The Joe Rogan Experience - #2013 - Paul Rosolie

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Paul Rosolie is a conservationist, filmmaker, and writer. He's the founder of Junglekeepers, an organization protecting threatened habitat in western Amazonia, and the author of "Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon."  www.paulrosolie.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Hey Marshall, come here buddy. This is one of the rare times that Marshall has been in studio during a show. Come here, say hi to everybody. He's the best. He's the best. He is the best. They're the best dogs.

They're like universally sweet dogs. They're such sweethearts. I love that my dogs, I can literally take a piece of meat out of their mouth, and they'll be like, is something better coming? They're so friendly. Yeah, there's no worry about protecting themselves or survival. No. My friend calls them love sponges.

It's the best way to describe them. Yeah, they're perfect creations. Hang out with us. We're going to be in here. So, dude, first of all, I'm in your book right now. I just started it. It's insane. How the fuck did you even get the idea to do what you did?

How does this take me through the first seeds of the thoughts that had you go to the Amazon? When I was a kid, I remember very far back. I remember being a kid and going to the Bronx Zoo and looking. They had an exhibit. I think it was in the House of Reptiles where there's all these scientists and they're holding a giant snake and they're doing research research and they're protecting these places and so i always had it in my head that like i want to see these places

before they're gone i grew up with a lot of like environmental stress i really felt like this message of like we're losing the rainforest we're losing elephants i was like i just how did you how did you develop that feeling i don't know i. I mean, my parents would, you know, read me Jane Goodall's books as a kid. And, again, things like the Bronx Zoo, Steve Irwin. You know, and I loved, I grew up, you know, and having access to, like, New York and New Jersey. I mean, there's such incredible forests there. It's really, the New York, New Jersey forest thing. Like, people, for whatever reason, don't live around there.

They think New Jersey is, like It's like people, for whatever reason, don't live around there. They think New Jersey is like some vast wasteland. New Jersey is like more bears per capita than anywhere else in the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's wild out there. No, there's amazing forests there. I grew up like, you know, and then by like 13 years old, I was like, you know, I had like a hunting knife and I would do one match and I'd bring my golden retriever into the woods and we'd'd do, like, a mini solo, two nights, you know, and I'd have to make a fire with that one match. And it's like I was always doing shit like this.

So you always had, like, a call to that kind of life. I always just rivers, streams, forests, tracking bears, trying to figure out where the fox's hole is. Like, I liked spending time with animals in nature, and then, like, it just drove me crazy that no matter how deep i would go you know in eastern forests you always like come out the other side and i always was just like i want to find somewhere where it's like truly wild like where there's no limit to it like what's what's the max what's the highest you can turn this thing and i was terrible in school failed

all my classes severely dyslexic all that and so i tried actually my wonderful parents were like you do know that you can take a ged skip the last two years of high school and go straight to college and i was like i did not know that so i did that and then as i was doing that i just said you know what i was like i'm gonna go to the amazon rainforest i had a professor that showed me a piece of wood and he made a joke like oh this is probably like teak from the amazon and like i was like oh yeah like i gotta get down there before it's too late that's what it was that is what it was i gotta get down there before it's too late yeah i mean it's like they're telling you that there's jurassic park there's literally anaconda dragons in these in these monster swamps and there's harpy eagles taking howler monkeys and

there's all this incredible bustling life and it's all vanishing. And I was like, well, I want to see it before it's gone. The greatest show on earth. Like, and so how much of an understanding did you have about the Amazon, about how to get around, how to, it seems like you just kind of just dove in. I did dive in. I found the most remote research station I could find. And of course, nobody wants to take it like a 17 year old kid from, from Brooklyn, from New Jersey and, and put them in the rainforest. I had no qualifications, but I, I, I went with people that were doing research on macaws and I was out there for weeks at a time. But the, the, the luck was that I met this guy named JJ Juan Julio Duran, local SA high Indian grew up in the forest barefoot and met the dude and the dude has libraries of information in his brain, medicinal plants, how to track animals, places in the forest that nobody knows

about. And then he just started, he was just like, you're funny. You really love this shit. He's like, let's go out all night. We don't come back until we find three snakes. He was terrified of snakes. He's like, let's go find three snakes. Cause he was like, why, why, why does this gringo keep catching snakes? He's like, what the hell find three snakes. Because he was like, why does this gringo keep catching snakes? He's like, what the hell is the matter with you? And so he was teaching me everything. And then I was just like, look, dude, this is how you do snakes. This is how you figure out if they're venomous.

This is how you handle a snake. I could teach him one thing. He taught me the entire Amazon rainforest. So he didn't know. I mean, he must have known what venomous snakes there were, right? No. Because what they'll do is they'll be like, oh, one it's venomous they chop it in half that's not how you identify a snake that's like saying like every you know it's like identifying cars by color like it doesn't make any sense okay right it's it's with snakes you can have like for example like an amazon tree boa you can have one mother giving birth to like a rainbow of babies

they'll be like gray ones green ones yellow ones like all these different morphs and so people will be like oh those are those red ones they'll get you those are coral snakes like no you know i just it's it's a constant battle with you know with the locals i'm always like do you think this is venomous or not and they're like hmm and i'm like would i be holding it if it was venomous and they're like oh yeah that's crazy that they don't know. But I guess it's like safer to assume that they're all venomous or anything bright colored is venomous. Yeah. And again, the jungle is a place where there's a lot of stories. And so like you always

hear stories about like who got bitten by a snake and this happened, who got, you know, and so like they have the snake Loro Machaco, which is, they know it's a green snake. That's all that like the average logger or the average gold miner knows. I was just like literally two weeks ago, I was out in the jungle and I was out and it was raining. And there was a Loro Machaco next to my head with flicking its tongue next to my head. And I was like, oh, cool. I got to bring this back and show them. So I very carefully caught this viper and brought it back.

And they're like, that's not it. That's the boa. And I was like, oh, God, I can't help you people. I'm literally showing it to you. But the rule is just kill every snake. And so I've always been like this, like ambassador for snakes, trying to get people to be like, you know, you have black snakes and gopher snakes and garter snakes and you show them to kids. Snakes are wonderful. Like I love snakes. They're a part of the whole ecosystem, especially in something as complex as the Amazon. I mean, you know, when i lived in the

hollywood hills people would always complain about coyotes yeah i'd say yeah yeah but how many rats do you see yeah you don't see a lot of rats it's a reason why that the coyotes are the cleanup system um yeah later i got to show you the video i took yesterday the day before yesterday a coyote walking through my front yard in new y. Yeah, they're everywhere now. They're everywhere. It's wild. Big one. Have you ever read Coyote America?

No. It's a really good book by this guy, Dan Flores. He's been on the podcast a couple times. He was my friend Steve's professor in college. And he stayed in touch with this guy. And he's a wildlife historian. And he wrote a book about coyotes. And the story is insane like coyotes

they're originally persecuted by the gray wolves the gray wolves were extirpated and killed off by the people that settled and then coyotes when they were prosecuted when they were persecuted what they would do is they expand their range yeah so they're in every single city in every state now and that's only over the last few decades i mean the fact i mean i think in a lot of places you Yeah. So they're in every single city in every state now. And that's only over the last few decades. I mean, the fact, I mean, I think in a lot of places you can hunt a coyote like daytime, nighttime, anytime. Anytime. Anytime.

With like any method. The thing is, it does the opposite of what it's intended to do. Because when you kill a coyote, then the females, when they do roll call, they realize a coyote's missing and they have more pups. Yeah. Yeah. It's a wild animal. No, it's a really amazing animal. They's a wild animal. No, it's a

really, it's a really clever too. No, they're crazy. This one comes trotting across my front yard every day. And it's like, I went, I opened my front door and I went, woo. He just stopped and looked at me and I just like took a picture on my phone. Wow. Yeah. It was crazy. New York city. It's an amazing animal. But so, so when you went down there, what kind of gear did you bring? Like how, how prepared were you for this? Uh,

completely. Shoestring budget. Shoestring budget. Yeah. A student dropped out of high school, saved up money from working at like the YMCA. Like I went down there wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Like,

did you plan on trying to find some sort of a job? Like what were you going to do for food? No. So this was the thing. I went down there as a volunteer just to experience it. And then basically as I became friends with JJ, he was like, could you come back? He's like, you have access to gringos and people that travel. He's like, bring us tourists. He's like, we're trying to protect this river now while it's still completely pristine.

And at the time I was like, well, that's, that sounds great. So I started bringing people, we started Tamandu expeditions. And so it was like small time, just bringing some tourists to the jungle, showing them around, taking them on night walks, doing stuff like that. Um, but it, it, it, it was a very much like, there wasn't a plan. I knew what I loved. I didn't have a plan. I wasn't like, I'm going to be a jungle keeper. Like I just went down there and was like, this is amazing. And I want more of it. And then, you know, at that age, people are like, you know, what are you going to do for a job? And I was like, I don't know, but I'm going back to the jungle. Like, and then it was as, you know, then as we saw more of the forest getting destroyed, as we were, we're the trans Amazon highway cuts straight across the Amazon rainforest.

You can drive from like Rio all the way to Lima. And so for the first time in history, they opened up a land trade route through the heart of the Amazon rainforest. And the final segment of the Trans-Amazon Highway was over the Madre de Dios River, which is right where we work. And so we saw the amount of cars in our region go from like 400 a day to like 800 a day to 2000 a day and all of a sudden these offshoot roads and all of a sudden the burning and all of a sudden places that used to be pristine and wild all of a sudden we're seeing this horrific burning ancient trees cut down entire ecosystems wiped out and so then at that point i'm going okay it's not a joke We, someone's got to do something about this. And then, you know, you look and you realize you're in the middle of

the Amazon rainforest. There is no one, there's no help coming. Like these, these ecosystems are going to be bulldozed if nobody does anything. So what regulations, if any, are in place, obviously there's people that are going to violate those. But are there regulations that are designed to protect those areas? Is there like some sort of a process that someone has to go through before they start cutting logs? The thing is there's national parks. There's protected areas. There's indigenous reserves. I mean we're in the country of Peru and it's like there's plenty.

There's a lot of protected land. Peru has done an amazing job of protecting a lot of its rainforest. They have the most crucial part of the Amazon because it's the Western Amazon. It's where the Andes Mountains, the cloud forests into the lowland Amazon. The most mega biodiverse terrestrial habitat that's ever existed. They've done a great job of protecting it, but there's still millions of acres that are just jungle. And you're at the edge of human presence on our planet so you're talking about like okay so you have a little city and you have the police and you have

the forestry department you have whatever else the things around the city they can deal with but if you tell them that two days up river way out there there's somebody cutting some forest that technically shouldn't be cut they don't care they're not going to put resources towards going out. They're not going to risk getting shot. They're not going to risk getting, you know, bitten by a bush master while they travel out into the jungle. It's just not on anybody's radar. So unless it's near them, unless it's in their jurisdiction,

nobody does anything. And as we found out now, even when it is in their jurisdiction, half the forestry department just got arrested in Peru for actually helping the loggers. They had sort of like infiltrated. Yeah. And then, of course, down there, you still have uncontacted tribes and you have places where there's giant anacondas and you have different territorial reserves. It's just like it's such a weird landscape that the idea of like enforcement, like when we've had problems, when we've had issues where we have to bring law

enforcement out there we have to bring them out there like we have to get the boat the gasoline the food provide them with you know it's like we have to like basically take them on a tourist trip out into the jungle and be like now go do police work it's very difficult and so like when you hear this stuff you know like which like again what we actually actually have to have to eventually we have to tell we have to tell the people this story how we got here how did like what made you reach out to me when you did well um I had seen a clip of yours that we talked about yeah what was the clip so yeah that was the that was the 2019 clip that was was when the Amazon fires went mega viral. And, excuse me, I threw up a video of me in the fires just like screaming and crying and being like, this is happening every fucking day.

And it went viral. It went viral. And at that time, we had created Jungle Keepers and we had tried to protect. So we had a little bit of rainforest we were protecting. I think we had like one or two rangers and then you shared it on your instagram and then it hit this level it like went to the next level of virality i remember because my cousin michael called me and he was just like joe rogan just shared it and i was like that's that's not there's no way that happened and he's like no it did and the the amount of attention that we got from that led to eventually people reaching out um this guy dax de silva reached out and he was like hey listen you guys every year with the

burning forest and the loss of habitat he's like i want to help what can we do what is what is what do you need to make this work how do we save this ring for there it is yeah that's that's the clip yeah we're gonna welcome to the fucking anthropocene and what what puts those fires out do people actively try to put those fires out or they just wait till it rains no the people start them that's that's the funny thing is it is it i'm not gonna be able to stay here long because this fire is spreading, but everything behind me right now is the forest that I've been working to protect for the last 13 years.

It's burning like this every day. There are literally millions of animals in this forest that cannot escape right now. And if you think our planet can survive this every day in the Amazon, you have another thing coming. We have all the resources to protect this, to stop what's happening behind me right now, and people let it happen every day in the Amazon, you have another thing coming. We have all the resources to protect this, to stop what's happening behind me right now, and people

let it happen every day. Welcome to the fucking Anthropocene. So when they're starting these fires to make clear cuts so they can raise cattle, what are they doing? It's basically their space, so we're going to use it. So, like, ideally a person, if they wanted to use that forest, you could

harvest the ancient hardwoods there and make millions off of it. You could use that forest to do like multi-tiered agriculture where you're producing tons of produce. These are people that are coming in. They're just clear cutting the forest. They're planting like cacao, papaya, grass for cows. Like it's literally burning down your house to cook a meal. And who owns that land? Well, that's the thing. A lot of it is indigenous land. A lot of it is, they call it Brazil nut concessions

where it's just areas where you're supposed to be harvesting Brazil nuts. But a lot of times it is private land, but there's people coming from other parts of South America and they're just coming in and they're clearing these areas and it's happening fast. And no one is there to protect. There's not enough resources to keep an eye on. It's just the vastness of it all. There's a, there's a vacuum in conservation. There's a problem with conservation. No one's

going to pay you to go protect, to go out into the wildest places on earth and protect these things. Like for the most part, it's very difficult. You can go get a job as a conservation biologist. You can go study things academically, but to go and actively do the work of protecting a rainforest or protecting a marine area that's sensitive, that's crucial to species. it's very difficult. And so that's why the, that whole story was so important was because I was, you know, by that point I was like 14 years into doing this with no support, no funding, no backing, no nothing. It was just me and the local guys, machetes and bare feet. And then after that video went viral, after you shared it, we got contacted by Dax. And then he basically was like, look, I'm, he a company called Lightspeed and then he transitioned into conservation. And so now he's helping the Sea Shepherd and he's helping the Nature Conservancy in Canada. And Jungle Keepers was his first project.

And all of a sudden we could actually do it. And so now these local people who used to be loggers and gold miners, we were like, yo, do you want a job protecting this forest? And so like guys had been cutting wood for like the last 15 years, guys have been like fighting the uncontacted tribes. All of a sudden we were like, do you want to just like, you know, help us patrol,

just protect it, do nothing. And they're like, do nothing. And we get paid and benefits. And it's a huge success. Like we were protecting 50,000 acres now, millions and millions of heartbeats in there.

Like spider monkeys, troops of giant river otters, jaguars, harpy eagles. I mean, just more biodiversity than you could list. And we need to protect 300,000. I need to protect 300,000 acres in the next year because now there's like Chinese machinery coming in where they're coming in with those, those giant earth moving things that like take out the trees. And so it's just like this, this race against time because we had this incredible treasure trove of biological incredible wealth medicines running through every every one of these things i mean there's there's there's

you go out with the local people and if you have something wrong with you there's a sap for that they can cure an ear infection they can cure whatever it is if they want to go fishing in the stream they have barbasco they have a root that they can crush, throw it in the stream. It'll stun the fish. You take the ones you want, you take it out and the other fish will swim away. It's like they have a pharmacy that we don't have access to. Yeah. That fish thing is wild. My friend Rinella did that. Yeah. Yeah. How do you say those, the guy's names from Guyana? Yano Mami? Yeah. Yano Mami. Yeah. yeah he went with them and they they did that thing with the fish they grind up the plants and they throw it in the water and the fish just get conked out

yeah yeah pretty wild like magic yeah it's like magic it's like a cheat code in the video game so this is a dangerous proposition right because clearly the people that are moving into these areas there that want to burn things down and grow things and someone who gets in the way of this is getting the way of their financial success yeah in in the case of gold mining there's there's a picture in there Jamie I think it just says gold mining I went down there with Matt Gutmann and we did a thing where we got into the gold mining areas where that down there with Matt Gutman and we did a thing where we got into

the gold mining areas where that's a whole other thing where they're clear cutting the rainforest for gold mining. That's like this. That's the Western Amazon. Wow. So they just gutted it. There is a sandstorm behind me in that picture and they are, that's the Amazon rainforest. And there's a desert there now. Wow. You can see it from space. Wow. And so, yeah, you go there. There's like sort of this machine gun limit where, you know, you drive towards this area and then they have guards. And inside there, they have these, see, there's that big hose going out. They have to cut the forest, burn the forest, suck up the land, and then the gold comes in the sediment in the sand.

And so they have to use mercury to bind the gold out of the sand. And then they burn that off, which then is going into the atmosphere and raining back down i mean this is like this is this is horrendous and the police can't stop it because you have to go in there with like the military the police will just get killed if they go over there oh my god so yeah we got we got in there this one day with some russian gold miners it was very strange and actually uh you got in there to investigate we got in there we we went we went in there with with with matt gutman's crew and we actually we actually filmed in the gold mining areas which no one does and while we were in there one of the russian gold miners was like hey man listen he goes you're that guy with the instagram right and i was like what the fuck are you talking about and he goes you see those guys

over there and i was like yeah and he goes they just said your name and i was like oh and then uh yeah like a week later those guys pulled up and it was annoying because the guy like acted like he had a gun but he didn't show me and he was like hey no more posts about gold mining and i was like the the gold miners follow me on social media like are you fucking serious like but no that that area is dangerous our lord how to be terrifying um yeah i mean for a second i was like is this is this is it happening right um because the way they pulled up you know i was like walking on the street and they like they like you know cut me off you know and they were like hey paul rosely and i was like oh and uh our lawyer or the guy that used to be the lawyer for jungle keepers um his father was very vocal locally about the gold miners and standing up to them and they just whacked him just that

easy no consequences no no consequences a really good friend of mine on the river um his father had moved out deep into the jungle like 20 years ago and raised his two boys out there. And then when this trans Amazon highway came through, uh, they saw the logging and the burning and that, you know, they wanted to live at the edge of the world. They wanted to be deep in the jungle. And so, uh, old man Satuko was like, you know, we're, we're gonna, we got to figure something out, either move deeper or move away or whatever. And like, they were trying to figure out what to do. And there was this one summer I spent a lot of time with his son. His name was also Paul. And, uh, he got, he got murdered by gold miners too. And so like, it's just like a, it's just a

war zone. And then, and then you have some of our, some of our guys now who are conservationists, who used to be loggers, who have shot at the uncontacted tribes and been shot at by arrows. One of my rangers has a scar on his head from a seven foot arrow from the uncontacted tribes. There's a picture of that too. I think it says uncontacted Ignacio. Seven foot arrow. Yeah. So they use the river cane and then they take bamboo and they get an incredible edge on the bamboo and they can, it's like they temper it over the fire so the river cane doesn't weigh anything so they make these monster arrows and they can actually like nail a spider monkey out of the trees from like you know 40 meters really yeah so check this out so

this is one of my rangers um ignacio he's he's local indigenous and uh and that's the scar on his head from the arrow yeah he was trying so the uncontacted came out and they were pretty fresh you're gonna have a scar on your head that's that's a good spot that looks good yeah someone's got a picture of it when it happened but he was he was saying they were trying to they were trying to push bananas because these people don't know you know these people are out there and they're naked and they're in the jungle and they've been there for you know a few hundred years and he was there and he was actually working for the ministry of culture and he was like let me try and be friendly let me try and be friendly. Let me try and like extend an olive branch.

And so he's trying to push a boatload of bananas towards them. And the scariest thing was they were, they didn't want anyone to understand them. And so they were actually speaking in capuchin monkey, monkey calls. And he's out in the middle. He's brave, this guy. And he went out to the middle of the river and he pushed this thing. And he said he saw the arrow coming straight at his eyeball and he just moved his head to the side and it just gave him that cut him right to the skull yeah there's that one and then there should be one more where he's just looking right at us but um yeah he's he's uh he's lucky he's really lucky

he's got worse stories than that too um one time he was he was at a remote guard post and the the tribes came and he'd already gotten i think he he'd already gotten shot. And he said he went up into the roof and like hid in the rafters, like and wrapped himself. And he said it was the middle of the day and he was baking. And he said he could hear the, the uncontacted tribes underneath him. to make the decision of do i kill myself like a dog in a car in this heat like he knew he was going to die or do i go down and let them rip me apart and it was like it was just the most terrifying story but yeah like that how did he get out of it he waited it out i mean he'd already been shot in the head so he was like i know what's going to happen if i go down there wow also then i'm also going to get i'm going to get everyone's going to come after me for calling them uncontacted apparently that's an outdated term apparently the correct parlance these days is voluntarily isolated indigenous nomadic persons

Let's stick with unkind we just call them on contact fuck you man fuck you for making me remember all that shit so silly Yeah Uncontacted is not a pejorative No, it's just... And then people are like, well, they technically have contact if they shot your friend. And I'm like, yeah, well. Sort of.

I guess. I guess. Peripheral. Sure. It's got to be horrifying for them, right? I mean, if they've been there for thousands and thousands of years living like that, and then slowly but surely they see this encroachment of machines, and how much they understand of this Western culture that's infringing upon them i don't it's weird because these guys that they don't have they don't have boats and so like they don't have like the wheel

like all these like simple inventions like they've just they don't they don't work with metal and so i believe that the current theory says now that basically these people were living extremely isolated around the time of the Industrial Revolution. They were already very remote. And then when you had the demand for rubber, the Amazon was the only place that you could get rubber. And Henry Ford found out when he did Fordlandia, you can't make a plantation out of rubber. It'll get leaf blight and die. So the only way to get rubber was to start a full-scale genocide where they sent down these rubber barons that beat and whipped the native people and sent them out into the jungle to go collect rubber from the rubber trees for gaskets and hoses and everything that we needed.

These are the people that fought. These are the people that remained unconquered, stayed back further in the deepest parts of the forest. And so you think these people's grandparents' grandparents must tell them that those outsiders will set you on fire. They will skin you alive. If you see one of them, kill it before it kills you. So they must be just running scared. Wow.

It is really fascinating that there are still people living essentially the exact same way they were living thousands and thousands of years ago. Yeah. They have a couple of machetes that they stole off some friends of mine. Like they sacked this village one time and they took pots and machetes. They killed all the animals. Yeah. They're very strange to deal with. Like there was a guy who had started leaving them like bananas and then he left them like a shirt.

You know, he would just very carefully because they can't speak. They don't speak Spanish. They don't even speak like Piro or anything like or Yine is the dialect that we deal with on our river. And they murdered him too. And like he was friends with them for a few years and no one has an explanation. I just spoke to an eminent anthropologist about this. I was like, what was the reason for that? And he was like, no one knows.

So he had made some sort of contact with them. He had regular contact. Was he in contact physically with them? I think like he would be in the same space. Like he could have spoken to them if he could speak to them. But I think it was sort of like a, like, I leave you this and then I back up and then they would come forward. And then, you know, it would be like this very, very careful exchange.

And that went on for a few years. And then everyone was like, oh, there's this guy and he's been able to develop this. It was like, it was special. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't, um, it wasn't in any way, it wasn't like a bravado thing. It was like, he was actually trying to be like, can we make friends with these people can we can we can we make a relationship here maybe bring them in maybe do they want to come in are they scared do they need help maybe we could just help them with some stuff um and then they found him with seven foot arrows in him so yeah no explanation no no explanation so yeah the the one time that I saw them, I ran for three days.

I, like, ran downriver. I jumped in my boat. I went all night. I just, I absolutely, I realized I'd gone, I'd made a wrong turn and ended up somewhere I shouldn't have been. And I was completely alone. Because then that was, after the learning days and the jungle keepers days came the days where the locals were like, okay, so you know the jungle. Like, start going out on your own. See if you could really do it go survive and i and i personally

wanted to see if i could experience living i wanted to know it's like it's like being told you can go to mars and walk around all by yourself whoa you're out in the amazon for a week by yourself and you're camping on a beach and you wake up and you walk up river and you camp on a beach and you wake up to me it was almost like the world melted away it was like uh that will smith movie where you're the last person on earth it's like you you you are in this jungle paradise where there's macaws and there's jaguars and the animals up there don't know what a human is it's like the galapagos you are in a place where animals are unfamiliar with the shape of a human, so they don't mind. And there's giant anacondas. Like, it's different.

It's different out there. There are still places where from century to century nobody goes. And the animals have no idea. And when you're out there, it gets really freaky. Like, I noticed my brain losing touch with like, like I would start to get worried. Like, was this just my reality now? Could I go back? You know, you're so far out there.

And the Amazon's friendly. The Amazon's not, the jungle itself, there's nothing that's going to eat you. A jag's not going to eat you. And unless you go swimming in a lake at night, a black caiman or an anaconda is not going to mess with you. And it's like, piranha tastes good. They actually, you know, that's like how you survive so it's like it's pretty chill as a wilderness experience until something goes wrong until you get a big thunderstorm and

the river rises 20 feet and there's entire trees this thick as school buses flying down river in the rapids then then you're in trouble that was one of the scary things about your book the way you described that when trees fall that they're so intertwined that acres of land might fall yeah yeah i everyone has you know what's the most dangerous thing in the amazon is it the snakes is it the jaguars it's like dude jack you don't even see a jaguar when you hear a pop like that big cannon shot pop with like an old tree pops and that you run you run because when that down, it's laced into the canopy with the other trees. And so it's going to pull down other things. I was with loggers one time and they were cutting a tree and it was going to go that way. So we were standing behind it and

I'm always like, okay, I got to document this. I got to document this. And so this tree is going to fall away from us. And this tree is probably about as thick as this room. And this tree, you know, talking about 160 foot tree and this tree starts falling over and it grabs another tree and we all realized it at the same time but the other tree broke and snapped in our direction and there's like a 30 foot shard of timber like a fucking oak tree flying at us and we all just scattered and then all like it was just like the world ended there. There was vines and giant things coming down. Entire, entire trees falling out of the sky and flying and splinters. It was cataclysmic.

Like, it was out of control. I would never, ever, ever stand that close to a tree falling on the Amazon again. I put a GoPro on it and run away. Wow. Jesus Christ. I would argue that that's crazier than the moon you know what you say going to Mars and running around there's nothing on Mars you're just gonna see a bunch of dirt it's gonna be sad it's gonna be like going to the to

Death Valley yeah but there's no people ever yeah it's just nothing what you're seeing is almost more crazy because there's so much life and it's so alien to you. You know, it's nature and it's a part of the earth that we live on. Yeah. But it's not a part of the earth that we live on where humans are. So that's what's so fascinating and unique about the rainforest. It's so wild. And so like that's where like our thing with, you know, even with the anacondas, it was like, you know, it started with the snakes.

And they'd be like, you know, teach us about the snakes. And after a while, I was like, guys, where are the anacondas? You know, like this is supposed to be the Amazon. Where the hell are they? And so they're like, well, once a year we go on these like hunting expeditions up rivers. They're like, come with us. And there's this family of brothers. JJ has like 17 brothers.

And they're like, come with us. And it's literally just a dugout, a canoe, like a little, you know, 16 horsepower motor. And you just, you go up for 10 days, 12 days to places where you go, where are we? And they're like, no, no, no, it doesn't have a name. We're just on river. You just out. And so, you know, we hunting and fishing and we're just like surviving off the land, going up the thing. And then we started catching the anacondas basking on the sides of the river. And so we just started jumping on these snakes, grabbing them by the neck. The first one I did, I fucked up though.

The first anaconda I ever caught. The first anaconda I ever caught, I really fucked up because I was like, okay, I know how to catch snakes. I've handled big snakes. I know what I'm doing. They were going to come in from the bottom. I was going to come in from the top.

I ran in and I grabbed the snake by the head and she went and wrapped my hands and my wrists are together. And I was like, oh shit. Oh no. I was like, now I can't get out of this if I wanted to. And the next coil came over my shoulders and it's a 200 pound snake.

So I'm on my knees. And so I went to scream JJ and all I got, I got nothing out. And so I'm sitting there wrapped in an anaconda with my clavicle, like turning into a V, my shoulders were almost touching and I could feel my ribs just about to go. Oh boy. And three of my friends jumped on. They started untying it from the tail and everything like that. But I came that close. Like, Oh boy, I really fucked up. Oh boy. Look at the size of that thing. Is that the one that is not the one that is, Oh, Look at the size of that thing. Is that the one? That is not the one. Oh, look at the size of that thing.

And that's not even as big as I get. How big is that one? That one is 18 feet 6 inches. That's so big. That's so big. This one, this is the largest scientifically wild-caught verified anaconda that we have. Wow. In scientific literature.

I mean, people have records of bigger ones. I've seen bigger ones. Um, this is, we named her Eleanor after my grandmother. That's the 18 foot one. This is the 18 feet, six inches. She was 220 pounds, but she was hungry. She was look at the size of that thing. Yeah. Yeah. My God. Yeah. So if, if that one that got ahold of you, that's not this one. It's a different one. No, the one that got a hold of me was five feet shorter than this one. This thing is a dragon. This thing is like the Kraken. There's no way. How big do they get?

That's JJ, by the way. I keep talking about him. Okay, so here's my measurement. And actually, somebody recently sent me a video of you and Forrest Galante talking about this, about how big can an anaconda get. Me and JJ were out on this place called the floating forest one night and you know i was trying to like i was thinking about like getting on the cover of national geographic i was thinking about like you know getting attention at that time right and uh but we we we had gone deeper down the amazon rabbit hole than like anyone had ever gone. We found this place, the floating forest where you're walking on, on rafts of floating grass and you're walking past

treetops. So there's a forest underneath the lake, but you're walking on the surface of it. And the anacondas love it because they can sit on these, on these grassy islands. And if anything comes, the whole thing is like a giant tympanic membrane. As soon as something takes a step, they're like threat and they go down. just like any big fish just like any ancient giant crocodile those shrewd old motherfuckers that have been there for a century they that's where they live and so we were out there like two o'clock in the morning and we're walking on these grassy rafts and jj's going this is anaconda and i went that is not anaconda because the grass was pushed down but it was like it was this big and i was like this can this is anaconda. And I went, that is not anaconda. Because the grass was pushed down, but it was like, it was this big.

And I was like, this can't be anaconda. He's going, this is. He goes, if it was a crocodile, he goes, you'd see the feet. And I was like, it just can't be. And then at like middle of the night, the stars are shining in the black water and everything. And we're by the tops. We're in the canopy of a forest on top of a lake. And we see two anacondas.

One of them is so big that I would say it was probably 24, 25 feet. Gigantic. That was an 18 footer. Then there was like another, like a 16 footer on it. And my first response was, we have to catch this snake. And so I jumped on it.

I just didn't think about it. I just jumped on the snake. Oh my God. And so the snake on it. I just didn't think about it. I just jumped on the snake. Oh, my God. And so the snake, and, you know, I always say, like, you know, Pixar, it didn't happen, but this was the middle of the night. I jumped on the snake, and as I'm holding it, the one measurement I have is that I was holding onto the snake and my fingers couldn't touch.

What? That's how big this thing was. What? It dragged me to the edge of the grass. What? That big. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Your fingers couldn't touch. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah. Dude, that's so big. It's so fucking big. And people said, oh, did it eat something?

And I was like, no, that was how big the snake was. And I know because when she got to the edge, to the edge of the grass, I dipped in head first. And this snake could have turned around and just eat me. She didn't. Her head was like bigger than a Rottweiler. It's bigger than Marshall's. Oh, my God. But she dove into the water.

Her idea is just escape, you know, stay alive. So she goes down and I, my face poked into the water and I was like, fuck that. You know, you start, you look straight down into hell down there. And I was sitting there holding onto the grass with this giant Anaconda rushing by me, you know, 25 feet of Anaconda slithering past me. And I put my hand on her. And as she went by my hand eventually went and then her tail slipped by me. And I was just, just alone in the dark and the Amazon. And I just seen this dragon. And then I turned around and went, what the fuck happened to JJ?

And JJ's just standing there and he turned completely white. And he was just, his circuits were blown. He was like, and I was like, you could have helped. I was like, you could have helped, man. So can you just help me out here? So the treetops, essentially there's water under the treetops. So you're walking on the treetops. So how deep is the water below you?

Like 30, 40 feet. So you're essentially walking on... Grassy islands, floating vegetation. Is it like in this video? So yes. Is it the same similar terrain? So yes. And thank you for not playing the sound on this.

But yeah, it's basically exactly like this. See those islands over there? Yeah. There's floating grass. And so this is actually how we caught the big one. You know, everyone starts, J.C. Did you see J.J.? J.J. has unlocked everything.

J.J.'s like, there's an anaconda, there's an anaconda. Nobody else saw it. And then I'm the only person that's willing to fuck with the head. And so they get the boats. This is literally how we caught the biggest anaconda that's ever been caught. So the camera guy was like, get the fuck out of here. And I just remember in this moment being like,

do I really want to do this? Do I really want to do what I signed up to do? Do you see it in the ground? I can see it here. I can see it here. And I'm just going, please, I wish, can I turn back? And so for the people just listening, you're standing on the edge of the boat, you jump off into the grass and you run.

And thankfully I have a good, yeah. Is that a GoPro on? Yep. And then you see there's my team. Boom, boom, boom. Everybody jumping in. So we had all these people that have all handled big snakes before coming in. And see, I don't have the head.

We didn't have the head. JJ had the tail. JJ got the tail. This guy Jonas had the tail. Mohsen had the tail. Lee had the tail. Everybody's holding on to this snake. We're using the boat to keep ourselves up.

And then I got the head. And then as soon as I get the head, I know I'm going to get wrapped again. Oh, my God. I mean, this is like, look at this. This is like. And this is the 18-footer? Yeah, this is the 18-footer. Oh, look at the size of this thing.

Yeah, so when people are like, why didn't you catch the 25-footer? I'm like, well, look at this. And just like I'm seeing how big this is. It's unbelievably big. And the idea that something was almost 10 foot bigger than this. Yeah. And much thicker around. Much, much thicker around.

This girl was skinny. Oh my God. Yeah. In a second, in a second, they'll show us walking with her. That is so wild. You get a sense of really how big she is, but. And you got to keep a hold of that. That bitch can swallow your head.

Look at it. Look at at what is that feeling like where you're holding on to the head of that thing yeah no it's completely completely wild and it was just i honestly in that moment it was like you want your best friends there because man that was that was scary that was very and so what is the plan what do you do with this once you capture it? Do you measure it and then let it go? Yeah, so for this one, here, look, there's a shot. There's a shot coming up where we kind of have her stretched out for a second. But with this one, we put a radio transmitter down her throat, and we were able to track her movements to learn about the home ranges of female anacondas.

So she swallows it? Yeah. It's just like a big pill. Oh, wow. How big? Like a Zippo lighter like a big pill. Oh, wow. How big? Like a Zippo lighter? Sure. Yeah.

Look at that. Look at that head. Oh, my God. Look at the teeth. Yeah. They were like, that's the queen of the Amazon. But yeah, she was old. She had so many scars.

And so we measured her 18 feet, 6 inches. And then the friendly people at Discovery Channel changed it to 19 feet, 6 inches on the show, which was always interesting. How dare they. How dare they. That sounds like Hollywood. Yeah. I'm just going to juice it up just a little bit.

Just a little bit. Just turn it up. It's impressive enough, you fucks. Look at that thing. Look at that thing. It's so immense. I just can't believe there was one that much bigger than that. Yeah.

What is the folklore? Like, what do they say when they say what's the biggest one? I mean, I have people that told me that they found a 60-foot anaconda. That guy's a drunk. Yeah, but maybe he's telling the truth. Pixar didn't happen. Remember the movie with Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube? I remember that there was one.

John Voight. John Voight had like the worst Brazilian accent ever. It didn't even sound Brazilian. I got to actually watch that movie. I really feel like I should. It's a terrible movie. Is it? Oh, it's terrible.

But it's great. Yeah. It's like one of those, I think it was like. There's nothing wrong with a good, bad movie. I want to say it was like 90s, right? Oh, shit. What year was that? It's a dumb but

the actual big anaconda look at the size of it the ones come by an ice cube the actual big anaconda was I think that I've seen that image before yeah you should hear his Brazilian accent too It's crazy It doesn't even make sense Wait does he eat two people at once? Yeah bro Oh shit It's a movie

Wow One person is not scary enough Gotta be tied together somehow You and your family Tied together somehow The snake reps So they say they've seen a 60 foot one But do they have an age limit?

It seems like when they get to a certain size, nothing's hunting them. No, they're an apex predator. So it's just disease or old age. No. So in the Amazon, the cool thing with the Amazon is it's the greatest natural battlefield on Earth. It's literally just this churning death march. Life is like a momentary stasis in this recycling of death. And it's like, you fight for it. And a snake that's getting big like that one that we just caught, like Eleanor,

it's like, so we learned that she moves around this swamp and has a home range. And then eventually after a few months, she passes the transmitter. She'll poop out the transmitter. But one of the guys on the team, Pat, is actually with him through Acadia University. We've been continuing this and we've learned that there are so many more anacondas than we thought. And everyone said the traditional literature said that they're ambush predators, that they only wait. And it's like, no, they're going to places where there's mineral licks in the Amazon and they stake out them. Like they're more strategic than we thought. Oh, so they wait for the animals to lick the minerals. Yeah. so there's places where there's like a salt deposit and so you'll get all the herbivores coming there for the salt and so but the anacondas will go up streams and

strategically target those places and so i've one time we saw an anaconda eating a peccary which is for everybody that doesn't know it's a wild boar like a javelina yeah and like i i was at a stream trying to take a picture of a butterfly and i heard this and i looked down and there's like a 16 foot anaconda and it just bent this peccary in half and it was just looking at me and it was like and then it split and so once a snake leaves its meal it's very unfortunate but once the snake leaves its meal it's not going to come back to it so the snake left because we had gotten unknowingly we got too close. So we had wild boar that night. We just threw it on the barbecue. Wow. Speaking of eating things, Jamie, could you, there's a, I think it's just called monkey head.

I've been dying to show you this. Can I ask you a question, though? Yeah. How old do they get? Like the one that you got that was 18 feet, how old do you think she was? The thing is they have indeterminate growth. So you take a baby anaconda. They're live born, by the way, not in eggs. And so you get, you get a brand new slimy little anaconda and

they come out, um, and their food for like the Jabiru storks, for other caiman, for even fish. Um, the fish are brutal, man. I just, I caught a baby caiman the other day. Um, he had no toes cause the piranhas were eating his toes off. But the anaconda is interesting because it has this outsized impact on the whole ecosystem because they start off basically as prey. They're just these little two foot worms. But then as they grow, then all of a sudden they can eat bigger things. Then they can eat the caiman back. Then they can start eating the birds. And then all of a sudden they're eating capybara. And then you get to the big mamas where they're the top of the ecosystem. They're the top of the food chain and so you have like black cayman anaconda jaguar harpy eagle giant river

otters and like those are your like you know top contenders for apex predator in the amazon the harpy eagle's amazing what a wild looking creature they're they're talons they're so big too is that the biggest eagle i don't i don't think it's that. I think the Philippine eagle or the stellar sea eagle. But the harpy is just unreasonably large. Like when you see them, you go, that's what that is. And they eat a lot of monkeys. They eat a lot of monkeys. And so one of the ways to tell when there's a harpy eagle around, like we'll be walking through the jungle and you just find a pile of bones.

Because up in that nest, 150 feet up up they're just dropping monkeys and sloths and the babies are ripping them apart and then they just chuck the bones out so you'll see like a little bone yard in the jungle wow yeah it doesn't last too long because nothing lasts long it just keeps recycling everything but um when i was a kid you know in the rainforest books they'd say 50 of the life in a rainforest is up in the canopy and it's like you always say like yeah bullshit it is there's more stuff up there than there is down there so when you're walking in the amazon you're under 150 feet of green three percent of the sunlight is hitting the ground most of the action is happening above you wow the birds the monkeys the bats the snakes the frogs everything is moving up there there's cactuses and bromeliads

and vines, and it's all interconnected. And there's this whole network. The Amazon canopy keeps changing the, the, like when you say how many species are on earth and it's like, they're like, we really don't know because nobody, nobody can spend time up in the Amazon canopy. There's people that have used hot air balloons. There's people that have used giant nets. You can climb up with a rope, but then like you're kind of limited to one tree. I just, we just spent the last two months building the tallest tree house in the world. It's like above. See, can you, yeah, can you do tree house?

It's, it's, it's insane. I slept up there for one night. Look at this. Look at this coming out of the mist. I just slept up there for one night and in the morning, I couldn't believe what I saw. We woke up and it was like what they tell you in the rainforest books. It was like, there was like three species of monkeys, like 15 different species of birds. There was things just moving all over the place.

There's a leaf cutter. What a cool little tree house. Little. It takes like 10 minutes to walk up there. That's badass. Yeah. Apparently it's the tallest tree house in the world. It's in the middle of the Amazon now. And we had solar panels up on there. That's badass. Yeah. Apparently it's the tallest tree house in the world.

It's in the middle of the Amazon now. And we had solar panels up on there. So how many feet up is it? I think it's about, I think the floor is about 110 feet up. And how long did it take to build this thing? A couple of months. It took like three months actually. We brought in some expert tree house builders. These guys are the tree house community.

That's insane. They build tree houses all over the world. But this one, it was like we had to figure out, like, how do you even build a stair? The staircase was half the project. How do you build a staircase to get up to the top of this tree? It's amazing. You guys did an amazing job. I love it.

Yeah. God, I want to go. It's beautiful. Yeah, there it is. The solar panels. That's incredible. So you get electricity up there. That's fucking badass.

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's really cool. Is it still there right now? Still there. No, like, it just got there. You see how fresh that wood is. It's no it's it's really still there right now still there no it's like it just got there you see how fresh that wood is it's like it's not even done like I so do you left there to come here you sleep there when you're there that's your spot yeah me and my girlfriend just slept up there and oh my god the girl going up there she must be an angel crazy dude if you're gonna hang out with me there's a lot of snakes a lot of climbing oh i can imagine you gotta go to the tree house um but now so when you wake up in the morning and look out from there it's gotta be insane i mean first of all you the sun coming up

in the east and you have like red apocalypse beautiful like mist coming off the jungle and you have spider monkeys like excited because that's a fig that's a ficus and so everyone's excited to eat so all the animals are coming to the treehouse and so you have like howler monkeys spider monkeys capuchins squirrel monkeys i can't even name all the birds for you it'd just take too long but there's just it's like cacophonous like i couldn't talk to you because we wouldn't be able to hear each other wow you have to scream and there's like fruit falling on you and animals are shitting all over the place. And there's like leaf cutter ants are starting up their day.

And then there's like bullet ants fucking around being like, who can I, who can I take down today? Like it is wild, but it's like, that's why we were like, okay, we got to,

because otherwise you climb up on a rope and you're like holding onto a branch and you look around and you go down. This is like, now you, now you can go up there and like take it in. it's a whole other world it's wild and we put it like right in the middle of the 50,000 acres and so it's just mega remote wilderness and you're actually comfortable and so you have solar panels so do you have batteries up there do you have like how are you running that well one of the guys on my team Stefan is a complete psychopath and an intense problem solver.

He put solar panels, hot water, a bathroom. So this isn't just a treehouse. This is like a luxury treehouse. A bathroom? Like running water? A shower. Whoa. So you have pipes that go down the side of the...

Yeah. Yeah. So there's pipes. The idea is that you can't bring a high volume of tourists into a pristine rainforest. And tourism is a major help for helping us protect this place. So we went with the African model. The guys I work with in Africa at VetPaw,

they work on a hunting reserve. And the owner of the reserve explained it to me like this. He was like, look, no one's going to pay $30,000 to take a picture of a buffalo, but they might pay $30,000 to shoot a buffalo and that like stuck in my head and it was like how do we how do we get less tourists at more value and it's like build the the tallest most remote comfortable luxury treehouse in the world and it's like so now so now we can invite people up there and be like you can like literally live stream like wi-fi we

got we got starlink up there we carried some starlink out there yeah so when you messaged me i was out there that's how i got it i got it on starlink i was out in the jungle and i was like oh i was like oh guys it's like i got to go back to the us for a minute like wow so you could have like the ultimate experience going to you could make a bunch of those Yeah, and join would bring an insane amount of money to go there. Yeah, I mean that's the idea So we're gonna see if it works Because since the beginning like when I started with JJ It was like we bring people to the jungle you camp out with us You live in the tent with us and it was like the market for that is like really small, right?

There's like six people that want to do that Nobody wants to do that and like and the people that do want to do it Ask them in the like six people that want to do that. Nobody wants to do that. And like, and the people that do want to do it, ask them in the morning if they still want to do it. Right. They don't. Um, and so,

so making it so that people can actually come and see the Amazon rainforest in a way that's, that's like safe and bug free and air conditioned and everything else. And it's like, you can just wake up and look at it all. And it's like, so it's that, it's a, it's a,

it's an amazing thing. I can't believe that I got to sleep up there. So it's pretty cool. That's insane. Yeah. So back to the anacondas. I'm trying to figure out how old they get. They get old, man.

I think like, I would say 70. Because when you have like a ball python, you're talking like 30 years or something like that. But do they know that they have a lifespan? Do they know that they die of old age? Is that a thing that happens with them or they just keep going? There's some animals that live on Earth. I think there's a shark that's older than the United States that's still alive.

It's like a type of, what is it, a Greenland shark? There's a type of shark that's literally from like the 1700s that's still alive. It's like a type of, what is it, a Greenland shark? Yeah. There's a type of shark that's literally from like the 1700s. Yeah. It's still living. They also pulled a spearhead out of a, I want to say a right whale, where the same thing, and they dated that spearhead back to like the 1830s or something. How long do Greenland sharks live? Like science says Greenland shark lives at least 250 years.

They may live over 500 years and that thing is just down in the black abyss just moving just blind just swimming around when our grandparents were alive

it was just doing that yeah people were riding horses that thing's just swimming around the internet comes around it's still swimming chat GPT

still swimming holy shit yeah I just wonder how old anacondas get. So the folklore about them, the 60-foot ones, I wonder if that's real. I wonder if they just keep growing.

I think I wouldn't be surprised if they're well into the 30s. If you told me that somebody found a 35-foot anaconda, I'd be like, absolutely. What is the world record that they've ever discovered? I don't know. Again, we have the scientifically verified 18 18 6 is not that big though not as big i've seen bigger i know other people that have seen like people i trust that have seen bigger um there's bigger anacondas out there for sure

yeah and there's no way to know there's so you're talking about so much territory yeah there's and so much territory because in between those rivers is just eons of unbroken forests. Like, yeah, we have to worry about the Amazon. It's being cut down, but there are still places. Is that one real? That's a dick pic. This is the one that keeps popping up. There's only a few pictures online.

The largest one is like 33 feet. So is that a perspective thing? Like when someone holds a fish in front of them like this? That's it, yeah. And that's why I said that. Because they're holding that so much closer to the camera, and that's a retic. So that's Indonesia. That's somewhere in Southeast Asia.

It's still big. It's still big, but it could be like 11 feet, which is kind of a puppy still. So there's other ones where it shows an anaconda wrapped around a giant tractor. Are those fake? I think those are fake. There's one though where they're cutting an Indonesian farm worker out of a reticulated python. That's real. 100%.

I mean people do get eaten by snakes. I mean that's not, you know. Oh, that's a rough one. I remember because when I was like, even up until like five years ago, it would always be like, are these videos real? And then like two years ago or so, they were like, watch this. And you see the guy fall out of the snake and you're like, okay, that one's real. Yeah.

It does happen. It does happen. How often does it happen? Is it something that they worry about or is it just like a very rare occurrence of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time? You gotta be pretty, I mean, as a human, you gotta be pretty stupid to get eaten by an anaconda.

You gotta be doing something really stupid. Really? Yeah. I mean, because like you're walking through the jungle like you know you know not to go up to your chest in certain swamps i mean dude i was i'm just feeling walking around knowing there's giant snakes around being up your chest and water the fuck out forget the giant snakes when you fall into that nightmare soup at two in the morning and you're and you get that black water on you and there's things going up your pants.

There are insects in the water. There are tarantulas walking on the water, eating the frogs. It's like you are in a festival of sex and death when you're in the Amazon night. Like it is falling into that water. Like when we go in there to do research, we're like looking at frogs and shit. And it's like we put our socks over our pants to like make sure, because otherwise shit gets up there.

One girl got bitten like 16 times by this giant aquatic water spider thing that like went up her leg, just going like Morse coding her, just like, just like pumping venom into her. Yeah. How bad did she get fucked up? Emotionally, I think it was worse than the pain.

Because the pain gave her some Benadryl and she slept it off. But she was just like, God, it was so horrible. She was like, I was slapping my leg trying to get this thing to stop biting me. And it was just getting more scared. So it was biting her more. And it's like, you don't even know what it is. It could be a new species. Wow.

You don't even know what it is. No, we find stuff. Don't have a real accounting of all the different species. No, no, no, they don't.

And so like people say, Oh, like a bullet ant is the most painful insect bite. And it's like, dude, I've been bitten by stung by bullet ants like eight times. They hurt, they suck.

But I found a, a caterpillar that was like, you know, I don't know, again, maybe like two Zippos. And, uh, I had it on a leaf and I was trying to put it in a terrarium and the leaf like bent under the thing's way it was like yellow it kind of looked like trump's hair and it like fell on my hand and i was plunged into

immediate like electroshock like pain waves way worse than a bullet ant way worse whatever this caterpillar did to me fucked me up for days wow it was horrible some kind of venom yeah i mean under under then then i like i really got scared because then i was like okay do i have to get out of the forest um so like we went in with like forceps and like moved the hair and like underneath the hair it has like these like christmas tree barbs and the hair is covering those barbs. Yeah, something like that. What the fuck, man? Yeah. Look at that thing. Yeah.

That was, I was not laughing. Like when we get bit by a bullet ant, we're like, oh shit, like your day's over. It's funny. That's not funny. Is this about your work? Is this from you? No.

This image? This is another one? Something random off the internet. This is in Florida? It says it's a pus caterpillar. Oh, my God. In Florida? I've never heard of it.

So is that an invasive species? Because so many of those in Florida. Most venomous caterpillars in the U.S. So what does it say? What did you say? It's what over here says most venomous caterpillar in the U.S. Oh, wow. It says it's like a bee sting, though.

It's a bee sting, only worse. Pain immediately rapidly gets worse from being stung. It can even make your bones hurt. So is that exactly what got you or something similar? No, something in that family, something related to that. But, dude, I hate that feeling. I hate even thinking about that feeling. It's horrible.

And so that's the worst one that you've experienced. That's the worst insect bite, yeah. What about other bites? Well, I mean, like, crocodiles hurt. And so that's the worst one you've experienced. That's the worst insect bite. Yeah. Yeah. What about other bites? Well, I mean like crocodiles hurt. You got bit by a crocodile? Yeah.

Really? Yeah. I just, uh, I, one time I got, I was, I was catching a caiman at night.

Um, and it was like a, you know, usually you catch a caiman and they're not that big. I caught one that's a little bit too big and she like, I couldn't get an arm over her. I had her by the neck and I couldn't get an arm over her tail because her tail was like over here and she thrashed out and i stupid stupid stupid i like grabbed one of her you just let her go you know there's no reason for

this i just i grabbed like a hind leg and i was like oh i'm gonna re she just came around went whack and just nailed me and snapped my watch in half like she just like put a nail through the watch i had which was great because it saved me. And then I still have this, like something in my arm, in my hand, just like a bone knot. But like then her other tooth went in there and came out there and it's like, it was just stupid.

Now I'm more careful when I catch crocs. How big is that caiman? They're fairly small in that family, right? Well, you have the, we have four species where we are we have the smooth fronted we have the dwarf which are both like you know like three feet five feet and then you have spectacled which can get up to like you know eight nine feet and then you have black caiman that can be 18 feet long really black caiman's a real black caiman's a real thing

really oh yeah 18 feet long yeah oh yeah no like a black caiman skull is like oh my god they're huge let me see what that looks like i always thought I was under the impression that caimans were the smaller ones. I didn't know they got that big. You know, black, black caiman looks like an alligator. Like it's it's they're monsters. A big alligator. They get 18 feet long. Holy shit, man. So you encountered those? Yeah, I've encountered those. I was. What the fuck, dude? Dinosaurs. Oh, they're huge. Holy shit. Dude, there is one spot that we were exploring.

This is, again, one of those places where you're way past, like, the edge of civilization. And we found this, like, swamp. And, you know, again, it's always JJ that finds everything. He goes, oh, no. And I wentj that finds everything he goes oh no i went what he goes look at these and there's like a drag mark huge black caiman like monstrous like a two foot thick stomach and then these monster hands on either side you know the feet as it's walking and we're like following this thing and it comes to the water and floating in the water is the bodies of all these dead peccary all these dead wild boar floating in the water and i'm like what am i looking at here and we got a stick and we brought him in and we

realized a whole herd of pigs had tried to swim across this water and this monster ass godzilla black caiman had just gone and just just just took down like 10 of them wow and so we just were like checking out his refrigerator. Like they were just there for later. They're just like floating there. So he's in the area. He was in, he was in the area and we were like up to our knees and I was like, I was like, we, we should probably, we should probably go dude.

Let's go. Oh my God. Yeah. No, like they're scary big. Like they're scary, scary, scary, scary big. Are those similar to the ones they have in like Costa Rica? Costa Rica, I believe, this is outside of my expertise, but I think you have American crocodiles

and I think you have spectacle caimans there. I don't think you have black caiman in Costa Rica. We saw some big crocodiles in Costa Rica. Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, big for me. Yeah. I don't know how big they, I didn't measure them,

but we were on a boat trip and we were going down this river and you see him sliding into the water so there's ones that were sunning on the side and then you see him just slide in the water it was very creepy yeah I'm because the waters brown and you can't see shit and you know they're there they don't bother you though like I just stepped on a came in the other like a small one I stepped on a came in the other day and it was like you know he freaked out okay costa rica crocodiles they weigh between 800 and 1200 pounds they get between 13 and 16 feet long yeah those are the ones that we saw so that's a different american crocodile yeah so it's the same as the ones that they have

in like florida is that that true i don't know that No, American crocodiles are like Costa Rican crocodiles. Something different. Can get very big indeed. Jeez. So I think they're saying it's the same thing. Is that what they're saying? Because I know the American crocodiles, they're smaller than the alligators, but much more aggressive. You know, they've spotted Nile crocodiles in the Everglades.

No. Yeah. No. They've got a kill on sight order spotted Nile crocodiles in the Everglades. No. Yeah. No. They've got a kill on sight order for Nile crocodiles. They've at least spotted one. They don't know if it's breeding. They don't know if there's more than one. That's so much worse than Burmese pythons.

The Florida thing is so goddamn crazy. It's so wild. It's so wild what's happened down there. That there's literally 99% of all the mammals are missing from the Everglades. 99%. 99%. Yeah. Google that.

They've found four since the 90s. Yeah. Okay. So they found four. So that's even worse because they're out there. So you know they're in there. You know they're in there. They found Nile crocodiles.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, I guarantee it's some asshole with a pet. Yeah. Let him go, and now they're breeding. Oh, but that's so much scarier. It's all scary. The smash power that they have to take down a wildebeest, to rip the head off a zebra.

I played a video on my Instagram that I found of one snapping a pig in half. It just snaps and just chucks down the leg. But see if you can find that statistic on the Everglades that there's 99% of the mammals are missing. I think it's true.

It's 99% of all the raccoons, 99% of all the deer, everything. Yeah, because the fucking crocodiles ate them all. Well, it's everything. It says it's because of the pythons, but it could be a few. 99, look at that. A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found the sightings of medium-sized mammals are down drastically as much as 99%.

In some cases, in areas where pythons and other large invasive, large non-native constrictor snakes are known to be lurking Wow So the the people that I know that have been there say it's over the last few decades. It's drastic Yeah, you don't see anything anymore. You just see the snakes and you see alligators What's like Guam Guam had that problem with the snakes for their own yeah there was on the island of guam they had a monstrous snake problem but they're that's the funny thing with the jungle is like it's everything is so there's so many there's so many predators everything is eating each other so it's like you don't have any one thing the balance is in amazon in the amazon that's the thing about the invasive species

that get introduced into a an ecosystem that an ecosystem that nothing's there to eat them, which is crazy. These python hunters that are finding these massive pythons in the Everglades, it's so crazy to watch how many of them there are and how they keep finding them. I see kids on social media going out and literally finding Burmese pythons. It's like everyone can do it. They say there's a half a million of them at least in the Everglades. I mean, it's, it's warm,

it's wet. There's wildlife. It's perfect. It's just like, it's fucking got to figure out something to do with that. How do they do that now? It's like, they're so invasive.

They're so in the system. How could they possibly eradicate them? There's, there's, I mean, cane toads in Australia. I mean, there's so many examples of this where we've transported something, or I think it was cats in New Zealand that devastated, house cats just devastated. Yeah, Australia as well.

They brought them in to kill off other things, and they just devastated ground-nesting birds and anything else. Yeah, like tragic. Yeah. That's really sad. But what can they do? At this point, the Everglades are so dense. No, like tragic. Yeah. It's really sad. But what can they do? At this point, the Everglades are so dense. Hire Florida men to go out.

They think they are doing that. They are doing that. Just put a reward on them. But how much of a dent can they even put in it one-on-one? I don't think it's a problem that you can really solve. Because you get those big ones, but then it's like they're so cryptic. Snakes are so cryptic. Like again, that what we've learned about anacondas is like, they're, they can be around

you and you don't know it. Like they'll go in the sand in a, in a river and they'll like stick their nose up and they'll just be resting. And they'll be like, I ate last week. I'm just going to chill here. And so like, we'll be walking up a stream. And if that snake, like once snakes have like radio transmitters in them, we're like, oh my God, they, we have none of the equipment required to find them so like the babies they're

in the leaf litter they're in the swamps they're like that we're never gonna get them out like that's just the way it is now like i think i i totally think that they should try as much as possible poor poor florida wildlife yeah but, what are you going to do? They're eating alligators now. I'm sure you've seen that. Yeah, there's a picture where it exploded out the side. Yeah, they're trying to eat alligators that are too big. They're eating 12-foot alligators.

We need to find someone to explain to the pythons what size alligator is, the proper size alligator to eat. That is so gangster, though. You try to eat something bigger than you and it bursts out the side of your body. How big do pythons get what is the biggest python ever i think the i think berms gets like 18 feet marshall got like shaky all this talk of pythons what the fuck they would love you i would never bring my dog to the jungle no way never it wouldn't last the bot flies and all this shit i saw the images off your instagram are you The bot flies and all this shit. I saw the images off your Instagram. Are you getting bot flies pulled out of your back? Yeah.

Yeah. When we were talking, I was in a bad way with some bot flies, man. They suck. How often is that? It's not often. But when it happens, it really, really sucks. Yeah. So this is it?

Yeah. So this I'd had. This was like I brought it home. This was like at home. And so, yeah, you see there's the tip of it. Oh, so this I'd had. This was like I brought it home. This was like at home. And so yeah, you see there's the tip of it. Oh, bro. So this is where you're already at home and you're getting it extracted? Yeah. See, that's a big one. That's as thick as like, almost

as thick as a pencil. Oh, look at that. Look at that thing they're pulling out of you. What does it feel like when it's in you? Look at the size of that, dude. Yeah, and they eat. You know, they eat at night. Look at the pus that comes dude. Yeah. No. And they eat, you know, they eat it.

It comes out. Dr. Pimple popper. She would be proud. Yeah. They, they, they,

at night they wake you up cause they'll start, they'll start, they start chewing on you. Yeah. They really suck. Oh, and that's the only way to get them out is to pull it. Oh God,

you got them all over your side and your arm. How did you get them? Uh, apparently a fly catches a mosquito and lays its eggs on the mosquito or moths. We think it's the moths in our region because usually every time I get bot flies, it's when I'm doing such intense work that I don't have time to wash my clothes. It's directly linked to how clean you are. Because I'll take off a sweaty-ass shirt, throw it over a stick, go to bed bed, wake up and then be like, boom, throw it back on and go. And then like a week later you get butterflies.

And it's like, cause the moths are covering your shirt at night and the mosquitoes are all, they're all like the sweat. And so you see all these bugs at night all over your shit. Oh, there's just eggs in there. There's just eggs. And then it gets on your skin and it gets in there.

So like I was, and then I, and then like I wasn't sleeping and then like they kind of get infected and it's just like, butterflies suck. Butterflies suck. It's like nature is of get infected and it's just like bot flies suck. Bot flies suck. It's like nature is metal in your skin.

It's like Just try to carve its way through you and eat your meat. Oh God. Oh. Marshall's freaking out over here.

He's like what are you guys doing? So other than the bot flies what are the other insects that you have to worry about? I mean just

like there's a constant stream of mosquitoes and gnats and stuff, but it's really not that bad. See this one they posted yesterday? Oh, God. That's a bot fly? Nasty, dude. That's a bot fly exiting. I think it's a system. Exiting a body of a dead animal?

Yeah. Oh, jeez. What the fuck man What a creepy thing That's a hell of a bad lie It's like a rhino They're particularly disturbing There's a great book

I wish I could remember this There's a great book on parasites The number of parasites for every species on earth How many parasites exist specifically for that. And it's like there's more parasites than there are animals on Earth, and it's fuck. It makes you not. So that's a thing to have to deal with. That's a thing to have to deal with, for sure.

What other, like spiders? Spiders are chill, man. I love spiders. When I see a big-ass tarantula chilling in my room like I'm like do your job eat the scarier stuff like tarantulas are not going to bother you

I'm always happy with a good a nice big tarantula what's happening tarantulas are cool tarantulas are super cool tarantulas I saw a tarantula

eating a mouse one time and it was great whoa they also caught it in the web no he popped out of his hole and he murked this thing. He just bit it on the face. He shoved its fangs

right in its eyes. It was funny too because I was watching the mouse. I did not see the tarantula and the tarantula jumped out and shoved its fangs into the mouse's eyes and the mouse went into instant arrest. It was paralyzed. It just went straight out and didn't move and the tarantula

was like, and pulled it down into its hole. Whoa. These stories scare you. He's a little freaked out. He's an empath. Oh no. Look at that. No.

Wow. God, that is the worst way to go. Thank God those things are as small as they are. I found a video the other day, and I put it on my Instagram, of a giant toad eating mice. Ugh. Yeah, there's like... And they can't even really crush them, so it's probably just like...

Swallowing it. Stuffing it in its mouth hole. But it's so creepy to watch, because you don't realize how big their mouths are until you see them stuff a rat in there. So some sick fuck had set this up they put the toad this big giant yellow looking toad yeah in like a fish tank with a bunch of rats running around see if you can find it it's on my instagram jamie i didn't see it on your instagram you don't see it no it didn't get

pulled down did it i mean i was looking god did it? God damn it. Censorship. These motherfuckers. They would pull down a story or a main page? No, it's on my main page. It's got to be in there. I don't think. Don't you get a notification when they pull shit down? I think pretty soon there's going to be more people with tattoos of your face than not. Here it is.

I found it, Jamie. Which one is it? I'll send it to you if you want. Is that Axl Rose? Where? You have your Instagram up on there. Oh, yeah.. Is that Axl Rose? Where? You have your Instagram up on there. Oh, yeah. I'm at Axl Rose.

Did you meet Slash? No. I didn't meet him, but I saw him. Oh, man. It's up there, Jamie. Scroll down. There it is. Bam.

That's it. So look at this giant toad. And these rats are running around trying to get free. Watch when he grabs one. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Look at his fat, greedy fingers as he stuffs that rat in his mouth. Look at that.

No teeth, just swallow. But I'm wondering right now, what kills the rat? It doesn't seem like a... Digests it, just swallows it. Why wouldn't the rat just chew its way out? Oh, God. I think it crushes it.

Slively in the poison or something. What a creepy animal. Imagine if those fuckers were big, just chasing people. They just seem so... There's something about reptiles and frogs and turtles. They just seem so heartless. Just...

Yeah. No emotion, just... Yeah. Dude, we found a large... I forget what type of spider it was, but it was eating a snake one night. That was fun. I love seeing the interspecies things.

When you see a tarantula eating a mouse or you see a spider eating a snake, and it's like, this is just worse than it should be. Yeah. It always happens in the middle of the night, too. It's always like not when you want to see that shit. Well, I would imagine it makes you really appreciate civilization in some way. At least the peace and quiet.

I mean, I guess not though because I guess you really appreciate that. I like where it's wild. I like where – I like to see – I mean, look, the Amazon is so important that it's like to me of course as a conservationist I'm like we need all of these crazy creations to be doing that to create that ecosystem it's like so like to me that's very comforting let all that crazy shit be there if you don't like it don't live

there like you know what I mean you can live in Connecticut like whatever but like the wilder it is like you go to the jungle in January and you go into a swamp and it's just a freak show. It's just all of that. And you just go through the swamp and there's all these frogs and snakes and night monkeys and anacondas and black caiman and all this shit. And you see eyes looking at you through the darkness and it's jaguars.

And it's like it is wild. Are the jaguars something to be worried about? Not at all. Not at all. I got woken up by a jaguar one time. I was on one of those solos and I was in my hammock and the jag came up. And I was very lost and very alone. And I was like on like day six or something of being lost.

I don't remember. No, it wasn't that long of a solo. But I was lost and I was scared. And I was in a hammock. How did you get lost? Well, as soon as you leave the river. Like you could literally walk 15 feet and then be like, I'm just going to come right back. And the jungle will like Blair with you.

You will you because it's all green. So you just like think you know what you're doing. Just like just last week, I took people I wanted to cross from one trail to another trail. And I was like, I'm a guide. I can do this. And I came back out on the same trail like a half hour later. And I was like, yep, that's what I meant to do. Let's go.

Like, it happens to JJ all the time. Really? You cannot find your way in the jungle. Do you use a compass? Don't use a compass. Why not? Because actually, apparently some of the iron content and some of the saps in the trees pulls the needle. It doesn't work really well.

Even the trees are trying to trick you. Oh, my God. GPS has run out of batteries you know it's like it's like you really just you have to learn your your your bushcraft you have to learn how to navigate in the jungle and it's like there which is pretty much you have to get just amazing at dead reckoning and and remembering your your course because it's so dense that like we play with people. We go, you know, we'll go see if you can go from here to there. And it's like, they can't, they can't go there. They can't do that. As soon as you leave the river.

So like I had gone out on this solo, gotten lost, gotten scared. And I've been like, oh shit. What if I just like into the wilded myself? What if now I'm going to be the next kid that went and died in the Amazon? And like, I like slept in the hamm in the, in the hammock, but this is like, as I was learning. So I didn't realize that the, the, the hammock that I had bought had a mosquito net on top, but the back was not mosquito proof so they could stick through. So my back was being destroyed by mosquitoes as I'm trying to sleep and like a couple of nights

of that. And so I finally fall asleep and I wake up in the middle of the night and I hear breathing right next to my face. And I like wanted to turn my headlamp on and I just hear like right here. Like I could feel her breath. And I was like six inches away from a jaguar's face. And she just like, you know, and then left. And she just came in. She wanted to see what that was. She was like, you're not going to move. That's what you're not and then left. And she just came in. She wanted to see what that was. She was like, you're not going to move.

That's what you're not going to do. She growled like right into my ear. And then later on. That one's cute. That's a cute picture. That's a cute jag. Wow. And they vary in colors and the spots and everything, right?

Like some of them are much darker. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. Actually, somebody recently was like, where do you see panthers? And I went on this whole thing of like, you know, a leopard or a jaguar, just like you can have albinos. You have a melanistic one. Wow. So like people would call that a panther, but a panther is not a real.

There's no animal that's a panther. It's like a Kleenex. It's just another name for it. That is so beautiful. But a black jag. Look at that thing. Yeah. Oh my God, that's beautiful. Yeah.

In South India, they have the black leopards. What an amazing looking animal. Look at the muscles. Yeah. It's an amazing killing machine. And so humans don't get taken out by them? I can only really speak for our region of the Amazon, but I haven't even heard a story about it. Really?

No one. Like, no one. Our jags are just—we have, like, record numbers of jags. Like, I think they're listed as near threatened, and we have, like, some of the strongest remaining jaguar populations in the world. It's incredible. And you barely see them. We barely see them we barely see them um the last one i saw was two years ago and some people like go their whole lives without seeing

them really yeah yeah yeah well because people walk off into the jungle and they don't realize people people it's so funny living in the wild and seeing people show up there and it's like people come and they're like they smell like shampoo and cologne and bug spray and deodorant. And they're just like, to an animal that has such better senses than we do, they might as well just have like sirens on them. And like you are this shiny, glittering foghorn of attention in the jungle. And like every animal is going to run away from you. And so people are always like, how come you go out and you see so much stuff? And it's like, I only shower in the river. I live out in the jungle. I smell like they do. Like I'm out there for weeks and it's like, I'm not going and like shampooing my hair.

It's like, and so like to these animals, like they know when you're coming, like a jag is just going to be like, oh, there's a human. Do you wash with soap when you wash in the river? I do. I do. I do use a biodegradable soap. You have to keep your skin clean or else you just get infections. But like for the most part, like my clothing, everything, like I don't use anything that's scented, um, because of that, because I want to be out there and, and just blend in. And that's whether I'm out in the field with elephants or whether you're out in Africa or India or whether you're in the Amazon, I want to be sort of like included. I want to blend in. And so like not that long ago, I was checking a camera trap and I heard, I thought it was a,

we had students at our research station at the time. And I heard like the leaves going, and it was like September. So the jungle was dry and I turned around and I was going to scare this person. Cause I was gonna be like, who walks that loud in the jungle? Like, have you never, you have no respect. And I turned around with my finger up and this jag walked right by me on the trail and just went, what's up? Just kept walking and I was like, finger up. And I was like, okay.

Oh Lord. But I took that as good because at least I was, my like scent trail was so that he didn't know I was there. I could see it on his face. He didn't care. He was like, hey. But I mean, he was six feet away. He didn't even break on his face. He didn't care. He was like, hey. But I mean, he was six feet away. He didn't even break his stride.

He just walked by me and was like, yo, what's up? They don't think of you as food, so they just keep moving. No, and I think they're, you know, with big cats, the mothers teach the young how to hunt, and I think they're so oriented, like with tigers, they're so oriented on horizontal, you know, get the neck from underneath, break the neck from up top. And it's like when they see a vertical animal walking by, I think they're like, first of all, I don't know what this is.

Second of all, it smells weird. Third of all, where do I even, you know, you got to be desperate to take that risk. I don't think that they, lions are a different story. But with jags, with tigers, with leopards, I don't, I've never, ever felt any fear of being around a jaguar. Like, any fear. I don't even take pictures of them. I just enjoy it. Wow.

I let other people take pictures. If I'm with people, I'll let them take pictures. But I will not lift my camera for a jag. I'll just stand there and just... Just take it in? Yeah. You get to see them so rarely. I don't want to sit there finally seeing one and then put another screen in front of my face.

Right. Look through it through some glass. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, that's our camera traps. That's from yours? Yeah. Wow, look at that thing.

Yeah. That is so majestic. What an amazing animal. Those glowing eyes. Well, that's the crazy thing. You shine your headlamp into the into the night and then when things look back at you you got to wonder what it is it's like well when there's two eyes in the front you know there's two eyes in the front yeah but

some sometimes the deer but then the jags do this thing where they move their head like this they're like they try and see around your headlamp they'll like do this little side to side thing like the deer they'll just blink at you they'll just blink and so you start learning the eye shines you start learning the you know because then you can be out there at night you look at something and people like oh shit dude it's a jag and it's like no it's a deer when you were saying that the uncontacted tribe were speaking in monkey calls how do they what are they doing so uh jj's dad used to tell us he said if you're ever out in the forest and something doesn't sound right he was like get out of there and he was like because they will use the tinamou calls like the undulated tinamou is like but like we know what that sounds like but we also know

what it doesn't sound like and so like every now and then you'll hear one that's you know that sounds like but we also know what it doesn't sound like and so like every now and then you'll hear one that's you know different and like we all get freaked out because we're like those that's how we do it that's how jj taught me to do it like if there was a bunch of tourists right there and jj wanted me to come over and like chill with him and we wanted to go hang he would just do that and get my attention and like i know that it's not a tenement i know it's jj and so it's like they've taken that to a whole nother level where they they actually shot one of the community members and then one of the guys who knows some of their language was saying that they it looked like they were mad with the guy that shot the guy

they were mad with him like they were like why did you do that now there's going to be retaliation like why did you shoot him and like there was like a whole discussion happening while these people were like huddled in the stream waiting to see if they got killed too so it's like i don't really on you know because when you get these loggers going in there it's like yeah we'll pay you to protect the rainforest and like you don't have to do this you don't have to be going into these these areas that are that dangerous um so yeah so at this point now though that are that dangerous. So yeah. So at this point now, though, through all of this, though, we've established jungle keepers. We have 50,000 acres. We're trying to do 300,000 acres. And if we can do that, we'll basically be helping to establish one of the largest protected areas

in the Amazon rainforest, which will encompass these uncontacted people. And they can stay uncontacted and they can stay safe and do whatever they want to do in the jungle, guarding the secret pyramids and the giant ground sloths or whatever the hell it is that they do. But we're close. Now, how many uncontacted tribes are they aware of? I think there's like over 100 different groups across the Amazon. Wow. There's also varying degrees of – and the other thing is the conversation so often gets turned to like they're violent and that they're people that live out in the jungle. And I have no idea how they do it either because at night we need headlamps. We don't have night vision.

All the animals have night vision. So it's like what do they do that night? They're able to make fire in the jungle at night every day you if i gave you an entire book of matches me and you we sat down right now in the jungle i was like okay cool you got a machete and a book of matches first one to make fire wins we couldn't do it it's wet everything is wet so how are they what you know what's their are they doing bow drill are they doing what are, you know, what's their, are they doing bow drill? Are they doing, what are they doing? We don't know. We don't really know. No, we don't know how they do that. We don't know how they stay infection free. We don't know what they do with their old people. We never see old people. We never really see children. And so like they move around and they,

we see like groups of men on beaches. We see like that picture, that aerial picture where you see like a family group out that's in turtle season where you have turtles laying their eggs on the beaches and the tribes will come out because that's easy food you just pick up turtle eggs and eat them um but there's so much that we don't know about their lifestyle and like people get so many things wrong just you know if you leave them alone then they won't kill you if you you know then people go they're stone age tribes and it's like well they're not stone age tribes because they're they're alive right now and you couldn't live out in the jungle but they can right so it's like there's elements of their you know their their botanical knowledge their medicinal knowledge their creation myths their view of history i mean they're they're

coming to reality from a whole different perspective than we are wow and there's really no way to get does anyone speak their language? Do we know what language they all speak? Is it universal? Do they have different languages? It's not universal and there was someone in our region who like captured a child from the uncontacted, raised them in a very remote community

and people have tried, anthropologists have tried, they've been like, hey, so what was it like when you grew up? And it's like, it's dark. He's just like, I don't remember. Like no one's been able to get any information out of him. How old was he when they captured him? I think like six, like under 10 for sure. Does he not remember? Does he just not want to talk about it?

I don't know. That's, that's, that's the, these are, there's all, there's all these underlying stories. Oh man. Yeah. that's, that's, that's the, these are, there's all, there's all these underlying stories. Um, oh man. Yeah. That's just, there's just, then last year at some loggers went to a place they shouldn't have gone and

they got, they got whacked and, uh, sort of like the, you know, like the WhatsApp underground in Peru, like everyone was sending each other pictures. Cause one of the cops like sent to his family,

a picture of what the bodies looked like on like day six, laying on the beach with arrows in them and shit. And it was like, Oh my God. It was like, it's just, it makes you stay in bed at night. You're just like,

I'm not going out. Jesus. But I mean, yeah, it's just, it's a complicated topic because there's people that want to contact them. There's people that want to leave them alone. And then of course there's missionaries that are like,

they need the Bible. What did you think about lost city of Z? Um, I loved the book. I wanted more from the movie. Um, of course. Yeah.

There's only so much time and yeah. Um, Hollywood fuckery. Oh God. Um, the book was fantastic. And that guy was out of his mind, out of his mind,

out of his mind. Yeah. Uh, Percy Fawcett. Yeah. Percy Fawcett. Yeah. Percy Fawcett. But, like, the fact that he could go on those expeditions and not get infected. I've been brutally, like, let me show you.

I'll show you this picture. I don't think there's any way of pulling this up. But, like, the jungle just gets into your skin. What is that on your face? MRSA infection. It, like, started, like, you know, mosquito bites, and then I would scratch, and you don't realize you're spreading it with your fingernails. You go like this and shit.

I mean, I almost died from that. But I was staying in the jungle to, like, take care of an anteater. How did you get free of that? Like, if you're in the jungle, did you use antibiotics? Go home. You just go home. I had to go home at that point.

I got to, I remember I got to JFK and the guy, you know, he like looked down at my passport. He goes, yeah,

what were you doing in Peru? And then he looked up at me and he goes, buddy, what the fuck? And I was like, I'm just trying to get, he like stamped it.

He was like, go, go, go, go, go. He's like, go,

go to the doctor. I can't, I can't believe they let me through. Right. You could have been infected with some crazy plague. Could have had like monkey Ebola. Like it was, it looked bad. And I have had like monkey Ebola. Yeah. It was,

it looked bad. And I spent days in the hospital. Like it was, it was really, really bad. Um, but for Percy Fawcett to not, they would say like other people would be dying.

There was somebody, I think the guy's name was Murray. He came from the Shackleton XP. He'd already been out with Shackleton. So he was like, I'm a real explorer. And he lasted, he didn't last any time with,

with, uh, with Fawcett. Cause Percy Fawcett was just like, you can't keep up, go die. You can go die with the mules. Like he just wouldn't stop. So my question is, is like,

did he go out and eventually get killed? Or did he eventually go out and like find the tribe that made him their king and just? There's no knowledge. There's no knowledge of it. Yeah, no one really knows what happened to him. And they said in that book that over 100 people have died looking for him since he left. Because then the other expeditions that have gone out, all of those have died too.

It's like, yeah, look at that. Look at him. Look at the look in his eyes. A hard man. That's a hard man. Look at him. That looks like a guy who could survive on the Amazon. Jeez.

Who tells you to keep up. Look at the fucking feral eyes on that motherfucker. Yeah. Wow. The story's so fascinating because now we know through the use of LIDAR that there really were

complex cities in the Amazon. Yeah. Which is just incredible that the jungle just swallowed up all these very complex structures. Yeah, it's funny because somebody sent me a video of Graham Watkins. Graham Hancock. The jungle just swallowed up all these very complex structures. Yeah.

It's funny because somebody sent me a video of Graham Watkins. Graham Hancock. Graham Hancock. Saying how he was like, yeah, and he goes, you know, the jungle is basically a human-made garden. And then, of course, I went and talked to like every scientist I knew because I was like, come on. And they're like, look, you know, in the areas around the rivers, there were complex. There was no debating it. There were complex civilizations, sometimes larger than we think.

But in those areas, you see a higher prevalence of like like he's like he said, like they'll plant Brazil nut trees. They'll plant, you know, whatever. I don't think bananas were there at that point, but where there was some gardening happening. But what what worried me then was then like Smithsonian came out and put out like an article and they're like is the amazon created by humans and it was like oh god no no no no no no because like then you're changing it from a designation of like this incredible complex wild ancient ecosystem to if people don't understand the context of what he's saying that that that people engineered it in places and then the headlines went to the amazon was made by people and then you have people like

Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro, who's no longer in office, but just being like, well, if we made it, we can manage it. Right. Let's go take it out. And it was like, I was like, Oh God, I was like, be careful. I was watching him on your show. And I was like, Oh, be careful, be careful, be careful. Cause like the work he does is great. I see what you're saying, but the implications of that narrative. Yeah. And again, a hundred percent there are, there are, dude, I mean, there's, there's, you find pottery in places, but it's always near the rivers. Like there's evidence of ancient civilizations. You want to hear the craziest thing?

One of my guys found a stone axe head. Now here's the thing. The uncontacted don't have rocks. You won't find a rock on our river. There's clay. There are no rocks. They found a stone axe head's the thing. The uncontacted don't have rocks. You won't find a rock on our river. There's clay. There are no rocks. They found a stone axe head in the jungle at a site from the uncontacted. But what that means is that the uncontacted tribe had a stone axe head that they've been holding on to since Inca times.

Wow. And someone forgot it at the camp. and someone forgot it at the camp. And so you're talking about civilization carrying around something from a previous civilization that they don't know where they got it from. It's like incredible. Wow. Because you cannot find it.

There are no rocks like that on our river. It was like a smooth gray stone shaped into like a blunt axe head with, you know, made, you know, so you could attach it to a stick. And they found this on the beach and they'd been using it to like clean turtles. But we don't have those rocks. That's more like an Inca type of thing. So this has been floating around through various people's hands in the jungle for decades, centuries, who knows. And what do they think about where that

came from? It's lost technology that they don't understand anymore. So the thing about the Lost City of Z was that there was a previous expedition that had encountered these cities and these incredible, beautiful, complex cities. And they described how elaborate their clothing was and their culture, their agriculture. And so then when the next expedition went back, there was no one there because they had killed everybody with diseases. This is the theory, right? Yeah. And, I mean, Oriana was the first person to, like, go descend the Amazon, which the thing that always drove me crazy about that was that they came down the Andes, made their way down the entire Amazon and then like looked at the stars, figured out where Spain was,

built a whole other ship and sailed home. Like, think about that for a second. They built a whole, you built a whole pirate ship and sailed to Spain based off the stars. Wow. And like now, like you look at us now and it's like, are we smarter than that now?

Like how many people can find your way anywhere without like your phone? Well, what is smart really? You know, what smart is, is your ability to use information correctly. Now, what information do you have? Like they had information that we don't have because they needed to be able to navigate using the stars. And they didn't have to deal with the kind of night pollution that we have, the light pollution that we have at night. It's one of the greatest tragedies about modern civilization is that we've blacked out one of the most spectacular things you could ever see. The thing that really centers us and humbles us, which is the view of the stars. I went to the Keck Observatory a few years back.

I went last year, but it was really good last year, but not this one time. The Keck Observatory is in Hawaii on the Big Island, and you go way, way, way up through the clouds, and the view of the cosmos is like you are in a spaceship with a clear glass windshield windshield and you see everything. There's no light pollution on the island because they have diffused lighting for all their streetlights, specifically designed so that it doesn't fuck with the telescopes. And so when you're up there, I'll never forget it.

The one time that I went, which was at least 15 years ago, maybe 16 years ago, At least 15 years ago, maybe 16 years ago. That one time was so spectacular that it changed my view of, like, Earth in the relationship to the cosmos. Just by seeing it. Because you see the Milky Way. You see everything. You see all the stars. It just took my breath away.

I couldn't stop staring at it. I was like, this is insane. And then I was thinking, God, this is everywhere. This is what the ancients used to see before we figured out electricity and blunted it all. And ruined our relationship with the cosmos visually. Because that's what every city does. When you look up at the night sky, you don't see jack shit in New York City.

You see a star. Oh, there's the moon. That's it. What is up there is literally the most spectacular thing that humans could ever witness. And it's there every night if you don't have light pollution and cloud cover. So, like, you're saying, like, it would be, like, almost like more stars than black. You see everything, man. You see everything.

It's incredible. So they're very careful at the observatory. There's no lights that get in the way of anything. So when you get outside of the building and there's just people lined up on the roads and on the hills, they're just staring up at the sky. Because it's perfect. It's insane. It's insane. It's so many stars.

It's everything. That's what it looks like. That's literally exactly what it looks like that's literally that's literally exactly what it looks like that is with your naked eye man it's amazing but it's this understanding that that's up there all the time and you can't see it because of light pollution but see that to me is so much of what we're doing with nature right now where it's like we're dulling it down. We live in this incredible reality and it's like we're dulling it down. Like in the Eastern Cape where I've been working

with the guys from VetPaw, the elephants have smaller tusks or no tusks because of poaching. And it's like you're taking this incredible, monstrous, giant land. Is that a natural selection thing? Like the ones that have smaller tusks are allowed to survive? It's because they're targeted.

Yeah, they're targeted for the big tusks. So the big tusk ones are getting killed and so somehow in response to that, they're developing smaller tusks because they're less attractive? To the point that they're even having no tusks. It's like it genetically bottlenecked them so quickly because over the last hundred years,

the humans were all going for the big tuskers. And now these monster tuskers, like the really big ones where they touch the ground, there's only a few of them left. That is so wild. And then moose, like in Maine, they have smaller antlers. And like we're actually like we're dulling down the magnificence of the universe. Like when you look at those pictures, you're like, why don't I see that? Picture if we saw that every night. Right. How different we'd be.

How much more connected we'd be. Oh, yeah. It's so humbling. I feel like there's a thing about mountain communities, ocean communities, where you're confronted with nature that's on such a scale of beauty and magnificence that you're overwhelmed by it. You're automatically humbled just by your environment and your surroundings. There's the same thing about oceans. You look out into the ocean, it's so humbling because it's so immense and there's so much

power and energy and life. It's just like, wow, it just puts you in your place. And the sky is supposed to do that too. There's a relationship that we have to the cosmos when you look up that is like, okay, yeah, this is the real mystery of life and of existence. That we fly through infinity on an organic spaceship every day. And that's what's really going on. It's not stationary. It's literally spiraling through the universe.

stationary it's literally spiraling through the universe and and that exact sort of wonder is what i feel when i wake up in the jungle and you you dip your hands in and you drink the river and then in the afternoon that you literally watch your sweat come off your forehead you hold your hand in the sunlight and watch it go into the air and join the mist from the jungle and then at 4 p.m you get that thunderstorm and it comes back and that cycle is moving through you. And it's like you are so connected to nature there. You are so it's so apparent that like you you you can't not be in absolute awe. And like you see this. And again, we're out there. We see the stars at night like that where it's like you can see the Milky Way. It's a belt across the sky. And there are these animals and these consciousnesses moving.

And it's all working together in this giant orchestra of the most complex life that's ever existed. And it's like you start to, you know, when you come home and then when you go back to a city, you go, you guys are really missing out. You know, like you feel so connected and locked in and and and you sort of like you said it puts you in your place it reminds you that we're how how insane this reality is yeah and that we're on this planet that we are so incredibly connected to and then you start to understand what happens when people get removed from that and how far off perception can go and because when you're not, what the jungle does is it brings you back to those chemical, physical truths.

It removes the cataracts of society from your eyes so that you're confronted with whether or not the river's rising, whether or not the sun is going to be blue. And when we're on an expedition, it's like it rains for six hours and we freeze. You can get hypothermia. Then the sun comes out, but the boat keeps moving. And it's like, well, now your skin is peeling off. And it doesn't matter what you believe in or who you are. It's like, we all have

to deal with the same reality. You got to survive. And that's where I feel good. That's the, the rules of the game are the same. There's no debating it. It's like, we all have to deal with the facts that nature is putting forward for us. And it's like, the world makes a lot of sense when you're out in the wilderness, the real wilderness. That's what people say that live like a subsistence lifestyle they say there there's something about it that's that deeply resonates with being a human being you know there's a famous vice series that we have referenced on this show a bunch of times it's called the vice guy to travel and they went to visit this guy i want to say his

name right i think it's heinmo court and he lives like way way way up in alaska and he has some sort of um they gave him some sort of permission a long time ago to hold this cabin in this particular area but he's literally like the last one to be able to do that yes and he lives up there just hunting caribou and fishing and that's all he does himself and yes he lives up with his wife in this tiny cabin that you know there's no windows and he has a generator and he's up there just eating caribou and hunting and living off the land. But he's a very intelligent guy. And when he talks about it, it's a really fascinating series because this guy – this is back when Vice used to do, like, really cool stuff.

Back when Vice was edgy. Yeah, where they were real. Yeah. You know, they were really doing cool stuff. And this guy fucking flew out there on a little bush plane and hung out with this guy for like a week when their camp got attacked by a grizzly. He had to shoot this grizzly because the grizzly was coming in to raid the camp. And like so it's the middle of the night. He's chasing this guy with a camera and the guy's like firing a shotgun at a grizzly.

But, I mean, you have to be a type of genius to live out in that. Like you have to be such a problem solver. Yes. You have to be able to build your house. You have to problem solver. Yes. You have to be able to build your house. You have to be able to do irrigation. You have to be able to, I mean, just in the jungle, it's like the problems you have to, I mean, I'm still such a novice.

It's like these guys, they're like, can you drive a boat? I'm like, yeah. And they're like, no, no, no. Can you drive a boat? Which means can you disassemble the motor and put it back together? Because eventually that's what you're going to have to do. And so it's like, if you go take your bush plane and go live out in Alaska,

it's like, well, how long until you have to call someone for help? It's like we rely on other people so much, and that's the beauty of being – you get so humbled being out in nature because you go, my God, doing anything is impossible. Even like making fire, everyone goes, oh, I'm going to use a bow drill method. And it's like, all right, cool, what are you going to use? And they're like, oh, this piece of paracord and this stick, and I'm going to carve it. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you going to use? And they're like, oh, this piece of paracord and this stick and I'm going to carve it.

And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where'd you get that knife? Where'd you get that paracord? Like start. It's tough. Start from nothing. Start from nothing. You'll get nowhere.

Just try and make rope. It's like mankind's like second invention. It's like, it's impossible. Just sit out in nature sometime. Just go sit out in nature and be like, I'm going to make rope. Functional rope. Enough that I can carry something.

Do you find rope from uncontacted tribes that they've left behind? I have a piece. You have a piece? I have a piece. Really? I found a piece on it. No. What does it look like? It's very, very fine. They weave it from balsa wood.

And so balsa, you can pretty much cut the, you know, take your machete and just like cut into the tree and it grows really quick. You can peel the bark off of it and pretty much use that as rope. But if you want to take it a step farther, you can tie that and then like braid it or twist it. And it has all these juices in it that like solidify. You can make legitimate rope. I could make 15 feet of rope in like two hours. Really? Yeah.

Oh yeah. Like it's, it's legitimate rope too. Like you could haul a boat with it. You could use it as bow string. Oh, totally. A hundred percent.

It's strong. Wow. But that you have to know that it's the balsa tree. Yes. When JJ, again, when JJ first taught me this, the first thing I did was march up

to a Cecropia tree and whack it with my machete and start trying to get the bark off. And the Cecropia ants like landed on my face and I came back and I was like, what happened? And he was like, idiot, that's obviously not a balsa tree. And I, you know, it took a long time, took a lot of bites. One of the more interesting stories was when you would run out of water and you found a certain type of bamboo that absorbs water. And so you have to cut the bamboo and drink the water out of the bamboo. Yeah. And that's pretty common. If you see bamboo tilted over on the side, it's gotten heavy and it's come over.

Does it have holes in it where it's absorbing the water? Like how is it getting into the – It's sucking it up. Oh, it's sucking it up through that it's sucking up through the ground through the ground so and then saving filling those those canisters so that's what those can that's the purpose of those things i don't know if it's that's the purpose it's definitely saving water is a purpose of them and so what we do is we can when we're out in the bush it's like you just you cut off one of those canisters and so you have like a sweet little bamboo cylinder and then you tie it with balsa and throw it over your back and it's like you're carrying a map it's like you just have this like a water bottle from the jungle but there are ways

of getting things done then what you do is what jj will do we'll go and we'll take you take a serrated knife and when you walk barefoot you get that big callus on the back of your heel you cut the callus off your heel stick it on on a hook, catch a few piranha, cut them up into pieces, catch some more piranha, and then stuff the piranha into the bamboo. Take some leaves, salt, stuff the leaves in the bamboo, and then throw the bamboo canister filled with piranha onto the fire. Really? Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. It's delicious. Really? Oh, my God, yes, because the bamboo flavors the piranha. And then if you're with the guys, they know other herbs that they can put on it. But it's like, oh, God, is that delicious. Wow. So much to serve at a restaurant.

Yeah. It started off of someone's foot. A piece of your heel. And the reason for that is that again, it's just like the fire thing. I do this when I bring students to the Amazon, I go like, okay,

let's make fire. Nobody can make fire. You go, okay, now we're going to go fishing. We'll give you hooks and, you know, and a line.

Find bait. A moth is too like loose and they're not around in the daytime. And then you're like, okay, well, what do I, what do I, there is,

there's no bait. Everything either is eaten or was eaten or is hiding or is camouflaged. You can't find bait. You know, in the Amazonian soil underneath the tree roots is clay. So you're not going to dig and find worms. And so it's like, it's a whole different game. Like it's this whole different like wilderness survival game down there. Wow.

You can't just go fishing. You can't just make fire. Like you have to learn how to do these things there first before that'll work. And the slicing a piece of your cows, that's common? That's a normal way to do it? It's a little bit of a flex. Like it's a thing that like jungle guys do. Like I'll do it, like if there's like a bunch of loggers and we're all like sitting there,

like I'll do it just to let them know. Because they'll all be like, oh, gringo. And I'll be like, oh, oh yeah look at my callus who can get more off the their their heel you know never everybody pulls out their knives and starts cutting their feet oh god that seems like that could go horribly wrong you do it carefully there's a way to do it you shave it off but like jj gets these big slugs of callus off and then you you can and it's strong and so that's great because then like the little fish can't pick it off you throw it in you get a fish and if you can get a decent size fish then you stick that on a nice big hook and by morning you get yourself like a nice big fat catfish so you work your way up the ecosystem

with your heel eventually starting with starting with your heel yes and Starting with your own skin. Starting with your heel. Yes. And is that, is there another way to do it? Is there other ways that they do it when they fish? Is there like? Oh, sure. I mean, you can go up to, again, I'm talking about like surviving. I mean, you can go up to the edge of the river with your headlamp and curious fish come and you just whack them with a machete. There's that.

We also just, you know, I mean, usually we had now, whether we're on a scientific expedition or whether we're bringing like tourists into the jungle or whether we're out with the jungle keepers, rangers, whatever we're doing, we have, we have a chef with us. We have a cook with us. We can't always be cooking for ourselves now and doing our work. Right.

It's like, you just steal some chicken skin, throw that on the hook. Then you're basically living off of the land when you're out there. No. To be honest, living off the land is something that we do when we go out on these ceremonial hunts or when we go out on expeditions to really uncharted places. We practice that. And the elders in the community, like we lost the guy who used to do the ayahuasca ceremonies in jj's community like we lost him during covet but it's like he knew things he knew methods that the younger generation doesn't know

like they have they have tiktok just like everybody else like tiktok yeah dude i told you gold miners follow me on instagram like it's like and that's a security risk for me yeah like but like jj's father once apparently killed an electric eel, removed the nerve. Again, I don't know anatomically if this makes any sense,

but this is how the lore goes. That he killed the electric eel, removed the nerve that generates the electricity. Then, cut his own arm open,

put the nerve in it, and slapped a dead frog on top of it. And then bandaged that up. And he said that that would give him strength until the end of his days he lived 87 years old alive in the jungle and healthy and he died one day at a barbecue just like he just like leaned over on his grandson smiled and died whoa he was like healthy until he died he He just turned off. Huh? Yeah. So like they, they do stuff. They, they, they have, um, I had a, I was doing some stuff with tigers in India and I picked up a disease called tularemia and I had this horrible patch of pus on my elbow. And I went to every doctor. I came home from India,

went to doctors in New York. And for two months I was like in bed and I had no energy. And they put me on this antibiotics and that and this and that. And these, again, like New York City infectious disease doctors couldn't heal this thing. I went to the Amazon. JJ takes my arm, looks at it and goes, oh, so bad. Look at this. He goes, come with me. We go into the jungle.

He cuts a tree, takes the sap, says drink some of this, not too much. He was like, one drop of this down your throat. I felt like it was going to close my throat. And then he took the rest of the sap and he rubs it onto the wound. And this is like a disgusting, pussy thing that had been plaguing me for months. It was better the next day. Really? It's better the next day. He knew which tree to go to.

Now think about how many thousands of years are needed, or at least centuries are needed in order for him to have that knowledge. How many people living out in the jungle had to try how many things to have that medicinal knowledge handed down through the generations, and then to be in the presence of a person that has that type of knowledge and to have access to it and to witness it working. And what specifically does that sap work on? Does it work on all kinds of infections and diseases or just the kind that you had? No. So we actually brought, we, you know, tested it in a Petri dish. And basically, um, there's some of these saps that just murder

infections. Like you, you can't get this bacteria to live with these saps. So like people use like neos, like we don't use neosporin in the jungle. Like it doesn't work. What we do is we go to the Sangre de Drago tree. Like that works. As soon as I see like a little something, like a mosquito bite that just doesn't look right and is like getting too much of my attention, just go and put that on it and immediately gone. One time I like slashed myself with a machete. I had this huge wound. I like, you know, I was thinking, oh, God, this is going to get so infected.

And then JJ was like, just drown it in that stuff. You'll be fine and like you you won't get infections wow there's like miracle shit down there and is this widely known is this something that the scientific community is aware of i mean botanists and yes and no um i think what was it captopril they made from from bushmaster venom in the 1990s. And I think it was Pfizer. I don't know who it was. One of those companies made like a few billion dollars off of it. But what happens is people will discover a compound in the Amazon and then export it. It will be like thousands of years of wisdom from ancient cultures handed down. And then someone will give that knowledge out to a corporation and they'll take it, profit off of it, and then that's it.

out to a corporation and they'll take it, profit off of it, and then that's it. But it's like we, at this point, one of the things we're trying to do is work with the indigenous communities to try and help them to preserve that knowledge. Because we're also seeing now that as the roads come in and you have the problems with the fires and it's changing, you know, at the edge, at the edge where the jungle is being destroyed. They, the younger people have to decide do they want to live the way their parents lived fishing hunting howler monkeys eating howler monkeys or do they want to go out into the world and do something else and it's like

let me start with like what else you know it's like it's very very complex being at the edge of living in like a tribal subsistence community and then being confronted with like the modern world and they have like a cell phone and there's definitely a feeling you can definitely see a feeling of like being like left out like they feel like oh we're just sitting here in a river whereas like i feel like people from our world would go like god they have it perfect they have all the fish they could ever want. Have you ever taken someone from there and taken them on a trip to New York City? I mean, I guess they don't have passports.

Well, some of my guys, some of the guys on my team that run Jungle Keepers are like super native but also kind of worldly. Like one of my guys, this guy Roy, he's a conservation chef. And he's like almost famous. He's been to Italy. He's been to Virginia. But he runs Jungle Keepers. JJ, I mean, speaks perfect English and like does interviews with me on like ABC News and

like, so like these guys have, Roy came to New York City. Dude, the craziest one is this guy. There's a story about an anthropologist. I think it was Kenneth Goode. I can't remember what his name was, but he went to the Yanomami, married one of them, brought them to the US. She couldn't handle it because she was like, I want to go back to the jungle, but they had had kids together. And I heard this legend when I was a kid and then that she had gone back to the jungle, but that this anthropologist had had Yanomami children that he raised on his own in the US. And then last year I was at a dinner

party and I met David Go Good, who is that guy. He's the kid. And so now he's going back to his people in the Yanomami villages. Yeah. He went to go back. He had to go find his mother. And the first time he saw her, she was naked.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I was sitting at like a dinner party and he was like, yeah, this was a... So his mother had abandoned him to go back to the jungle. He's raised by his father. The anthropologist. And then how old was he when he went back to see his mother I think he was in his 20s

And he had to go on an expedition of a river and to the jungle I think when he was a little kid, I don't think she lasted long. I don't think she liked our way of life She wanted to go back Yeah, and so now he's doing his PhDs or keys awesome Like he could sit here with us and like, he's doing his PhD on, uh, the Yanomami microbiome.

Uh, I think that's his mother and he's studying their gut fauna. Cause their rates of cancer, their rates of disease, their rates of depression, of course are like nothing compared to ours. And so he's launching this massive study right now to do, to find out why are they so healthy and why are we so fucked up I

thought it'd be easier to find out why we're so fucked up but yeah he's got a crazy crazy story the the way they have an understanding of their environment and the plants and what to eat and what not to eat is just, I would imagine talking, if you could speak their language and, like, be immersed with them for a long time and get an understanding of what they know, it must be amazing. Well, the great thing is that he can. That's what makes him so interesting is that he's doing it and he's working on it. But think about how much we're losing in terms of like what you said the connection to the stars

and then the the the realization on a daily basis that we're part of like this like this massive march of life and that we're connected to these systems and the rivers and the rain and like it sounds like so cliche to almost say it but it's like when you're down there and you remember these like original truths and then you go like like there's such a dissonance between like when you wake up there are certain things you have to do like when i wake up in the jungle you have to go check the boat because the river might have eaten it at night like you you have to go work on your water system you have to go on the trails and clear them like it's like there's things that nature demands farmers know this you have to wake up and milk the cows.

I feel like what's happening, so many people, it's just like, you wake up and you're like, well, what do I do now? It's like you get so disconnected from the systems that we're a part of. It's amputating us of the thing that connects us to whatever is running this machine, like the gears that work the game.

Like, and that's what that these people still remember. They're still connected to that reality. And then none of these people are going, are we living in a simulation? They're like, no, they're like,

they know what reality is because they're living in it every day. So I think that preserving these last wild places while they're still here, like I truly believe that we're at the most crucial moment in history, not because of nuclear war or anything like that, but because never before has there been a global threat. talk about climate change, but like our rivers and our ecosystems are being tested to the point where like our oceans are collapsing. Our rainforests are vanishing. We're losing species faster than we can even count. And we have all the knowledge and technology and ability to stop it. We've seen that humpback whales, they went down from like 120, they were up at around 120,000 pre-whaling and they went down to like 5,000. And then we banned whaling and now they're back up to like 115,000 humpback whales globally. Like they're back.

Bald eagles, they're back. If you just stop annihilating these animals and murdering their habitats, they will continue to make the ecosystems that have been our home on this planet for millions of years. They literally have made our lives possible. And so to me, there is nothing more important. And I think that when I was a little kid, I actually think I had some semblance of an idea that my mission was I'm here to protect rainforest.

That's what I'm here to do. And that's why I had to get there quickly before it was too late. And I had the incredible luck of meeting a teacher who could unlock that world for me. And now we have the chance, the historical chance. You talk about those sharks. There are trees on the river that were there before the Spanish touched South America. So the world wars, everything that we know, our grandparents, all of this, that tree was a sapling standing there in the Amazon rainforest while pretty much everything that we're familiar

with took place in history. And we have a chance to protect the incredible complex ecosystem of thousands of species that are living on this tree that can never be replaced. You're talking about a millennium tree with leaf cutter ants and reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, mosses, lichens, cactus, everything living on this skyscraper of life. And we can cut it down for nothing and grow some papayas or we can protect it. And we have the chance to protect it. And no one else is going to have that chance. And as a global society, it's like we can protect black rhinos before they go

extinct. This incredible, ancient, monstrous, mega fauna animal that we have the privilege of experiencing. There's no reason for this to happen, that people falsely believe that their horns are medicinal when they're not. And so it's like, I think we are at the most exciting time with the most exciting opportunity because the natural world, you know, we could get through this and people will look back on our time and just go, what were they thinking? You know, like the way, like when the industrial revolution came around and they put all the kids in the factories and they were getting like crushed in the gears and choked out by smoke. And it was like, we just made regulations and fixed it. It's like, we don't need to be killing life on earth. We can exist here and we, and it is awesome. We can fly and we can

take photos and we can have all this amazing technology. We can leave our planet now soon. All of this is possible, but we, we have to remember the basic truth that we are inextricably tied to our ecosystems and there's no getting around that and so we have to protect them and so that's that's the that's the mission that we're on and so incredibly the local people of the amazon and everybody at jungle keepers and so like somehow that mission formed and then you you became a part of that march when you when you retweeted that and helped us find Dax who helped us protect it. And now we're like moving towards creating this giant protected area.

Well, this podcast, I'm sure, will energize that even further. So what can anybody do if they're hearing this? I mean, obviously, this resonates with everyone. Your story is so incredible and just this calling that you have to that and the fact that it really has happened and you you've become a part of protecting it yeah what can anybody do that's listening to this um junglekeepers.com we have monthly donors we do trips to the amazon we have ways to get involved with the local people that are now protecting their rainforest it's this is totally an indigenous-led effort um and it's's, you know, you, when you,

I don't, I don't know how these other organizations work. What I do know is that, you know, when I went down there and JJ was like, we have to protect this. We started jungle keepers as a way to just take guys that were loggers and give them a different job, give them a better life. It's like, everyone's winning. We're saving the ecosystem. We're giving these people better life. When people support jungle keepers, like we have like monthly donors and people, they come and visit us in the field. Some people don't, some people give us money and they're like, look, I don't, I don't ever want to go anywhere near the jungle, but I'm glad it exists. Um, now we're trying to take people up into the canopy. And even that we're providing people with

jobs as chefs and boat drivers and guides and taking a small, sustainable amount of people into a really beautiful place instead of ruining it with trails and people and garbage. It's like we're just going to do it right and keep it pristine and keep it wild. So we're doing everything we can. We're studying this place. We're working in every way possible to save the millions and millions and millions of heartbeats that are in every square acre of this rainforest. It's just like it's that feeling. I get that feeling every time where it's like you said with the stars where you look out there and you just go, this is so incredible that you feel like you've just been like energized by some other force. You feel completely connected to everything.

And you're tapping into the mains. You're connecting to like the thing that vibrates it all. It's a strange thing when you're in nature like that. I've never been to the Amazon but in nature It's just in general. There's a feeling that you get almost like you're on a substance like you're on You're you're connected to a vibe that doesn't exist in the urban world And not in the concrete jungle that we live in. It doesn't exist. So when you go there, it's all of a sudden like,

oh, this thing, this thing that I feel. It's like you're tuned into it. It's connected to you. And we're not connected when we're in cities. It's like this weird bluntness and dullness to it all. I think it's just, it's throwing a fish back into water. I think that we belong out there. I think that we've amputated ourself from that.

And so when we go back out into wild places, we're like, yes! Yeah, despite our evolution and the technological innovation, we're still biologically that same creature that coexists with nature.

Which is removed from the experience for the most part. Yeah, which frustrates me. I got shell-shocked, man. I've been jumping in a river for showers for the last few months. And it's like, let's take a shower in a cold,

tiled room the other day. I just took a normal shower and I was shocked by it. I was like, where are the stars? Wow. What a weird experience. How do you feel? How long are you going to do this for?

Do you have a grand plan? Is this just your life now? Well, no, you can't keep doing this. Like so like. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. First of all, when you start something like this, like there's no there's no plan. Like you just start. And actually, you know, I've heard actually I always I always thought of this thing. And then I actually heard a clip of you saying if it's like, you know, if you're going go after something, it's like pretend it's a, what would the character in the movie be doing? Yeah. Like if you're going after something and it's like in terms of being productive, in terms of just continuing to chase the thing. And it's like when you start something like trying to stop the global march of destruction of wildlife, it's like you are going to fail.

The fact that we in this tiny little place are notching a win like that is incredible. But it takes an extreme toll having so much uncertainty that I'm going to leave here and fly back down there and go running into the Amazon fires and just broadcast that to everybody because that's what gets people excited.

That's what gets people to understand what we're losing because you have to show them the beauty and then show it being destroyed and be like, we can stop this. And so my plan is I want to, in the next year, protect the rest of this river. Now, how much do you have to worry about your own personal safety now? Because what you're talking about with the gold miners and this, they know who you are. And people know who you are now and the more you get this message out the more you're going to become a problem for them the gold miners yes but i stay away from the gold mining because i'll get whacked pretty quick over

there the the loggers on the other hand i just make friends man these guys the last year there was a rainy night and we were all hanging out at the research station and some loggers showed up. And they came in and we were like, hey. And we had power. We let them charge their phones. We gave them some hot coffee and stuff. And it was like we made friends with them. We had some drinks with them.

Now a few of them are working for me. And it's like, dude, we just keep making friends. And they protect us. There's an understanding like they're just doing what they have to do. They're just doing what they have to do to survive. The loggers, like the guys on the ground, they're not bad guys. Again, a lot of them are really good friends. They're just working.

Yeah, they're just they're just working. They're coming from other parts of Peru. A lot of them have families and that maybe their father was a logger or maybe their friends was a logger. And so like they go out and there's not a lot of stuff you can do out in the Amazon. Either a fisherman or a log or something. But if you're living that half life where you have to make your living off the jungle, but then go buy a house in town, it's like, well, that's a hard thing to, you know, and then it's like, or you could just sell it all and go get an office job or something. And it's like, there's not a lot of great options for that. So like they are in a tough position and so whether it's whether it's in the

and that's the other thing that i'm in grand plan trying to look for it's like a way of first of all getting conservationists paid because i know people all over the incredible conservationists all over the world who like are doing this work protecting species and no one's paying them to do it they're just out there doing the work um and then allowing local people to find a way of like being supported in that transition. So that you don't have to be, you know, taking somebody that used to be a rhino poacher and making them a ranger. You know how the rhino poaching works? Let's go catch rhino poachers. How fast can we turn people around to that?

And then make protected areas that are beautiful enough that we can bring people and then have them have jobs and it's like there's a there is a solution to this and so finding that solution and exporting it so if we save this river if we're successful in saving this river the true change then will come in in sort of applying that to somewhere else well then maybe there's a river in the congo where that's going to happen we're going to lose all the beautiful pristine medicines and wildlife that's there and the herds of elephants. Well, we can figure out how do we do it here? Let's do it there. It's like this can catch fire.

And it's like people more and more and more through this storytelling, through social media, through all this stuff. It's like we're getting more and more support because people want to help. I don't think if you asked anybody, if you said like, what do you think about polar bears? I don't think anybody would be able to, you know, be like, I hate polar bears. I want them to go extinct. I don't think anybody's on, you know, not too many people are going to say that and say, look, we can save the ecosystems and all the beautiful things. I mean, it's not that difficult. All we're doing is asking people to not cut down trees. And the exciting thing is that now we're actually having success with that and it's because people are helping us get the message out it's because people are like sharing it and taking action that's why i asked you about

slash because he's been he actually reached out to jungle keepers and he was like dude i want to protect the ring oh that's awesome yeah yeah i got to see him play i was actually backstage it was insane i sat on the stage with my family and watched in Greece in Athens Wow three-hour show insane So it's hot out there literally slash was dripping sweat Like it was felt like you're watching him play and sweat is flying off of his body and falling on the ground It's hot. It's fuck out there. It's an outdoor show. Yeah off of his body and falling onto the ground. I mean, it's hot as fuck out there. It's an outdoor show.

Yeah. Three hours. Shit. 60 years old. Got it. Going hard for three hours. I would love to see that. It was incredible.

I would love to. It's incredible. He loves snakes. He loves snakes. I'm sure. He's a huge, huge lover of animals in general. The whole thing was insane. I just randomly ran into Axl Rose at a restaurant.

Did he just like point at you? No, no. I was with my friend Brian Murorescu who? wrote the book the immortality key and Just happened to align perfectly where he was going to be in Greece when I was in Greece Yeah, the immortality key is a book about the illusinian mysteries and about how in ancient Greece They had these ceremonies that they would do where they were taking psychedelics. And it's been proven now because of the wine vessels.

They did a study of the wine vessels and they showed that they have ergot inside of them. And ergot is a fungus that creates an LSD-like effect. And so they know that they were mixing their wine with these potent psychedelics and having these ceremonies, these intense sort of well-guarded and secretive ceremonies. And he wrote this amazing book on it, and now it started a field of study at Harvard. It's incredible. And there's been a lot of scholarship on it,

and for the longest time it was dismissed. Like in the 1970s this guy wrote about it, and they basically wrote him off as an intellectual they're like this preposterous but now there's physical proof and then people are much more open to the idea of the ancients using psychedelics and so i just by sheer luck was in the same place with him at the same time and he took me and my family on a tour of these ruins it was incredible so we're having dinner and we're you know it's getting late like in Greece they stay up late man they're eating late at night and drinking and we're like we're staying at this place that is a view of the Acropolis it's insane and my friend

Brian comes back from the bathroom he's like hey Axl Rose is here and I'm like that's crazy and we had to walk by him yeah because the way to leave you're walking by his booth. And so I was like, do I say hi? I guess I have to say hi. I hope he knows who I am. And then I said hi. And not only did he know who I am, he knew some of my bits.

He was asking me about comedy. And he asked me, do you want to come to see the show? I'm like, fuck yeah. So he invited us to the show. It was insane. That's incredible. It was so cool. And my youngest daughter is a huge Guns N' Roses fan.

So she freaked out. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, my youngest daughter is a huge Guns N' Roses fan, so she freaked out. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, my youngest daughter has an incredible taste in music. She loves Nirvana and all this weird stuff. Do you listen to Kiss? That's cool. You're into Kiss? She's fucking 13.

There's something so comforting about that. Oh, it's amazing. When a kid is like, I like the music. She's got super eclectic, interesting taste in music, and she's always listening to new music. That's one of the cool things about things like Spotify is you get suggested other songs. You listen to a Bad Company song, and all of a sudden they're suggesting a Pink Floyd song,

and then you're listening to all this stuff that as a 13-year-old with a modern playlist, you probably wouldn't be really introduced to. And then they know what songs you like. They continue giving you. Oh, it sounds like that. How about one of these? I do go to radio.

I'll find a song I love, and then I'll do go to radio. And then I'll just start doing shit. And I keep harding songs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've discovered so much new music, so many new artists. It's incredible. Yeah, that's really cool. That's a really cool aspect of today.

So anyway, the show was incredible and I didn't get to meet slash I only got to meet Axl, but I met one of the other band members too. Okay. It was pretty dope Yeah, well, I'm gonna take slash to the jungle and I want to wow. Yeah, he looks like he belongs there. So sweaty and If you saw him in grease man covered in sweat, holy shit is he talented I just wanna see his fingers go. Oh, it's incredible legs go oh yeah credible is incredible so he's one of the best I was one of the best ever like the band is so good it's like you forget how many hits they have and it was like three hours in you're like oh yes patience yeah oh my god you know Paradise City oh shit it was it was an amazing show it's amazing

show I've been a fan of them since like the fucking 80s. I used to lift weights to them in Revere, Massachusetts in 1988. And so here I am. Those are rock gods, man. I mean, what? You got the Stones, them. I saw them recently too. I saw the Stones about a year and a half ago here at the Circuit of the Americas.

They had this giant outdoor show. Amazing. You can't believe they're really there. It's like when I'm watching on stage, I was like, is that really Mick Jagger? He's right there. Because it sounds like it's like a historical thing. It's like Ringo's still out there somewhere. Well, no, that's like a few years ago.

They were like, Chuck Berry died. And I was like, Chuck Berry was alive? Right, right, right. I had no idea. Yeah. I remember that. I was like, whoa, I like Chuck Berry died I was like Chuck Berry was alive right right no idea yeah I remember that I was like whoa I thought Chuck Berry was those guys are still doing it they're still doing it when I was a kid like there was no old rock stars like rock star it was such a recent and so many of them died young you know Hendrix and Morrison and Janis Joplin so many

of them died young. It was like a normal thing that they were just going to die young. Look at him. Slash his Instagram page. It's Mick Jagger's birthday today. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. How old is he? There we go.

Happy birthday, Mick Jagger. He's as old as Biden. Wow. That's insane. He's like doing backflips on stage. Doing three-hour shows. And he has two trailers filled with gym equipment. He works out every

day. Mick Jagger works out every day. He's famous for it. Like he's got this rigorous routine that he does every day. He does yoga. He does weights. He does all these different exercises. He's like incredibly fit. So, yeah, I mean, because you're

always talking about how rigorously you have to work out. You've got to get that out of you. Yeah. And I always feel like that. If I'm not out in the field, there's something I have to leave on the mat. I have to go sweat it out. Yeah. He says that.

And then what's the guy's name? Dick Van Dyke, right? The guy from Mary Poppins. When he was really old, I think he was on Letterman or Leno or something, and they were like, you should write a book. You're so old, but you're so fit and everything else. or something, and they were like, you should write a book. You're so old, but you're so fit and everything else. He goes, yeah. He goes, I could write a book.

He goes, but it would be one line. Keep moving. He's like, just keep moving. He's like, don't get sedentary. Yeah, don't get sedentary. He's 97. He's still alive, too. Dick Van Dyke?

Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah, he's still out there smiling. I think he's got a young wife, too. Woo! Let's go, Dick. He's working out there smiling. He's got a young wife too. Whoa No

Yeah, he's that wild man. I'm having that experience where I wish you didn't show me I had a different thing a different image what he was gonna look like Yeah, he got old. Yeah, that's what happens even if you keep moving a certain point time time gets you i mean he's amazing yeah yeah but you you do have to do something your body requires it and if you don't it will deteriorate i think some people some people don't some people seem to be happy to just coast from thing to thing to thing and you ever like meet somebody that just doesn't work out oh Oh, a lot of people. I'm a comic. I know a lot of comics.

Fat fucks. They don't do shit. Just look at some people. I'm like, you're happy? You're just going to go to sleep? Yeah. And you're going to wake up and there's no like, don't charge into battle. Put some, you know.

Yeah. I just think it takes all different types of folks to make this world go. Oh, it sure does. And there's a lot of people that just operate on completely different energy, completely different needs, completely different interests. Oh, it sure does. And there's a lot of people that just operate on completely different energy, completely different needs, completely different interests.

No, I mean, if I don't get that, I feel like that's what me and a golden retriever have in common. It's like, if you don't get that energy out, if you don't just... Yeah, he has to work out. Right? Isn't he crazy if you don't work him out?

Yeah, he loves to chase the ball, and then he's cool. We go swimming, then he's cool. He just needs, you know, he's an animal. He needs stuff. He needs activities. I respect, I love, like, I love, you know, like a dog, you wake him up, you go, you want to jump in a freezing cold river?

And they're like, yes! Hell yeah! It's like, what? They're like, yo, it's snowing outside. It's three in the morning. You're like, yes! And they go outside, and they roll in it. And it's like, sometimes I try to be that right you know especially joyful so joyful and so impervious

to like i'll be warm later you know i'll be comfortable later i'll be less wet later like you know yeah they just charge into everything and it's so you never see a wolf be like i don't wanna right like they're just like yeah i'm gonna. Well, the connection that dogs have with people is so bizarre because it's so manufactured. It's so strange that like that dog, Marshall, was in his ancestry was a wolf. Yeah. Like what did we do? What did we do? We made him so pretty and fluffy.

And took a wolf and turned it into like the least intimidating, most loving, no worries about it turning on you or anything. No. No challenges to you. It's just all love. I mean, I've been out and I've been camping with my goldens and they get scared and come to me. Yeah. Oh, he turned them into. During the 4th of July, he was freaked out.

Yeah. Like we were in the house and it wasn't even loud in our house. But, you know Texas doesn't fuck around with fireworks. They shoot off real fireworks in people's backyards Yeah, so we were there and you hear boom boom. It's not even that loud, but in the distance for him. He's like They're coming so we're watching TV in the couch. He's hopping on me and he's hopping on my wife He's hopping on my kids. He's going back and forth like Almost like he's letting us know. he's hopping on my wife he's hopping on my kids he's going back and forth almost like he's letting us know yeah someone's shooting out there you know it's like some part of him was like completely freaked out by it now it's adorable i love i love how um just how harmless they are it's just wonderful to have such a you know i've had shepherds i've had

other been around other dogs i've been around wolf dogs and they're impressive and they have other qualities but there is something so wonderful been around wolf dogs, and they're impressive, and they have other qualities. But there is something so wonderful to that just pure love. Yeah. They're just a pet. Yeah. They're just a pet. They're just a pet.

Just a loving member of your family that is murderous to squirrels. Murderous to squirrels, and I severely believe that if somebody broke into my house, all they have to do is pet them. Yeah. You know what I mean? They're not really going to know. I don't, you know. I don't think they're, like, tuned into danger like a shepherd is. No.

Or a pit bull is. I mean, these are, you know, our family dogs, they've never experienced danger. Right. You know, you can go like this, and they're like, what? What's going on? Yeah, what's going on? You waving? Are you going to pet me?

Right, right, right. They don't care. Yeah. I know. It's just, it's an amazing thing, but it's also weird. It's so, it's like, what an amazing thing, but it's also weird. It's like what a beautiful creation, but also so strange that we have subverted nature in some bizarre way that's turned this predator, this hunting pack predator, into this family creature that's like literally one of the family. Like Marshall, he's one of my children.

Yeah. The only time that gets too much for me is when you get down to like those little bulldogs that can't breathe. Oh, God. Like where I feel like that's abusive breeding. It's weird. It's weird. It's weird. Like why would you want that thing like that?

They're really cute. You ever see that meme where they're like pug owners? Isn't he so cute? And then they're like the pug. And it's like a picture of Steve Buscemi in that Adam Sandler movie with his eyeballs going different ways. Yeah. They're, they're fucking chihuahuas too.

Some of them are their fucking tongues hanging out and their eyes are sideways. Yeah. Like why'd you do that? Yeah. Why did you do that? It's a weird breed. It is so, it's so weird. But, but at the same time, it's, it's very, I think it's great that we, that we can have

this, this incredibly loyal loyal like i was just reading something that chimps don't take iqs from humans like dogs you know you know you look at your dog you you just look at the leash you look at the door and they don't really yeah they are so locked into us yeah and like no other animal does that right and like i've seen an elephant identify a pregnant person i saw an elephant walk up to a woman, touch her on the stomach, and then like call the other elephants and be like, yo, this one's pregnant.

And they all started, they knew shit that we don't know. She was like, this is cool. She has a baby. And they were like more careful. The elephant thing is so bizarre because they recognize each other after decades of being apart. They're so smart that I think when I look at an elephant,

I see a non-human being. I don't look at it like there's animals and there's cockroaches and there's dogs and there's rhinos and cows and all that shit. That's fine. When I look at an elephant, I look at it and I'm like, you, they treat you like an animal, but they shouldn't. I've seen them do things that are so intelligent i've seen them be so compassionate that i think that we are just not smart enough to understand how smart that they are

and and just because they're not changing their environment and typing things and we just have a distorted idea of intelligence i think that yeah well like you said your intelligence is the ability to interact with your environment and survive in it. And it's like they've gardened all of the habitat that they exist in. Like when you watch an elephant twisting branches and creating that that environment and they're going and grazing around on everything and moving that forest. And there's mushrooms growing out of the piles of shit that they leave. And it's just like there's so much elephant dung and there's so much complex structure and and the thing is as a human usually what we do is we watch either we watch elephants in the zoo where you're looking at

basically like a mentally deranged elephant that's been kept in a box its whole life or you're in like a game drive vehicle and you drive up to elephants in the field and they're like ah shit humans and then they like, ah, shit, humans. And then they like walk off. Very rarely do we get to see human elephants alone in nature problem solving. And so like then you'll get these articles where scientists will be like, we gave elephants like a key and a lock. And so many of them couldn't figure it out. It's like, well, that's you're giving elephants a human problem to solve.

You're not giving them an elephant problem to solve. It's like, well, you're giving elephants a human problem to solve. You're not giving them an elephant problem to solve. One time I was with a, I had a Jeep and it had a whole thing of bananas in it. And I was working with this elephant. He was a bandit. He had been mugging banana guys. There's a road that went through the jungle and this elephant was going out and he would stop them.

He would stop the truck and then the other elephants would come and they would mug the banana guy. So by the time he got to where he was going, he wouldn't have any bananas. So the Indian forest department had to show up and they like shackled this poor elephant. His name was Dharma. And they like threw him in elephant jail. I have a picture of elephant jail on there. Um, but he, one day he caught me with bananas and he came up to the Jeep and he was like, yo bananas. And of, I'm looking up at him. I'm like, hey, I'm a good boy. Good boy. He, like, pushed me to the side. He was like, you don't call me good boy.

That's elephant jail. But, yeah, he took the Jeep and he shouldered it, put it up on two wheels, made dead-ass eye contact with me. And he was like, are you going to give me the bananas or not? And I was like, just put the Jeep. You know, I was in this – suddenly I was in an argument that i couldn't win with an elephant i was like please put the put the car down you put the car down and then i was like come on come over this way put it up eventually i had to give him the bananas or he was he and he was threatening me he pushed it up just enough and stopped and looked at me wow he was, you want me to do this?

Because it seems like you like it when it's this side up. I don't know though. And I was like, it was actually terrifying in that moment because I was like, I can't overpower you.

I can't like threaten you with, there's no way for me as a smart human to win this argument. And he just looked at me. And then he got his bananas. And then the next day

when he did it uh my friend neithi had a hack for it she was the one who was really in charge of this but she would go and take a cup of water and throw it at his face he would slap him and you know he'd be like i hate that and then he'd like get upset and walk away but but they really uh it's surprising like jane goodall changed humanity being like uh you know she discovered that that animals use tools and it's like you watch elephants they use tools all day long you know like I've seen elephant like rip off a stick and like use that to scratch yeah they're so they're just they're just brilliant they're just brilliant they know we've seen those videos of elephants painting I'm skeptical already but no what are they paying ever seen it. They taught an elephant to paint an elephant.

And the elephant's literally painting a trunk. Really? Yeah, it's impressive. I don't doubt it. I just wonder what the incentive... I mean, I guess like everything else. Didn't they send us one? They sent us a painting that one of the elephants had made.

A painting of an elephant by an elephant? They make things. I don't know how they're teaching them how to make these shapes. I don't know if the elephant recognizes that it's making the image of an elephant or if they've taught them to make specific shapes. I don't know what they do, but here, we'll show you a video.

These elephants take a paintbrush, they put it in their trunk, and they dip the paint and start working on canvas. I mean, I don't doubt it I honestly I wouldn't put much past an elephant and I mean they they do this so here's this elephant and they give this elephant this is all real video I thought like is this is pre-ai shit too so this elephant he puts the paintbrush in the elephant's trunk and the elephant walks up to the palette come on to canvas, and starts painting.

Starts painting his girlfriend. Look at this. Also, look at how dexterous that trunk is. Yeah. Look at the control that he has. See, it's looking. It's creating something that mimics what what it is and so this guy has to dip the paint for it gives it back to the elephant

wonder why the wonder why he dips the paint for him wow look at that you can already see it's gonna be an elephant so the paint i don't think the elephant totally understands it needs more paint you know it knows when it gives it the brush, the paint's on it. That's what makes me think. Look at this man. Oh, look at that. He even has the mouth. Yeah, look at this.

That's a better elephant than most people could draw. Yeah, better than like most kids for sure. Like look at this. It's really incredible. But it's somehow or another, it's not being guided so it knows how to do this. Yeah, it just, my gut says that there's something gimmicky about this. I don't know. Yeah, like I mean you could train You can train a lot of behaviors, right? But so how is it training it to make these shapes?

Which is so specific. It's very it's literally drawing itself. I Would like an explanation Like like because it's really good like does the legs the legs are proportionate the mouth is good the trunk is up it's like oh my god yeah no but yeah there was no did you did you cut that Jamie just guys see I'm skipping ahead okay okay in a video I was gonna be like I call bullshit cuz it and I don't skip ahead just let it play out let's just take a look at how it's doing this.

So now it's doing flowers. I read that they're trained to do this. Of course. Of course they're trained. But, like, what is this thing seeing? Does it know that, I mean, you have to train a child to paint, too. Wait, but you know they use medicine. Like, they've documented elephants eating plants that induce labor that African tribes use. And then they found the elephant doing it.

There's published papers on this. What? Elephants use medicine. What? Yeah. What kind of plants that they find induce labor? I wish I remembered the name of it. I was just looking this up because somebody told me and I didn't believe them.

But there's a plant that helps induce labor in some African tribes that they chew when mothers are like right on the cusp of giving birth. And this one researcher found elephants eating a ton of this stuff and then having babies and then went back and studied it again and again. Wow. Elephants might be able to self-medicate to induce labor. Wow. Like this world is wild. God, that's so interesting. So they know that the elephants have been trained, right?

Yeah, that's what I was going to get into. So trained to make that specific image, but still. Try getting a dog to do that. It's not going to be able to do that. How smart is that damn thing? I mean, that's the thing. I think that's what I'm struggling to get out here is that you can train a dog to do very complex tasks, like a sheep dog. Or like that guy who has like 400 different things and he goes, you know, get the ball, get the sponge, get the thing.

But like that to me is still a gimmick. Whereas like the fact that they have culture the fact that elephants have taught other elephants that you can chew on this when you need to have a baby right they have shit that we're not realizing right like we just look at them we're like oh they're giant grass-eating octopus face things like with butterfly ears like cool why not right but it's like if we spend that time or the fact that they do the the low vibration communication where they can communicate through the earth where they rumble. And they can send like, you know,

there's water over here, come. And like, we can't hear that. What are they doing when they're doing that? They're pounding on the ground? Like how are they? No, they're rumbling. And they're sending through those. So they're an elephant skeletal structure. Like it's like the foot is up.

And so the whole bottom of their foot, I once had an elephant step on my foot and it doesn't hurt as much as you think because it's very soft under there. And so they can actually like rumble and transmit information so they shake their body no they're it's a it's a it's inside of them and it transmits it through the ground yeah and like vast distances too miles and miles wow yes oh my god yes no that this is this is elephants can communicate in a way that we can't hear using the earth

is that the sound of it so it says this is i mean there's obviously some other you can hear that low frequency rumble it's very low wow it's like a whale. They're like avatar creatures, right? There's another one. Look at that. Yeah. How crazy they are.

Wow. That's amazing. And they're talking. This is great. We should always have this soundtrack on. I love this. Yeah, I should go to bed to this. This is like a warm blanket. This is great. We should, we should, we should, we should always have this soundtrack on. I love this. Yeah. I should go to bed to this. This is like a warm blanket.

This is wonderful. Yeah. You know, people like sleep with the static sound, sleep to this. Oh, what dreams you would have. Oh my God.

Don't lose this link. I'm going to listen to that tonight. That's amazing. That's great. I did not know they did that. Yeah. But like the fact that they're transmitting, like, I don't, I don't know, I actually don't know how complex it gets, but like that they can be like, hey, you know, there's water over here, guys. You know, or that there's simple communications.

Like I know vervet monkeys have different calls for aerial predator versus lion versus whatever. So they actually have like a type of, you know, dialogue. They can talk to a degree. I've heard that monkeys even trick each other. Like when some monkeys are going after fruit, a monkey will make the sound of like an eagle. And then the other monkeys will take off and then they'll run and steal the fruit. Why not? Why not?

Why not? Deception. So smart. Deception in the monkey community. Yeah, it's wild, man. That sound thing is incredible. That was really awesome. I have this monkey video queued up you wanted to show a long time community. Yeah, it's wild, man. That sound was incredible. That was really awesome. I have this monkey video queued up you wanted to show a long time ago.

Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. We were talking about the things we eat in the jungle, and I was talking about the bamboo and the things and the other things, and I wanted to show you this. Let me just set this up for you. This is one of my friends who used to be a logger. This is one of the guys that's been at war with the uncontacted tribes.

This is his daughter, and she's six. This was the other day. And I found her sitting there and I said, what is your favorite food? And she went this. And then I just watched her rip into this thing and just her favorite food is monkey. Yeah.

Yeah. The beginning of the video, I'm like, what's your favorite food? And she's like, monkey. Oh, my God. There's something so bizarre about watching a child eat a monkey head. I mean, she's like really getting into that shit.

She's like in the tendons in the brain. Oh, boy. Did you try monkey? Yeah. No, I helped her with that one because she couldn't. What does monkey taste like? I mean, that not very good because they just throw it on the fire. But they like it.

If it's prepared okay. And again, I always get like a barrage. I get that thing where people, it's like I've devoted my life to protecting the rainforest. And then people are like, how could you pick up that snake? You were torturing it. And it's like, you got to deal with those people. And it's like, yeah, we eat monkeys, guys, like protecting the rainforest. And then people are like, how could you pick up that snake? You were torturing it. And it's like, you got to deal with those people. And it's like, yeah, we eat monkeys, guys, like in the jungle.

Like when you're hanging out with local people, they eat monkeys. And if you're at their house, you eat a monkey too. How often do they eat monkeys? All the time. All the time, man. But no, somebody handed me a plate not that long ago. We got to this community.

We actually went with jungle keepers. We were like, we get to this community and they come out with macaw feathers and robes on and shit. And they give us this bowl and they're like, welcome, eat. And the bowl, we looked at it and we were all like side eyeing each other. And we're like, oh shit. And it had a monkey hand. It had a piece of a taper. It had a piranha.

And it had the foot of a yellow footed tortoise, which looks like Bowser's foot from Super Mario. Like it was this big, scaly, gnarly thing with rice. And they were like, welcome. And then like, yeah, you can't be like, oh, you have to be like, thank you. And you're like eating this bowl. It's like new at the zoo. It's like, guys, I really wanted to protect the animals what does the foot taste like the foot was the best thing in the bowl really yeah because the monkey hand was like sinewy and disgusting and um taper i feel too bad eating a tail i don't want to eat a tail that's that's it so i was

actually able to use the foot like those those big scales like this claws at the end so you could actually kind of use it as like this giant spoon for the rice and so we were all just like sitting there in this really really remote community worrying about getting shot and just like playing with all the different animals in our bowl and like and you have to eat it all right i mean you got to eat it all otherwise you look like a you look like a stupid gringo if you don't right you know because all the local guys are like dude give me your foot give me your foot can i have the hand and they're like do you want the balls and they're like somebody give me taper balls and like everyone's fighting over everything and so like if you're like no thank you it's like well you're just not you know i want them i my reputation down there i'm like i want

to be seen yeah in with them respecting their way of life their local customers how many monkeys you think you've eaten i'll tell you when we're off the air no i've probably a handful of times had monkey the the sickest i've ever been was for monkey as well because they left it out all day they don't have refrigeration oh boy so somebody cooked me monkey and then i ate it and then i like i like walked out back and i was like is that the other half of the monkey you just cooked me and they're like yeah and it was like covered in flies and it was like had been out all day it was completely rancid so it's basically i just ate roadkill oh boy and i was just that was the sickest ever oh this this one got some controversy man this poor little diaris

just trying to eat her dinner and everyone freaked out and what is she eating there that's a turtle a turtle yeah and people are mad that? It's a turtle. A turtle? Yeah. And people are mad that she's eating a turtle? Oh, the comments section on this are garbage fire. So she was, I mean, literally, she was just eating dinner. I was just taking a video of her. But I mean, people were like, how could you let her do this?

And I was like, let her eat? Yeah, Jesus, what are you talking about? Yeah. But she's adorable. She's so tough. She actually, I saw her, the last time I saw her, she took an ax and she like broke open this log and she pulled out this grub that was bigger than my thumb. And she was like, eat it. And I was like, I don't want it.

And she was like, why not? And I was like, you're six. I was like, because I don't want grub right now. And she just took it and bit the pincers on the face of it. She like bit the pincers off. She was like, what about now? And I realized this kid was like, you afraid to eat a grub?

So then, of course, I ate like 10 grubs. And I was like, there, okay. But she's tough like that. She grew up in the jungle. Challenging you. Yeah. She senses that you're a little bit of an outsider. Yeah.

She was just like, are you as comfortable with this as I am? I was like, oh. I was not prepared for that. She's like, let me put down what I'm doing and eat more grubs than you, kid. What's a grub taste like? Brainy grass. It's mushy.

The worst thing about a grub is that if you don't cook them and you just like, or when you start to cook them, when the nematodes come out of them, when the parasites that are living in the grubs come out. Yeah, so I mean, nothing seems to happen usually, I think. Do you have to cook them? You should cook them. Was she cooking them? Nope. No, she was eating them like popcorn. I couldn't keep my mind.

All these videos of her just eating them, they're hysterical. And then they had a baby. He's got a baby. It's like a, he was like an infant. And the mom is popping them in the baby, little tiny soft ones without the pincers but she's popping them in and like the whole family like it was like you got popcorn at the movie theater it's like we couldn't you couldn't fight over it fast enough everybody wanted to grow up and then she just picked the biggest gnarliest motherfucker with the gnarliest fangs and she was like put this in your mouth are they nutritious they're very nutritious really oh

they're amazing yeah no and if you cook them they are delicious really yeah they're sweet uh no they call them suri oh so they like they'll stick a bunch of them on a stick and then fry them and stuff there's a bunch of what does it taste like when you fry them when you fry them it's crunchy it's good like that you i guarantee if you blindfolded somebody and fed them fried grubs they would be totally stoked about it. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

No, they're delicious. Shout out to Roy Raquelme for making the best fried grubs. Yeah, no. So that could be like a menu item. Yeah, no. Yeah. Like you go to Peru and like. Oh, there they are.

Oh, still alive. They're alive on the skewers. Yeah, but like I've seen like the way people give like a baby a lollipop or something. So this is like a market where they're just cooking them on the market. Yeah. These guys seem to be enjoying them. They do look kind of tasty. Yeah.

Wow. Let's eat grubs. Dude, you have a fascinating life. I have a weird life. It's pretty weird, but it's pretty fucking cool. Yeah. Well, dude, I've been waiting so long to say thank you face to face, and I mean it. Thank you so much.

Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. It really, really altered how things went. I appreciate you altering the entire course of everything and making it possible to protect all those heartbeats. It's a crazy place. You should come see it sometime. You and Lex. Listen, it's my pleasure.

And I thank you for what you're doing. And I thank you for coming here. And I hope more people will understand and more people get involved now because of this. Because of this conversation. I think they will. Yeah, let's save an entire river. That insane carnival of life. Let's protect that entire thing.

Listen, I think we could do this kind of show a bunch of times too. So, like, anytime new things are coming on and new things are happening or anything you want to talk about, let's do it. All right, man. As soon as I get some weird new parasites. I was actually thinking of trying to keep the botfly. Oh, God. I was like, we're going to take it out on you. No, no.

It's no need. Are you sure? I'm positive. I guess you want to eat it afterwards. Jesus. Show me how tough you are. Yikes. Do they eat botflies?

No. Do they cook them? No. No. No. No. No. Oh, Jesus. Show me how tough you are. Yikes. Do they eat bot flies? No. Do they cook them? No. No. No. No. Oh, no. That's taking it too far.

They cook tarantulas. I know that, right? Tarantulas apparently taste like crab. I've never actually had one. I mean, I've eaten pretty much everything, but I've never had a tarantula. Apparently, David Good's people, the Yanomami, they do that. They cook up some nice tarantulas. Well, listen, man.

Thank you so much for being here, and thank you for everything that you're doing. It's courageous. It's amazing. It's inspiring. It's really interesting. And your book, which is available right now. Mother of God. Yeah.

I'm listening to it on audio right now. It's incredible. So thank you. Thanks for being here, man. Let's do it again. Thank you so much. My pleasure. All right.

Fireflame. being here man let's do it again thank you so much my pleasure all right