? Because I got some questions about this. You can ask me questions about it. I can't tell you where it was. I can't pointed out on map on public. Fair enough. All right. Never mind on that part.

That's fine. I'm almost shocked that they found that because like out here, the mob waxing guy, they take them to the fucking metal ends. They can find those bones and shit, you know, three, four, five, six, seven years later if they have to. But you think about out in the Amazon

where everything, the jungle literally eats itself. If someone wax someone out in the middle of the Amazon, they could leave the body right there and how long would it even last? before it's completely gone. Not long, but I think that the thing that what they, not like a day, like a two days, your body's gone. The vultures, the dung beetles, the flies, the maggots, the things, I've seen it.

I've watched like a dead porcupine. I've watched a dead taper, which is almost the same weight as a human, same amount of flesh to digest. Bones gone. Taper went to bones, I would say, in three days, like no flesh left on it, in the middle of the jungle. And then you give it another week and those bones are gone with the rain and the mycelium get into it.

So why did the narcos build a mass grave and how did the body stay there long enough to even be discovered? I think it's the turtle tracks principle. So when you, when you, when you, when you, people want to eat turtle eggs and you're driving up river in your boat, they, the only way to find the turtle eggs is to look for the footprints of the mother turtles. And you can see these, these, these little footprints going up the beach to the point where you can see the turtle eggs. And then the only time you're going to find those is when the tracks are fresh. So once it rains, it's wiped. So either you're finding new turtle eggs or you don't find turtle eggs, but you're never going to find turtle eggs and have there be baby turtles in there. They're either fresh, right? And so with the mass grave,

I think that what they did was they piled up so many bodies that there were so many vultures flying over that thing. You'd have king vultures, yellow-headed vultures, black-headed vultures. So some native person probably saw this thing of vultures, tornado of vultures, like, they've never seen before and went, I want to know what's over there. These native people are so smart, they probably went, I want to know what's over there. And they probably went and invested. That's the only thing I could think of because it would be so far out. But at the same time, it would cause such a reaction in the forest to have that much

material that can be digested. So I don't, there's not this, I mean, I don't know anything about it. Somebody, somebody very reliable told me that this had happened. But the important thing is this, I mean, you know, the reason. How many more you're talking for? I don't I mean he said mass graves so you're talking at least over 20 I would assume but this is not these are not this is I'm at this point reaching deep into what I don't know but the the thing is you know people keep going why did you release the footage of the uncontacted tribes and it's like because they can't tell their story on a podcast they can't go to the United Nations they can't go post social media posts so either they're going to go extinct and no one's going to know about it or we get the power to protect their forest and get the narco out and save all the wildlife and they continue to live there as long as they want but in order to protect them we have to tell their story and we need the support of people wanting to protect them

and so for that we have to publish what's going yes and that is you know most people have gotten that it's only like you know every every hundred comments or so you get somebody that's just like leave them alone you can't we are leaving them alone they're coming out of the forest and asking us for help yes you can't worry about that no that's you know you're doing the right thing and you're an expert on it So I'm not worried about that. The other thing I keep thinking with the Narcos, though, is like they're doing this five, six hours up river, obviously growing the stuff and then transporting it out of there. They don't even really need to think about how they smuggle it, though, because there's no one out there. There's no one out there.

They just fucking stick it on the boats, right? Stick it on the boats. And you don't know where it ends up. Like you don't know where the boats end up. I mean, we do. The boats end up on the trans Amazon Highway. And then the trans Amazon Highway leads all the way to Lima. Okay.

So you don't know who they end. And there's there is a police checkpoint on the road, but they stop you and they, you know, they do that pointless baggage search thing where they unzip your bag and they look into it and they touch a few things and then they zip your bag. They're too, they're too lazy to really search it. And so, I mean, you could have all the cocaine you want in that bag and they're never going to find it. They're dogs.

It would be a little bit more efficient. But again, you're talking about a police force where the people are good. They want to do their jobs more effectively. They don't have the resources. They don't have the training. They don't have the funding and they're trying the best they can. They also have too much land and too few officers. Same thing with the gold mining.

And that you can look up. You can look up Madre de Dios of Peru. If you look up the Madre de Dios of Peru and you zoom in on that on Google Maps, you can get the maps up. Yeah. And if you look satellite, if it's on satellite, it should be on satellite. I think. You had to go to after.

Yeah, open a maps. Exactly. Yeah. And then go to satellite view. So it's the real thing. layers on the left there you go yeah so see that right above your cursor

see that yellow shit at the bottom that zoom into that that's all gold mining that's all gold mining that's all gold mine that's hundreds of thousands of acres of gold mining now you and i in episode 124 talked about that at like the 29 30 minute mark so you've talked about this before but for people who haven't seen that or haven't heard this like who runs these operations hold on i literally want to take a picture of

I just want to take a picture of the screen because that's kind of fun. Who runs these organizations? Gold mining mafias. There's mafias of gold miners. So actually some of the security people that I work with with the police have worked for, because they don't, you know, security doesn't care where they work for. They've worked for legal miners. There are some legal mining happening, not illegal mining.

And this dude was telling me a story where he was working for the legal miners. So these people are working up to their time. chests in the sludge pulling the gold out of the soil. They'd already cut the forest, burned the forest, and now they'd irrigated the soil, and they're sucking it up, and they're using mercury to bind the gold. And they finally get, after weeks of effort, they get this tiny little golf ball-sized piece of crap gold. It's not even high-quality gold. And now they have to move, this family of artisanal gold miners has to move this gold from here to the city where they can sell it. Now you have this very, very valuable thing concentrated in your hand.

And everybody knows you have it because you're a gold miner. So what happens? They get in their car and they start driving. They actually were able to hire security to go with them. And he said, as they're going down this little dirt jungle trail, and there wasn't trees this time, they'd used a parked pickup truck just to block the road. Everybody came out. Everybody started shooting.

I said, well, what happened on that day? He said, well, me and my team killed six of them of the attackers. He said, but we only lost one. He said it was my friend right next to me. said he got shot and his neck exploded hit the artery and he died right there and so this is all so that these people can get one piece of gold to the to the selling point they've destroyed acres and acres of a priceless ecosystem they've risked their lives and so you have to look into the fact that these people are so desperate nobody would do this if they had another option there's you just

pointed out though also there's a legal and illegal ones so the legal ones that are the legal ones that that obviously goes through the Peruvian government, gets permission, are there guardrails on ecologically what they're allowed to do there? No, it's very unregulated. And in those areas, they call this La Pampa. And you, we, I've driven up to the gates of that area and there's gates and that is where you find your guy

with the AK-47. That's where you see a guy in sunglasses with a machine gun and you don't go past there. He won't let you pass there. And there was one time that I got to go into the gold mining areas. And I had Matt Gutman with me from ABC News. Shout out, Matt.

Yeah. And we got to go. We met these Russian gold miners. And they were Russian gold miners. And they had come and they had legal permits to try and they were actually trying to make gold mining less environmentally devastating. They're trying to improve upon this cut it, burn it, suck it all up. And they were like, maybe there's more sustainable way to do this.

Maybe. And so we walk, we go in there. We're on like dune buggies going across. this wasteland, this sand, it looked like the bottom of the ocean, and this is where the Amazon rainforest used to be. In the distance, there's a sandstorm blowing up. It looked like dune, and we're in these dune buggies with sand all over us, and I'm going, this is where the jungle used to be. This is the apocalypse of nature happening all around us. And we're standing on a dune, watching the sandstorm spread across the land, and the Russian guy comes up to me and goes,

you are Paul Rosalie, yes? And I said, how? yes and I'm going, I know my name. And he goes, they are gold miners and they know your name. And I want, they know my name.

He said, that's how I know your name. He said, because I heard them saying your name. He goes, I'm just telling you. They know your name. They know that you raise money

to stop them. And he's like, they're all talking about the fact that you're here right now. And he was like, you might want to be careful. And then days or a week later, I don't remember,

but the, I was walking in the city just like like you see there and on the sidewalk and a little took took pulled up and drove up on the curb and two guys jumped out and pushed me up against the wall and they said no more no more talk in Spanish they said no more talking about gold mining and there's a few other threats that they were spitting out at me but I was at that time I fully thought that that was it can't that was up against the wall and I said this is they there's no reason that they can't dave can you pull up a picture we've done this before but I want people to see this Amazon gold mine wasteland let's try that search like you've shown me this before

paul where it's just totally blown out and yeah which one do you want paul one on the far right any of these yeah i mean that's those it's pretty bad that's where the jungle used to be yeah and then actually that one you're scrolled over right now dif hit that because you can literally see it where it's cut off so that was all trees yeah you honestly just add my name to the end of that search thing right there and I'm pretty sure my picture will come up I wonder okay I just am curious let's see yeah right there top result that's it that's that day I'm talking about it's like the fucking Sahara

in the middle of the Amazon you can see the sandstorm in the background of that photo that's that's just such a horrific picture and that pipe coming out the front that's what they use to suck the earth up it was one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen the complete annihilation of nature on earth devastation of millions of years of evolution to nothing and how much is this type of

destruction growing like do we know a rate it's growing at or has it been somewhat contained at this point growing and the problem is that the military is scared to go the the peruvian law enforcement is scared to go in there now because the miners are more numerous than they are they're what about the military i mean the military can be called in a few years ago they came in with with helicopters and and commandos and they came in And they blew up a bunch of shit. They arrested everybody. And then they had a few problems. One, they had hundreds and hundreds of people.

They'd just arrested. And most of them are artisanal, you know, small-scale people. They're not bosses. They don't have anything. So eventually you have to let them go. Next, they just blew up all this mining equipment. And the damage is already done. And half the people ran off into the surrounding jungle.

And so within a few weeks, everybody was back at it, doing the gold mining again. And then so you go, well, what do we do? Another huge. But the problem is, if you don't have a better. alternative for these people, just like the loggers. If you say stop logging, they're going, I'm going to stop logging. I'm going to feed my daughter. I'm not going to stop logging.

But if you go, hey, I have a better job for you. You can work as a ranger. We'll give you a t-shirt. We'll give you some binoculars. You can drive a boat, right? And they go, yeah. And they go, well, we're happy. You don't have to run from the law either. Well, then they're happy to do that. But now you have to find a way to replicate that for tens of thousands of people that are destroying this ecosystem because they're desperate and they don't have any money.

And they're willing to risk their lives for a couple of nuggets of gold and then try to get that to the place where they can sell it before they get shot. It literally is like the Wild West. And then people are coming with masks on and pistols and taking that gold from them. The poorest people on earth being robbed by the slightly poorer people on earth. It's just it's horrible. It's no country for old men. It's just dark. Above that, like above the level of these mafias.

Yeah. Like I'm just thinking about the logging we've talked about in this. past where the funding can be traced back to America, China, different countries around the world. Like enemies are like all doing the same damage and shit and then all the countries are buying the product that they get there. Do we also see like nation states funding some of the gold mining as well? I don't not in this case. I think that most of the, most of the logging that's had, most of the gold mining that's happening here is such low grade gold that it's not going towards like jewelry. It's not being exported to Europe. It's a or a, or a,

America this is this is like gold you use in like electrical work it's not yeah this is all that risk for just that what's the most valuable thing out there but again these people there's so much they could they could literally if education was the prevailing or or the head of the line out there these people could learn how to do all kinds of complex agroforestry and and actually make products that make them more money in a sustainable living and they could be exporting Brazil nuts and and small amounts of tropical timber and caring for their kids in an environment that's thriving, whereas this is now a wasteland.

Nothing can grow there or will for decades. And so we're fighting this. When I say that we're fighting this existential threat, I mean this for everybody on earth. It's if a fifth of our fresh water is contained in the Amazon and one fifth of our oxygen is coming out of this system and all of this biodiversity and endangered species and undiscovered medicines and tribal indigenous knowledge is contained in this,

we're literally on the cusp of losing it. And so it is this thing that right now, we need people to right now, we need to figure out how to save this river so that we can prove that it can be done and again and again and again. Across the Amazon, indigenous territories are the largest, most prevalent way

of protecting the Amazon, the most effective. Then there's the national park systems. And then there's other things, but it's like we have to also, I think as a country, I think it would be helpful if America was putting pressure on South America, or carrot in the stick,

You know what I mean? Incentivizing Latin American countries, even better. Incentivize them and say, look, we're going to hook you up with trade. Yes. We are going to hook you up, but we want to see zero deforestation. Let's help these people to rise out of poverty. And then no one's going to go out and start shooting jaguars and cutting down trees if they have a real job. Sure.

Yeah. If you were given control of one of these gold mine wastelands tomorrow, how would you fix this and how long would it take? Obviously, you can't regrow ancient trees in fucking 10 years, but like, what could you do to salvage what's happened? I mean, you would have to talk to an ecosystem restoration expert. I focus in saving primary rainforests and old growth rainforest. When you look at the thick jungle that's on there, I'm about saving this. Once you get down to that level, that's tough. That's like, how do you bring back a dead body?

And that's going to be the mercury contamination that's there, the fact that the sun beating down on that sand is going to prevent anything. But maybe grass from growing there, you'd have to find a way of getting some initial cover. You'd have to wait for the pioneer species like Socoropia and balsa and the grasses to take over there and to begin to build a layer of some sort of soil and topsoil and some shade. Otherwise, it really is just scorched wasteland. It's not going to grow back. What is the current you mentioned the current like national park system out there What is it let's just focus on Peru for a second before going to other countries what does that even look like at the moment? Because you had said earlier your threshold for your stuff would be like 300,000 acres So what do they already have in existence and who runs it? Oh, it's really good

I mean in our region you can look up the they have Alto Puros National Park. There's the Tamboata Reserve there's Manu National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage heritage site. There's different indigenous territories. There's something called the Amarikairi, Ameriqairi, I was kind of choke on that word, Ameriqairi indigenous territorial reserve. There's the uncontacted indigenous reserve. There's so much that's protected and then you go up to the northern north of Peru. There's more area protected and even Smithsonian published a map where they showed that if we can protect from Ecuador down through the through Peru, the Andes Amazon interface that this

could be a contiguous protected area that would protect the most biodiversity on earth. So there's there's massive amounts of hope out there. It's just that we need more people, we need more action. And that's why this has been so great with the book is like, we've, we've, this is like the right time and it seems like the story is reaching people. And I think the message of the book is understanding that.

I think a lot of people feel like they individually don't have, the capability to do something. And I think that what this proves on a number of levels, whether it's JJ, me, Jane, that you absolutely can. And there's different levels of it. You know, you don't, you shouldn't, nobody should do what I did. What I did was sort of suicidal. Suicidal.

Well, I mean, in the sense that like I would never tell anyone to go do what I did, you know, go out on solos for 15 years, live out of your backpack, have no plan B. Fish with your fucking skin. on the bottom of your foot. Yes, develop crucial life skills like fishing with the bottom of your foot. That's why there's one Paul Rosalie. Amen.

Now, what about, you mentioned about 60% of the Amazon is in Brazil. Yeah. And there's been all kinds of political shit going on with their government there. What's the current standing of like the job they're doing in protecting the Amazon? Obviously, it's different than where you are. You're in Peru. But how much do you know about that? It's not great. And the last administration, the Bolsonaro administration, he actually encouraged people to go into the Amazon and settle it. It was like manifest destiny. Settle it? Settle it. Settle it. He said cut roads. He actually provided funding for people to go out, cut roads, deforest, set up farms. It was like we said we have all this territory in our country that we're just not using. This is unutilized potential that could be having economic output.

an ecosystem just standing there isn't actually putting dollars in our pockets. So he went, get out there, do that. And if I'm not wrong, and this is one of those ones of disclaiming, I'm saying that I believe, I believe I'm not wrong. He actually said something to the effect of like, get rid of the indigenous people, get rid of the tribes. What is it? Like, kill him? What does that get?

Can we pull that up? That's crazy. He was, it was something very extreme. He's referring to all of them, the ones known and the ones uncontented. I remember just watching it and going, that is, that is, I mean, people talk about like, racism. I was like, this is, this is, this is, this is crazy. This was wild. Bolsonaro wanted to exterminate us, claims indigenous leader, Raoni, metu, metu, metu,

Kiyapo chief tells in memoir of seeing former president in his dreams and of warning Lula not to repeat past mistakes. Okay, let's go down. Okay, but that's his dreams. I'm saying there's a, there's a, I know that I saw a video of, of, Bolsonaro saying something where it's like, he's like, we don't need these. Like, you know, something very dark. Okay. Um, I could, I'm trying to see if there's anything that mentions that in here. Can we just Google Bolsonaro quotes on eliminating indigenous tribes? Let's see if that's, okay. Yeah, your Bolsonaro has a long history of controversial and widely condescending.

remarks regarding indigenous tribes in Brazil and advocating for their assimilation, the exploitation of their lands, and expression admiration for the historical eradication of indigenous population in other countries. A frequently cited quote from a 1998 interview published in 2015, 2016, shows him praising the actions of the U.S. cavalry. He stated, it's a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn't been as efficient as the Americans who exterminated the Indians. There you go.

That's a blatant statement. So you have a guy like that who can say that it's unfortunate that we are not able to exterminate indigenous people more than we have. You have that guy running the country that has some of the most sensitive pristine cultures on earth. And so you think of all the endless miles of smoky jungle and all the toucans and the spider monkeys and the macaws and all the raindrops and leaf cutter ants and these complex bylaws. processes and the fact that everything is interconnected and that the rain in the Amazon is caused by the sum total of all of these interconnections and then you have China and the World Bank and the

IMF and guys like Bolsonaro who just want to make money and they want to use it as space and they want to clear aside that I mean just imagine if it was a town of people and you said we're literally going to bulldoze the town with the people in their houses and then burn it That's what we're facing. And so I live this life where, you know, it's funny when you watch Mission Impossible, right? We had the ancient forest. We found out that there was 10,000 acres of the Amazon rainforest that was going to be bulldozed and chopped down and burned.

And we were able to go online. We told the world about it. We found a donor who gave us half of the money we needed. We went to Instagram and the words spread around the world. And we were able to raise $300, $350,000. We protected the ancient forest, saved. Right? but that was two weeks of like psychotic work and expedition up there,

meeting the landowners, using our indigenous wisdom, sending JJ out, talking to the police, signing with the lawyers. I mean, monumental efforts. You get across the finish line, you fall on your face, but you pick your face up and you go, but there's more smoke. It's the next one. So it's like even if you can ride the motorcycle and jump off the mountain and land it on a train and then parachute down and stop the bomb from going off,

but that's great, but then you've got to do it again tomorrow. Yeah. And you're only going to get lucky so many times. Like swatting flies. It just, yeah, it just doesn't stop. And so we've had this, you know, this is the story of win after win after win, but it's like it's also there's so many losses. Like the first chapter in here I'm talking about JJ teaching me how to track.

Also, I looked at the titles of the chapters right before you got here. Fucking sick, bro. Yeah. They're sick. Yeah. The first one is the rivers in our veins. And it's like, that's just when JJ, the early, the early days where JJ would just take me on these little streams in the forest and teach me

everything and then that first stream that we used to explore for years and years and years that then they burnt it down and now it's gone they just burnt it down settlers came in took it as a farm they burnt it down they planted yuca there for a couple years and now they're gone so they ruined the ancient forest that used to be there killed every single animal that was living in that forest I mean, this stream used to have, you know, emerald stained glass ceilings and these giant trees and vines going across and there'd be jaguar tracks on the rivers and clouds of butterflies. It was magical. And they came and they just cut all the trees with chain. Individually, you know, the amazing deliberation, deliberateness here, you have to go and cut each tree for it to fall over.

That's the other thing people don't realize with the environment is that if you stop killing it, it will live. It's been there for millions of years long. The city, Amazon formed 30 to 55 million years ago, millions of years ago. And so this system has been complexifying for millions of years. It existing right there, all the trees. And if you look at some of the millennium trees at standing, you look at a thousand-year-old tree, you see, that tree was there when they were painting the roof of the Sistine Chapel. That tree was there in World War I.

That tree was there in World War I. That tree's been there my entire life. It's been this sentinel of the age. of the centuries, and then they cut it over. So that story's over. And think of how many millions of animals have lived on the branches of that tree over the course of the centuries that it was alive.

And now that story's over, and the fact that in another thousand years we may not have a tree like that because if we break the moisture cycle of the Amazon, we're not going to have an Amazon rainforest. And so that becomes then that every day is Mission Impossible until we save this ecosystem. And that ecosystem happens to be the size of the lower 48. And we're the last generation of history

because once we cut too much of the Amazon and it can't produce the rain that makes it the Amazon rainforest, then it's going to dry out and become a wasteland. And then you're talking about post-apocalyptic panic on this planet because everything is going to change and then our weather's going to go crazy and it's like you're messing with all the dials. And so the fact that we can protect this,

I don't think it's a very big ask. And if you're going to go the Jane Goodall route, the Gandalf route, you go, hey, there's still time to do this. So it's not a big ask. I mean, to protect the rest of our river, we need $20 million to protect the rest of our river. I just met somebody that spent who was working, I just met somebody who spent $20 million, putting in a new cafeteria at their company. And it was like, easy.

So this, this, this is, this money's out there. Here's a check. Yeah. So here's some, some, some chairs and a counter and a few Coke machines and a roof and it's $20 million right there. We could save, I mean, we're already protecting land. It's half the size of Singapore. It's nine Manhattan Islands.

One less building in New York could make a big difference. There you go. Yeah. Make a huge fucking difference. You've talked about before how you don't know where the percentage cutoff is, meaning you don't know when it gets to, whether it gets to 30 or 35% or 40 the Amazon cut down where it's the point of diminishing, like no return, diminishing returns. Do you feel like we have, I don't want to say.

halted but done enough good over the last three years to kind of keep things that's even just status quo of losing the Amazon or are we still statistically losing too many trees? We're still losing too many trees every year. But again, it can't, you know, you're watching, you're watching the, you're watching the water slide out of the bucket. And it's like we're, we're slowing it. We're stopping it, but it's still leaking. It's still leaking. It's still going. and it's only one bad administration away from being devastated. Right. And the thing is we just, you don't want to go close to that.

You don't want to, you know, how close can you go? How many, how many, what is it, rivets? Can you take out of the wing of an airplane before, you know, take one, two, three, a hundred, you fine, big plane. And how many does the wing come off? That's right. You don't know. We don't know.

Someone knows. But with the Amazon, nobody knows who's never been done before. And why would you want to push it to that? And so I think that, you know, I think that more and more people are understanding that you need healthy ecosystems for human life to thrive, that these things come standard. They're free. These ecosystem services are free. Life on Earth comes standard with fresh water in the streams.

It comes standard with fish in the ocean. There's food everywhere. There's sunlight. There's plants. There's ecosystems. People understand. People start talking about, oh, we should, you know, we're going to go to Mars great you know it's Bill Maher fame I loved Bill Mars thing about uh where he goes fuck Mars

and he's he's going you know he goes there's things that you that are not on Mars that are on earth you know one example is air he's like you don't understand we have ecosystems here that create the environment you live in without oxygen in the air that is because of the ecosystems this doesn't work and so i think people get very uh cavalier with their ideas of what's possible we live on this tiny little crust of the earth. That's it. And that's very, very delicate. And something like a hole in the ozone layer.

Or you hear that when Crackatoa went off, the entire globe cooled because of the smoke from Crackatoa actually. When was that? When was that? It was like, I think it was like. The whole world cooled because of that. I believe that you can see it. When?

Crackatoa, no. All right. Cracketto's most famous and catastrophic 1883 eruption occurred from a series of massive explosions culminating on August 27th, 1883. The activity began in May and ended in October that year

with the final basis causing immense tsunamis and killing tens of thousands in Indonesia. The explosion destroyed over 70% of the island collapsing it into a caldera collapse. Wow. It generated colossal tsunamis, some reaching 120 feet high, leading to over

36,000 deaths primarily on Java and Sumatra. The eruption ejected vast amounts of ash and gas causing global climate effects that the sun-colored sunsets and a temporary drop in world temperature. There you go. Yeah. So like a single volcano affecting global temperature. Let me talk about something like the Amazon rainforest that's pretty much the defining feature of our planet. It's like the face of Earth. It's a big, nice green thing as you're coming in. i i just it just it's this is what i i i don't i don't think there's anything more important right now than then making sure that we survive this period of adolescence everyone's very very concerned with the future but it's like until you can until you can show that you can manage the things

that you've been given for free that's right um where where else in the world paul besides the amazon are you most concerned about right now from an environmental perspective i mean any river that has in the U.S., I mean, we've dammed like 90 something, 97% of the waterways in the, and the U.S. I mean, just think of that. There's millions and millions and millions of waterways and they all have a dam. And to the point that now that was, you know, 100 years ago, people thought that was a great idea. They're starting to take down the dams now because salmon fisheries, you know, whereas we're

at 5% of the amount of salmon that used to be in a river. 5%. In a lot of rivers? Yeah. We've devastated so many animal populations. They've come down to barely viable populations. Yeah, 5% is crazy. Where we used to have billions of salmon coming out of these rivers.

And so what's more valuable? A dam to make a little bit of electricity or having salmon that bears and people in the ecosystem can all depend on the salmon. Right. And I think that at this point, it's like even the people that used to be the destroyers are understanding that this is just not. It's not going to work like this. You weren't kidding, bro. More than 550,000 dams are located in the United States,

indicating that nearly every major river in the country has been dammed, diked, or diverted. The national inventory of dams lists over 90,000 significant structures, but total dams, including smaller non-federal ones, may exceed two millions, causing widespread habitat fragmentation. Yeah. Yeah, no. How's that even possible? It's incredible.

There's a documentary that'll make you cry called Damn Nation. It's an amazing documentary. And it's like they interview all these people that are fighting to protect waterways. And it's like you meet these beautiful, there's a guy who his job is to monitor salmon. And you know, you see him talking about this. You know, he takes you under the water in these clear pools and talks about how these fish come here and how they're just trying to get up river. And they're trying to do they spawn. and their whole life is connected to the river from the sea upwards.

And then as if this wasn't bad enough, as if we didn't damn the rivers that stopped the salmon, then you have farmed salmon. In every store, you can get wild car. You can get farmed salmon. They're genetically engineering the salmon. They're filling them with antibiotics. They're keeping them in pens that are in the ocean. And so then when the farmed salmon get out, what do they do?

They go breed with the wild salmon. And this is catastrophic because a wild animal, I say this every time I eat a piranha or the big paco which like the vegetarian piranha in the Amazon that animal has for millions of years been swimming in those waterways and generations and generations and generations and that they've been surviving and it's the strongest of them have been surviving escaping predators and surviving against the elements and finding food and so when you are when you have the incredible luck again the it's almost supernatural to be able to get this fish out of the Amazonian river because if somebody brought you to the edge of the river and you didn't have any tools. You were just a human. It's completely impossible.

And 15 foot deep water that's racing by it 12 miles an hour, you have zero chance of ever getting this powerful fish out of the river. You never even know how to find it. But if you have a fishing line made from plastic that comes from somewhere else and a piece of metal that comes from somebody else, both somewhere else, both that somebody else made for you that you bought, now you have this special thing that you tie to a rope. And then you need a piece of meat from an animal that somebody grew on a farm. so now you have all these things that your society helped you get. And somehow you're able to pull this fish out of the river. And you feel like you did it yourself, but really you had a lot of help.

And the incredible sacrament of eating something that came out of a wild river, you are incorporating into your physical system, something that has been forming for millions of years. You're taking part in this great natural cycle. And to do that, you have to do that, you have to. to do that with the deference and respect of this great great great story and so the thing of building a dam across a river and stopping the lives of millions or billions of migratory animals that depend on this river for life and ruining it for future generations is is one of the greatest acts of terrorism

that you could possibly imagine and so you can imagine that when i do leave the jungle where it is wild and where i can drink from the rivers and i come back to the world i'm horrified by what I see. I mean, even upstate New York, I know where the endangered American eels live, and I actually have gone and seen them. The endangered American eels. There's an American eel. They're beautiful. They're bright yellow. They are beautiful. I go look at them at night in the pools where they live. They come up the Hudson, and they're trying to move up the waterways because they want to go up the streams, and that's where they spawn. They're beautiful. But there's all these dams and you look just below the dam all the eels are sitting there all the eels are just

below them there no way of getting over a six foot dam stupid concrete six foot dam is ruining it for an entire species as part of the entire ecosystem that's part of the hudson valley that provides the clean water that goes to new york city and the reason new york city has clean water is because the cat skills are protected but the hudson river's part of that and so even that like who's advocating for the eels i mean the fact that they're still sturgeon i think they found a third 13 foot sturgeon in the Hudson River not that long ago. These are dinosaur fish and these are ancient fish. Wait, actually, I think I remember that.

Yes. Oh, that's like where it washed up on the side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the cops were out with the lights and there was this giant fish on the side of the rocks. Got it. Dude, they're catching fucking bull sharks out here now. Yeah, well, the water's getting healthier. And so the wildlife is coming back.

I mean, again, look at California. The water is so much cleaner. And so there's more fish, there's elephant seals and sea lions. and whales and it's amazing what happens when you just stop polluting the nature. Unbelievable, right? You would never think. It's like, man, the tree has been standing there for 150 years. If you just don't cut it over.

Oh, my God. Somehow it keeps standing there. Do we have it, thief? They found this one in Maine this year. Nice. Oh, that's a big motherfucker. No, but you take it in like New York City sturgeon rocks. Yeah, I remember that one because it was nuts.

Because everyone's walking by Maxwell Park. Yeah, it was right out by Maxwell Park. Right up here, I'm pretty sure if my memory served me right. Let's see if Dave can find it. It's not coming up. I know exactly the one. I think Hoboken girl had it. Like back then on Instagram, I don't know when that would have been, though.

But it's all good. We know what happened. We know what happened. We know what happened. There's a big fish on the edge of the city and everybody was losing their minds. Yeah. It's one thing when you see out in the middle of nature, but like seeing it like in the guanis. Yeah, right here.

Like a 10 foot fish with spills. spikes coming off its back. Some dudes eating the fucking B-Ally three feet away. Jesus Christ. You know, Paul, now it's, obviously, like, you're able to have a profile and you go talk about this stuff and you're seeing the fruits of many years of work actually go into helping you do that work and get it way farther. But like we were saying earlier, there were a lot of years there where you were, like, kind of

yelling out and a lot of people wouldn't listen and you couldn't get the proper attention on it. And you were fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting down there to do what you do. And you stuck with it. And I always admired that so much because I can't even imagine, like, when we met, you've been down there for, like, 16 and a half years or something like that. And I tried to think about my life that was well more than half my life at that point. You know, how did you keep, like, such a, I don't want to say, like, upbeat mentality, but how did you keep a day-to-day mentality? mentality of focusing on the mission when so much time would pass without any real progress happening despite all of your efforts i think that the thing that sent me down to the amazon in the first

place was panic over what i saw happening to the environment and so when i got there and i discovered that this place was more beautiful and more complex than anything i had ever imagined reality surpassed my wildest dreams for the first time in my life and so that place made me happy it was a selfish thing and then over the years it's not that i was upbeat at all it's that i was running away from the the the depression of of being told that we're living at the end of days and that all the rivers are dammed and all the rivers are polluted and all the species are going extinct and so as a young person as a kid i mean i remember crying crying to my parents at night because I was worried about the turtle lonesome George who was the last of the

Pinto Island, Galapagos tortoises, or hearing that elephants are going to go extinct or the horrible videos they played you at the Bronx Zoo where you hear that sound of the chainsaw like a nightmare and you can see the trees going over and so when I finally got to the rainforest and it was like it was like in the adventure stories when you you know they reach the island where everything's possible and there's these incredible species these beautiful snakes and rainbows of macaws flying across it. And for a while, there was this beautiful play period. There was like the age of innocence where for the first few years

was so you have to go two years, two days. You'd have to get on the boat and go two days from the nearest city to reach this remote research station. There was no one else out there. And you're all alone out in the Amazon with surrounded by life. The antithesis to the millions of miles of frigid space, this glowing, beautiful, complex carnival of life all around you at all times. You could jump into the river.

You could drink it at it with your hands. And then seeing that get destroyed changes you because the thing you love the most gets annihilated in front of your eyes. And then you come back and I would come home and go, why aren't, why isn't everybody freaking out about this? And everybody worried about whatever was on the news that week. And I go, guys, wait, no. We're losing something that's everything.

replaceable. And at that time, you're right, I had no, no platform, no vehicle by which to communicate the destruction I was seeing. And so I just went back and spent more time because I said, maybe my job is to witness the destruction of this great thing. Maybe that's it, is to bear witness to the loss of something beautiful. I mean, that's what Peter Beard was doing in Africa when he saw these, where he wrote the end of the game, where he just saw this vast wilderness destroyed and and sort of domesticated and ruined and denatured. And so I said, maybe this is dark. And so I think actually when people have asked me,

what is it that allows you to take some of the risks that you took? And so a lot of the risks that I took I was able to take because I thought there wasn't much point to it. I figured I was just going to see a lot of bad stuff. And I didn't think I was ever going to have a life that integrated with the world I had come from, like society, New York, America, I had gone to this very, very far in place, discovered something that altered the chemical composition of my soul.

And now I was inherently obligated to protect these animals that had given me so much that made me feel this feeling of warmth and life and beauty. And then when I went, and then it got easier once I realized that if I didn't do it, nobody else was going to. The day that we saw the smoke on the horizon and JJ said, I said, there has to be somebody we can call to do something about this. And JJ looked up river and he looked down river and he goes, do you see anybody?

He goes, do you see anybody here? And there's a little bit of, you know, there was an attitude there too where he went, what are you talking about? You still stupid or have you been here for a few years? He goes, there's nobody else. There's no help coming. And so he goes, if anybody's going to do anything, you have to figure it out. And I won't.

And he didn't say we have to figure it. You have to figure it out. So that's where, you know, jungle keepers, it's what's so crazy is that right now as we're talking there's people driving up and down river in boats with a jungle keepers logo there's rangers wearing shirts with the jungle keepers logo there's 136 000 acres of rainforests protected because jungle keepers because people from around the world have joined us in this fight but what it started out with was just an idea two guys standing barefoot with machetes on the side of a river who said we should just protect this thing we should be the jungle keepers we made it up

and now it's become a movement now it's become a book now it's i mean i certainly never thought that it would get to this point. And so now, I did. After a huge, I gotta give you credit for that, you did. I read and I, you'd always, you'd always sort of pump me up and you know that there were periods where I was like man, I'm dying. I mean all of last year, I would say all of once, once the, once the, once the narcos hit and then all the way through till like September, I would say I was, I would say I was, that was probably the, because that was probably, that was, you know, that was dark time.

That was like PTSD times. I think about this. There's moments, obviously, like anyone's career out there that like stick out to you that you just remember. You can put yourself right back in the place. And I remember when we first wrapped filming for the first time in October, 2022. And you, it was funny because you were like, was that any good? And I was like, that was fucking fire. I knew what was going to happen.

But you were just, you could see it. You were exhausted. And I remember it came full circle because you and I had a conversation the last night in the Amazon about this and it was like amazing to see where you were at that point in May 2024. But, you know, I said to you like,

I can see you're fucking tired, but it's about to get a lot better. And then obviously it did. But even in that exhaustion, you were going back in maybe like two weeks or something like that. Like when we changed the subject and be talking about like when we went to day,

dinner afterwards, like what you were going to do when you got back. Of course, shit's burning. Like in that way, it's miserable. But like that light, that spark, I think, I don't know, from the outside, I think for all those years, that's what kept you going. Like, if I were guessing, like, you're extremely upset at the destruction. Cynically, you're thinking, am I just here to fucking document this? As you just said, but you are so in your element and in such a beautiful place that is like your life's calling, that your effort. to protect it as putrid as or not putrid but like as barren as they were for a long time because you couldn't get the support that you wanted it's like the battle of still doing that there was

some there had to be something exciting and that it's just pure love i mean you just love i love seeing these places i loved exploring these things i loved expanding my knowledge and i mean at this point you know i've gotten to see and do things that were that that are that are far beyond what my wildest dreams would have been. I mean, when I went to the first to the Amazon, I wanted to see the Amazon. Just see it. Just see the jungle. I never thought I'd get to explore the deepest parts of it. We never thought we'd find me. That's what this book is about. I mean, it's about how, you know, meeting JJ who unlocked the Amazon for me, finding the biggest anaconda's going on the solos, all these things and then realizing that we had to protect it, finding your, your calling. I never

thought any of that was possible. I mean, we've, there's the, the highest peaks that we could see at the beginning are things that we look down on now as quaint and cute it's like you know this keep that perspective though man you got to keep that perspective but also again from the barefoot machete days from the days of the inception of the thought that we could possibly do this i tell everybody yeah yeah okay so so we just got on the field at the world cup we could still lose and if we lose everything dies it's not like we get a second shot at it and so all of the this the 20 years that are in this book the 20 years that i've put in right now it's still like yeah great like congratulations me that i've gone on a few talk shows doesn't mean shit the fact that more people

are coming in the fact that we're getting a little bit closer to the large donors and the thousands of small donors getting us past that point where we get the extra is 20 million dollars we got 20 million dollars tomorrow saved the rest of the river story over then we make a documentary about how we save the wildest place on earth inspire other people use that blueprint to save tons of other places. So we're on the cusp of doing something historic. But it doesn't, just because you're at the end of your walk on the high wire doesn't mean you're going to make it. You got to finish it. We do have to finish it. And so I'm very aware of that where it's like none of this, none of this is going to mean anything until it's safe. Because until then, it's all just an idea. It's well said.

Who inspires you besides conservationists? We've talked a lot about Jank at all. We've talked a lot about Steve Irwin. We've talked a lot about the greats and the people who for obvious reasons you look up to, but you know, over the years like while you've been down there, are there other people that you're like, God damn, I love this person because they do this or they think like this or they talk like that. I mean, there's definitely people outside of conservation. I don't know. I don't really, I don't lift my head up so much to look. The people that inspire me are the people that I know in real life who are just who are who are good at it, whether those are people who are just raising amazing families or people who are you know the people

i know who are really good at the art that they do whatever that may be um i think people who know know how to live life well who are good at the art of living are the people that i respect the most there's there's not many people that i that i truly you know it's not like i have like a mentor or something at this point we're i have a team of people i have a team of people working with me though that you know it's not just jj it's like me most and jay but J. J. Stefan, Roy, it's like, and it's like this team of Avengers of people that, you know, everyone's doing a job that nobody else can do. And so, yeah, there's, there's other, there are other conservation projects, though, like the, uh, all over the world, there's people

saving elephants and there's people working on cheetah populations, there's people trying to free whales from nets. And so I look now and, and that's, that's the cool thing. People say social media is toxic. I go on my Instagram. That shit is curated. Every time I go on, all I see is good stuff. All I see is, I mean, again, sometimes an elephant got poached, but like last week I was watching somebody remove a snare from an elephant's foot that the elephant would have died. If there wasn't people to go tranquilize it

and veterinarians to go fix it, and now that elephant's going to live. And it's like, so I see these things happening. I go, okay, it's not just us. We're fighting here, but there's people fighting all over the world. And they're making progress on the elephant conservation front. Yeah. It was bleak a decade ago.

And now it's, it's better. It's still got ways to go. And tigers have gone up from, I think, 3,000 to 5, like tigers are going up. And that's good. You're talking about from India through China, like you're talking about a huge area where Asia, with the population of Asia, they're still managing to get some wins, like to protect the species, set aside to create connectivity through the protected areas.

That's tremendous. And there's hope to be found in that. We have sturgeon. Oh, Joe found the sturgeon. Yeah. This was right by Maxwell Park. Going back to this. That's wild.

That's it's crazy It was right there I walk there Like every day This is where I take calls When I talk the end of the phone Oh my fucking Wow

What was gonna happen Get the fuck out of the way There's a hundred million year old fish there Oh Look at that fucking thing Wow That's awesome

That is a big Right here in Hoboken people We'll see. All right, that's good, there, D. I love that there's always that one person. Leave it alone. Shut up, lady. The cops, like, because it was dead.

We didn't want a bum to eat it. Could you see yourself raising a family in the Amazon someday? I think it'll always be a half-half thing, especially now that I'm getting, you know, it's more valuable for me to be spreading this message and then the team on the ground doing it. This is just a new development after 20 years in the Amazon. I think it'll become more of a 50-50 thing. Right. My kids will grow up in the Amazon 100%.

They're going to be savages. They're going to be disgusting. They're going to know how to... They're going to have the callous to off their feet by the time they're three years old. I'm going to start them off on bullet ant stings. You know, just let them learn... You're going to put bull and ants on them. Well, I want them to learn.

I mean, the babies that, like, JJ's family, like, you know, his brothers are constantly having babies. And, you know, there would be like a one-and-a-half-year-old sitting right there. and you know they hold up their arms and a wasp lands here and then they put their arm down a wasp stings them and so these babies were getting stung by wasps like five times a day and you watch them as they grow up and the first few times they cry this few few times they're going to see the same kid six months later and he gets stung by a bee and he's like whatever they just don't care so the jungle makes you tough i mean i have pictures of this five-year-old one of the we we turned a gold miner into a ecotourism operator, which is an amazing story.

Love it. But his kid at like five years old, he was great with a machete, but he would also use this huge kitchen knife. And he knew how to keep his fingers away from the piranhas mouth. And he would work with a bucket of piranhas. And he'd get all the scales off him and cut him down the belly and remove the guts. And he, just this kid was an expert with a knife and handling fish that could remove the tips of his fingers five years old.

And so, yeah, of course, the jungle. No. And so I would definitely want my kids to be, you know, have a little bit of that. Yeah, we got to evolutionarily study the Paul Rosalie spawns. Yeah, they're going to have wide feet from walking barefoot. I mean, I just see parents helicopter parenting. And like, you know, every time I'm babysitting, it's always, you know, do you want to climb that tree? I'll be here if you fall. I will catch you. We're going to have responsible adventures, but you're going to try it. Yeah, I got good hands. Yeah, I got great hands. I can catch a football. Just keep them away from the.

uncontacted tribes. We got to get to that now. We haven't talked about that yet today. Like don't let those, if there's little Rosalie's running around, don't take your chances with 300 fucking yard seven foot arrows. That's next level. That is next level. Yeah. So you obviously have gone public with this video you alluded to earlier. You just pull up polls Instagram again. It's in the last 25, 30 posts or so. But this tribe is, this is the original one. we talked about the first time we were together, the Mosca Piro tribe. Just for people out there who were unfamiliar with the background, are we talking about a tribe here when we say on contact the tribe, obviously,

they're not a part of society, but how are these like pre-stone age kind of people? Again, if you think about the fact that the Egyptian Empire was what, 3,000 to 5,000 years ago, and the Stone Age was something like three million years ago. These people are pre-stone age. They're in the bamboo age. And there's certain anthropologists that get incredibly upset when you say that because they go, no, they're modern people. They have their own technology.

But there's also a lot of anthropologists that just acknowledge it. There's tribes all over the Amazon that have way more sophisticated societies where they have traditions and they have carved out boats and they have more. more complex societies. These are still living a nomadic hunter-gatherer life, which is why they've been so hard to understand. And for the first 20 years that I worked in the Amazon, this was always a mythic thing. When I wrote Mother of God where I'd been out on the solo and I caught a glimpse of them across the river, I ran for days and I knew for a fact that nobody believed me. I just could see it on people's faces. I would tell that story and people would be like, yeah, okay, sure.

Like where are you running into that? Deep in the forest. I had gone 10 days. into the most remote part of the forest because I was trying to have this incredibly wild experience with the deepest part of the Amazon. I wanted to commune with the deepest of the heart of the jungle. And then it turned out that I went so deep that I came out the other side into their territory and they had happened to be moving through the same area. And I saw the smoke and I ran for my life and I left them alone. Now on this day, you saw the smoke from their fire. Mm-hmm. On this day, the thing that makes it historic is that they contact They contacted us.

Wait, what? What's the context here? How did that go down? We work with the indigenous communities now that are inside the junglekeepers reserve. A lot of the people in the indigenous communities that are our friends, our boat drivers, our guides, our rangers. They live in the indigenous communities. They fish out of the rivers.

They hunt monkeys. They hunt monkeys. Yeah, of course. That's what they eat. Damn it. And so, no, no, I mean, again, you know, you can't get mad at us for eating deer. They like monkeys. There's lots of monkeys.

We got word that the Mashkapiro were going to come out of the forest. Are they like very close to the Brazilian border? Is that where we're talking? We're talking about the southeast of Peru, yeah. Okay. And so, but the indigenous community said to us, you as directors, they said, you as our neighbors who want to help us protect this watershed, you need to be here for this because we are sick of being attacked by these people.

Wait, the Mosca Piro were attacking. The Moshko Piro come out and do raids. They want children, women, crops, whatever they can guess. They do raids. When was the last raid? I think in 2013 they came out and they sacked the village. The men were all fishing. It was like a holiday.

And the men had all gone out of the village fishing. And the Moshko came in and they surrounded the village. They corralled all the women and children into one hut. And so everyone assumed they were going to burn it. And then they were all in there crying as these naked male warriors walked around the village. And they cut up the beds, stole the machetes, took a few pots, and murdered every animal that was in the village. But not the people. They actually left the people living that day.

How many of them, how deep are they? Like how many people did the Moskos have? We don't know. Because from Manu National Park over to our river and down and then over to the Brazilian inside there's a few thousand clans of nomadic uncontacted you can say voluntarily isolated nomadic people so not so the moshkos are just one yeah and so yeah i would say volunteer think that i think this is a very accurate word voluntarily isolated nomadic people because they are shunning contact of the outside world the term uncontacted right away leads people to be able how uncontracted are they you know

are they contacted now that you've seen them it's like shut up who cares they're very very very very wild people and so on this day they came and you can see them coming down the beach with the bows out seven foot arrows how did they you said that they contacted the the indigenous tribe you know indigenous tribes started seeing footprints on the river they knew they were coming they got the sense they know the jungle they said there's people out there walking barefoot they start to find an arrow on the side of the river they go they're here they're around you there and they said if If they show up, it could become violent. They might have the communication.

We don't know. They said, but until you see it, you won't believe it. And they said, so you get here. And we were. When was this? This was a little over a year ago. Okay. And so we ended up there and you see in the video, they come with the bows out.

You see them walking very cautiously, looking at us, pointing at us, scoping us out. And for everyone that you saw on the beach, there was 10 more in the fall. forest in the shadows tracking us with that. So when you say in the forest, I'm seeing, is that river behind them? That's river behind them, but this is because it's at the bend of a river. Right. Off to the right is forest. And so where are you guys? You guys are-

We're on one side of the river there on the other side of the river. And so they came out and the local indigenous anthropologist, again, we're just there as observers. We're there as directors because the indigenous people want help dealing with this problem that they have, that they share territory with this tribe that has no rules. This tribe will take your crops. This tribe will take you or kill you. It doesn't matter. They don't have the same rules that we have. What language do they speak? I mean, some derivation of yine. And so they actually the, it seems like they call themselves the nomole. So maschopiros means the wild piro. And so that's what the people in the countryside called them. But it seems like when they came to the edge of the river, after we convinced them to put down their bows,

they held up their hands and they said, no mole, which is brothers. So they said no moly and we said no moly. And everybody kept saying no mole back and forth across the river. And it was this acknowledgement of like, we are brothers, we are brothers. But they were scared to put down their bows and arrows, which means, you know, many of the theories with the uncontacted tribes, some people say they've been out there for thousands of years. And other people will say they haven't always been this wild, that these are splinter factions of tribes that got scared during the rubber boom when people went down to get rubber and they just decimated the local populations. And so that's part of the reason they're living such basic lives with this minimalist technology where they just have bamboo and rope because they used to be part of larger groups and clans and societies and then they got split off. So whether they've been out there for hundreds or thousands of years or whether they've been out there for hundreds or thousands of years or whether they're, they've just been out there for a century.

It's not really relevant. The point is, they're extremely wild people that speak a language that almost no one else speaks. And we know nothing about how they reproduce, where they reproduce, what they do with their old people, what their creation myths are. We know a little bit about what they eat because we find turtle shells and monkey skulls next to their fires on the beaches. We know that on trails, if they leave an X made of sticks, you don't walk down that trail if you want to continue to breathe

because they will fire an arrow through you. And I say fire an arrow through you because a lot of their arrows are so long, the seven foot arrows that when it goes through you will pass completely through you. And so you'll just feel the impact and you'll have a machete-sized cut going straight through your body

and so you have a few seconds before you bleed to death. So are they leaving the X to tell you not to be there or is that their ex because they're hunting back there and if you go in there? No. They're telling you this. Don't go further. This is our territory. So people have disrespected that and wound up dead.

The New York Post reported on it, I think in 2024 in August or September that two loggers were killed. At least two loggers were killed by the Moschapiro. It was like global news because their bodies were found. But for everything that makes the news, there's 20 other things, of course, or 50 other things, incidents that happen out past the scope of what anybody's ever going to see. And it just decomposes out there. One of the things on sort of the backwoods WhatsApp network was a few years ago they My friend turned to me and he goes yo the Moshko's got some loggers and I went where he goes up on the bububu river and he showed me his phone and it was just pictures of the loggers that other fishermen had found and the

loggers just had arrows sticking out of them and they were bloated from days of being on the edge of the river and all the vultures had picked out their eyes and you could see half of their skull and it was like It was just the most terrifying thing in the world. I mean, even though they were loggers, they shouldn't have been there. They were told not to go there. And the boogeyman got them. When you have this moment of contact, though, with them. So you said there's the river between you guys.

How far away did you say it was again? I mean, at this point, they're about 100 meters away. So they're in range. Okay. They're in range. When they, first of all, who, who's everyone that's there with you? And how many of the indigenous community, which is probably like 35 people at this point.

They evact a bunch of people. We have an indigenous anthropologist with us, someone that has communicated with uncontacted Mosco Piro groups before. He lives out there. JJ had introduced him to me years ago. What's his name? Rommel.

JJ had been like, this guy is incredible. He actually one time communicated with those people. And he was like, this man is the leading expert on these people. He speaks their language. He speaks the Yine, which is the closest to what they, so it's like when I go to Italy, I can speak Spanish and kind of get by. I can speak Spanish and we can get there. Got it. And they're like, they're like, they're like, okay, cool. We get there a little bit. And they're like, I understand a little bit of Spanish. It's close enough. They do that. But as these people came out, he said, I've never seen any of them. He said, this is a completely new tribe. He said, this is first contact. These people are coming out of the jungle. And whatever they want, this is the first time they're seeing the outside world. And so we're standing on the beach and he was the one standing out in the front,

in the river, up to his waist, hands up, saying, I am not a threat. No, Moli, brothers, I do not want violence. Please put down your weapons. And he's saying this in a language that half translates, but they listened and they put down their weapons. So we're all standing there. And it's me and the other two directors, Mosin and Stefan, who are both professional photographers.

And here's the other thing. tradition all this footage is shot by them by the way we're going to look at the footage in a couple minutes yeah you continue to wherever i go everyone keeps saying paul rosalie you know paul rosalie's talking about it paul rosalie wrote about it but it's not the they most and stephan both professional photographers on my team and directors of junglekeepers were the ones on either side of me shooting this with photos and video and what we knew was that you know if you google uncontacted drives in the amazon my whole life i had always done that and everything you see is like looks like bigfoot footage It's blurry.

It's from far away. It was crappy. It's unclear. This is the first time in history that we are getting a view into what it was like when people were living in the stone age. It's like an aperture back in time. And these people have been stuck in a time capsule because they've been living this life in the jungle where they don't even know that there's parts of the world that aren't jungle. They may not even know that water. I mean, they certainly have never seen water freeze because they live in the jungles.

they don't know about ice. They only know about metal because they've stolen machetes from loggers. They do have, one thing that we discovered is that they do have some paracord. So they've either founded on the side of the river or they've gone and raided loggers. They do have some modern rope that they've managed to steal. But I mean, I've been in villages where you're sleeping in a little thatched hut and in the night the dogs start to bark. And you're in a village that's way out in the jungle.

like deep, deep jungle. And you're in this tiny little village. And around you is just this ocean of green jungle. And at night, the dogs start to bark. And you know, in this country, people have dogs as pets. And they treat them like one of the family. And out there, dogs are an alarm system. That's why you have dogs.

And the dogs start to bark in the middle of the night. And then we were missing shirts in the morning off the clothesline. And there was bare feet tracks on the ground. And so the tribe comes and walks through the village in the night. which if you think about getting up if you get up in the middle of the night there's no indoor bathrooms you're in a village you have to walk outside right go piss in the grass and so every time you wake up in the night and walk outside you run the risk of shining your flashlight onto a six-foot tall person with a face painted red with whose the first reaction is going to be to shoot

you so you don't make noise so he's going to shoot you right in the neck that took a lot of pisses off the side yeah no is there no thank you thinking about that. So yeah, we were scared. So how did what the one part I'm still unclear on? I couldn't really tell. They knew that they were coming because they had seen the footprints. And so they say, you guys got to be here.

And then Rommel goes out into the middle of the river and does this to signal. But how did you know like that day at that time they were going to. We didn't know that day at that time. We've gotten to the village and it had been days. It had been like two days that we were waiting there. And then, you know, we said, look, we have a lot of stuff to do. We have land that we have to protect. We have office work to do.

I was like, I have to. And we were like, we got to go. And they kept saying, please stay. They said, do not leave. And then I was actually sitting there writing the chapters of this book. I was sitting there just working on the book on my laptop in the middle of the community, in the middle of the Amazon. And they all started screaming, Moshko.

And everyone started lifting kids and putting them away. And chickens were going crazy. And dogs were barking. And then we looked across the beach and we saw this. And it was just everyone was running. I mean, you just heard people loading shotguns getting ready. Because you don't know if this is going to be a friendly encounter and they're going to want to talk about things or if this is going to be a massacre. So no idea.

Rommel goes out into the middle of the river. How long of a process is it from him going like this to them, to him backing off and then them walking over to where we're going to see? No, he went out into the first third of the river and this is the dry season. So the river is very, very low. you really could walk across the entire river you could in fact and then gradually they came slowly they put down their bows they came to the edge of the river and then they all huddled up and they were pointing at us and they're looking at us and then we realized also that you we couldn't have the big cameras up most and stephan were shooting on uh professional cameras with like

800 they even know what they don't know what they don't and so they were actually saying chitiksu chichu they're saying me you have guns on us even though we didn't have guns on it was the cameras so we had to put down the cameras because they didn't know what a camera is but they know what a gun is they do know what they do know what they do know what a or at least some of them know what a gun is because the loggers and the narcos have fired on them and so they they are aware that that the outside world can pose a danger and so then what you can see in the videos that then when he was out there the other people present prepared a boat covered in plantains and the first thing we did we could push it across and give them an offering and so ramel walked it out pushed

it to them and then that's when you see them rush across the river and grab those plantains and the terrifying thing was that it wasn't like they were going to share them. You can see them in the video pulling in mine or mine and his or his and that's it. And so it makes you wonder what kind of of society or ranking they have within their own culture. Paul, were you able to make eye contact with them? Like and and it's close enough that you can you both can understand you're looking into each other's peoples? Oh yeah. No. And they There was at first, the first two hours were very tense. Two hours.

Oh, yeah. They were there communicating for long because they got one thing of bananas and they wanted more bananas. They wanted more plantains. And then they got they got a load of sugar cane. And then they were like, well, while you're at it, give us some rope. And the community is being friendly. They're going, well, you can have more bananas. You can have more sugar cane.

You can have some rope. And then at some point, Rommel standing out in the middle of the river and they pointed him. And they were like, give us your shirt. So he takes off his shirt and he hands on the shirt. And they're like, we'll take the pants too. And he's like, well, sure, why not? And he gives him the pants. And then they come forward with this incredible necklace.

And they gave him a necklace that they put over that they know, how did they give it to him? Somehow they gave him a necklace. Now again, at this point, I'm running around. We're either taking pictures, talking to different people, staying behind trees. At some point I got, it became aware, though, that they had given him a necklace in exchange for that. He never physically touched them, though. He always had a boat length between him. And he would stay, he would keep the boat in such a way that if anybody did raise an arrow that he could kind of go under the boat.

and protect himself. There was a little bit of strategic for two seconds. For two seconds. Or at least he could like float down river. I mean the boat's pretty big right so but again an arrow cuts through the river. He kept the boat in between the other thing is you don't want physical contact with people that are living this wild out in the rain forest because they don't have any immunity built up to outside pathogens and so they could be very devastated by the common cold. So Rommel knows this and was being careful of this.

And yes, we were close enough that after the first two hours, after we'd given them everything we could give them, they started right away on the beach, they started breaking down. We have lots more footage than what we were able to release. We tried to, we worked with anthropologists and ethicists and the Peruvian government to make sure that we were doing best practices that everybody understood that we did not contact them. They came out and presented themselves and had questions to us. What did the government say?

Government doesn't know what to say. Government hardly believes it's true. And then they see the footage. And then they see the footage and they go, well, we want to understand what's going on here. And of course, because I'm not a Peruvian, they're interested in, you know, is this being done in an ethical way? And that's why the book is so important because it's like it takes people through the exact story and the context and why this happened. Because this is such a historical thing. Never before has there been HD footage of an encounter from the uncontacted tribes coming out to the modern world.

and this type of exchange where they were asking, why are you cutting down our forests? Where they're asking, why do you cut our ancient trees? They're asking, who are the good guys and the bad guys, and how do we tell the difference? They're scared. They're asking rum, all this stuff.

What's he saying? He was answering them as best he could. And then, of course, they just wanted more and more and more plantains. And so we literally gave them all of the plantains that the community had, which is their main source of carbohydrates. So they gave them all of their food. And of course, as, you know, I said, just keep going. You know, as jungle keepers, I was just like, we'll call back and dispatch a boat.

We'll make sure you guys have food. Give these poor people food. And then do you remember who Ignacio is? The guy that got shot in the head with the arrow. Yes. Yes, he's got the big scar. Yep. He's got the big score.

So he had previously been shot by the Mash Kapiro in 2019. Same tribe. In 2019, not the exact same tribe. He like swam away, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the scar on his face like that. Yep. Yep.

And so, yeah, that scar. You move your ring finger up a little bit. You got it right up. Nope. Up. There you go. But yeah, he was there and then, you know, he looked at Rommel and he took off his, he showed his shirt and he was like, can I?

And I watched them do this. And he looked at me and he was like, and I was like, I don't, I don't, I don't. I was like, he's the boss. I don't care. And then he took off his jungle keeper shirt. and he threw it to Rommel and then Rommel was holding the jungle keeper shirt and the tribe was like, come on, give it over.

And so Rommel throws the jungle keeper shirt and it lands in the water and they grab it and throw it over their shoulder. And then as the day ended, a few things happened. One guy walked up, picks up his bow and arrow and they're all starting to leave now. They all have piles of bananas on their back and he shot one arrow in our direction

across the river, landed in the sand. He just smiled at us. He just... This is such a long period. a time? Three hours at least, maybe more. Are you scared? At the beginning, we were very scared. In the beginning, we were going, what's going to happen?

Is this going to turn into a massacre? What if somebody fires a gun? What if somebody fires, you know, the arrows? What if this? And then it became known that we were having a communication, that they were talking to them, and this community was saying, we are your brothers.

You don't have to be scared of us. We'll give you whatever you need. And the tribe was saying, God knows what. They all speak at the same time. They're like a flock of parrots. They're all speaking at the same. at the same time. They all speak at the same time. It wasn't like there was quiet and one man would speak. They all were speaking at the same time. There was a cacophony of voices at all time. So

for us watching, we were too, what are they saying? When they speak or they speak and with their hands a lot too? They're speaking with their hands a lot. A lot of them were doing this thing where they put their finger under their nose. I don't know what that means. They all seem to have the same haircut. It was just, and then some of them are carrying this, this large necklace that seems be made out of Brazil nuts and it has teeth all around it and two of them were carrying the same necklace and it was made the exact same way it seemed to have like half of a Brazil nut and then this part would be all teeth coming out straight out straight out like this and then the other side looked exactly the same as this side but what I'm thinking is that they hold that up a little bit

yeah so like so this is almost a perfect representation of it except more round where they had probably a piece of Brazil nut and then some piece of leather or something that had that had looked like came in teeth all stuck into there. And then on the other side was the same as this. It would be another. And they were wearing that as a necklace. And it's a huge necklace. It was a big ball, the size of a softball.

And they were wearing it. And they made sure to never get it wet, which makes me think that it was probably smoldering embers. So they don't have to make a fire from scratch every time. Smoldering embers on the... So that's a picture of the necklace. Look at that. Holy shit. that's like that's like flavor flaves clock that's like some indiana jones shit yeah but yeah i mean obviously

like from the deep can we see it clear that's that's nice that's nice and clear yeah and that's the moment that they rushed across and we're getting at the plantains but that thing right there i don't understand this this this right here is the moment that he shot the arrow across at us so you know that's the thing back in the old days there's a lot of stories or people like oh that's that sounds like it never happened it's like well this we happen to have two professional photographers there so it's all caught on video on camera. There's a lot of footage that we haven't released yet. We just,

we just, we released like two minutes of footage of hours of this interaction, because we're saving it for the documentary, of course. But, as you should, as we should. And also,

we were very, very conflicted about whether or not we should release this footage because we said, are people going to understand this? Are people going to, to, you know, think that these,

this tribe is, you know, noble, savages and we need to be like them and we should need to go find them and study them and no these people have indicated for decades if not centuries one single thing and that is that we want to be left alone and so the only thing that we can do is protect the forest they live in and so not only is jungle keepers protecting 130,000 acres and not only is jungle keepers doing that with the leadership of the indigenous people and then through the help of people around the world but we're protecting

this incredibly pristine ecosystem where if you imagine a football field, think of a football field and how tremendous it is if you just take a handful of coins and sprinkle it across the field. In about that much area, you have these tiny clans of people surviving in this vast, vast, vast wilderness that is the whole 300,000 acres that we're trying to protect. So most of it is pristine, untouched jungle with just wildlife. And then living out there is this tiny population of indigenous people. And when you think of what happened to the Comanchees, the Navajo and the Iroquois and the Cherokees,

all of these indigenous cultures that were devastated in the last several hundred years, this is a chance to take history and change the narrative, where we actually just protect their environment and leave them alone. And if they wanna contact the next closest tribe, the indigenous communities that we work with, if they want to learn how to plant bananas

and maybe they think is fine, but that's none of our business. The thing that they've asked for, the way that we respect them is all we have to do is leave the jungle alone. And this tribe remains safe. And so for the sake of the animals and the heartbeats and the ancient trees and the undiscovered medicines and the uncontacted tribes, that is why I'm on this mission to protect this river now. When he went to shoot that arrow, you didn't shit yourself though? No. The way he did it, he walked out with a swagger

and a smile and he walked right up to the edge of the beach. And he held the bow nice and high. He made it clear he wasn't aiming at anybody, fired off the arrow and then took a big smile at everybody and was like, what are you going to do about that? And then how did they leave it? Did they back away like looking at you? No, no, they all turned away at that point. One guy had a machete and there's, we have a great video. My friend is going, oh, they have me machete. He's going put down my machete and the, they, which they don't understand Spanish, which is hysterical, but because he's speaking to them in Spanish, but it didn't matter what language he was speaking in. he was going, hey, and yelling at the guy, and the guy had a machete, and he just looked back

over his shoulder. And it's like, yeah, come over here and get it. How about that? And even them, they were smiling. They were like, yeah? You want to come get it? Not. Isn't that amazing?

That across culture and language and a thousand year gap. A lot more than that. Sure. But that we could still, you know, or like. Human. Yeah. And then there was moments where, you know, towards the end, they were all spread out on various parts of the beach and we were all spread out.

And everybody had gotten comfortable by then. And, you know, like Ignacio raised his hand. they went like this and they would raise their hand and go like this and then you know i mean he did like a little you know he like kicked his foot and like did like a little dancing and they'd do the same thing and we were all just like we started playing with each other you know i raised my hands like this and they'd raise their hands like this and it was just it was just kind of like both both tribes shirts versus skins both tribes were like this is wild like because they were them too they're going okay these people are this is interesting you know and we're over there thinking i mean if a fucking tyrannosaurus rex

walked out of the jungle behind them. I couldn't have been more shocked. This is the uncontacted tribes and they're in front of us. This is something that, I mean, you hear about people, someone's brother, uncle, cousin, whatever, in the jungle saw a glimpse of them.

I'd caught a glimpse of them. But the fact that they came out and asked us what's going on. We want an update on why our forest is disappearing. You know, the fact that the, and then like the odds. the odds i know i've been there 20 years with the odds the human odds of being there for something like this and it happened at the perfect time because you know the the the global news of this happening has

helped yes with the launch of the book and the book it helps explain this to everybody and it's getting in front of more readers and so everything has sort of come together at the perfect time just like me going to the amazon i met jj the perfect time and so it's like you just you keep hoping that we keep having that serendipity of just maybe we came to this river at the perfect time and everyone is going to swell and that enough people are going to hear about this that we are going to protect it and if we can do that i think that the hope shockwave that that that's had that you know we're in the hope business now and the the amount of excitement and the sense of accomplishment that can be said that this wasn't done by some wild institution or some you know some some some out-of-touch scientists this was done by the

people because this place should be protected and i think that's that's what's what makes it so exciting when you were i i just can't get over like what it must be like when you actually come upon them and they recognize you and you recognize them even though you're literally from different time zones you know when you are having that moment i don't know how long it is where you are eye contact eye to eye with this other person right here like from a human perspective, like, was that one of those things where time kind of stops and you realize, like you talk about the laughing and all that and you see the humanity and those things as the time goes on.

But when you're first just eye to eye staring at each other, like, what is it? Can you describe that feeling? No, that's why I write. Because I can't put it into words. You have to spend the time to try and get it out of yourself onto the page and you try and you try and explain to someone some semblance of it. And that's the beautiful thing about writing is you can, you know, when you read, you're sort of magically inside someone else's brain.

And as a writer, that's your job is to take that moment. And in that moment that they were shooting, they had their cameras out and they're shooting video and they're shooting photos and they're making sure they get everything in documenting. I literally was sitting there with my eyes open going as a writer. I need to drink in every moment of this. I'm holding onto the tree and pinching myself going, this is real. And so all of those moments, you know, I mean, the moment that they left, I was like, bang notebook notebook is open just everything everything everything just downloading everything that was

coming out of me and just and then there's a video of me from the the following day as we're going down river i literally have the laptop open because i was like this is too insane i was like i just the first draft is just going to come out and it's like i have no shirt on i have noise canceling air pods in no roof on the canoe for nine hours downriver and i'm just i'm just typing on a macbook air i'm just like this has this has to come straight out of my brain to fingertips into this because it had to come fresh. That was the wildest thing. And the thing that I always think with this, anytime I get something that means a lot,

and that could, again, it can be an amazing day of fun with friends or something historic like this where you go, I kind of love the next day because you go, it happened. Adrenaline. No, but also that because now that it's happened and it's over, it can't be taken away. I remember the first time I caught a big anaconda, and I kept that classic picture of me and JJ with the anaconda over us. And I kept turning on my camera, even though at that time I had no way to recharge my camera, I kept turning it back on and I kept going back and looking because I was like, this was so

incredible that I would go, I hope it was real. And I'd just think that up. And I'd go back and check, and I'd be like, wow, look at that snake. And when this happened, you'd wake, I woke up the next day and turned to my friends and went, that did happen, right? Like, that didn't just dream. And they were like, no, yeah. We had arrows at that point.

There was arrows that they had, you know, we'd found multiple different arrows. Did you have a, did you put a picture of the arrows in here? There must be a picture of the arrows in there. I don't know. I mean, they've been, well, yeah, he's holding it. Maybe not. Yeah, I want to see that.

I remember that video right there. I can't show that one on camera. That's, I mean, all right, let's play the video because we haven't done it yet, Diff. and we got to make a note just because there's some nudity in here. We've got to have some bleeps over that area on the post at it. You're going to have to bleep out the balls. But let's take a look at this for people who have not seen it.

Okay. Is there sound all that? So they're like on the pointing at you. Oh my God. They have both. You know. How tall are they? Like five, six, five, seven? They were pretty tall. They're taller than...

Look, what are they? They're getting it now. They're getting the plantains. They'll listen to them as they go. Naturalama? Interestingly, that's not. That was... This is the second boat. That was some other thing. To see how they are rushing with this break. Yeah, the ones in the back, what's he holding?

Who's been over right there? See him holding that thing? Do you know what that is? I'm not sure. I can't talk on this video. is this when they're about to leave this is them moving up off the beach and you can see people carrying little backpacks and they have you see there's still arrows and stuff stuck in the beach so the community goes and collects those things they have a little collection of artifact like you said the next day you're you're feeling it but in that moment you're you're totally aware you're living through insane history.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. In that moment, it was good that was three hours. It wasn't like a 10 minute thing. It wasn't a five second thing. That's unreal. With wildlife encounters, I'm very used to, you know, you see a jaguar, you draw one breath and the jaguar vanishes back into the forest. And you're like, God, that was incredible, but it was so fleeting. This was like for hours, we were there. There was multiple layers to this. There was moments of communication. There was moments of beauty, moments of fear. There was so many questions that we have unanswered. And, and, then they went back out into the jungle and there's a thousand more tribes like that down in their area that we've never seen that we've never seen no concept the indigenous some of the indigenous tribes

who do have contact though they have contacted those other tribes too they have limited contact with them but even they're scared to do that because there was a there was a guy by mono national park who did kind of befriend them for a while and uh he started giving them been leaving them bananas and he left them some shirts and time went on and he would talk to them and then one day they found him porcupined arrow sticking up him land flat and no one knows why that was the first intro i ever edited for one 24 people want to hear that story it still hits so hard these days it just sucks because it's so scary because you go he did everything right yeah he only wanted good for them he only wanted to help them so didn't work out yeah you come any closer to find those fucking pyramids

we're not going to talk about we're not going to wait a minute you can't just say Oh, I certainly can. I got a hard out at 5 o'clock and we're not talking about the fucking fear. You can't just say, you have found something. And then he dropped both of them off the room. No, hold on. Give me the hard drive. Have you found something?

There's nothing that we found. There's nothing. There's nothing there. Will you blink twice and tell me off camera? I would be remiss if I wasn't honest with my best hoboken friend that. That's it. That's a shot in the fucking boat. God damn.

Yeah, no, there's no pyramids that we know about down there. I mean, the Amazon, as our dear scientist colleagues have made public, there's more geoliths in the Amazon than we previously thought. But that doesn't mean the Amazon's man-made people. But that doesn't in any way mean the Amazon is man-made. And every person that says that needs to be slapped in the face. the Amazon has formed in 30 something million years ago if not 55 million years ago

in the Eocene has been developing since then and the fact that there's a couple of bits of terra prada and some some earth sculpting under the forest does not mean that the whole thing was manmade so do you think El Dorado is still out there somewhere I don't think DeRaldaado was ever out there ever I can't believe that those dumb motherfuckers went looking for it and killed themselves over

I mean really they're like the fuck Percy Fawcett and all the other conquistadors showed up and they were just like you have entire civilizations of people that came out to meet you and give you textiles and food and clothing and they were so friendly that they all of their original if you go back and read pizarro's original journals they were friendly the people when they showed up if you read Columbus's journals where he says i'll give a gift to the first person that sees land and the men were having an argument over who saw it first and he goes i told them screw them and i goes i gave the gift to myself and then the first person that they found they caught hauled them on board and started in

interrogating him asking him about gold. Of course, he didn't speak their language, so you didn't understand what gold was. And they're like showing them. And they're like, you know, it was like Sam Jackson interrogating the guy in the beginning of Pulp Fiction,

English motherfucker, do you speak it? And they're like, you got a piece of gold. God damn it. It's out there, though. I'm telling you it's out there. The golden city?

Come on, grow up. The remnants of it or somewhere. They're going to use LIDAR. They're going to find it. Graham Hancock will find it. Good. I hope he finds it. You should go find it.

That's right. I love that thumbnail. You sent me and that was very good. And I took that personally. That's good. Yeah. Paul Rosalie, it's always a pleasure, brother. I'm really proud of all the work you're doing.

Congratulations when having a number one New York Times bestseller. I'm not surprised at all. Can't wait for the next book already. And I also can't wait to go down there again. Yeah, you got to get back down there, man. Fuck yeah. All right, brother. We'll do it again soon.

Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. You back to me. Peace. Thank you, guys. for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.