Kind: captions
Language: en
where are we right now Paul Lex we are
in the middle of
nowhere it's the Amazon jungle there's
vegetation there's insects there's all
kinds of creatures a million heartbeats
a million eyes so uh really where are we
right now we are in Peru in a very
remote part of the western Amazon basin
and because of the proximity of the
andian cloud forest to the lowland
tropical rainforest we are in the most
biodiverse part of planet Earth there's
more life
per square acre per square mile out here
than there is anywhere else on Earth not
just now but in the entire fossil
record the following is a conversation
with Paul Rosy his second time in the
podcast but this time we did the
conversation deep in the Amazon jungle I
traveled there to hang out with Paul and
it turned out to be an adventure of a
lifetime I will post a video capturing
some aspects of that Adventure in a week
or so it included everything from
getting lost in dense unexplored
Wilderness with no contact to the
outside world to taking very high doses
of
iasa and much more Paul by the way aside
from being my good friend is a
naturalist Explorer author and is
someone who has dedicated his life to
protecting the rainforest for this
Mission he founded jungle Keepers you
can help him if you go to Jungle
keepers.com
it please check out our sponsors in the
description and now dear friends here's
Paul
rosley I can't believe we're actually
here I can't believe you actually came
and I can't believe you forced me to
wear a
suit that was the People's Choice trust
me all right we've been through quite a
lot over the last few days we've been
through a bit let me ask you a
ridiculous
question what are all the creatures
right now if they wanted to could uh
cause us harm the thing is the Amazon
rainforest has been described as the
greatest natural Battlefield on Earth
because there's more life here than
anywhere else which means that
everything here is fighting for survival
the trees are fighting for sunlight the
animals are fighting for prey
everybody's fighting for survival so
everything that you see here everything
around us will be killed eaten digested
recycled at some point the jungle is
really just a giant churning machine of
death and life is kind of this moment of
stasis where you you maintain this
collection of cells in a particular DNA
sequence and then and then it gets
digested again and recycled back and
renamed into
everything and uh so so the things the
things in this Forest while they don't
want to hurt us there are things that
are heavily defended because for
instance a giant anteater needs claws to
fight off a Jaguar a stingray needs a
stinger on its tail which is basically a
serrated knife with Venom on it to deter
anything that would hunt that Stingray
even the catfish have pectoral fins that
have razor long steak Knife sized
defense systems then you have of course
the Jaguars The Harpy eagles the piranha
the candiru fish that can swim up a
penis Lodge themselves inside it's the
Amazon rainforest the thing is as you've
learned this week nothing here wants to
get us with the except exception of
maybe
mosquitoes every other animal just just
wants to eat and exist in peace that's
it but there is each of those animals
like could describe have a kind of
radius of Defense so if you accidentally
step into its home yeah into that radius
it can cause harm or make them feel
threatened make them feel threatened
there is a defense mechanism that is
activated some incredible defense
mechanisms I mean you're talking about
17t black cayman crocodiles that with
significant size that could rip you in
half anacondas the largest snake on
earth Bush Masters that can grow up to
be nine to I think even 11 ft long and
I've caught Bush Masters that are
thicker than my arms so for people who
don't know Bushmaster snakes what are
these things these are vipers it's the
LGE I believe it's the largest Viper on
Earth venomous extremely venomous with
hinged teeth tissue destroying Venom
like if you get bitten by a Bushmaster
they say you don't you don't rush and
try and save your own life you try to
savor what's around you look at look
around at the world smoke your last
cigarette call your mom that's it so
that moment of stasis that is life is
going to end abruptly when you interact
with one of those yeah I even have even
this this seemingly can I just pause at
how incredibly beautiful it is that you
could just reach to your right and grab
a piece of the Jungle it's like it's
like a even this seemingly beautiful
little Fern if you if you go this way on
the fern you're fine as soon as ow as
soon as you go this way there's
invisible little spikes on there if you
want
to oh I see I feel see that so like
everything is defended if you're driving
on the road and you have your arm out
the or if you're on a motorcycle going
through the jungle and you get one of
these it'll just tear all the skin right
off your body it's kind of doing that to
me now so what what would you do like we
were going through the dense
jungle
yesterday and you slide down the hill
your foot slips you slideing down and
then you find yourself staring a couple
feet away from a bush Master snake what
are you doing you're for people somehow
don't know are somebody who loves
admires snakes who has met thousands of
the snakes has worked with them respects
them celebrates them what would you do
with a bush Master snake face to face
face to face this has happened um I've
been there it's nice um I've come face
to face with the bushmaster and there's
two things there's two reactions that
you might get one is if the bushmaster
decides that it's vacation time if it's
sleeping if he just had a meal they'll
come to the edges of trails or beneath a
tree and they'll just circle up little
spiral big spiral big pile of snake on
the trail and they'll just sit there and
one time there was a snake sitting on
the side of a trail beneath a tree for 2
weeks this snake was just sitting there
resting digesting his food out in the
open in the rain in the sun in the night
didn't matter you go near it barely even
crack a
tongue now the other option is that you
get a Bushmaster that's alert and
hunting and out looking for something to
eat and they're ready to defend
themselves and so I once came across a
Bushmaster in the jungle at night and
this
Bushmaster turned its head towards me
looked at me and made it very clear I'm
going to go this way and so I did the
natural thing that any snake Enthusiast
would do and I grabbed its tail now 11t
later by the head the snake turned
around and just said if you want to meet
God I can arrange the meeting I will
oblige and I decided to let the
bushmaster go MH and so it's it's like
that with most animals you know a Jaguar
will turn and look at you and just
remind you of how small you are like
what did you see in the snake's eyes
what how did you sense that this is not
the right this is not this is going to
be your end if you proceed his Readiness
I I I wanted to get him by the tail and
show him to the people that were there
and maybe work with the snake a little
bit as an 11 foot snake he the snake
turned around and made it very clear
like not today pal it's not going to
happen is in the eyes and the movement
and the tension of the body the movement
it was the movement and the S of the
neck it was it was it was as if you
pushed me and I went let's go make my
day yeah like he just looked a little
bit too yeah too ready he's like I love
this okay all right so you know you just
know you just know whereas like the
snake you met last night yeah beautiful
snake such a calm little thing he just
focuses on eating baby lizards and
little snails and things and that snake
has no concept of Defending itself it
has no way to defend itself so even a
even something the size of a blue jay
could just come and just Peck that thing
in the head and swallow it and it's a
helpless little snake so it's it's
really it kind of depends on the animal
depends on the mood you catch him in
each one has a different temperament the
grace of its movement was mesmerizing
curious almost maybe I'm the prizing
projecting onto it but it was the tongue
flicking was a sign of curiosity was
trying to figure out what was going on I
like why am I on this treadmill of human
skin you know they're just just trying
to get to the next thing trying to get
hidden trying to get away from the light
also the texture of the scales is really
fascinating I mean it's my first the
first Nick I've ever touched is so
interesting it just such an incredible
system of muscles that are all
interacting together to make that kind
of movement work and all the texture of
its skin of its scales what what do you
love about snakes from my first
experience with a snake to all the
thousands of experiences you had with
snakes what do you love about these
creatures I think it's when you just
spoke about it it was that's the first
snake you've met and it was a tiny
little snake in the jungle and you spoke
about it with so much light in your eyes
and I think that because we've been
programmed to be scared of snakes
there's something there's something
wondrous that happens in our brain maybe
maybe it's just this this this Joy of
discovery that there's nothing to be
scared of and whether it's a rattlesnake
that is dangerous and that you need to
give distance to but you look at it from
a distance and you go whoa or it's a
harmless little grass snake that you can
pick up and enjoy and give to a child
it's they're just these strange legless
animals that just exist you know they
don't even have eyelids they're so
different than us they have a tongue
that sens senses the air and they to me
are so beautiful and I've I've my whole
life been defending snakes from humans
and it's it's they seem misunderstood I
think they're incredibly beautiful
there's every color and variety of
snakes there's venomous snakes there's
tree snakes there's huge crushing
anacondas it's just of the
2,600 species of snakes that exist on
Earth there's just such beauty such
complexity and such Simplicity they're
just they're just to me to me um I feel
like I feel like I'm I'm friend with
snake and and they rely on me to protect
them from my
people friend was snake me friend snake
me friend snake you said some of them
are sometimes aggressive some of them
are peaceful is this a mood thing a
personality thing a species thing is it
what is it so as far as I know there's
only really two snakes on earth that
could be aggressive because aggression
indicates uh uh offense and so a
reticulated python has been documented
as eating humans anacondas although
while it hasn't been publicized they
have eaten humans um every single other
snake from Boa constrictor to to Bush
Master to spitting cobra to grass snake
to gter snake to everything else every
single other snake does not want to
interact with you they have no interest
so there's no such thing as an
aggressive snake once you get outside of
anaconda and reticulated python
aggression could be trying to eat you
that's pration
but for every other snake a rattlesnake
if it was there would either go escape
and hide itself or it would rattle its
tail and tell us don't come closer a
cobra will Hood up and begin to hiss and
say don't approach me I'm asking you
nicely not to mess with me and most
other snakes are fast or they stay in
the trees or they're extremely
camouflaged but their wholeo is just
don't bother me I don't want to be seen
I don't want to be messed with in fact
all I want to be do is be left alone and
once in a while I just want to eat and
by the way when you see a snake drink
your heart will break it's like seeing
it's the only thing that's cuter than a
puppy like watching a snake touch its
mouth to water and just you just see
that that little mouth going as they
suck water in and it's like it's just so
adorable watching this scaled animal
just be like I need water in a state of
vulnerability yeah but bro there's
nothing cuter than a little puppy with a
tongue like baby ball python all right
baby king cob baby elephant so what are
there they're like at a puddle and they
just take it in they can be at a puddle
and they just take it in or one time in
India I was with a snake rescuer and we
found this 9 foot king cobra this this
God of a snake they're opio fagus Hannah
is their Latin name and they're they're
snake eaters they're the king of the
snakes the largest venomous
snake and the people that call called
The Snake
rescuer cuz that's a profession in India
um you know it had gotten into their
kitchen or their backyard and so we
showed up and we got the snake and the
snake rescuer he knew he looked at the
snake and he went to me he said you know
why do you think this snake would go in
a house and he was quizzing me and I
actually went you know I don't know is
it warm is it cold you know like
sometimes cats like to go into into the
warm warm cars in the winter and he was
like is thirsty he goes watch this he
took a water bottle poured it over now
the snake is standing up the snake
stands up 3T tall this is a huge king
cobra with a hood terrifying snake to be
around he leans over to the snake and
the snake is standing there trusting him
and he takes a water bottle and pours it
onto the snake's nose and the snake
turns up its nose and just starts
drinking from the water bottle human
giving water to snake big scary snake
but this human understood snake gets
water snake gets released in Jungle
everybody is okay so sometimes the
needs are simple they just don't have
the words to communicate them to us
humans yeah and is it disinterest or is
it fear almost like they don't notice
this or is it where Source the unknown
aspect of it the uncertainty is a is a
source of danger well animals live in a
constant state of danger like if you
look at that deer that we saw last night
it's stalking Through the Jungle
wondering what's going to eat it
wondering if this is the last moment
it's going to be alive it's like animals
are constantly terrified of that this is
their last moment yeah just for the
listener we're walking through the
jungle late at night so Darkness except
our headlamps on and then all of a
sudden Paul stops he's like sh he looks
in the distance he sees two eyes he's I
think you thought is that a jaguar or is
it a deer and it was moving its head
like this MH like uh scared or maybe
trying to figure trying to localize
itself trying to figure out trying to
see around doing the same to it the two
of you like moving your head yeah and
like deep into the jungle like I don't
know uh it's pretty far away through the
trees you can still see it 30 30 ft or
so yeah that's the thing to actually
mention I mean the with headlamp you see
the reflection their eyes it's kind of
incredible just to see a creature to try
to identify a creature by just the the
Reflection from its eyes yeah and so the
cats sometimes you'll get like a
greenish or a bluish glow from the cats
the deer are usually white to arm orange
Cayman orange night jars orange snakes
can usually be like orange moths um
spiders Sparkle and so you have all
these different as you walk through the
jungle you can see all these different
eyes and when something large looks at
you like that deer did your first thing
is what animal is this that I am staring
back at cuz through the light you kind
of get you see the reflection off the
the bright light off the leaves and I
couldn't tell at first cuz I actually
those big bright eyes could have been an
ocelot could have been a Jaguar could
have been a deer and then when it did
this movement that's what the cats do
they try to see around your
light thought maybe Lex Freeman's here
we're going to get lucky it's going to
be a Jag right off Trail your definition
of Lucky is a complicated one yeah it's
a fascinating process when you see those
two eyes trying to figure out what it is
and it is trying to figure out what you
are that process uh let's talk about
cman we've seen a lot of different kinds
of size we've seen a baby one a bigger
one tell me about these uh 16 foot plus
apex predators of the Amazon rainforest
the big bad black cayman which is the
largest reptilian predator in the Amazon
except for the Anaconda they kind of
both share that that that Notch of apex
predator they were actually hunted to
endangered species level in the 70s cuz
they're they're leather Black Scale
leather but they're coming back they're
coming back and they're huge and they're
beautiful and I was I was walking near a
lake and I never understood how big they
could get except for I was walking near
a lake last year and I was following the
stream you know what it's like when you
f a little stream and there's just a
little trickle of water and all of a
sudden this River had been running the
other direction on the tree on the
stream River comes up to me and I swear
to God this animal looked to me went hey
and I went hey he like didn't expect to
see me there and he turned around he
like did a little spin started running
down the stream then he turned around
and you could tell he was like let's go
and I you know I'm not
anthropomorphizing here the animal was
asking me to come with him so I followed
the river down the stream we started
running down the stream and the river
looks at me one more time is like yo
jumps into the lake and I'm like what
does he want me to see now in the lake
there's River ERS doing Dives and
freaking out and going up and down and
up and down and they're very excited
they're screaming they're
screeching all of a sudden and I've
never seen anything like this except for
in like Game of Thrones this crackhead
comes flying out of the water all of the
river ERS were attacking this huge black
cman 16
head half the size of this table and she
was thrashing her tail around creating
these huge waves in the water trying to
catch an otter and they're so fast that
they were zipping around her biting her
and then going around and this otter
swear to God inter species looked at me
and went watch this we're fucking with
this C it was amazing and I for the
first time I got to stand there watching
this incredible interspecies fight
happening they weren't trying to kill
the Cayman they were just trying to mess
with it m and the Cayman was doing his
best to try trying and kill these otter
and they were just having a good time in
that sick sort of hyper intelligent
animal like wolf sort of way where they
were just going you can't catch us yeah
like intelligence and Agility versus
like raw power and dominance I mean I
got the
handle some smaller Cay in and just the
power they had you know you scale that
up to imagine what a 16t even a 10 foot
any any kind of black hon the kind of
power they deliver maybe can you talk to
that like
the power they can generate with their
tail with their neck with their jaw
alligators and Cayman and crocodiles
have some of the strongest bite forces
on Earth think a saltwater crocodile
wins as the strongest bite force on
Earth and you got to hold about a what
was it a 4 foot spectacle
Cayman and you got to feel I mean you're
a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu how do you how
do you compare the the explosive force
you felt from that animal compared to
what a human can generate
it's uh it's difficult to describe in
words there's a lot of power and we're
talking about the power of the neck like
the what is it I mean there's a lot it
can generate power all up and down the
body so probably the tail is a monster
mhm but just just the neck and you know
not not to mention the the power of the
bite that and the speed too because uh
the thing I saw and got to experience is
how still and calm at least from my
amateur perspective it seems
calm uh still and then from that sort of
0 to 60 could just just go wi it's
thrashing and then there's also a
decision it makes in that Split Second
whether uh as it thrashes is it going to
kind of bite you on the way or not M and
that's where that's where of the four
species of Cayman that we have here you
see differences in their personalities
as a species and so you can like just
like you know like gener
golden retrievers are viewed as a as a
friendly dog generally not every single
one of them but as a
rule spectacle came in puppies You
released one in the river and it did
nothing didn't bite one of your fingers
it just swam away
mhm we dropped one in the river and what
did it do it chose peace now I had a
smooth fronted Cayman a few weeks ago
and this was probably about a three and
a half footer not big enough to kill you
but very much big enough to grab one of
your fingers and just shake it off your
body just death roll right off and as I
was being careful totally different
Cayman than the one that you got to see
this one has spikes coming off it
they're like like like left over
dinosaurs it's like they evolved during
the dinosaur times and never changed
they have spikes and bony plates and all
kinds of strange growths That You Don't
See on the other smoother Cayman and I
tried to release this one without
getting bitten and I threw it into the
stream gently into the water just went
wah and tried to pull my hands back and
as I pulled my hand back this came and
in the air turned around and just tried
to give me one parting blow and just got
one tooth whack right to the bone of my
finger and uh uh bone injury feels
different than a skin injury so you in
instantly and it just reminds you of
that's a came in with a head this big
and it hurt and I know that it could
have taken off my finger now if you
scale that up to a black
cman it's it's rib crushing it's it's
zebra head removing size you know just
just meat destroying it's it's incred
it's Nature's metal sort of you know
just raw power so what's the the the
biggest croc you've been able to handle
we were doing Cayman surveys for years
and we would go out at night and you
want to figure out what are the
populations of black cayman spectacle
Cayman smooth fry Cayman dwarf Cayman
and the only way to see which Cayman
you're dealing with is to catch it
because a lot of times you get up close
with the light and you can see the eyes
at night but you can't quite see what
species it is for instance this past few
months we found two baby black cayman on
the river which is unprecedented here we
haven't seen that in decades so it's
important that we monitor our Croc
population so I started catching small
ones um in mother God I write about the
first one that me and JJ caught together
which was probably a little bigger than
this table and uh probably mid 20s
bravado and competition with other young
males of my species led to
me trying to go as big as I could mhm
and I jumped on a spectacle came that
was slightly longer than I am and I'm
5'9 so I I jumped on this probably 6ot
Croc and quickly realized that my hands
couldn't get around its neck and my legs
were wrapped around the base of its tail
and the thrash was so intense that as it
took me one side I barely had enough
time to realize what was happening
before it beat me against the ground my
headlamp came off so now I'm blind in
the dark laying in a river in the Amazon
rainforest hugging a 6ot
crocodile and I went
JJ as I always do but I in that moment
before I even let go I knew I couldn't
let go of the Croc because if I let go
of the Croc I thought she was going to
destroy my face so I said okay now I'm
stuck here if I just stay here I can't
release her I need help but I was like
I'm never ever ever ever going to try
and solo catch a Croc this big again I
was like this is this is I knew in that
moment I was like this is good enough so
anything longer than you you don't have
control of the tail you don't have you
have barely control of anything really
yeah and that's a spectacle came black
cman is a is a whole other order of
magnitude there it's like saying like oh
you know I I was play fighting with my
golden retriever versus I was play
fighting with like you know what what's
the biggest scariest dog you could think
of the the dog from Sandlot a giant
gorilla dog thing like a like a malamu
something something huge what do they
call Mastiffs yeah mffs I mean you
mentioned dinosaurs what what do you
admire about black cayman what they've
been here for a very very long time
there's something something prehistoric
about their appearance about their way
of being about their presence in this
jungle with crocodiles you're looking at
this this Mega Survivor they're in a
class with sharks where it's like
they've been here so long when you talk
about multiple extinctions you talk
about the sixth Extinction Earth's going
through all this stuff the crocodiles
and the Cockroaches have seen it all
before they're like man we remember what
that Comet looked like and they're not
impressed yeah they have this they carry
this wisdom and their power yeah in the
Simplicity of their power they carry the
wisdom yeah and they're just sitting
there in the streams and they don't care
and even if there's a nuclear Holocaust
you know that there would just be some
Crocs sitting there dead eyed in that
stagnant water waiting for the life to
regenerate so they could eat again it's
going to be the remaining humans versus
the Crocs and the Cockroaches and the
Cockroaches are just background noise
yeah they'll always be there sons of
bitches you know we're talking about
individual black cayman and Cayman and
different species of Cayman but when
whenever they're together and you see
multiple eyes which I gotten to
experience it it's quite a feeling
there's just multiple eyes looking back
at you
mhm of course for you that's uh
immediate
excitement you immediately go towards
that you want to see it you want to
explore it maybe catch them analyze what
the species is all that kind of stuff
yeah what's can you just describe that
feeling when they're together and
they're looking at you so head above
water eyes reflecting the light yeah so
the other night Lex and I were in the
river with JJ surviving a thunderstorm
we're in the rain and we had covered
our covered our equipment with our boats
and the only thing that we could do was
get in the in the river to keep
ourselves dry and so we were in the
river at night in the dark no stars just
a little bit of canopy silhouetted with
all this rain coming down it was such a
d you could hardly hear anything and all
the way down river I just see this Cay
and ey in my head lamp light
mhm and I started walking towards it
because I was like this is even better
we can catch a Cayman while we're in
this thunderstorm in the Amazon River
and uh when JJ went Paul it's too
far JJ very rarely very rarely like
he'll he'll make a suggestion like he'll
usually go like maybe it's far but in
that situation deep in the wilderness
unknown Cayman size he went Paul it's
too far don't leave the three of us
right now yeah were too far out to take
risks we're too far out to be walking
along the riverbed at night because then
you know right here at the research
station if you step on a stingray you
get Evac out where we
went nothing so so for me seeing those
eyes I think I've become so comfortable
with so many of these animals that I I
may have crossed into the territory
where I feel I feel so comfortable with
with many of these animals that they
just don't worry me anymore I mean you
were I I I looked looked at you in a
raft while you had a sizable probably
about 12T black cayman right next to
your raft I watched its head go under
bubbles the bubbles it was all coming up
right next to your raft as he he was
just moving along the bottom of the
river cuz he looked at me went under and
then my raft passed and yours came over
him so now I'm looking back and your
raft is going over this black cayman and
I'm going I'm not worried at all I was
not worried I was not worried that the
Cayman would freak
out I was not worried that he would try
to attack you I knew 100% that came and
just wanted us to go so you could go
back to eating fish yeah that's it man
it's humbling it's humbling these giant
creatures and especially at night like
you were talking about and for me it's
both scary but and just beautiful when
the head goes under H cuz like
underwater it's their domain so anything
can happen so what is it doing that is
its head is going under it could be
bored it could be hungry looking for
some fish it could be maybe wanting to
come closer to you to investigate maybe
you have some food around you maybe it's
an old friend of yours and just wants to
say hi I don't know I have a few on the
river old friends um no when we see
their heads go under it's just they're
just getting out of the way we're we're
shining a light at them and they're
going why is there a light at night I'm
uncomfortable head under so these came
and again you think of it as this big
aggressive animal but I don't know
anybody that's been eaten by a black
cayman and the the smaller species
smooth fronted Cay and dwarf Cayman
spectacle Cayman they're not going to
eat any but again at the worst if you
were doing something inappropriate with
a Cayman like you jumped on it and were
trying to to do research and and it bit
your hand it could take your hand off
but that's the only time I've been
walking down the river and stepped on a
Cayman and the Cayman just swims away
and so in my mind Cayman are just these
they're peaceful dragons that sit on the
side of the river and so to me they are
my friends and I worry about them
because two months ago we were coming up
River and on one of the beaches was a
beautiful about 5 foot black cayman with
a big machete cut right through the head
the whole Cayman was wasted nothing was
eaten but the Cayman was dead what do
you think that was curious humans just
committing
violence yeah just loggers people who
aren't from this part of the Amazon
because a local person would either eat
the animal or not mess with it like pico
would never kill a Cayman for no reason
because it doesn't make any sense so
these are clearly people who aren't from
the region which usually means loggers
because they've come from somewhere else
they're doing a job here and they
they're just cleaning their pots in the
river at night and they see eyes come
near them because the Cayman probably
smells fish and then they just whack cuz
they want to see it and they're just
curious monkeys on a
beach and again me friend of Cayman I
protect from my type that said you know
you uh protect your friends and you
analyze and study your friends but
sometimes friends can have a bit of a
misunderstanding and if you have a bit
of a misunderstanding with the black
cayman I feel like just a bit of a
misunderstanding could lead to a uh bone
crushing situation but not for a little
five foot Cayman and I think that's
incredibly speciesist w a ball humans or
a ball
Cayman no like all my friends do the
same thing they go you swim in the
Amazon rainfall you know you swim in
that River and I go yes every day we you
know back flips into the river we've
been swimming in the river how many
times with the piranha and the stingray
and the candiru and the Cayman and the
anacondas all of it in the river with
us and we just do it and what's that for
you so what what allows you to doing
that to do that knowing and having
researched all the different things that
can kill you which I feel like most of
them are in the river MH what allows you
to just get in there with us well I
think it's something about you where you
become like the portal through which
it's possible to see nature is not
threatening but beautiful and so in that
you kind of Naturally by hanging out
with you I get to see the beauty of it U
there is danger out there but the danger
is part of it just like there's a lot of
danger in the city there's danger in
life there's a lot of ways to get hurt
emotionally physically there's a lot of
ways to die in the stupidest of ways we
went on a Expedition through the forest
just twisting your ankle breaking your
foot um getting a bite from a thing that
gets infected it's there's a lot of ways
to die and get hurt in the stupidest
ways in a non-dramatic Cayman eating you
alive kind of way yeah it it it strikes
me as unfair because humans we still in
our minds so so programmed to worry
about that Predator that Predator that
Predator what predator we've killed
everything black Caymans are coming off
the endangered species list we
exterminated wolves from North America I
actually heard a Suburban lady one time
tell her son watch out foxes will get
you mhm foxes yeah they eat baby rabbits
and mice well in the case of apex
predators I think when people say
dangerous
animals they really are talking about
just the power of the
animal and the black came have a lot of
power lot of power and it's almost just
a way to celebrate the power of the
animal sure and if it's in celebration
then I'm all for it because my God is
that power like the waves of of of fear
that you saw like when that tail I mean
you saw you saw the tail of the
spectacle that perfect amazing thing
with all those interlocking scales that
work so it's like a perfect creation of
engineering and then and then when you
have one that's this thick and all of a
sudden that thing is moving with all the
acceleration of that power W the volume
of water the sound that comes out of
their throat they're such they're
dragons we talked about the scales of
the snake but like they came in just the
way it felt yeah was uh incredible just
the armor the texture of it was so cool
I don't know like the the the bottom one
came in have a certain kind of texture
and it just all feels like power but
also all feels like designed really well
it's like it's like
exploring through touch like a World War
II tank or something like that just it's
the engineering that went into this
thing yeah that like the mechanism of
evolution that created a thing that
could survive for such a long time it's
just like incredible this is a work of
art the PO you know the defense
mechanisms the power of it the damage it
can do uh how effective it is as a
hunter all of that all you could feel
that in just by touching it do you ever
see the the mashup where they put side
by side the image of I think it's a
falcon in Flight next to a stealth
bomber and they're almost the exact same
design it's incredible like that what's
the equivalent for for a Croc
maybe a tank like more like armadillo
Turtle I don't know like H and yeah
there may not be a a machine a war
machine equivalent of a crocodile it
would have to have like
a big jaw element to it yeah the water I
mean we we talked also about hippos
those are interesting creatures from all
the way across the world just monsters
yeah hippos and rhinos hippos are bigger
usually or rhinos are bigger rhinos
rhinos is after elephants is the largest
white rhinos they can be terrifying too
again when you step into the defense
absolutely but I have to tell you after
being around so many rhinos your friends
you have friend I have Rhino friends
black and white rhinos Y and uh they're
all sweethearts and I mean I mean
sweethearts and I mean when you look at
a
rhino it's like a living dinosaur I know
it's a mammal but somehow it screams
dinosaur because it seems like penic and
and and from another age with the giant
horn and they're so much bigger than you
think like they're minivan sized animals
like you're you're we're not taller than
they are at the shoulder and they have
the strange shaped head and the huge
horn and they sit there eating grass all
day so if a rhino is dangerous to a
human it's because the Rhino is going
don't hurt me don't hurt me don't don't
hurt my baby and then they're like you
know what I'll just kill you it'll be
easier because you're scaring me right
now you're too close to that Rhino
yeah and so like there again I just
think it's funny because humans were so
quickly to go which snakes are
aggressive well there are no aggressive
snakes you know rhinos can be dangerous
if provoked otherwise they're peaceful
fat grass unicorns you know like they're
they're really pretty calm we have these
incredible giant animals and the largest
animals on our planet the black cman the
Rhinos the elephants all the big
beautiful stuff is becoming less and
less yeah and it almost reminds me like
in Game of Thrones they're like yeah
they in the beginning they're like yeah
there used to be dragons and it was like
this memory and it's like yeah we used
to have mammoth mys and we we used to
have Stellar sea cows that were 16 ft
long manatees and it's there were things
we used to have the Caspian tiger that
only went extinct in the '90s our
lifetimes and it's that that's
mind-blowing to me that's that that has
haunted me since I'm a child I remember
learning about Extinction and I went
wait you're telling me that I remember
being a kid and going by the time I grow
up you're saying that I gorillas could
be gone elephants could be gone and
because we're doing it and then I I just
that I I remember I remember looking at
the the NightLight being blurry cuz I
was crying I was so upset and oh and it
was Lonesome George that Turtle the
Galapagos T us where there was one left
and they said if we just if we just had
a female he could live and as a six
seven eight-year-old that destroyed me
we're all just starting to get laid
including that Turtle including that
Turtle for a few hundred years
dude so for young people out there you
think you're having trouble think about
that Turtle think about that turtle
yeah you know there's a turtle that
Darwin and Steve Irwin both owned yeah
yeah I heard about that turtle man they
live a long time yeah they've seen
things they've seen things that there's
a there's a great like internet joke
where they're like they're like accusing
him of like being uh in congruous with
modern times they're like he did nothing
to stop slavery he didn't fight in World
War II like canel the turtle yeah
canceled the turtle oh shit what a world
we live in so it's interesting you
mentioned black and and uh anacondas are
both apex
predators so it seems like the reason
they can exist in similar environments
is cu they feed on slightly different
things how is it possible for them to
coexist I read that anacondas can eat
Cay but not black cayman how often do
they come in Conflict so anacondas and
Cayman occupy the exact same Niche M and
they're born at almost the exact same
size and unlike most species they don't
have sort of a size range that they're
confined to they start at this big baby
Cayman are this big baby anacondas are a
little longer but they're they're
thinner and they don't have legs so it's
the same thing in in terms of mass and
they're all in the streams or at the
edges of lakes or swamps and so the baby
anacondas eat the baby Cayman baby
Cayman can't really take down an
anaconda they're they're going for
little insects and fish they they have a
quite a small mouth so they again it's
in their interest to hide from
everything a bird a heron can eat a baby
Cay pop it back and so they have to
survive but the Anaconda and the Cayman
kind of kind of joust as they grow can
you actually explain how the Anaconda
would take down a Cayman like would it
first uh use constriction and then eat
it or what's the meth methodology yeah
so anacondas have a kind of a I don't
know like a three-point constriction
system where their first thing is
Anchor like Jiu-Jitsu so first thing is
latch on to you I like how I'm writing
this down like all right this is jit's
like a master class here this is for
when you're wrestling in Anaconda just
in
case and you'll be like the coach and
the sideline
SC uh don't let him take the back yeah
all right so so one time me and JJ were
following a herd of Collard pecker and
JJ's teaching me tracking so we're
following you know the the hoofprints
through the mud and we're doing this and
I'm talking about no backpacks just
machetes bare feet running through the
jungle and we come to this stream and
JJ's like I think we missed him you know
I think they went and I'm like no no no
they went here look and not cuz I'm a
great tracker cuz I can see H you know a
few dozen Footprints hundreds of
individual Footprints right there and
I'm going no no they just crossed here
and JJ was like you know what we're not
going to get eyes on him today he was
like it's okay he's like we did good we
followed him for a long time and I was
like cool and then I was trying to gauge
like can I drink this stream and I see
aula and aula is a salt deposit where
animals come to to feed cuz sodium is is
is a deficiency that most herbivores
have here and all of a sudden I just
hear like the sound of a wet stick
snapping just that bone
Crunch and I look down and there's about
a 16 foot anaconda wrapped around a
freshly killed pecky wild boore and what
this Anaconda had done was as the all
the pigs were going across the stream
the Anaconda had grabbed it by the the
jaw swiped the legs wrapped around it
bent it in half and then crushed Its
Ribs and that's what the Anaconda do
whether it's to mammals to Cayman it's
all the same thing it's grab on they
have six rows of backwards facing teeth
so once they hit you they're never going
to come off you actually have to go
deeper in and then open before you can
come out all those backward facing teeth
so they have an incredible anchor system
and then they use their weight to pull
you down to Hell to pull you down into
that water wrap around you and then
start breaking you and Every Breath You
Take you go and you you're up against a
barrier and then when you when you
exhale they go a little tighter and
you're never going to get that space
back your lungs are never going to
expand again and I know this because
I've been in that Crush before JJ pulled
me out of it and so this pig the
Anaconda had gotten it and as the pig
was thrashing and the Anaconda was
wrapping around had bent it in half and
I just heard those vertebrae going yeah
and so for it's the same thing they just
grab and they wrap around it and then
they have to crush it until there's no
response they'll wait an hour they'll
wait a long time until there's no
response from the animal they'll
overpower it then they'll then they'll
reposition probably yawn a little bit
open their jaw and then start forcing
that entire now here's the crazy thing
is that an anaconda has stomach acid
capable of digesting an entire crocodile
where nothing comes out the other side
and when you see how thick the Bony
plate of a crocodile skull is that that
can go in the mouth and nothing comes
out the other side that's insane and so
it always made me wonder on a chemistry
level how you can have such incredible
acid in the stomach that doesn't harm
the Anaconda
itself and someone said but it's able to
digest oh it's some kind of mucus oh the
MU mu there's oh interesting there's
levels of protection from the Anaconda
itself but it seems like the anacon is
such a simple system as an organism know
like that simpl taking a scale could
just do the can swallow a Cayman and
digest it slowly I know but my question
was how how on Earth is it physically
possible to have this hellish bile that
can digest anything even something as as
as horrendous as a as a a c in scales
and bones and all the hardest shit in
nature and then not hurt the snake
itself and I had a chemist explained to
me that it's probably some sort of mucus
system that that lines the stomach and
and neutralizes the and keeps it
floating in there but my God that must
be powerful stuff so what does it feel
like being crushed choked by an
anaconda uh you when an anaconda is
wrapped around you and you you find
yourself in in the in the shocking
realization that these could be your
last moments breathing you are
confronted with the vast disparity and
power that there is so much power in
these animals so much crushing
deliberate reptilian ancient power that
doesn't care they're just trying to get
you to stop they just want you to stop
ticking and there's nothing you can do
and there's I find it very a inspiring
when I encounter that kind of power when
you even if it's that you see you know
you see a dog run you know you ever try
to outrun a dog and they just Zip by you
and you go wow you know or you see a
horse kick and you go oh my God if that
if that hoof hit anyone's head it'd
knock them three states over and it's
like it's like there there is muscular
power that is so far that like you said
that
explosive that we we dream of doing it
like imagine if like a a Muay Tha
kickboxer could could harness that sort
of Cayman power that
smash um and so it's it's just a
inspiring I think it's really really
impressive what animals can do and we're
we're all you know we're all the same
sort of makeup for the most part all the
mammals you know we all have our skele
skeletons look so similar we all have
like you know if you look like a kangar
biceps and chest it looks so much like a
like a like a a man's and if same thing
goes for a bear or you ever see a naked
chimp like chimps with alopecia oh shit
and so it's shed it looks like a
bodybuilder like it's got cuts and huge
huge everything like it's got pecs and
they got that face that's just like just
let me in what no where's your wallet
yeah do something but yeah but there's a
the specialization of a life
time of doing damage to the world and
using those muscles it just makes you
makes you just that much more powerful
than most humans cuz humans I guess
have more brain so they get lazy they
start puzzle solving versus you know
using the biceps directly well yes and
no and I have this question okay so I
you know that whole you are what you eat
thing now we one time here had two
chickens now one of them was a wild
chicken like from the farm had walked
around its whole life finding insects
and the other chicken was like Factory
raised mhm and so we cut the heads off
of both of them started getting ready to
cook them now the factory raised chicken
was like a much higher percentage of fat
had less muscle on its body with softer
tissue a a lighter color the farm raised
chicken had darker more seny muscles
less fat was clearly a better-made
machine and so my question is is that
what's happening with us you know like
if you go see a sherpa who's been
walking his whole life and pulling you
know and walking behind mus coxes and
lifting things up mountains and
breathing clean air and not being in the
City versus someone that's just been
chowing down at IHOP for 40 years and
never getting off the couch like I
imagine it's the same thing that you you
become what you eat yeah I mean like you
and I we're like half dead running up a
mountain meanwhile there's a grandma
just like walking and she's been walking
that road and she's just built different
with her alpaca on her shoulders with a
baby and she
just they're just build different when
you when you apply your body in a
physical way your whole life yeah like
you can't replicate that like like just
like that chimp has those from
constantly moving through the canopy
constantly using those arms just like if
you you know if you see an
Olympic Athlete or you hug
Rogan exactly you just go what why is
there so much muscle
here that's exactly what I uh what I
feel like when you give him a hug this
is this is definitely a chimp of some
sort how how does that uh just just that
the constriction of the Anaconda just
the the the feeling of that
I are they doing that based on inst
instinct or is there some brain stuff
going on like is this just like a basic
procedure that they're doing and they
just really don't give a damn they're
not like thinking oh
Paul this is this kind of species he
would taste good or is it just a
mechanism just start activating and you
can't stop it with an anaconda I really
think it's the second one I do think
that they're impressive and beautiful
and Incredibly Arcane I think they're a
very simple system a very ancient system
and I think that once you once you hit
predation mode it's going down no matter
what the stupid mosquito I'm going like
this and every time he just flies around
my hand like I'm a big Slow
Giant and he just goes around my hand
and then he goes back to the same spot
like and I'm like no and then he comes
right back to the same spot it's like
it's like he's just going fuck you now
here's the question if the mosquito is
stupid and you can't catch it what does
that make you fucking stupid dude I
flicked a wasp off me the other day it
flew back like 12 feet and in the air
corrected and then flew back at my face
it made so many corre like calculations
and Corrections and decided come back
and let me know about it and it was like
shoot and that was probably went back to
the nest said guess what happened today
this bitch ass Kid From Brooklyn tried
to flick me and I showed him what's up I
had him running they had a good Chuck on
that one uh yeah you actually mentioned
to me uh just on the topic of anacondas
that you've been uh participating in a
lot of scientific work on on on the
topic so like really in everything
you've been doing
here you are celebrating the animals
you're respecting the animals you're
protecting the animals but you're also
excited about studying the animals in
their environment So you you're actually
a co-author on on a paper uh on a couple
of papers but one of them is on
anacondas and uh studying green anaconda
hunting patterns what's that about so um
the lead authors of that paper Pat
champagne and Carter Payne uh friends of
mine and what we started noticing for me
began at that story I told you where we
were coming across the Stream and we saw
the Anaconda had had had been positioned
just below
aopa and then other people began
noticing that Anaconda seemed to always
be beneath these culpas where mammals
were going to be coming and that that
contrasted with what we knew about
anacondas because what we understood
about anacondas that they're purely
Ambush predators and they don't pursue
their prey but what we began finding out
here and Pat led the process of amazing
scientist he worked with the KD
University for a long time worked with
us for a long time and and he he was one
of the first to put a transmitter in an
anaconda right around here and we were
able to see their movements and that's
what these papers are showing is that
they actually do pursue their prey they
do move up and down using the streams as
corridors through the forest they
actually do pursue their prey they
actually do seek out food so I mean
think about it it's a it's a giant
anaconda obviously it's not it can't
just sit in one spot it has to put some
work into it and so they're using scent
and they're using communication to use
the streams so you could be walking in
the forest in a very shallow stream and
see a sizable Anaconda looking for a
meal so in a shallow
stream it moves not just in the water
but in the sand yeah so it's it also
likes so to borrow a little bit they
borrow quite a bit and so these large
snakes
operate Subterranean more than we think
interesting like there's there's times
that you'll go with a Tracker you go
with a Telemetry set and it'll
say like we'll be over the snake the
snake's underground snake has found
either a recess under the sides of the
stream you saw it last night where all
the fish have have their holes under the
side of the stream there was a there was
a six foot dwarf came in right in the
Stream right where we were standing he
had his cave he goes under there they
know they have their system yeah we
walked by it we walked by it and he
stuck his head out cuz he thought we'd
gone
and then we turned around and I just got
a glimpse of him cuz I was in the front
of the line and he just went right back
into his cave you you guys are not going
to touch me and so yeah with the
anacondas it's been really exciting and
uh in
2014 JJ and me and Mosen and Pat and Lee
we all we ended up catching what at the
time was the record for uni Marin
scientifically measured it was 18 feet 6
inches 220 pounds one of the largest
female anacondas on record
and since that time these guys have been
continuing to study the species
continuing to just again just add a
little bit by little bit to the
knowledge we have of the species and
studying green anacondas in lowland
tropical rainforest you've seen how hard
it is to to move to operate to navigate
in this environment and so when you
think of the fact that in order to learn
anything about this species you have to
spend vast amounts of time first
locating them
and then finding out a way to keep tabs
on them because even if you get lucky
enough to see an Anaconda by the edge of
a a stream to to be able to observe it
over time to learn its habits or to put
a radio transmitter on it or to take any
sort of valuable information from the
experience is almost impossible and so a
lot of the stuff that I wrote about
Mother of God us jumping on anacondas
and trying to catch them and at first it
just seemed like something we were doing
to learn to to just try and see them but
it ended up being that we were wildly
trying to figure out methodology that
would have scientific implications later
on because now it's allowing us to try
and find the largest anacondas and
people used to say there's no way there
25 foot 27 foot well there was just that
video of the guy swimming with the 20
foot anaconda and so now as we keep
going I'm going well maybe through drone
identification we could find where the
largest anacondas are sitting on top of
floating vegetation and even then how do
we restrain them so that we could
measure them and prove this to the world
it's sort of a side quest but so by
doing these kinds of studies you figure
out how they move about the world what
motivates them in terms of when they
hunt where they hide in the world as the
size of the anacon change so all of that
that's that's those are scientific
studies yeah I mean look there's so much
that we don't know about this Forest we
don't know what medicines are in this
Forest we don't know with a lot of the
1500 there's something like 4,000
species of butterflies in the Amazon am
on rainforest and of the 1500 species
that are here in this region all of them
have a laral stage caterpillars right
and each of the caterpillars has a
specific host plant that they need to
need to eat in order to become a
successful butterfly to enter the next
life cycle and for most of the species
that fill the butterfly book we don't
know what those interactions are I
recently got to see a the White Witch
which is a huge moth it's it's one of
the it's it's one of the two largest
moths in the world it's the largest just
moth by wing span wow huge it looks like
a bird big white moth we still I believe
I believe that we still don't know what
the caterpillar looks
like it's 2024 we have iPhones and
penis-shaped rocket ships like we don't
know where that moth starts its life
yeah we still haven't figured that out
by the way the rocket ships are shaped
that way for efficiency purposes not
because they wanted to look make it look
like a penis speaking of which I've ran
across a lot of penis trees
while exploring and make me I this I
know it's not just a figment of my
imagination I'm pretty sure they're real
in fact you explained it to me and they
they make me very uncomfortable cuz
there's just a lot of penises hanging
off of a tree yes I don't know what the
purpose is I don't know who they're
supposed to attract but it certainly
makes but certainly Paul like really
enjoys them yeah yeah well clearly you
you've done some some research and
you've noticed a lot of them I haven't
even seen them there was there was there
was a time where I almost fell and to
catch my balance I had to grab one of
the penises of the penis tree and
Unforgettable uh Anaconda the biggest
baddass anaconda in the Amazon versus
the biggest badass black cayman CU you
mentioned there like there's a race if
there's a fight this UFC in cage who
wins underwat the biggest and the
baddest the biggest and the baddest that
you have can imagine given all the
studies you've done of the two animals
species in the baddest you're talking
about an 18t several 100 lb black cayman
versus a 26 foot 350 lb
Anaconda yeah I think it's a it's a it's
a death stalemate I think the Cayman
slams the anaconda bites onto it the
Anaconda wraps the Cayman and then they
both thrash around until they both kill
each other because I think the the cay
will tear him up so bad and the cayman's
not going to let go he's going to is
never going to let go but then he's
gonna he's going to realize that he's
he's also being constricted so then he's
going to stop and he's gonna he's going
to keep slamming down on that anakonda
mhm and the anacon is just going to keep
constricting but if the Cayman can do
enough damage before the an again it's
almost like a Striker versus a Jiu-Jitsu
yeah you know if you can get enough
elbows in before they lock you how fast
is the construction so it's pretty slow
it's it's no it's it's incredibly it's
it's incredibly quick so it's it's it's
you you take the back and get me in
choke hold it's that it's I have maybe
30 seconds maybe on the upward side if
you haven't cinched it under my under my
throat but if you've gotten good
position it's over is there any way to
unwrap the choke undo the choke
defending not unless you have outside
help unless you have you know another
human or another 10 humans coming to
unwrap the tail help you but for an
animal like if a deer gets hit by an an
no way they don't stand a chance so the
the the black C would bite somewhere
somewhere close to the head and then and
just try to hold on and thrash yeah I
don't I don't think a large black cayman
here's the thing every fisherman knows
this like the biggest fish they're smart
yeah and more importantly they're shrewd
they're careful a huge black cayman
that's 16 ft long isn't going to be
messing with a big anacon like they they
they'll they won't they won't cross
paths because while they technically
occupy the same type of environment that
black cayman's going to have this deep
spot in a lake and that anaka is going
to have found this floating Forest like
sort of black stream backwat where it's
going to be and they'll have made that
their home for decades they'll already
have cleaned out the competition so
maybe if there was a flood and they got
pushed together that they they could
have some sort of a showdown but almost
more certainly is that when they get to
that size that Cayman at any sign of
danger Bloom right under the water just
you it's almost like it's like even if
you what do you learn when you're a
black belt you know what what do you do
with a street fight you still run away
mhm there's no reason for a street fight
and I think the animals really
understand that no there's no reason for
this so like like a giant anacon and a
giant black hman they could probably
even coexist in the same environment
just
knowing using the wisdom to avoid the
fight like why or they would have a big
Showdown and one of them would either
die or have to leave they would have a
territorial dispute yeah yeah without
killing either of them yeah I dude n
nature Anything Could Happen one of the
things that me and Pat wrote up was that
I saw a yellow tailed crepo which is
like a six foot rat snake eating an
oxyopes mogenis which is the the the red
snake that we found last night and just
no one had ever in scientific literature
we'd never seen a crebo eating an
oxyopes before and so I had the
observation in the field I sent it to
Pat champagne Pat writes it up paper and
so it's like it's this really cool
that's a really cool system because
we're just out here all the time you end
up seeing things jjj's dad saw an
anaconda eating a taper taper is the
size of a cow damn and it's that guy
didn't lie you know some people you
trust your sources on that he he saw
enough stuff he didn't need to make up
stories and you know how you you know
what I love now is when you go to when
you ask people when we were going up the
mountain with Jimmy yeah JJ said to him
he goes have you ever seen a puma up
here in the mountains and Jimmy goes
they're up here and J J JJ went no no
have you seen it and Jimmy went no never
seen one and you know how most people
will go yeah yeah I've seen it that
makes me trust a person when they admit
nah I haven't seen
it they're up here I haven't seen it and
Jim has been living there his whole life
his whole
life there's Pumas in the mountains you
know mountain lions Pumas whatever the
you know there's all different names for
them they're distributed from I think
from Alaska down through Argentina
that's they're everywhere it's extremely
successful species from deserts to high
mountains everything I think you're
saying Pumas have a have a curiosity
have a way about them where they
like explore like
follow people like just to kind of
figure out like uh just that Curiosity
versus like as opposed to causing harm
or hunting and that kind of stuff like
what is this about I think it's based in
predatory instincts but I also think
there is a playfulness to higher
intelligence animals that you don't see
in lower intelligence animals and so
something like a rabbit for instance
you're never going to see a rabbit come
in to check you out you just would you
just you can't even think of it like
that like a rabbit's just going to
either eat or run away there's really
two settings when you think of something
like a RI giant
riverter or a Tyra which is a they call
it MCO here it's a it's a huge arboreal
weasel and they'll come check you out I
woke up at my house the other day and
there was a Tyra climbing up the side of
the house and he was looking down at me
sleeping and it's like he came to check
me out like it's like they're smart
enough and they're brave enough here's
the important thing they know that they
can fend for themselves they can fight
they can climb they can run and so
they're like let me I'm curious I got
time let me check this out yeah they're
gathering information I wonder how
complex and sophisticated their world
world model is like how they're
integrating all the information about
the environment like where all the
different trees are where all the
different nests of the different insects
are what the different creatures are by
size all that kind of stuff I'm I'm sure
they don't have enough you know storage
up there
to like keep all that but they probably
keep the important stuff basic you know
so sort of integrate the experiences
they have into like what is dangerous
what is tasty all that kind of stuff I
think it's more complex than we realize
you go back to that friend's dewal book
are we smart enough to know how smart
animals are there's so many incredible
examples of controlled studies where the
researchers weren't understanding How to
shed being so insurmountably human and
understand that there are other types of
intelligent and whether that's Elephants
or cats so big cats for instance we just
saw a camera trap video from last night
yeah where you see one of our workers
walk down the trail and then 5 minutes
later a cat behind them by the way we're
walking just exactly the same area also
exact the same time yeah yeah so we're
out there and there's deer and there's
cats and there's a jaguar and there's a
puma and there's all these animals out
out there and we're out in the night in
the inky black night in this ocean of
Darkness beneath the trees and we're
just exploring and getting to see
everything and there's all these little
eyes and heartbeats I love the jungle at
night man it's the most exciting thing
yeah one of the things you do when you
turn off the headlamp complete darkness
all around you and just the sounds
everything you hear the cicas the birds
they're all screaming about sex yeah all
the time so they're just trying to get
laid Yeah so all of them are making
mating calls now the trick is to make
your mating call without attracting a
predator yeah but at night what what
what amazes me is that for us it's so
from the from the caveman logic of it's
hard to make fire here it's hard to even
light a fire here to having this this
this incredible beam of of of it you
know all of a sudden we can look at the
jungle and walk through that Darkness
then we're seeing the frogs on those
leaves and the snakes moving through the
undergrowth and the deer sneaking
through the Shadows it's like it's
almost as Supernatural as skydiving it's
a strange thing to be able to do that
technology allows us to do we're doing
something really complex and we're
walking on trails that have been cleared
for us that we've planned out and so
walking through the jungle at night you
just get this freak Show of of of
biodiversity and I'm I'm addicted to it
I truly love it except for the times
over the last few days when we walked on
through jungle without a trail and
that's just a different
experience how would you categorize if
somebody said Lex I think I'm going to
go for a hike Through the Jungle not on
the trail yeah what would you tell them
every step is really hard work every
step is a puzzle every step is a full of
possibility of hurting yourself in a
multitude of ways you just a wasp nest
under a leaf uh a hole under leaf on the
ground where if you step in it you're
going to break a knee ankle leg and
going to uh not be able to move for a
long time uh
there's all kinds of ants that can hurt
you a little or can hurt you a lot uh
bullet ants there's snakes and
spiders and uh
oh my favorite that I've gotten to know
intimately uh is different plants with
different
defensive mechanisms one of which is
just spikes so sharp you have I don't
know if you brought it but there I
didn't bring it I didn't bring it
where's my club there's an epic club
with the spikes but there's so many
trees that have spikes on them sometimes
they're obvious spikes sometimes less
than obvious spikes and you know it
could be just an innocent as you take a
step through a dense jungle it could be
an innocent placing of a hand on that
tree that could just completely
transform your experience your life by
penetrating your hand with like 20 30 40
50 spikes yeah and just changing
everything that's just a completely
different experience than going on on a
trail where you where you're Observer of
the Jungle versus the participant of it
and and it truly is extreme hard work to
take every single step now just think
about this I think scientifically cuz
people like to summarize people like to
get really really uh sort of cavalier
with our scientific progress and they go
you know we've already explored the
Amazon it's like well have we because in
between each tributary is you know let's
say just between some of them let's just
say 100 miles of of unbroken Forest
who's explored that yeah maybe some of
the tribes have been there maybe some
areas they haven't been now when you're
talking about scientists whether they're
indigenous scientists Western scien
whatever so many of the areas in this
jungle that is the size of the continent
until us still have not been accessed
and the places where people are doing
research see I've been down here long
enough I see all the phds come down here
and they all go to the same few research
stations they're safe they have a bed if
you get Hella dropped into the middle of
the Jungle in the deepest most remote
parts you're going to find
microecosystems you're going to see
little species variations you're going
to see a type of flower that JJ's never
seen before like what happened the other
day as you start walking through new
patches of forest you start finding new
spe species and everything here changes
you just go a little bit up River and
the Animals you see differ you go on
this side of the river versus on the
north side of the river there's two
other species of primates there that
don't exist here and that's in the
mammal paper that we did with the the
emperor tamarinds and the pygmy morets
that the Rangers found yeah the the
mammal paper is looking at the diversity
of life in this one region of the Amazon
what kind of can can you talk talk more
about that paper mammal diversity along
the Le Pedas River once again the mammal
paper Pat champagne The Prodigy um he
was sort of leading on this with a bunch
of other scientists who have worked in
the region including hly O'Donnell out
of Oxford um myself I really just made a
few observations the jungle Keepers
Rangers got featured because they're the
ones that spotted a pygmy marma set that
had previously been unrecorded on the
river I got to I got to contribute
because I had I had the only photograph
that I believe anyone has of an emperor
Tamarind on this River it's the first
proof of Emperor Tamarind on this River
and that's exciting it's exciting
because um you know you'll you can post
post a picture or share a scientific
observation or write about something and
then what happens is you get these these
like couch experts these armchair
experts who who will come and say you
know no no you don't get blue and yellow
MAA there I can tell from my bird book
it says they're not there and they'll
tell you you're wrong you know no you
don't get woolly monkeys there or
emperor CH it's like but but we but we
have proof and so we're coming together
to try and add to that knowledge my
general sort of amateur experience of
the species I've encountered here is
like this should not exist whatever this
is this is not real this is CGI like
what just the colors the weirdness I
mean there's uh I think I called it the
the Paris Hilton uh caterpillar because
it's like fur it looks like a of's dog
like yeah yeah it's like really furry
and it's transparent and and and sort of
it's transpar all you see is this white
beautiful fur and it's just like this
caterpillar it doesn't doesn't look real
do you think there are species like how
many species have we not discovered and
is there species that are like extremely
badass that we haven't discovered yet if
you look up how
many trees are in the Amazon rainforest
it's something in the order of 400
billion trees there's something like 70
to 80,000 species of plants individual
types of plants here 1,500 species of
trees it's it's so vast that it it's
comparable like the the the scale is
like only comparable to the universe in
terms of stars and galaxies and and and
and for the sheer immensity of it and so
we're we're describing new species every
year and just walking on the trail at
night you and I have seen you know you
see a tiny little spider hidden in a
crevice and has the scientific eye ever
seen that spider before has it been
documented do we know anything about its
life cycle there's still so much that's
here that is completely unknown you know
we have pictures of all these
butterflies Somebody went out with a
butterfly net and caught these
butterflies took a picture of it gave it
a name put it in a but butterfly book
but what what do we know what host plant
do they use for their caterpillars
what's their geographical range what
what do we actually no not that much so
are there creatures out here that
haven't been described absolutely and
some of them could be extremely
effective uh predators in a nich
environment yeah absolutely I mean
certainly certainly in the canopy 50% of
the life in a rainforest is in the
canopy and we've had very limited access
to the canopy for all of history you
know if you wanted to get up into the
rainforest canopy you basically have to
climb a Vine or what scientists when I
was a kid I always used to see them with
like the slingshots or the bow and
arrows they would they would shoot a a
piece of paracord over a branch Pull the
Rope up and then you know do the
Ascension thing and then you're up in
this tree getting swarmed by sweat bees
getting stung by wasps you're trying to
do science up there in that environment
it's incredibly hostile and so having
canopy platforms I actually met a guy at
a French film festival who had used hot
air balloons to float over the canopy of
the Amazon and then lay these big Nets
over the over the broccoli of the of the
trees M and the Nets were dense enough
that humans could walk on the Nets and
then reach through and pull cactuses and
lizards and snakes whatever just take
specimens from the canopy that's how
difficult it is that that scientists
have resorted to using hot air balloons
MH and so having a treehouse having
canopy platforms having it's it's
starting to get there starting to be
more and more access to the rainforest
canopy and so we're beginning to log
more data you know we even observed in
our Treehouse which is supposed to be
the tallest in the world we're seeing
lizards that we don't see on the ground
lizards that have never been documented
on this on this River like we're seeing
snakes where they're saying we saw the
snake inside a crevice on that tree in
the Strangler fig and we don't know what
it
is it's just people haven't been up
there and that's where a lot of the
monkeys are that's where there's just a
lot of dynamic life up there yeah I mean
you when you wake up in the canopy in
the morning in the Amazon
rainforest as soon as that the darkness
lifs as soon as that purple comes in the
east in the morning the howler monkeys
start up yeah and then the parrots start
up and then the end start going and then
the MAA start going and pretty soon
everybody's going and the spider monkey
groups are all calling to each other and
it's just the whole Dawn Chorus starts
and it's so exciting so you're saying
when they're screaming it's usually
about sex sex or territory usually sex
and violence or implied violence or the
threat of violence yeah I mean Hower
monkeys in the morning they're letting
other groups know this is where we're at
we're going to be foraging over here you
better stay away and so it's it's a
little bit respectful as well there is
order in the chaos so just speaking of
screaming MAA are like these beautiful
creatures they are uh lifelong Partners
they stick together so there you see
just they're monogamous you see two of
them together but when they communicate
their love language it seems to be very
loud screaming
yeah what what do you learn about
relationships for maca that that it can
be loud and rough and still be loving
it's still be loving but is that
interesting to you that there's like
monogamy in some species that they
they're lifelong partners and then
there's like total lack of monogamy in
other species it's all interesting I
mean there's the anti- monogamy crew
who's like you know we were never meant
to be monogamous we're supposed to just
be animals and then there's the other
side of the crew that's like we were
meant to be monogamous we are monogamous
creatures that's what God wanted between
a man and a woman and then other people
like yeah but I know about these two gay
penguins and so that's natural too and
so then everyone to draw their their
identity they're trying to to justify
their identity off of the the laws of
nature so the fact that MAA are
monogamous really doesn't have anything
to do with anybody except for that it's
beneficial for them to work together to
raise chicks it's difficult they rely on
Ironwood trees or AG Gua palms and it's
difficult to find the right hole in a
tree there's only so much Macau real
estate and so they need to use those
holes and each one of those ancient
trees it's usually 500 100 years or more
is is a is a valuable Maca generating
site in the forest and so if those trees
go down you lose exponential amounts of
maca and that's how you get endangered
species and so that's why we're trying
to protect the Ironwood
trees another ridiculous question tell
me if every jungle creature was the same
size oh boy who would be the new apex
predator the new Alpha at the top of the
food chain dude that's like Super Smash
Brothers of the Jungle that's incredible
like bullet ants if you had a bullet ant
that was the size yeah can it be like uh
like a tournament so everyone is
pound-for-pound ratioed yeah for
efficiency so you have basically like a
six- foot bullet ant versus a a huge
black cayman versus an anaconda versus
ocelots are the size of jaguars versus
yeah well let's let's go bullet an
versus black cayman but they're
comparable size same
size I don't know man I never thought
about it I mean bullet an has these
giant giant giant mandibles it could
probably grab the black cayman and then
at that amount of Venom you're talking
about a bucket of Venom going into that
black cayman black cayman's going to get
paralyzed immediately well insects have
just a just a tremendous amount of like
strength I don't know how they generate
what the geometry of that is the natural
world can't create that same kind of
power in the biger thing it seems like
it seems like it seems like ants and
like just these tiny creatures are the
ones they're able to have that much
strength I don't know how that works
what the phys of that like an ant leaf
cutter ant lifting that leaf that
doesn't make any sense yeah doesn't make
doesn't make any sense I I don't know I
don't know if that's a limit of physics
I think it's just the limit of evolution
of how that that works one of the most
interesting limits that I heard uh
somebody talking about recently was the
reason that dinosaurs didn't get bigger
even bigger because that's the the the
the the conditions on Earth were
favorable towards it was that at some
point their eggs reached there's
physical limits that their eggs reached
a size the eggs were so big that that
eggs need to breathe for the embryo to
survive and their eggs reached a limit
where in order to have a shell that
could hold the mass of the liquid and
and the young dinosaur if they got
bigger it wouldn't be permeable anymore
mhm and I thought that was so
interesting because the entire size of
physical creatures was determined by how
thick shell can be before it breaks or
before it can't pass air through it yeah
there might be a lot a lot of the like
biophysics limits to you know
fascinating stuff just like the the
interplay between biology chemistry and
physics of like a life form it's like
this thing
there's a lot involved in creating a
single living organism that could
survive in this world and bigger you
know being big is not always good being
a big creature it's for many reasons
like you were saying the big creatur
seem to be going extinct yeah for many
reasons but in in the human world is
because they seem to be of higher
value given the current size of the
Jungle I think that the the MVP the
pound-for-pound
goat is ocelots you're talking about
like a midsize is 40 40 5050 lb cat that
can climb that does unlike a Jaguar
Jaguar every time it hunts it's going
after a deer it catches a deer the deer
could hit it with its with its antlers
it could tear it with its Hooves it's
risking its life for that meal an ocelot
ocelots walk around at night and they
climb a tree eat a whole bunch of eggs
eat the motherb bird too kill a snake
maybe mess around and eat a baby Cay and
they can have whatever they like
and they're they're Sleek enough and and
smart enough to get away from predators
they don't really have
predators and so they sort they sort of
occupy this perfect Niche where they
they can hunt small prey in high
quantity without taking on big risks and
so if you had to choose an animal to be
it would probably be like an ocelot or I
would say giant River ERS which are so
damn cool because they're the locals
call them Lobos de Rio riverwolves
because they're so tough and they're so
social and they're so like us because
they're intensely familial groups they
live in holes by the sides of lakes and
they swim through the water and they
catch fish all day long piranas they eat
them just like the scales go flying as
they eat these piranhas and they're so
joyous in the way they swim and they
have friends and they have family and
they I think it would be I think we
could relate to being a river a really
because I can't picture being a cat and
being so solitary and just marching
along a 15m route and making sure
there's no other cats and and coming in
on your territory and marking that
territory it seems it seems very solo
and very catlike a lonely existence
lonely existence and we humans are
social being we're so social and so to
me river is it's like having a big
Italian family you're like constantly
eating you're freaking out you just like
causing problems with the black cman
take down a black cman start a street
fight yeah yeah it's a family thing you
mentioned piranhas yeah what what do you
think you know they're they're a source
of a lot of fear for people what do you
find beautiful and fascinating about
these creatures they're also kind of
social or at least they hunt and operate
in groups yeah not in the M million way
though piranas are in large schools but
I fish are so different like if you I
can talk to you all day about how how
much I'd love to be an otter also going
back to the fighting thing otter and
weasel muscle a day tend to be very
loose In Their Skin So if you grab an
otter it can still rotate around to bite
you so it's like if I grab you by the
back you're stuck you know like we can't
you grab them by the skin yeah they can
rotate around and just shred you apart
so they're they're really cool Fighters
um piranha fish fish I don't I don't you
know I don't identify with fish in in
terms like that I think living out here
has made me think of fish as um kind of
Rapid food that can or can't be gotten
like you know to me a piranha is just is
when I see a piranha I think about how I
want how I want it to taste yeah so like
fish is a is a food source for so many
creatures and the
so they're primarily food s but piranhas
are I mean they're Predators they're
serious Predators they are serious
Predators I found a baby black cayman
not that long ago and he was missing all
of his toes cuz the Piranhas had eaten
them off it was really sad he just had
these stumps and he was swimming around
the water and I was like you are not
going to make it he was like 8 in and he
was such a cute little puppy he had
those big eyes and I was just like man
you already are missing all your toes I
was like just a matter of time he now he
can't get away so some big aami Heron's
going to come and just nail him pop him
down his throat that's the end of that
for the Cayman I mean nature is metal
nature sure is shit is metal bite off a
little bit and then makes you vulnerable
and then that vulnerability is exploited
by some other species and then that's it
that's the end yeah but humans are are
brutal too like like like that story we
heard about that guy the other day who
caught a stingray on a fishing hook
chopped its tail off to make it safe for
humans cut a piece of the stingray off
so he could use it for bait and then
through the live fish back in the river
like to me that is incomprehensible
amounts of
Cruelty with with with flawed logic in
every direction like if you're going to
use the thing as bait use it as bait if
you're going to remove its tail well
then just kill it all together yeah or
if you want to save the animal and not
kill it then don't maim it before you
return it to it it was so such a
weird so if you kill an animal you want
to use it to its fullest by using it as
a food source by cooking it by you know
eating eating every part of it all that
kind of stuff yeah so we have we've been
eating Paco yeah in your time here fried
Paco is great fried P it's delicious
full of nut you could tell it makes you
healthy I feel like we better work out
so that we can go harder in the jungle
and so uh a few months ago in August
when the river was down it was there was
a day that the river was clear and a
friend of mine Victor who's who's
married to a native girl he said it's
time to go Paco fishing and at the time
we were stuck out here and we had no re
Supply everybody was busy and so
everyone was demoralized the staff was
hungry we were hungry and it really
became this thing of like hey go catch
us some Paco they were working on the
trails they were installing the solar we
were working hard and we didn't have
food and so we went out to the river and
what we did was we went up River we
camped on the
beach and in the morning Victor's wife
was was canoeing with the with the
paddle dead quiet don't let the paddle
touch the Wooden Boat
Nikita was balanced in the middle of the
thing Victor's on the front with this
huge fishing rod and I'm sitting there
and he goes I'll catch the first one you
catch the second one and he's got this
huge fishing rod and a piece of half
rotten meat from the day before and he's
smacking it against the wall 6 a.m. M
he's just letting it smack against the
water and I'm going and we're floating
down the river and I'm going this is not
going to work and we're floating and
we're floating and a half hour passes
and I'm going it's Dawn I want to go
back to sleep I'm such I'm just not a
morning person and all of a sudden a
fish hits that line almost pulls this
man off of his feet and he swings the
thing in the fish comes on the boat and
then I realize he's got a big metal
Mallet on the boat so that you could try
to shut that fish off and it's this huge
or shaped thick muscular Paco MH and as
soon as I saw that
fish I just thought wow the strongest of
this species for millions of years have
been swimming in this River and suddenly
we've through this incredible
combination of the boat and the and the
and the cord and the hook none of which
we made and the skill that he had from
knowing how to fish a paco because
otherwise there's no chance that you're
getting that fish they hide they're very
very suspicious of what you're doing we
had gotten this fish onto the boat and
boom you hammer it like a caveman boom
doesn't die boom you have to crush its
skull and now you have this fish and
you're you're holding this genetic
material this sustenance for your life
that has been devel veloping since the
dinosaur times it's so beautiful the act
the sacred Act of eating that of of the
fish of the competition with the fish
and we spent the morning fishing we got
three Pacos three huge giant vegetarian
piranha and I I just remember touching
them with so much reverence thinking
about the incredible history and how
that before these Rivers existed those
Pacos were were swimming through the
water and and and and trying to survive
through through through history through
history through history until this until
we we took just a few and we did it
respectfully and we did it when we
needed it most not at a time when it was
just for fun and it was it was really
really special well humans using them
for sustenance there's a collaboration
there that's that's something also that
I've seen in the jungle that there's
creatures using each other and it's like
a dance of either uh mutually using each
other it's or it's parasitic or
symbiotic
it's interesting like there's
a uh a medicinal plant you grabbed that
was full of ants yeah they were like
trying to uh murder you by
biting but they were defending the plant
that they were using for whatever
purpose but there's a clear dance there
of the ants using the plant and the
plant existing there for other
applications and other use for humans
and there's that kind of Circle of Life
happening but the ants were defense so
the the plant didn't have its own
defense mechanism the ants the army of
ants was there to protect the plant mhm
and did you actually when you remember
we put our backpacks down at that one
spot and it was like the ants Scot on
your backpack and I said oh shit this is
that tree did you actually get bitten by
one of those because they're incredibly
painful the tongar one they like yeah
surprisingly painful cuz they're small
there nothing like um luckily have not
been bitten by a bullet ant yet but it's
just it's amazing because they live
inside the tree the tree comes standard
with holes in it that allow the ants to
to move and to exist safe and it
protects their eggs and they protect the
tree and then so we saw that spot where
there's a perfect circle around the
trees cuz the ants had excavated the
other vegetation so that those trees
could have no competition to grow the
incredible calculation of how ants know
to gu come programmed to Garden that
tree and the tree somehow has been
genetically informed to have ant habitat
within itself it's it's it's
mind-blowing and it actually is the
foundation of a lot of existential
confusion for me because how the hell is
this possible yeah one of the things you
mention that's also a source of a lot of
existential confusion for me is ants
yeah and the intelligence of different
creatures in the forest there's these
giant colonies there's just giant
systems but even just looking at a
single colony of ants them collaborating
leaf cutter ants is an incredible system
so individually the ants seem kind of
dumb and simplistic but taken together
there is a vast
intelligence operating that's able to be
robust and resilient in any kind of
conditions is able to figure out a new
environment is able to Res be resilient
to any kinds of attacks and all that
kind of stuff what do you find beautiful
about them like as you said just leaf
cutter ants in this jungle forgetting
all the other hundreds of species of
ants that are in this jungle but just
the leaf Cutters
apparently
digest roughly 177% of the total biomass
of the forest everything all these giant
trees all that leaf litter 177% of that
almost a fifth of this Forest Cycles
through leaf cutter colonies so they're
constantly regenerating the forest
they're huge source of the of the driver
of this ecosystem and so to me when you
see them working it's again like I said
you see your friends as you go through
the jungle you see all the kpok tree you
see kinea tree you see oh there's leaf
cutter ANS doing what they're supposed
to do and it's it's just so beautiful I
find them very beautiful army ants
they're so tough they're so ready to
fight they have the huge mandibles
they're just ready to they're just
they're transporting their eggs they're
moving from here to there anything
that's in the way is getting eaten
they're just Savage and they're kind of
cute for that unless you're tied to a
tree the savagery is cute I find that
yeah it's kind of reassuring you know
you want certain things to be that's
their part oh that everybody plays a
part in the entirety of the nature
mechanism the powerful play um but but
but yeah but the army ants are so Savage
you know like if you if you step on army
ants they will all kamakazi just attack
onto your feet and they'll just they'll
just sacrifice their own life for the
good of the thing and they'll be trying
to kill your your shoes and there's
something funny about that to me there's
something like kind of reassuring again
unless unless imagine if you're going
through the jungle and you slip and you
fall and you twist your knee yeah and
you fall in just the right way but you
you can't get up yeah you can't you're
stuck there yep and then army ants find
you yep they will take you apart there
are records of horses that have been
tied up and army ants come and they'll
take out the whole horse imagine the
pain of
that it might be raining on us very hard
very soon you want to pause nope I think
we'll stay here until the ship goes down
we we should mention that there's this
one source of light and we're shrouded
in darkness and and now the night shift
is going to take over soon and we are in
the Amazon rainforest what does the
rainforest represent to you when you
zoom out look at the entirety of it Carl
Sean's pale blue
dot resonated with a lot of people that
everything you've ever heard of all the
heroes all the villains all of your
ancestors every achievement tragedy
Triumph everything has happened on that
one spot this one tiny tiny little rock
that has life on it and to me the
rainforests represent the crown jewel of
that as far as we know and to the best
of our knowledge and with our shrewd
scientific brains at their fullest
capacity this is still the only place
that we know that has life and given
that the fact that there are still these
tropical towering complex ecosystems
that we are barely understand crawling
and full of the most incredible life
it's just to me it's it's it's so
wonderful it's so incredible those the
waterfalls and the birds and the Maca
and the Jaguars it's barely believable
like if you were to theoretically tell a
hypo hypothetical alien I live on this
planet and there there's these places
where everything is interconnected
everything means something to something
else and the whole thing is this system
that keeps us alive and each tree is
pumping air into the river and there's
an invisible River above the actual
River and the whole thing goes into
stabilizing our global climate and each
little tiny leaf cutter ant somehow
contributes to this giant biotic
orchestra that keeps us alive and makes
our environment possible that is
beautiful I love that and so the the
rainforest to me are the greatest cele
ation of life and probably the greatest
challenge for us as a global Society
because if we can't protect the Crown
Jewel the best thing you know the most
beautiful part then then we're really
really missing the point yeah the
diversity of organisms here is the
biggest celebration of
life that is at the core of what makes
Earth a really special thing that said
you and I have been arguing about aliens
for pretty much the day showed
up all right he you brought a machete to
this
fight um luckily the table is long
enough can't you can't reach me so to
you Earth is truly special yeah you
don't think there's other Earths out
there millions of other Earths in our
galaxy when you look up you know we were
sitting in the Amazon River okay at dark
the storm rolled over and you started
counting the stars yeah one two and that
was once you can count the stars that
was a that the storm will actually pass
eventually will pass and that's what you
doing 3 four five and it's going to pass
you're not going to have to sit in that
River for like all night so just a
couple hours to keep yourself warm okay
each of those Stars there's earthlike
planets around them
okay why do you think there's not alien
civilizations
there you can write down a calculation
on a napkin you can site different
Hollywood movies you can point up to the
pieces of light the stars but if you if
I talk about show me a single cell
that's not from this planet it's still
not possible and so I agree with you
that the likelihood is there all
indications point to it it would be
fascinating especially if it was done in
especially you know imagine finding a a
planet of alternative life forms not
necessarily even intelligent imagine
just a a planet of butterflies whatever
you know something else that would be
amazing but
but I'm concerned with the reality that
we have in front of us is that that this
is the spaceship this is life yeah and
so right now given that reality maybe
that's maybe that's the case maybe maybe
there are other
planets
or or maybe we are the first maybe life
originated here maybe God the universe
whatever maybe maybe this is it this is
the this is the this is the the testing
ground for something bigger and and and
and this complexity and this div of life
and this life that we have is that
important and I think that part of what
we do when we go oh yeah but there's
other planets where first of all we're
we're we're taking an assumption into
reality without I mean you know aliens
right now are about as real as Santa
Claus we think they're out there but
we're not sure maybe they're a little
more real because you know it could make
sense we no one has an alien no one's
seen an alien no one's even seen
cellular life and so I'm not again if
they showed up tomorrow great let's
study them but but right now we have
this very simple threat going on where
we can't stop killing each other and our
living
environment and so while some people can
specialize in looking to the stars and
to other planets and talk about being an
interplanetary species I'm very much
concerned with the fact that here in our
home turf our living environment where
the air is good and the rivers are clean
and the trees are big and there's Maca
flying through the sky and salmon in the
rivers
not only do we have a responsibility to
each other and to our children to
protect this incredible gift that is our
entire reality seems kind of weird to at
some point it conservation seems kind of
ridiculous like you're begging people to
not pollute the things that keep them
alive it's it's it's almost kind of
silly at a
point but but we have this incredible
thing where there are fish in the ocean
and in the rivers they come standard
with life on Earth and and we're we're
we're harming the ability of Earth's
ecosystems to provide for that life and
we are the generation that's going to
decide if those systems continue to
provide life to all the people on Earth
and all the generations and by the way
all the other animals that exist for
their own reasons other consciousnesses
that were just beginning to understand
elephants humpback whales whatever
families of giant River
ERS you not everything can be seen from
a human perspective these are other
species that have their own stories and
so I'm I'm more biocentric than
anthropocentric and that I I I think
that that nature is important but I also
believe that we
are we are special we are the most
intelligent animal so one I I agree with
you there's some degree to which when
you imagine
aliens you forget if by for a moment how
special and important life is here on
Earth yeah
but it's also a way
to reach
out through C curiosity and trying to
understand what is intelligence what is
consciousness what is exactly the thing
that makes life on Earth
special another way of doing that and I
see the jungle in that same way is
basically treating the animals all
around us the life forms all around us
as kinds of
aliens as that's a humbling way that's
an intellect humility with which to
approach the study of like what the hell
is going on here this is truly
incredible like are are the animals
we've met over the last few days
conscious what is the nature of their
intelligence what is the nature of their
Consciousness what motivates them are
they individual creatures or are they
actually part of the large system and
how large is the system is Earth one big
system and humans are just little
fingertips of that system or uh are each
of the
individual animals really the key actors
and everything else is in the emerging
complexity of the system so I think
thinking about aliens is a
necessary uh I like my to with a little
Drop of Poison from Tom W is a necessary
perturbation of the system of our
thinking to sort of say hey we don't
know what the fuck's going on around
here sure and Aliens is a nice way to
say okay uh uh the mystery all around us
is immense cuz to me likely aliens are
living among us not in a trivial sense
Little Green Men but the force that
created
life I think permeates the entirety of
the universe that there is a force
that's creative now the force that
created life is a is a big one and then
the other thing is what do you mean by
that there's aliens
living among us you mean
extraterrestrials yes living among us
yes you believe
that not like 100% but there's a as a
good percentage I don't understand how
it's possible for there not to be a very
large number of alien
civilization throughout the just our
galaxy but that's different than saying
that they're living among us if you tell
me that there's aliens living five
galaxies over and that they're just out
there somewhere I'm kind of I'm kind of
more on your side than that they're here
because just like Bigfoot like we have
camera traps we have DNA sequencing
through through water now like we can
you're telling me no one found one wing
nut of a of a of a ship in all like the
Egyptians up until right now no one in
Russia saw like a crash ship took a
picture tweeted that shit real quick and
you know I I think there's no Bigfoot
there's no trivial manifestations of
aliens I think if they're here they're
here in ways that are not comprehendable
by humans because they're far more
advanced than humans they're far more
advanced than any life forms on Earth so
they're even if it's just their
probes we cannot just even comprehend it
I think it's possible
that they operate in the space of ideas
for example that ideas could be aliens
feelings could be aliens Consciousness
itself could be aliens so we can't
restrict our understanding what is a
life form to a thing that is a
biological creature that operates via
natural selection on this particular
Planet it could be much much much more
sophisticated it could be in a space of
computation for example as we in the
21st century are developing increasingly
sophisticated computational systems with
artificial intelligence it could be
operating on some other level that we
can't even imagine it could be operating
on a level of physics that we have not
even begun to
understand uh we we barely understand
quantum mechanics we use it quantum
mechanics is a way we use to make very
accurate predictions but to understand
why it's operating that way we don't and
there's so many gigantic powerful Cosmic
entities out there that we
detect sometimes can't detect Dark
Matter Dark Energy but it's out there we
know it exists but we can't explain why
and what the fuck it is we give it names
black holes and dark energy and dark
matter but those are all names for
things that mathematical equations
predict but we don't understand and
so all of that is just to say that
aliens could be here in ways that are
for now and maybe for a long time going
to be impossible for humans to
understand so aliens in the in the
strict biological sense like like like
like horseshoe
crabs we agree that they're they're not
we haven't found physical aliens the
only way I can imagine finding physical
aliens is if alien species are trying to
communicate with us humans uh or with
other life forms and are trying to
figure out a way to communicate with us
such that we dumb humans would
understand like let's create a thing
yo there's a
moth the size of a small Eagle that's
try to get us 15 minutes of ATT it just
might it just might um big fan of the
podcast okay Lex I love you um all right
so so what your wouldn't it be
interesting it would be really
fascinating to me if we found out that
there were aliens living among us and we
couldn't see them and what some of the
people were calling aliens the
scientists the the religious people were
calling angels and then everybody had
this realization that whether you call
them aliens or Angels there are these
other there is more way more to the
universe than we're realizing I just for
me the fact that there's there's a skull
on the table yeah there's a skull the
table there a skull in your hand there's
now a skull in my hand of a monkey with
a bullet in its head that I found on the
floor of an indigenous Community where
they eat monkeys I didn't kill the
monkey so save your comments but you
know in terms of of the animals I think
I think that when I see space it my
feeling and I'm not requiring anybody
else to have this feeling but because we
know because is the only place that we
know that there's life and we have no
idea how it
started I just think it's so important
to protect it and and and for me it's
just as much about our children as it is
about the little SP SP monkeys and the
little baby Cayman that are in the river
right now because life is so beautiful
yeah and I think that there's a huge
amount of intellectual responsibility
that we
can transfer off of ourselves if we go
yeah the rivers are filled with trash
and yeah Extinction is happening but we
have to be an interplanetary species
anyway because at any moment this could
all end from an asteroid and like
everything's going to shit anyway and so
it's like we're fucking up this planet
it's like that's that's we're just being
angry teenagers who are you know going
goth for a while and it's like what if
you just rolled up your sleeves and said
holy shit wait a second you know we can
pretty much do whatever we want we can
fly all over the world we have we can do
heart transplants we can watch Netflix
and the Amazon if we wanted to like we
could do all this amazing stuff we can
capture on video our adventures and go
back and watch them again and again and
again there's so much
incredible opportunity that technology
has allowed us to do and we're the we're
the richest in hist I mean we could do
everything we could cross the whole
planet in a second and it's like that's
an amazing time to be alive and if we
just don't fuck up the ecosystems and
kill all the other animals we got it
made yeah so it is true that we can
destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons
but it also is true that that snake that
I got to handle yesterday is like one of
the most beautiful things Earth has ever
created in in that little organism is
encapsulated the entire history of Earth
and it's it's beautiful so we both
things are true we should we should
worry about the existential destruction
of human civilization through the
weapons we create and we should become
multiplanetary species as a backup for
that purpose but also remember that this
place is is really really special and
probably if not difficult probably
impossible to recreate
elsewhere and by the way there's
something incredibly powerful about a
skull yeah
if you've ever hold a human skull it
it'll give
you uh it'll it'll it'll it'll weigh on
you for a sec because you look into this
the hollow eyes of this face and
suddenly you go you feel your own teeth
go you feel your own skull and you go
holy shit you go what is going on it's
like taking acid you just go oh boy I
forgot that I'm a ghost inhabiting a
meat vehicle on a floating Rock but even
even a monkey yeah it's like looking at
a
ancestor you know not a direct ancestor
but there's a it's like a you know like
you you looking at a puddle at a
reflection mhm a little blurry but it's
still a little blurry but it's still
there yeah it's still there and
like the roots of who we are is still
there and it's it's all kind of
incredible do you ever think of the the
tree of life just kind of like where we
came from yeah the jungle is a Emeral it
just keeps it's a system that just keeps
forgetting because it's just churning
and churning and churning and churning
has in some ways no history but to
create the jungle to create life on
Earth there's a deep history of lots of
Death Sex and Death a festival of Sex
and Death life on
Earth that's what I see in the skull
yeah there's something it's there's
something kind of terrifying about that
image to me like when I hold that every
now and then at night you hold that
skull and you it just reminds you that
you're temporary yeah both you and I
will one day have one of those
yeah
H mine will be
bigger God the male competition
continues the silver back slaps the
Lesser male once again uh do you have a
lighter yeah bro you want to light this
blunt yeah
what are your favorite animals to
interact
with I mean my favorite absolute
favorite animal to interact with is 100%
elephants which there's no elephants
here but I've been incredibly privileged
to spend some time with elephants both
in India and in Africa
and I think that they're so smart and so
complex that we do a really bad job of
understanding what an elephant really is
MH I think that most children probably
think of elephants as like something
kind of cuddly most adults probably
think of have a similar misconception of
them when you see an elephant when you
see a 12 foot tall bull elephant with
bone coming out of its face with huge
tusks and those giant it's a it's a
octopus faed butterfly eared Behemoth
that's a survival machine and it'll look
at you and just
go do I have to kill you to keep safe
and it's just they're so tough and they
have they have dirt on their back and
they have flower petals and their little
hair you realize they have hair all over
their body and they the power to throw a
car over to flip it just one of the most
impressive animals on Earth and I think
that I've gotten really good at
interacting with wild elephants in a way
that's respectful to them and I think
that that when an elephant allows you to
be in its space it's because you're
you're showing submissiveness and and
respect for the elephant space
and they're so intelligent that they're
communicating with seismic vibrations
through the Earth that they have you
know matriarchal society that they can
remember the M the maps of their
ancestors they know how to find water
that they can solve problems they're
they're such beautiful animals and
they're so talk about aliens they're so
alien looking these big weird heads and
the trunks with all those muscles and
they're so different than us but but yet
I actually think that we we grew up
together you know they they they kind of
raised us sibling species that we we've
been we've inhabited the same Epoch in
history and and we've relied on the
ecosystems that they've created and I
think that they have a deep
understanding of humans elephants and I
think I see them more
like aliens more like non-human beings
that we share the Earth with so I don't
see it as we're humans and they're
animals I actually see hum elephants as
as sort of a separate Society along with
humans as one of the dominant species on
the planet so almost every species
especially the intelligent ones
especially the big ones are their own
societies that overlap and sometimes co-
develop yeah I think whales I think
elephants I think that there's there's
those higher you know no one's
suggesting that sardines are you know
somehow need human rights or something
but I think the elephants need
representation in governments because
they're they occup they they influence
their landscape they engineer their
environment they have emotions they have
families they have burial rituals
they're so like us and yet we treat them
like they're just just oversized cows
that we have to be scared of it's
they're not they're not the same as as
domesticated livestock they're one of
the treasures of Earth I mean look let's
just say Little Green Men showed up and
you said they said well what's Earth
it's like well there's mountains there's
Rivers it's like well how how do I do
this you know there's mountains rivers
there's there's elephants like it's like
one of the first things a baby learns is
elephant even if he's never seen one
it's just so iconic on earth like you
said um um Darren aronowski Darren arski
um the the elephant walking over the
camera I haven't seen it you said it's
incredible yeah so at the sphere the
postcard from Earth I mean it's a
celebration of Earth yeah in all forms
and one of the critical big creatures in
that film is an elephant and it steps
over the audience and the whole like the
whole sphere reverberates that power I
mean some of it is size yeah some of it
is like how did Earth create this it is
a weird looking creature but we take it
for granted cuz we've accepted that this
Earth can't create this kind of thing
but it's weird beautifully weird oh it's
beautifully weird I mean I mean
elephants there's something really
impressive and and wise about them
there's also beautiful weird that isn't
so that doesn't come with so much
Grandeur like to me a giraffe is
beautifully weird yeah but they're just
you know they're 18t tall camel deer
things with you know giant necks and
they're strange and they're they're
absolutely serenely beautiful but they
don't they don't have that deep
intelligence that that elephants have
there's something that elephants have
you see in their eyes where's how does
the intelligence manifest itself well
this is the thing uh a lot of people a
lot of the when I was reading friends to
walls book a lot of what he was saying
was that you know people give elephants
human problems to solve in controlled
environments and call it you know a
study on elephant intelligence whereas
if you're watching wild elephants and
you're in the wild you're going to be
watching them in a way that they're
they're looking you've pulled up in a
safari vehicle or you've pulled over to
the side of the road and the elephants
are wary of you so they're not acting
natural but as soon as you start
watching wild elephants TR truly in the
wild and comfort comfortable with your
presence you see how they start caring
for their babies or or how they can get
annoyed I once watched elephants around
a water hole and there's this warthog
and I don't know why but this warthog
decided he needed to get in and and
there was this young male elephant and
he kept turning around to this warthog
and just being like don't make me do it
now this elephant did not need to hurt
the warthog and the warthog was just
like I need to drink I need to drink I
need a drink much simpler brain the
elephant was like you could just tell he
was like watch this and just went and
crushed the
warthog like it was a big Beetle yeah
and crushed his pelvis and the warthog
dragged itself away on its front legs
and probably went off to die but this
young elephant put out his ears and he
like paraded around with his tail of and
he was like look what I did destruction
and it's like that's a very relatable
type of he was annoyed with the warthog
yeah and and and and so you see them do
these things I mean the most magical
thing and I've spoken about this many
times was that I was walking with a herd
of semi- wild elephants that were
crossing through a village in India
because elephants have lost a lot of
their territory because there's so much
so so much population in India and so
we're crossing through a village which
is very delicate because the matriarchs
are leading the babies and there's
villagers who have no idea what an
elephant is and they're watching the
elephants
cross and the matriarchs backed this
girl up against the wall and she was
terrified standing there with her back
against the wall and the Elephant just
put her trunk out and and touched the
girl's stomach and then the other
elephants came and they all started
touching her stomach and the the the the
ranger there explain to me just went
she's pregnant they know she's pregnant
they can smell they can tell and they're
curious and they all the all the female
elephants came to investigate the
pregnant girl and she had no idea what
was going on and so it's like that stuff
that
stuff and it's cool to hear that you
know with the the crushing and the pride
of a young elephant that there's a
complexity of behavior it's just like
with humans I mean you know not always
pretty that's the thing man humans are
capable of Good and Evil and sometimes
we attach these words
uh I love that there's just it's an
orchestra of different sounds yeah and
that's that one is sex which that's a
bamboo rat calling out for a mate a m
all right good luck to you buddy yeah
good
hunting uh uh you know humans are
capable of evil things and beautiful
things and I wonder if animals are the
same you think there's just different
personalities and different life
trajectories for animals like as they
develop in their understanding of social
interaction
of survival of maybe even primitive
concepts of right and wrong within the
social system do you think there's a lot
of diversity and personalities and and
behavior just like different
people is there different elephants of
course and and what I really like is
that you said is there a perception of
what's right and wrong because elephants
have a code of ethics and so as the for
the simplest example is that as young
males begin to grow they start
developing these tusks and those tusks
are a tool and they use them so for
Indian elephants the females don't have
tusks and the m do the females kick the
males out of the herd the females keep
all the sisters and the Ants and the and
the and the and the cousins together but
the males are their own thing and so
here's the thing if you have so what you
get is these these Crews of male
elephants and the older males will you
know this play fighting that goes on
around you know two young males can play
fight but the older males they'll kick
some ass they'll show them how to behave
they'll explain who gets to talk to the
females who get to interact who gets to
mate who gets the best vegetation to eat
and so there's an order established and
so young male elephants have to be
taught how to act just like a Teenage
Human has to be taught you know you
can't just haul off and and break
another kid's nose you got to there's
going to be consequence maybe you'll get
suspended MH or maybe that kid will get
his friends and beat the living shit out
of you whatever it is society regulates
your behavior and elephants have a very
strict very predictable sort of like the
males teach the males how to run things
and the females which which really have
the final say they're
matriarchal they're the ones leading the
herd where to go the males follow where
the where the wise females tell them
where to go so that regulation
mechanisms from that emerges a kind of
moral system under which they operate
what's right and wrong for an elephant
yeah for an elephant right and wrong for
an elephant is not the same as what's
right and wrong for Grizzly Bear Grizzly
Bear if you're male grizzly bear and you
see a female with Cubs you just kill
those Cubs and then you can mate with
that you can mate with her and put your
own Cubs in there and it's like that's a
whole different type of Ethics yeah the
value of uh child life is different from
species to species some of them hold is
sacred some of them not at all and
that's why I think I I resonate so much
with elephants because they're I think
they're M I think that we're we're we
are kind of matriarchal at least I grew
up matriarchal like women were the force
in my life um my family and most of my
friends's family women kind of have the
final say and uh I feel like that's the
way it is with with with with elephants
like you might be bigger and stronger
but it doesn't really account for much
if you're not smarter and and more
emotionally intelligent and you know how
to take care of the
group just to zoom out into the
ridiculous questions as we were talking
about aliens there's uh a lot of people
trying to understand trying to study the
origin of life oh I love this first of
all what do you think is life versus
non-life like when you look at like ants
or even like the simplest simplest of
organisms we saw a frog in the Stream
yesterday that was like a leaf frog it
was like as flat as a sheet of paper and
it does a lot of weird
things and it found a way to exist in
this world but that's a single living
organisms with a bunch of components to
but like there a life form that exists
in this world what is the difference
between that and a rock what what is
like what is the essence of that life
this might be an unanswerable question
there's probably a chemistry physics
biology way of answering that like what
to you is that I I I think to me life is
something that grows in responds to
stimuli like in basic biology 101 I
think and I'm fine with that I don't
need it to be more romantic than that
but I think it's actually comical
how how do you get from a rock to an
orangutan mhm you know and our answer
for that is primordial soup maybe there
was just stuff on Earth and then the the
the stuff just got up and started
walking maybe there just there was
nothing happening and then there was all
of a sudden there was a cell mhm and the
cell had function and then it
complexified and then it started
reproducing and found male and female
parts and and what like it we are so un
underere equipped to understand how the
hell we got here let alone an or or even
bacteria I see there so
many uh in very simple mathematical
models like something called Game of
Life their cell automa you could see
from simple rules and simple objects
when they're interacting together as you
grow that
system complex objects
eyes like that emergence of complexity
is not understood by science by
mathematics at all and it seems like
from primordial soups you can get a lot
of cool shit and the force of getting
from
soup to like two humans on microphones
yeah uh not understood and it seems to
be a thing that happens on Earth I tend
to think that it's a thing that happens
everywhere in the the universe and
there's some
deep Force that's pushing this along in
some way that there's something we uh I
don't want to sort of
uh simplify it but there is something
that creates complexity out of
Simplicity that we don't quite
understand uh and that's the thing that
created the first organism living
organism on Earth that like leap from no
life to life on Earth that's a weird one
that's a weird one cuz you can
imagine I think that what the Earth is
four 4.5 billion years old and you can
imagine just
this this rock of a planet with like
rain and storms and elements and iron
and granite and like just random stuff
it's pretty easy to imagine that but
then I remember that book that I think
we all have the same book when we were
kids and then like they show this like
fish-like animal crawling out of a out
of the primordial soup and it's like bro
you just missed the most important part
author of that book
bro
and and I think the first bacteria came
in around three 3 3.7 billion years ago
so there's like at least like you
know a bunch of billion years where
there was just nothing it was just a
planet and then we started seeing
fossils of the first bacteria and the
bacteria stuck around for for a long
time a billion two billion years years
it's just very very long just bacteria
just bacteria but a lot of them a lot of
them there's probably a lot of
innovation a lot of murder a lot of
interaction yeah yeah and then I mean
there's there's a big a few big leaps
along the history of life on Earth yeah
you know the Predator prey Dynamic that
was a really cool Innovation it's almost
like Innovations like features on an
iPhone it's like it's nice like uh
Predator prey uh uats so comp comp Lex
multicellular
organisms uh emerging from the water to
land that was weird that was a a
interesting Innovation there's how
whatever led to
humans that there's a lot of interesting
stuff there I see I can't even get that
far I can't get from Rock and Sand to
cells yeah that's that's a
huge I mean I mean to everything around
us that has cells it's just it's it's
wild even and I I could imagine being on
another planet and how incredibly
valuable this thing would be this this
it's impossible to replicate it I'm
looking at it through the candle light
right now and I can see all of the
structures in this Leaf the incredible
structures in this leaf that look
exactly like the veins in my arm which
look exactly like the rivers that are
flowing across this landscape and it's
like life has this this overwhelming
pattern that it uses and it's so
beautiful I just I just think
it's yeah when when you imagine the the
the the days of the lightning and the
volcanos and the primordial soup it's
it's there's a there's a big gap there
and it's it's fascinating to think about
and it's fascinating to see how
different people's belief
systems uh lead them to different
answers there not to give any spoilers
but postcard from Earth Darren aronowski
film the idea there is it's the there's
probes that are sent out from Earth to
all these other planets and each probe
contains two humans a man and a woman
uhhuh and those two humans are in love
so think of a couple in love they're
sent there with all the information
basically a leaf that holds the
information of what it takes to create
life on other plan to recreate on Earth
on other planets and the two humans hold
all the
information for the things that make
life on Earth special especially in
human civilization is love
Consciousness the the the social
connection so all that information is
sent in the probe and the postcard from
Earth is uh those humans waking up
remembering all the information that is
Earth that wow like a celebration
of all the things that make earth
magical throughout its history all the
diversity of organisms all of that
you're loading all that in to create
life on that new planet which is
something I think alien civilizations
are doing they're sending probes all
throughout the Galaxy and they just
haven't arrived yet but anyway that's
another uh that's so beautiful and one
of the things that I I think I all I I
want to see that so much and one of the
things that I love about aronowski work
is is the Fountain and what I find so
beautiful about that is that now here
he's saying okay we're sending probes
out to other worlds alien civilizations
and in the fountain it was sort of what
I thought he did so beautifully was
braided together those three stories
where in one I don't remember if he's in
a spaceship or if that's supposed to be
like his soul M the other one he's a
scientist in sort of like comparable
times to hours and then he's the the the
Spanish explorer but either way there's
the tree of life and it's sort of braids
together all of the major religions and
it made me think of that quote that you
hear where it says you know oh God what
was it um Christ wasn't a Christian and
Buddha wasn't a Buddhist and Muhammad
wasn't a Muslim they were all just
teachers who are teaching love and it's
like the fountain The Fountain sort of
says nature is the that driving force
and it's our job to understand that the
game is love and that's what that's what
the main character in the fountain needs
to learn is that it's that it's nature
that's going to just that's going to
carry your soul through this this this
thing and that there's so much you don't
understand and the Epiphany at the end
God I love that movie God I love that
among many things you're also an artist
is trying to convert the thing that is
nature into a thing that we humans can
understand the complexity the beauty of
it that's what Darren ornowski tried to
do with those couple of films that's
something that I hope you do actually in
the medium of film too that would be
very interesting and you do that in the
medium of books
currently um how much do you think we
understand about the history of life on
Earth I think we got it all
wrong no I don't know it seems like they
change it all the time you know they
say they say that Easter Island you know
when I was in College they were big on
telling you that Easter Island they
ruined their environment and uh they had
environmental collapse and that's why
there was nobody on Easter Island it was
a cautionary tale we could ruin our
environment and now it seems like
they've changed their mind on that and
then when humans entered North America
seems to be hugely up to speculation and
you know the the Africa spreading that
we all spread out of Africa and then the
the pine Overkill Extinction Theory and
it's like it seems like every few years
they update it and they change and they
say oh the guys no no no no the guys
from 10 years ago actually my new theory
is the best theory let's write some
books and get me on Letterman and it
seems like there's a new prevailing
Theory that's really always exciting and
edgy about how how we got here and where
we came from and how we dispersed and
maybe even has some political
implications like how we should use the
Amazon moving forward like the Amazon
was engineered by people so fuck it
let's just cut it down yeah it's I tend
to believe that we mostly don't
understand anything but there's an
optimism in continuously figuring out
the puzzle of that we offline talked
about the the Graham hanock Flint Dibble
debate uh on on Rogan I like debates
personally so Flint dible represents
mainstream archaeology and I actually
like the
whole science the whole field of
archaeology you're trying to figure out
history with so little information
you're trying to put together this this
this puzzle when you have so little and
you're desperately Clinging On to little
Clues and from those Clues using the
simple possible explanation to
understand and now with modern uh
technology as as Flint was trying to
express that you can use large amounts
of data that's like imperfect but just
the scale and using that to reconstruct
civilizations there different practices
from the little details of uh what kind
of things they eat how they interact
with each other what kind of art they
create to when they existed what are the
time frames all that kind of stuff and
that starts to fill in the gaps of our
understanding but still the Arab bars
are large in terms of what really
happened and that leaves room for things
that Graham Hancock talks about like
lost civilizations which I like also
because it gives you have
um a kind of humility about maybe
there's giant things we don't know about
or we got completely wrong and that's
always good to like
remember it's confusing to me to imagine
like what I I don't even know what like
what ended the where did the Egyptians
go like what happened to seemed like
they were doing so good they had so much
cool shit um but I mean I was reading
anthropological stuff in the Amazon
about about tribes that you know just
through through their societal
structures and through their hunting
practices that
that didn't really
develop practices that worked and kind
of bands of people that went extinct
before they could turn into larger
societies and and there's there's a lot
of people that got it wrong you know for
every explorer that that
that that leaves Borneo and arrives in
South America there's probably hundred
hundreds more that just die at sea get
eaten by sharks you know Avalanche and
it's just it's so fascinating to me that
we all of us really past our
grandparents don't really even know
where we came
from like do you know who your great
great great grandparents are like no I
mean there there's methods of try to
figure that out but really again the air
bars are so large that it's almost like
we trying to create a narrative that Mak
sense for us you know that I'm I'm 10%
Neanderthal therefore I can bench press
this much and uh therefore my aggressive
tendencies have a explanation when in
reality there's so much diversity of
personalities that they they uh far
overshadow any possible histories we
might have your aggressive tendencies
don't have any explanation
you're no you need to you listen to me
right now I'm sorry don't hit me again
don't choke me out again yeah man one of
the things you and I talk a lot about is
different explorers yeah um who do you
think
is I'm just throwing ridiculous question
one after the other who do you think is
the greatest Explorer of all time oh God
I love Shackleton but I I hate the cold
so I can't I don't really I can't even
read about it I hate the cold so much um
I can't can't even go there for fun um I
think Percy faucet in the Amazon was was
was was the goat in terms of just
sheer the last of the Victorian era you
know March forward go deeper just stop
at nothing and then eventually take such
big risks that you never come back it's
it's hard for me to relate to that kind
of exploration because to me I'm such a
softy I wouldn't want to like leave my
family behind I wouldn't want to like
even if you told me that I could leave
Earth and go exploring and I could go
touch the moon I'd be like nope
absolutely not like the highway is
dangerous enough like I would never risk
dying in space this guy left his home
went out into the jungle out there with
horrendous gear compared to the camping
gear we have today no
headlamp and just explored for years on
end well let me actually push back like
you have that explore there is
definitely a thing in you just me having
observed you behave in the jungle and in
the world you're pulled towards
exploration towards Adventure towards
the possibility of discovering Something
Beautiful including like a small little
creature or like a whole new part of the
rainforest a part of the world that like
is like holy shit this is beautiful I
think that's the same kind of imperative
so maybe not going out to the stars but
like like I can see you doing exactly
the same thing so he he disappeared in
1925 dur during an expedition to find an
ancient lost city which uh he and other
people believed existed in the Amazon
rainforest so there's that pull like I'm
going to go into there with shitty
equipment with the possibility of
finding something and they said he ran
into uncontacted tribes and started
goofing off I think he started I think
he started dancing and singing like the
tribes were ready to kill him and he
started goofing and like doing a song
and a dance and just being ridiculous
and the tribes are like what now mhm and
they're like wait wait wait wait wait
don't shoot him yet that's a funny one
yeah and they they actually he kind of
like on a human level used used humor to
save his own life on multiple occasions
to the point where he de-escalated the
situation was like look we're not here
to fight we're here to we have a have a
pile of maps you know all my guys have
Barry Berry Den malaria like we're dying
out here if you guys just go on your
Merry way we'll go on our merry way and
like incredible he was so tough and then
that guy from shackleton's Expedition
ended up on one of faucet's expeditions
and you go oh yeah he's
he's a proven Explorer he's been through
the Antarctica and the guy was like fuck
the
jungle absolutely fuck the jungle he was
like and and there's a great quote where
he says without a machete in something
you know I don't remember exactly the
words he used but he said without a
machete in this environment you don't
last yeah and you know that now like you
you in that tangle to just take three
steps that way would I would immediately
be taking on I mean I'm not wearing
shoes right now yeah bullet ants
venomous snakes spikes through my feet
tripping over myself I don't have a
headlamp unbelievable risk right there
we're sitting on the edge of
tragedy can you explain what the the
purpose of the machete in this situation
is like what is a machete how does it
work how does it allow you to navigate
in this exceptionally D dense
environment so this is the tool that I
spend most of my life carrying this is
in my hand for 90% of my time and in the
jungle you really need a machelle
there's so much plant life here that you
have to cut your way through and like a
Jaguar an ocelot a lot of these other
animals that are more horizontally based
and low to the ground they can make it
like when we got stuck in those bamboo
patches and we were just hacking through
them and it's dangerous and there's as
you hit the bamboo it ricochets and
there's spikes and then one piece Falls
and it pulls a a train a Vine that has
spikes on it and that hits you in the
neck and it just the jungle is Savage to
humans but if you are an a gy a little
rodent or a jaguar or a deer you can
kind of slip through this stuff and the
deer have developed really small antlers
they can just kind of weave through low
to the ground and so and so for us being
these
vertical beings walking through the
jungle it it really helps to be able to
move the sticks that are diagonally
opposing your movement at all times so
machete is just a very very useful tool
um it can help you pull thorns out of
your body as you saw last night we can
use it to find food mhm you want machete
fishing you cut a fish head off with a
machete by like it was swimming and then
you basically you know uh macheted the
water and the other fascinating thing
about that fish without his head it kept
moving soing was just using I guess his
nervous system to uh to swim beautifully
I mean I that there's so many questions
there about how nature works because
well let's explain it because the way
the machete hit this fish it kind of
kind of took his just his his eyes off
of and his lower jaw was still there so
it really just like the brain and and
the top jaw that came off and this fish
as the the dust cleared in this stream
this fish was I found it very Haunting
in a very like Interstellar way like it
was just the programming was still there
but the brain was gone and the fish was
just still moving and it was going to
die but it was still swimming and it
looked like an like like a live fish it
was it was something and you're still
trying to catch it which is interesting
I still have to work to catch it cuz
every time I caught it it would it freak
out and then it would jump back in the
water and I'm programmed here from years
and years of living in the Amazon that
everything can hurt you so you actually
become quite you know if a moth lands on
you you flick it because it could be a
bullet ant and so even the fish here a
lot of the fish here have spikes coming
out of them and so even though I know
that fish I know its name I've eaten
them many times as I was holding it when
it would twitch with that explosive
power just like the Cayman I would I
would I would get that fear response and
release it and so that happened three or
four times before I finally said this is
stupid even though he's slippery he
hasn't got a head I can hold on to him I
put him in my pocket yeah you put him in
pocket and then we fried him up and and
he was delicious so and I'm grateful for
his existence and for his role and for
my existence on this planet this brief
existence that I was able to enjoy that
delicious delicious fish so the machete
is used to cut through this extremely
dense jungle there's Vines by the way
there rope like things that are
extremely strong and they go all kinds
of directions to go horizontal and all
this I I don't even how tree we have a
tree right above us that makes no
sense there's like a tree that kind of
failed and then a new tree was created
on top of it that makes it just makes no
sense it feels like sometimes trees come
from the uh from the sky sometimes they
come from the ground I don't I don't
really quite understand the how that
works cuz there's new trees that grow on
Old trees and the old trees rot away and
the new trees come up that whole
mechanism Strangler figs and so
Strangler figs as you go across the
world's ecosystems that whole belt of
you know whether you're in rainforest in
the Amazon the Congo Indonesia all
across the tropics you have Strangler
figs and the amazing thing that this
that this species does it's become a
keystone species across the planet with
a hyper influence on its ecosystem
wherever it is because they produce
fruit in the dry season when the rest of
the forest is making it hard for animals
to find fruit to find food and so the
bats the birds the monkeys they all go
to the Strangler fig they eat the fruit
and the fruit of course is just tricking
the animals the the the plants are
tricking the animals into carrying their
seeds to another tree and so they're
getting free Transportation monkey takes
a poop on another tree after eating
Strangler figs and then that Strangler
fig sends out its Vines gets to the
ground and then as soon as it begins
sucking up nutrients out competes that
tree for
light grows hyperdrive around the trunk
of that tree and then eventually that
tree will die and the Strangler fig will
win because it got a it got a boost up
to the top whereas these little trees
down here they're going to have to wait
their turn they have to wait until a
tree falls until there's a light Gap and
then they have enough food to grow quick
and so this whole thing is an energy
economy everything is just trying to get
sunlight and so Strangler
figs yeah top down trees growing over
parasitic top down octopus trees growing
over other giant trees and you've seen
the size of some of the trees here so uh
you know back to Percy Fon and
exploration what do you think it was
like for him back then a 100 years ago
God damn going through the jungle well
see the thing is those guys didn't go
with the locals they came down here with
like mules and they tried to do it their
way yeah and so he's one of the people
that wrote about the green
hell the jungle as the oppressive ah war
zone where there's nothing to eat eat
and everything is killing you and
it's I I think I think that that image
is so wrong CU as you saw last night we
could go if we went out with JJ right
now we would machete fish some fish we
could start a little fire we do it all
in shorts like to to JJ it's green
paradise and it's intense but but if you
know what you're doing which the local
people surely do well then just beneath
the sand there's turtle eggs that you
can eat and inside the nuts on the
ground there's grubs that you can eat
and if you really needed to you could
just jump on a Cayman and eat that cuz
their tails are pretty full of meat and
it's like there's actually unending
amount amounts of food here and so it's
it's they were pretty you know they were
strange buch if you're able to to tune
into the that frequency I feel like
you're you and JJ yeah are able to tune
to
the to the frequency of the Jungle that
is a a provider not a destroyer of human
life right like uh I think to be
collaborated with not fought against yes
but we're coming at that with a with our
modern lens CU we're coming down here
with I've survived how many infections
in the jungle where those probably would
have killed me before so my dead ass
opinion of the Jungle would have been
overwhelming and Collective murder as
Herzog says um and so Percy faucet was
coming down here with this view of it's
trying to kill us at all times where we
are flying down here and coming out here
with our Superior medicines and our
ability to survive infections and and so
it's it is different for us it is
different we're we're we're we're coming
at this very very different but faucet
to me was like the last of like the real
swashbucklers like the really batshit
crazy explorers that just went out into
the into the dark spaces on the map mhm
and it's very hard for me to identify
with him but with for instance Richard
Evans schulties from
Harvard that's someone where you go okay
now we're getting to the point where I
can start to understand mean just like
the Conquistadors and they tell you the
Conquistador showed up you know they
killed the the Spanish killed 200,000
Inca on the first day and then they they
marched to this city and they like when
I hear about that can you imagine
yourself just like slaughtering a bunch
of women and children and and soldiers
and then just like drinking some wine
and doing it again tomorrow I can't
actually wrap my head around that yeah
it just seems like an entire different
world no like different world different
value system I value system different
relationship with violence and life and
death I think we value life more we
value we resist violence more yeah like
I I just I can't like if we saw a car AC
I feel like if I saw a car accident like
you know or if you see a little bit of
War some violence like it affects you
these people were so comfortable with
the those things it was such a normal
part of their the the Spartans the the
commanches like they became so
comfortable with war to the point that
it
became what they did MH and they it they
celebrated it and direct violence too
like taking that machete and murdering
me or if I got to the machete first me
murdering you not a chance bitch I and
then I would put it on Instagram and
show
off and the number of DMs I would get
from murdering you with a machete
meanwhile half the world right now is
messaging me saying my DMs are filled
with take care of Lex don't lose Lex
make sure Lex comes back safe Lex is a
National Treasure we love Lex make sure
he holds a snake the amount of love that
is out there meanwhile I emerge from The
Jungle of blood around me with a machete
and I take over your Instagram cup he's
very humble he doesn't want to hear
about the
love all right so what do you think
makes a great Explorer whether it's uh
Percy f Richard Evan schaly by the way
say who Richard Evan Shelties is he's a
biologist so that's another lens through
which to be an Explorer is to study the
the biology the like the immense
diversity of biological life all around
us Richard Evans Schult um I know about
him from Reading way Davis's book One
River which is this big Hefty you know
five or 600 page Tome about the Amazon
and it covers two stories it's Richard
Evan schulties and I think it's in the'
40s I think it's like pre-World War II
era where he's in the Amazon looking for
the Blue Orchid and the cure for this
and that and he's pressing plants and
he's going to these indigenous
communities where they still live
completely with the forest and they and
they drink iasa and they they talk to
the gods and they he learns about how
they beli that the Anaconda came down
from the Milky Way and swam across the
land and created the rivers and sort of
he came down and and and even though he
was a western scientist from Harvard he
embraced the indigenous perspective on
the world on creation on spirituality
and and he he sort of resigned himself
and gave himself fully to that and spent
years and years traveling around parts
of the Amazon that had hardly been
explored and certainly never been
explored in the way he was doing it in
the ethnobotanical spiritual way of of
what medicinal compounds are contained
in these plants and how do the local
indigenous people use and understand
them for example you know of 880,000
species of plants in the Amazon
rainforest and 400 billion trees in the
Amazon rainforest the
statistics of likelihood that through
trial and error that humans could
discover
iasa it's it's astronomical that one of
these trees and a root when put together
allow you to go access the spirit realm
and see hallucinogenic shapes and and
talk to the gods that's that's that's
almost almost enough to inspire
spiritual thought itself the fact that
trial and error it would take like
millions of years or something it's it's
it's I forget what the figure is it's
incredible but Richard Evan schulties
was one of the first people that came
down and saw that and then one river is
where Wade Davis comes back I believe in
the 70s and the the Heartbreak of the
book is that all of these incredibly
wild places with with n naked native
tribes and these these intact belief
systems Wade Davis comes back and a lot
of the same places that schulties went
now there's missionary schools and
they're wearing
discarded Nikes and you know whatever I
don't know if there's Nikes in the 70s
but like Western stuff has made it in
they've been contacted domesticated
forced into Western society and you know
a lot of them then forget the thousands
and thousands of years the that have
gone into creating the medicinal
Botanical knowledge that the indigenous
possess about how to cure ear infections
and how to treat illnesses from the
medicinal compounds flowing through
these trees is lost in a single
generation with with the
modernization yeah he uh he wrote the
plants of the Gods their sacred healing
and hallucinogenic powers that is
interesting you mentioned like how to
discover that like how do you find
those incredible plets those
incredible things that can warp your
mind in all kinds of
ways of course physically heal but also
like take you on a mental Journey that's
interesting so you don't think trial and
eror is possible I was reading about
iasa and they say they were saying
statistically if if you know if a bunch
if you put a thousand humans in the
Amazon and gave them villages to live in
because humans are communalist species
it would take 10 and tens of thousands
of years or perhaps even centuries
before even the possibility it's like
that thing you know a bunch of chips on
a keyboard how could they write Hamlet
it's like astronomical odds to get
to oh wait this and this dosed together
and so what the local people believe is
that the gods revealed this
secret Through the Jungle to us as a
link to the spirit world and that that's
how we know this because if they didn't
remember it from their ancestors we
would have no idea how to get this
information from the wild
so I will likely do
iasa what do you
think exists in the spirit world that
could be found by taking that
journey I think that iasa is I can only
speak from personal
experience and for me it was
as if your brain is a house you've lived
in your entire life and it's a big house
it's a mansion and there's many many
rooms that you didn't even know exist
hidden rooms behind the bookshelves
under the floorboards rooms that you had
no idea were there and some of them are
fantastic and some of them are
terrifying
basements and iasa takes you on a
journey through that at at its at its at
its most effective you sit in front of
the shaman with the can light with the
sounds of the Jungle and you drink this
substance and after that what happens is
the journey is all inside and and that
the Shaman's supposed to be able to
guide you through that but in my
experience
here you're so deep inside like falling
through nebulas out in space no physical
form or crawling through the jungle like
it's like it's really really powerful
like it's not like a it's not like the
recreational drugs that that that
everyone does like where you go I did
mushrooms and I could see I could see
music like and I was talking to my
friends but no no like your face down on
the floor usually vomiting sometimes
shitting um you know having dialogues
with with the Creator and that that that
can be that can be traumatizing as well
as amazing it's a really good way of
looking at it as a big house and you get
to open doors that you've never have
before and discover what rooms are there
and inside you you ever think about that
like that there's parts of yourself you
haven't discovered yet or maybe you've
been suppressing how much uh are you
exploring the shadow oh boy so say you
me Carl Young and Jordan Peterson are in
a deserted island together fuck I didn't
even make my bed
today there's no bed in an island
great
C I want to see you and Jordan Peterson
do iasa together
um I I think I think I that's that's the
thing iasa to me you know I've kind of
told you about like I've I've
experienced some things that really made
me believe that that there's that
there's a benevolent Force around us but
to me
iasa was like
a was a ride through the scariest parts
of the universe to sort of be like
here's here's what it could be like you
know the that's where I came up with my
idea that you know like deep space or
just space outer space it's just the
outside of the video game and this is it
because when I was on iasa I was I was
one of the jungle creatures and I wasn't
Paul and I didn't have a name and for a
long time I saw many things and I was I
arrived at this spot in the jungle where
there was a big tree and all the animals
were there and they were all not in
words not in not in any language that we
can understand but they were all
discussing what to do about the threat
and the and and it was all it was all
leaving it was all flying up and it was
fire and the jungle was being destroyed
and it was like I I went and then after
that it was just space and stars and
silence like crushing vacuum silence for
years and that was terrifying that was
fucking terrifying when I came back and
I had hands
man I can remember my own
name you're grounded things are simpler
you're back inside the video game what
are the chances you think we're actually
living in a video game when you say a
video game it implies that there's a
player who's the player this
no there's a main player usually that's
not going to be God God is the thing
that creates the video game oh so then
we're just and there's somebody's their
NPCs like I'm an NPC you're NPC Jesus
Christ so main character you yeah yeah
you created me is this like Halo where
you can kind of kill the NPCs
cuz I see how you put the Machete behind
you okay I I think I'm just going to
take a stand here I think that because
people I'm I'm just sick of fucking
playing it halfway I think that because
people live indoors in climate
controlled boxes in cities far away from
nature they've completely lost track of
everything that's real and they've
started to think that we're living side
of simulation notice that nobody
carrying an alpaca up a mountain thinks
that we're living inside of a video game
no they all know that it's real because
they've had babies on the floor of a
cold Hut yeah they understand the
consequences of Life they understand the
fish and how hard it is to get them and
the basic rules of the wind and the rain
and the river and that we all have to
play by those and that it's and and you
talk to a talk to a grieving mother and
ask C if she's living inside a video
game and it's like the people to me this
this whole thing of are we living in a
simulation to me that's a that's that's
the that's the infirmary of of society
starting to that starting to to to to to
to parody itself it's it's people going
I have no meaning in my life anymore so
is this even real and again go ask the
sherpa go ask the Eskimo they're not
they're not worried you forget what
fundamentally matters on life what is
the source of meaning in a human life
uh if you talk about such subjects
nevertheless you could for a Time stroll
in the big philosophical
questions and uh if you do it for short
enough a time you won't forget about the
things that matter that there is human
suffering that there is real human
joy that is
real that the the our time in the jungle
was very hard
did you suffer enough to know that it's
real yeah I man I was hoping we're in a
video game that whole time so that's
actually that's actually a really good
way to there was this moment that I
watched where you were washing a shirt
in this pathetic puddle cuz we had no
water and CU we had walked all day and
tripped all day and gotten thorns in our
hands and our feet and our legs and we
were lost in the jungle and it was night
time and we didn't know if a big tree
was going to just fall on us and mous
trapped kill us and there's a lot of
uncertainty but I watched something very
special happen to you and that was I saw
you crouching by the side of this puddle
it wasn't even a flowing stream so he
couldn't drink it and you were just
trying to wash the sweat off of your
shirt and you you looked at me and you
just said the only thing that I care
about right now is water mhm and I feel
like in that moment we were United in
the in the simple reality of the fact
that we were so thirsty that it
hurt and that it was a little
scary yeah uh it was scary but also
there's like
a a joy in the interaction with the
water because it cools your body
temperature down and there's like a
faith in that interaction that
eventually we'll find clean water
because uh water is plentiful on Earth
Earth it's kind of like a delusional
faith that eventually we'll find it was
just like a little
celebration I think the cooling aspect
of the water cuz uh you know the body
temperature is really high from
traversing the really dense jungle and
just the cooling was somehow grounding
in a way that nothing else really is
yeah it was a little celebration of life
of life on Earth of Earth of the Jungle
of everything everything it was nice it
was a nice moment I think about that had
a couple of those there one in the
puddle and one in the
river one was uh full of delusion and
fear and the other one was full of uh
relief and
celebration yeah I've I've you know
there's this thing that they they say
where the the the all the pleasure in
life is derived from the
transitions when you're cold warm feels
good when you're hot cold feels good
when you're hungry food feels good and
when you're that thirsty water becomes
God mhm and it's all you want and also
and also the other thing is that when
you're when we're out there it felt so
good to be so lost and so tired and so
like we were doing level like like how
would you how would you describe um the
physicality of what we were doing the
level of physical like exertion well
it's something
that I've haven't train I don't even
know how you were trained for that kind
of thing but it's extremely dense jungle
so every single step is like completely
unpredictable in terms of the terrain
your foot interacts with so the
different variety of slippery that is in
the jungle floor is fasinating cuz some
things I mean the slope matters but some
roots of trees are slippery some are not
uh some trees in the ground already
rotted through so if you step through
you're going to uh potentially fall
through so it could be a a shallow hole
or it could be a very deep hole with
some leaves and vegetation covering up a
hole where if you fall through you could
break a leg and completely lose your
footing or fall rolling down hill and if
you roll downhill I'm I'm pretty sure
there's a
99% probability that you'll hit a thing
with spikes on it so there's so many
layers of avoiding dangers of small
dangers and big dangers all around you
with every single step so there's like a
mental exhaustion that sets in like the
just the perception and you're just
observing you you're extremely good at
perceiving having situational awareness
of taking the information in that's
really important and filtering out the
stuff that's not important but even for
you that's exhausting and for me it was
completely exhausting just paying
attention paying attention to everything
around you so that exhaustion was
surprising cuz it's like there there's
moments when you're like I don't give a
damn anymore I'm just going to step I'm
just going to like and so that's it you
go I don't care anymore and you reach
out and you I'm just going to lean
against this tree and then what happened
and spikes in it yeah and then you have
to care yeah and then there's just bad
luck because there is wasp nest there
there is there's just like a million
things and that is physically is
mentally psychologically exhausting
because there's the uncertainty when is
this going to end it's up uh in our
particular situation up and down Hills
up and down Hills very steep downward
very steep SE B Port no water all this
kind of stuff it it's uh the most
difficult thing I've ever done but it's
very difficult to describe what are the
parameters that make it difficult
because I I run long distances very
regular I do extremely difficult
physical things
regularly that on some surface level
could seem much more challenging than
what we did but no this was another
Beast this is something else but it was
also raw and real and Beautiful cuz it's
like it's what the Explorers did yeah
it's what Earth is without
humans and and also just like the
massive scale of the trees around
us was uh The Humbling size difference
between human and tree it's both
humbling and that like that tree is
really old it's it's a time difference
uh lifetime difference and just the
scale it's like holy
shit we live on an earth that can create
those things makes me feel small in
every way that life is
short that my physical presence on this
Earth is Tiny how vulnerable I am all
those feelings were there and in that
the physical uh endurance of traversing
the
jungle yeah was
the the hardest Journey that I remember
ever taking
every
step and then that made making it out of
the
Jungle and then made
it the swim in the water that we could
drink that was just pure
joy it was probably one of the happiest
moments in my life just sitting there
with
you Paul and with JJ in the
Water full Darkness the rain coming down
and all just us all just laughing having
made it through
that having eaten a bit of food before
and the absurdity of the timing of all
of it that it somehow worked
out
and how we're just three little humans
sitting in a
river just our heads emerged barely
above water with jungle all around us
what a
life that was a real Adventure that was
a real Adventure a real one yeah I'll
never forget that
so um it's a real honor to have shared
that of course we had very different
experiences when you saw a Cayman in
that situation you're like I have to go
meet that guy that's a friend of well I
mean we were in the in the river in a
thunderstorm just our necks above we're
all laughing our asses off and I mean
we're in the river With The Stingrays
and the black cayman and the piranha and
all the electric eels and everything and
it's pitch black out and then what were
we doing we're holding our headlamps up
and there's those swirling moths the
infinity moths all making those
geometric patterns and it's like we're
just three ridiculous
primates three friends in a river just
laughing yeah because we were safer in
that River than we had been in there and
we were
rejoicing that that that the
thunderstorm was was compared to the war
zone that we'd been living in the
thunderstorm was safe and it was it
really was a beautiful moment and also
that like very different life
trajectories have taken these three
humans into this one place yeah it's
like what yeah wow is this universe that
would like uh cuz we're kind of like
those moths you know what I mean like
we're we're would come from some weird
place on this Earth and we' have all
kinds of shit happen to us and we're all
pursuing some shit and some light and we
ended up here together enjoying this
moment yeah or something else it just
felt absurd and in that absurdity was
this like real human joy and damn water
tasted good water's good man water and
those those little oranges yeah those
things and then I would just say like do
you feel like I feel like running like
no matter how much I run I feel like the
like you run you do a workout and then
you stop maybe people who do Ultras feel
this but like I felt like the we would
wake we woke up it was like you know
wake up at dawn 6:00
a.m. let's start walking you know break
Camp go and it's like pretty much you
just don't stop all day and it's level
10 cardio all day long and you're
sweating buckets and there's no water
it's like you would never put yourself
through that voluntarily you couldn't
you'd never you would never have the
resolve to to continue torturing
yourself except for that we were trying
to make it to the to freedom to get out
and it's like the obsession of that with
the compass and the machete and the
navigating fuck I think there's
something to be said about like the fact
that we didn't think through much of
that and we just dived into it I think
there was like we're like laughing
enjoying ourselves moments before and
once you go in you're like oh shit oh
shit and you just come face to face with
it
yeah that I think that's what you know
whatever that is in humans that goes to
that that's what the Explorers do the
you know and the the best of them do it
to the extreme levels well I think that
what we did was to to a pretty extreme
level because we we left the safety of a
river of knowing where we were and
voluntarily got lost in the Amazon with
very little provisions on on a very now
that we're back I'm now that we
experienced what we experienced I really
can't stop thinking about how fucking
stupid it was that we did that yeah
because if we had gotten lost Pico was
saying to me even if you guys had one of
you had broken your leg
mhm it's you know days in either
direction even if they had sent help for
us help would take how long to to scour
all that jungle sound doesn't travel
even even a helicopter even if they
looked for us they wouldn't be able to
see us how would we signal for help
can't really build a fire and so it's
like if anything had gone wrong if we'd
gone a few degrees different different
to the West would have taken us two more
days if we'd if we'd gotten injured it'd
be it'd be carry through that yeah and
so it somehow only afterwards am I
really going wow thank God we got out of
this thank God after I see so many
people going make sure nothing happens
to Lex Friedman yeah I'd be the deadest
motherfucker on Earth if
happen it somehow works out it does seem
to somehow work out let me ask you Bo
Jane Goodall another Explorer of a
different
kind uh what do you think about her
about her role in understanding this
natural world of ours I think that Jane
is like a living historical treasure
like I think somehow she's alive but
she's she's already reached that level
where it's like Einstein Jane Goodall
like there's these these these
Incredible Minds
and you know growing up as a child my
parents would read to me because because
I was so dyslexic I had learned to read
until I was quite old and my mom was a
big Jane Goodall fan and and all I
wanted to hear about was animals and so
I would I would get R to about this lady
named Jane Goodall this girl who went to
Africa and studied chimps and who broke
all the rules and named her study
subjects even though that wasn't what
she was supposed to do and she became
this incredible advocate for Earth and
for ecosystems and for and she seemed to
realize as her career went on that that
teaching children to appreciate nature
was the
key because they're going you know that
thing where she says we don't so
much uh inherit the Earth from our
ancestors but borrow it from our
children we're just here we're just
passing through and so if we destroy it
we're we're we're we're dimming the
lights on the lives of future
generations and so she's been really
really cognizant of that and she's been
a light in the darkness she's sort of in
terms of saying that animals have
personalities and culture and and their
own inali rights and reasons for
existing and and that human life is
valuable she's very big on that every
day we influence the people around us
and and the events of the earth even if
you feel like your life is small and
insignificant that that that you do have
an impact and I think that's a really
powerful little candle out there in the
darkness that Jane
carries what do you think about her
field work with the
chimps badass
the fact that she did what she did at
the age that she did at the time that
she
did is is incredible it's actually
incredible she has that Explorer Gene
and she also has that Relentless
relentlessness is like this incredible
quality she just you know she travels
300 days a year educating people talking
around the world trying to help bolster
conservation now before it's too late
and traveling 300 days a year is not fun
traveling at all can be not fun so I I
started reading the river of Da book you
recommended to me on was V yeah uh so
that guy's badass on many levels but I
didn't realize how much of a naturalist
he was how much of a scholar of the
natural world he was so that book
details his journey into the Amazon
jungle um what do you find inspiring
about Teddy roseval and that whole
journey of just saying fuck it of going
to the Amazon jungle taken on that
expedition well I mean Teddy Roosevelt
you could write volumes on what's
inspiring about him I think that you
know he was he was a weak asmatic little
rich kid that that wasn't physically
able that had no self-confidence and he
was very and he and and he had pretty
severe depression he had tragedy in his
life and he was very um at least for me
he's been one of the people like in the
one of the first historical figures who
where where he wrote about about the
struggle to overcome those
things and and to make
himself from being a weak as Matic
little teenager to to to sort of
strengthening himself and building
muscle and becoming this Barrel chested
Lion of a guy who could be the president
who could be an Explorer
and uh one of the Rough Riders and he
just just everything he does is so is so
hyperbolically you know incredible to
come out of war and have the other
people you fought with go he this guy
has no fear I mean he must have just
been a psychopath and had no fear and
then proving it further was that thing
where he was going to give a speech to a
bunch of people and he got shot in the
chest and went through his spectacle
case and through his speech and even
though the bullet was lodged in his
chest this man said don't hurt the guy
that shot me I believe he asked him
why'd you do it and then as he's
bleeding and in the rain said no no no
I'm not going to the hospital I'm gonna
keep going with the
speech what a badass that's incredible
but going to the jungle on many levels
is really is really difficult for him at
that time there's so many things that
could so many more things even than now
that can kill you all the different
infections everything and and the lack
of knowledge just the sheer lack of
knowledge so that truly is an
expedition a really really challenging
Expedition so there's lessons about what
it takes takes to be a great Explorer
from that the
perseverance how important you think is
perseverance and exploration especially
through the jungle I think it's all
there is if you hear about the people
and and and I think that that is a
tremendous met metaphor for life because
whether you hear about that plane that
crashed in the Andes and the people were
alone and freezing and they had to eat
each other and some of them made it out
some of them kept the fire burning and
Teddy roselt voluntarily after being
president M threw himself into the
Amazon
rainforest and survived came so close to
dying but
survived and so perseverance is all of
it I mean that's that's I think that's
our quality as a human so they also
mapped so on the biology side is
interesting but they mapped and document
a lot of the unknown geography and
biodiversity what does it take to do
that so when I when I see move about the
jungle you're always like you capture in
creature you take a picture right down
like so you can
find new creatures find new things about
the jungle document them sort of a
scientific perspective on the jungle but
the back then there's even less known
much less known about the jungle so what
what do you think it takes to document
to map that world and you un explored
Wilderness I I mean they're they're
clearly pressing Botanical
specimens they're probably shooting
birds and and and Roosevelt knew how to
knew how to preserve those specimens I
mean he really was a naturalist so he
knew exactly so if he's seeing these
animals to them where whereas we'll take
a picture and identify it they were
harvesting specimens taking them with
them drying them out um for them it was
totally different and and it could be
the first you know there's I don't know
I forget what JJ said there's something
like 70 species of ant Birds here and
it's like so How likely are you to be
the first person to ever see this one
species of bird and so for
them and it's you have this bird and so
perfectly preserving that specimen and I
think a lot of non-scientific people
don't realize that every species from
blue whale to Elephant to Blue Jay to
Sparrow whatever whatever it is whatever
species we have on record there are
scientific specimens and the first
people to see them shot them mhm and
that's there museums are filled with
these cataloged preserved birds that
these explorers brought back from New
Guinea and South America and Africa and
then put into these dra and and and now
we we labeled them and we said this is
you know this is red and green M this is
Scarlet Macau this
is brown crusted ant bird and this is
and it's just they're just categorized
that book of birds you have like
Encyclopedia of birds yo what the human
achievement in these Pages for people
listening Paul's just flipping through a
huge number of pages these are just is
this in the Amazon or is this in Peru
this is just here
birds of
Peru it dude pages on pages of toucans
and araris and and hummingbirds and ant
birds and and Smoky Brown woodpecker and
and tropical screech owl which we just
heard by the way it's just it's endless
who knew there was so many birds I had
no idea there was so many birds
documenting all of that uh analy I mean
there's also which we got to experience
and you're you're you're pretty good at
also is is actually
making understanding and making the
songs of the different birds yeah what's
your favorite bird song to make uh
undulated tinu because in the
crepuscular hours of Dawn and dusk uh
they're usually the ones that make up
what is considered by many to be the
anthem of the
Amazon can you do a little bird for
us that's what a undulated u sounds like
and it's usually like oh it is getting
to be afternoon and it's kind of it's
almost like hearing Church on a Sunday
it's like you just there's something
about it you go ah there he is and like
you were saying it's a reminder oh
that's a friend of mine yeah surrounded
by friends I have so many friends here
what does it take to survive out here
what is a basic principles of
survival in a jungle
cleanliness I mean really but we talked
about this but like you know keeping I
have so many holes in my skin right now
look I have a mosquito there we go um I
have so many spots that I've scratched
off of my skin because a mosquito bites
me and then I scratch it or the other
big one is that I I I worry that I have
a tick not uh deliberately not with my
thinking brain but my my my simei and
brain just wants to find and remove
ticks and so I scratch and then if my
fingernails get too long I remove my
skin and then those be get those get
infected in the jungle so staying hyper
clean using soap like basic stuff
keeping order to your bags um order to
your gear things in dry bags make sure
you know we did we we explained that we
got in the river during a thunderstorm
we didn't explain why we did that
because the thunderstorm came when we
had eaten dinner but we hadn't set up
our tents and so we decided to cover our
bags with our boats that we had been
carrying our pack rafts that we've been
carrying in our backpacks so all of our
gear would stay dry mhm so the only
thing we could do is either sit in the
rain and be cold or sit in the river and
be warm and so keeping our gear dry
momentary discomfort for future you know
that was that that to me was an
incredibly
smart calculation to make is you really
just you got to be smart out here you
can't you know not running out of a
headlamp while you're out on the trail
and being stuck in that Darkness yeah it
really takes just being a little bit on
your toes and I find that that that
necessity of being on your toes is is a
place that I like to live in it's just
the right amount of challenge here so
keeping the gear organized and all that
but also being willing to sort of
improvise I've seen you improvise very
well cuz there's so much unknowns
there's so many so much chaos and
dynamic aspects that like planning is
not going to prevent you from having to
face that in the end of the
day no it's been really funny watching
you sort of shed your planning brain
like day like day one it was very much
like so are we GNA and then I I could
tell I could see your I could see your
brow sort of furrow when you I would go
I don't know what time we're going to
get there and you'd go well well just
tell me and I'd be like I I don't know
what the jungle's going to let us to you
know Let's do let's record the podcast
tomorrow okay but we if it if it you
know if it rains if it gets windy if a
friyah comes if there's a a Jaguar with
rabies Like Anything Could
Happen Landslide like anything literally
I mean the thing you mentioned trees
falling that's a thing in the jungle
that's a major thing in the jungle holy
shit first of all a lot of trees fall
yeah and they fall quickly and they
could just kill you they fall quickly
they're huge we're talking about trees
that are like the size of school buses
stacked yeah and connected to other
trees with vines so that when they fall
this Millennium tree this Thousand-Year
old tree boom it shakes the ground pulls
down other trees with it so if you're
anywhere near that for a few Acres
you're getting smashed M that's the end
of you and so the jungle at any moment
that you're out there could just decide
to delete you and then the leaf cutter
ants and the army ants and the Flies and
everything you'll be digested in three
days you'll be gone gone no bones
nothing who do you think would eat most
of
you uh I would hope that that like a
king vulture with a colorful face would
just dramatically just get in there like
right in the ass just like Nature's
metal just like when they like walk in
through the elephant's ass I'd want that
on camera trap I think that would be a
great way to go and we slowly look up
and just kind of smile at CER rip out
your intestines and just shake it just
Victorious over your dead body well but
also honor a friend that's another way
yeah sure but you know you just you look
so you know you're white naked ass
laying there in the jungle you be like
face down
shit that's why you always have to look
good any any moment Tre can fall on you
and a vulture just swoops in and eats
your heart that's
right uh we talked about alone the show
bit yo Rock House yeah who's what do you
think about that guy Rock House Roland
Welker from season 7 he built the rock
house he killed the
muscock uh with bow and arrow and then
finished it with a
knife and had the GoPro to mount to you
know to to document it that's really
mind-blowing I mean so for people don't
know that show is you're supposed to
survive as long as possible on season 7
of the show they literally said you
could can only win it if uh you survive
days and and that's there's a lot of
aspects of that show that's difficult
one of which is it's in the
cold the others they get just a handful
of supplies no food nothing none of that
so they have to figure all of that out
and um this is probably one of the
greatest performers on the show Roland
Welker he built a Rock House Shelter so
what I mean what does survival entail
it's building a
shelter fire catching food so staying
warm getting enough energy to sort of
keep doing the work it takes a lot of
work like building the rock house I read
that it took 500 calories an hour from
him so he had to feed himself right
quite a lot you're lifting uh 200 lb
Boulders and still the guy lost uh I
read 44 lbs which is 20% of his body
weight so that's
rival what uh
lessons what inspiration do you draw
from
him I think he was fun to watch
because he had this indomitable Spirit
he was just he wasn't there to commune
with nature he was there to win and he
was like to me that's the Pioneer
mentality he just he was just he goes
I'm a hunting guide I'm out here I'm
going to win that money I'm going to
survive through the winter he wasn't
worried I feel like so many people are
like they worry second guessing
themselves am I in a video game I don't
know what's my you know just questioning
their entire existential identity and
this guy was like you know what there's
a musx over there I'm going to shoot it
I'm going to stab it and then I'm going
to make a pouch out of its ball sack and
I'm going to live off that for the next
few months and win a half a million
dollars and that's an amazing amount of
pragmatic optimism that I just enjoyed
and every time he would go we got to get
back to rock house and it became even
though he's all alone it was he had a
big smile on his face and what made that
season so great was that it was him and
then it was C MH and and Roland had you
know the muscle and could make rock
house and then cie was was the opposite
she was this girl who yeah she could
hunt with her bow and she knew how a
fish and and she wasn't using raw power
but what was so endearing about her was
that how much she loved being out there
as hard as it was and as isolation
isolationist as it was she was smiling
every time every time the show cut to
her she was like Hey everybody it's
morning can you believe the frost like
you've been out there for a 100 days
amazing optim I think it was really an
amazing show of that that the game is
all here The Game of Life the game of
alone and the game of life because it's
the same thing yeah she maintained that
sort of silliness the the goofiness all
through it when the condition got really
tough and she had a very different
perspective as you know Roland didn't
want any of the spirituality it's very
pragmatic yeah and for C is very
spiritual connection to the land she
said something like she wanted not only
to take from the land but to give back I
mean there's this kind of poetic
spiritual connection to the land is such
a dire contrast to Roland and but she's
still a baddass I mean to survive no
matter what no matter the kind of
personality you have you have to be a
badass I think she uh took up
uh porcupine quill from her shoulder
that was crazy because it I think it
went in yeah somewhere completely
different and it migrated to her
shoulder and the way that I understood
that is because they have I said that's
impossible yeah cuz I remember that
she's like pulling off her shirt and she
she's like there's something and then
she like pushes it out and I remember
like I was like hold up hold up hold up
hold up how yeah yeah and it was because
the barbs once it goes in as you move
and flex your body it moves a little bit
each time and it could migrate like I
didn't even think of that shit plus if I
remember correctly uh I think she caught
two porcupines the second one was like
rotting or something or infected it had
an infected body whatever had the spots
on it yeah she chose not to eat it no
and then she chose not to eat it at
first and then she decided to eat it
eventually yeah I forgot that yeah and
she that was that was an insane sort of
really
thoughtful uh focused collective
decision waiting eting a day and then
saying fuck it I need I need this fat
and that was the other thing is like fat
is important oh yeah it's like meat is
not enough you learn about like what are
the different food sources there
apparently there's like uh rabbit
starvation is a thing because when you
have too much lean meat it it doesn't
nourish the body fat is the thing that
nourishes the body especially in uh in
cold
conditions so that's the thing she yeah
she she was she was incredible and I
thought as as as as Brash and sort of
fun as Roland was she
represented um a a much more beautiful
take on on it and it was really
heartbreaking when she lost cuz I mean
and like you said still a badass it's
kind of like farest Griffin versus
Stefan Stefan Bonner like it was like it
doesn't matter who won yeah you guys
beat the shit out of each other like and
she didn't really lose right so she she
got evaced because her toe was uh going
frostbite frostbite 100 days you think
you can do 100
days
honestly I've done
a I'm 18 years in the Amazon man I just
at this point it's
uh I could I wouldn't sign up for
another hundred days yeah you know at
this point I don't I don't have that to
prove I've survived in the wild and uh I
wouldn't want to voluntarily take a
hundred days away from everyone I know
yeah the loneliness aspect is is tough
we're not meant for that I really love
the people I have in my life and I I
wouldn't I wouldn't and you see it on
the show a lot of the people big tough
ex Navy Seals who are survival experts
who know what they're doing they get out
there and they go you know what I miss
my family yeah and they go it's not
worth it they have this existential
realization they go we only got I only
got so many years here like let's let's
this is crazy it's just some money fuck
it they go home you know what's funny
cuz you sometimes film yourself in the
jungle when you're alone and there's a
another guy uh Jordan uh Jonas hobo
jordo uh he's the season six winner and
he said that the camera made him feel
less
lonely I I've heard of him from multiple
channels uh one of the things is he
spent all of his
20s in um living in Siberia with the
with the tribes out there who uh Herzog
happy
people and
so he actually talked about
that it's one of the lonliest time of
his life because when he went up there
he didn't speak Russian and he needed to
learn the language and even though you
have people around you when you don't
speak their language it feels really
really lonely and he felt less lonely on
the show cuz he had the camera and he
felt like he could talk to the camera
there is an element when you have in
these harsh conditions if you like
record something you feel like you're
talking to another human through it even
if it's just a recording I sometimes
feel that like maybe because I imagine a
specific person that will watch it and I
feel like I'm talking to that
person well I noticed that when things
got especially hard and they did get
especially hard when we were out in the
wilderness that you
would begin filming to share that
struggle but I also think that I've used
that at
times where yeah you go maybe if I
because if you can tell someone else
about it then you're on the hero's
journey and and then it sort of has to
make you braver and it changes how you
because you I'm I'm cold and I'm tired
and I'm I'm hungry and this hurts and
that hurts and I don't know when we're
going to make it and how is this going
to go and and all of a sudden you go
well guys we're we're here we're going
that way and and uh and then you're like
well I got to keep going cuz cuz you're
like they're still out there if you
forget you have to step up that's one of
the reasons I I want a family I think
when you have kids yeah you have to be
like you have to be the best version of
yourself like for them all my friends
with kids that I've seen them go through
where until you have a family you're
just you're just playing around man I
mean you could do important work you can
you can have skin in the in other games
but it's once you have a little tribe of
humans that depends on you yeah if you
take that seriously if you want to do
that right it's one of the hardest
things you could
do and it it just it just changes
everything how is your life changed
since we last met speak about changing
everything do you been for people don't
know pushing jungle Keepers forward into
Uncharted territor saving more more and
more and more and more rainforest
there's a lot I could ask you about that
there's a lot of stories to be told
there it's a fight it's a battle it's a
battle to protect this this uh
beautiful area of rainforest of nature
um but since we last met you've made
you've continued to make a lot of
progress uh so what what's what's the
story of jungle Keepers leading up to
the moment we met and after and
everything you're going doing right now
18 years ago when I first came to the
Jungle I was a kid from New York who
always dreamed since I was 6 years old
maybe even younger of going to a place
where animals were everywhere and
there's big trees and skyscrapers of
life and so being dyslexic and and not
fitting in in school and and reading
about Jane Goodall and having Lord of
the Rings be one of the things I grew up
on I just chose to come to the Amazon
and the first person I met was this
local indigenous conservationist named
Juan hulio Duran who was trying to
protect this remote River the last
pedras river which in history apparently
faucet referenced either the Les pedras
but he called it taam Manu and said
don't go there you'll surely die from
tribes and so there's very few
references to this this River in history
it's stayed very wild because it's been
a place that the law hasn't made it that
the government hasn't really extended to
like you know we sort of past the police
limit and so JJ was out here ages ago
trying to protect this River before it
was too late and when I met him I was
just a barely out of high school kid
with a dream of see just seeing the
rainforest let
alone seeing a giant anaconda or having
any sort of meaningful experience or
contribution to the narrative and
somehow over all the years that we began
working together and sparked a
friendship and began exploring and going
on Expeditions and bringing people to
the rainforest and and asking them for
help and manifesting the hell out of
this insane dream that we had I mean we
didn't even have a boat we would take
logs down the river we would have to cut
a tree down every time we wanted to
return to civilization we'd have to cut
down a Balsa tree and float down the
river Flo down the river on it yeah it
was it was it's Madness like it's
Madness it's pure Madness and I don't
know what made us keep going but along
the way people showed up who cared and
who wanted to help and if it was a movie
it wouldn't even necessarily be a good
movie because you'd go oh please you're
just telling me that you just kept doing
the thing and just magically people
showed up but yeah that's what happened
that's exactly the way it went we kept
doing the thing that we loved we said it
doesn't matter if we don't have funding
or a boat or gasoline or friends or or
anything we just kept going MH and along
the way we found someone who could help
us start a ranger program and then we
found daxa Silva who helped us fund the
beginning of jungle Keepers and then
people like Mosen and Stefan who were
there making sure that this thing
actually took flight off the ground and
then right around the time that we were
wondering what was going to happen and
if we're all going to have to quit and
get real jobs and if we could actually
save the rainforest from the destruction
that was
coming Lex fredman sends me a DM MH and
honestly changed the entire narrative
because up until until then we had
been we had been playing in the minor
leagues pretending trying real real hard
and the listeners of your show in the
moments after you published your episode
with with our
conversation began showing up in droves
and supporting jungle Keepers putting in
5 10 100 a thousand we started getting
these
donations and the incredible team that I
work with we all went into hyperdrive
everybody everybody started going nuts
we all started spending 16-hour days
working to try and deal with the tidal
wave that Lex sent towards us just cuz
so many people knew that we were doing
this that was an indigenous Le fight to
protect this incredibly ancient virgin
rainforest before it was cut and people
resonated with that and so we we we got
this this this huge swell of support and
this year we've we've protected
thousands and thousands of more Acres of
rainforest because of that swell of
support so current 50,000 Acres what's
the goal what's the approach to saving
this rainforce since we printed this
it's gone up to 66,000 Acres
it's and and as you know in each of
those little acres are millions and
millions of animal heartbeats and
societies of animals and the goal here
is that we're
between Manu National Park alaus
National Park the Tambo Reserve we're in
a region that's known as the
biodiversity capital of Peru one of the
most biodiverse parts of the western
Amazon and we're fighting along the edge
of the trans Amazon Highway and so it's
it's just a small group of local people
and some International experts who have
come together and Ed these in incredibly
outside of the box strategies to sort of
crowdfund conservation to go look we
know that this incredible life is here
we have the scientific evidence we we
have the national park system if we can
protect this before they cut it down mhm
we could do something of global
significance all these Jaguars all these
monkeys all these undescribed medicines
the uncontacted tribes that we share
this forest with could all be protected
and people have stepped up and begun to
make that happen and there people from
all over the world and it's
incredible but what's the approach so
trying to with donations to buy out more
and more of the land and then protect it
so the approach is that currently the
government favors extractors so if
you're a gold miner or a log an illegal
logger or you just want to cut down and
burn a bunch of rainforest and set up a
cacao Farm the government's fine with
that doesn't matter you're not really
breaking the law if you destroy nature
so as long as you're producing something
from the land they don't see it as a
loss then then nature was destroyed
permanently yeah it's just Wilderness
it's sort of just beyond the scope of
it's not doesn't or the local people
that technically own the land out here
the local indigenous people for instance
we fought this year to help the
community of Puerto noo who's been
fighting for 20 years to have government
recognized land these are indigenous
people in the Amazon fighting to protect
their own land and you know what it was
that was holding them back they didn't
understand how the the system of of of
legal documents worked to certify that
titled land they didn't really have
theun funding to go from their very very
remote Community into the offices and so
jungle Keepers helped them with that and
so really all we're doing is helping
local people protect the forest that is
their
world that's it if people
donate how will that
help if people donate to Jungle Keepers
what what you're doing is you're
helping someone like JJ who's an
indigenous naturalist who has the vision
who has seen Forest be D destroyed he's
trying to protect it before it's too
late you're
saving mahogany trees Ironwood trees kpo
trees skyscrapers of
life just monkeys birds reptiles
amphibians birds mammals this entire
avatar on Earth world of rainforest that
produces a fifth of the oxygen we
breathe and the water we drink this
incredible thing as far as I know it's
the most direct way to protect that and
so the fact that the fact that we've you
know we have large funders who give us
you know $100,000 to protect this huge
swath of land and that goes through
through things like this and through
Instagram it you know it goes directly
to the local conservationists who who
work with the loggers to protect that
land before it's cut but one of the most
impactful things that has happened this
year in the wake of our last
conversation was that I got an email
from a mother and she said you know I'm
a single mom and I work a few jobs and I
can't afford to give you a ton of money
but um me and my kids look at your
Instagram often after dinner and they
really want to protect the heartbeats
they really want to protect the animals
and the rainforest and so we do we give
$5 a month to Jungle Keepers and it was
to me that was so impactful because I
used to be that little kid worried about
the animals and I saw how a few Million
Raindrops can create a flood yeah I
ask that people donate uh to Jungle
Keepers you guys are legit um that is
going to go a long way jungle
keepers.com
uh saving the
rainforest if we did if let's just say
some company organization or or if
enough people donated it let's just say
we got that 30 million that money would
go directly into stopping logging roads
into creating a corridor a biological
Corridor that connects the uncontacted
indigenous reserves with other tribal
lands with Manu national park with the
tambopata which establishes essentially
the largest protected area in the Amazon
rainforest and what makes it this
groundbreaking is that we're not doing
this in the traditional way we're doing
this take it to the people mhm and
that's what's been so exciting is that
you know when he started this when JJ
started this 30 years ago he had no idea
his father wanted him to be a logger he
didn't have shoes until he was 13 years
old he grew up bathing in the river he
had no idea that a bunch of crazy
Foreigner scientists were going to show
up and some guy in a James Bond suit was
going to come down here with microphones
and and that all of a sudden the world
would know that he was on this quest to
protect this this incredible ecosystem
and all those little aliens well that's
all important thing to remember that the
the people that are cutting down the
forest the loggers are also human beings
their families they're they're they're
basically trying to survive and they're
desperate and they're doing the thing
that will bring them money and so
they're just human beings at the core of
it if they have other option if they
have other
options they will probably choose to uh
give their life to saving the community
to first and foremost providing for
their
family and after that saving the
Community Helping the community flourish
and I think probably a lot of them love
the rainforest they grew up in the
rainforest yeah I mean look at pico yeah
Pico used to be a logger full-time
logger longtime logger now he loves
conservation
conserv he's like yeah you know it's all
about just providing people people
options there's some dark stuff on the
on the gold mine stuff you've talked
about you showed me parts of the
rainforest where the gold mes are and
and they're just kind of erasing the
rainforest yeah sort of at the edges
this one the mining happens and it's
this
ugly it's this ugly process of they're
just destroying the jungle just for the
surface layer of the sand or whatever
that they process to to collect just
little bits of
gold and there's also very dark things
that happen along the way as the
communities around the gold mines are
created so the the entirety the moral
system that emerges from that has things
like prostitution where onethird of the
of the women that
are drawn into that sex traffic and
prostitution are minors under you know
under 17 years old 13 to 17 year old
there's just a lot of really really dark
stuff I think that we
have a rare
chance to do something against that
Darkness I think that this is an example
of local people who
have taken action done good work been
good to the people that have
visited harnessed a certain amount of
international moment
momentum and now we're on the cusp of
doing something historic and so for the
children in the communities along this
River it won't be being a prostitute in
a gold mine it'll be becoming a trained
Ranger like last month um our Ranger
coordinator and one of our one of our
female Rangers went to Africa for a
ranger conference and it's like we're
beginning to this is someone from a
little tiny village
withs up
Rivera about aerv Ranger and it's like
that's that's changing lives and her her
daughters then she's married to ignasio
the guy she like her her their kids are
going to grow up seeing their parents
walking around with the emblem on and go
oh I want to and then and then people
like pico and Pedro and all these guys
that work here are going to go well we
have to we have to protect this forest
and then they start getting fascinated
about the snakes and then they caring
about the turtle eggs and then all of a
sudden they have a way of life and and
nobody needs to go be nobody nobody
needs to go steal anybody's kids to be a
prostitute and a gold mine that's
horrible and so it's really a it's a
win-win for the for the animals for the
river for the rainforest for people
we're improve it's biocentric
conservation it's it's just making
everything better yeah I've read in an
article that said an
estimated 1,200 girls between ages of 12
and 17 are forcibly drafted sent a child
prostitution uh around the communities
in the gold mines at least onethird of
the prostitutes in the camp are
underage the girls had ended up in the
camp after receiving a tip that there
were restaurants looking for waitresses
and willing to pay top dollar they
jumped on and bust together and came
down to the rainforest what they found
was not what they were expecting the
mining camp restaurant served food for
only a few hours a day the rest of the
time it was the girls themselves who
were on the menu literally at the end of
the road and without the money to return
home the girls would soon become trapped
in
prostitution it's interesting to me that
the
most
devastating destruction of nature the
complete eraser of the rainforest burned
to the ground sucked through a hose spit
out into a disgusting Mercury puddle
like the complete annihilation of life
on Earth
goes hand inand with the complete
annihilation of a young
life it's like it's all based around the
same thing it's it's the light versus
the dark that's that's it's it's the
destruction and the Chaos versus a move
towards order and
hope and and
and it is incredibly dark and this
region is heavy with
it well I'm glad you're fighting for the
light is there like a milestone in near
future that you're working towards like
financially in terms of
donations there is in in the next year
and a half as you saw in your time here
there's there's roads working around the
jungle keeper concessions all the work
that the local people are doing to
protect this land is trying to be
dismantled by International corporations
that are subcontracting logging
companies here and really what we need
is $30 million in the next two years to
protect the whole thing you've seen the
ancient mahogany trees you've seen the
families of monkeys you've seen the
Cayman in the river all of this is
standing in the pathway of Destruction
that road they're going to come down
that road and men with chainsaws are
going to dismantle the forest that has
been growing since the
beginning this is so magical do you see
the snake over there yep do you there's
a snake okay I'm just gonna don't move I
don't want you to move I'm going to just
this is one of the most beautiful snakes
in the Amazon rainforest this is the
blunt headed tree snake my favorite
snakes I've been hoping that you would
get to see this
snake I have been praying oh boy okay
okay let's just let's just let's just go
right back into this okay look at this
little beauty creation let's keep you
away from the
fire look at this little blunt headed
tree tree snake
wow such an incredible so tell me about
the snake harmless little
snake um if you put your hand out he'll
probably just crawl onto your hand just
be real careful with the fire so look
I'm just going to put him like this
we're going
to yeah let's just snake safety so he's
a tree snake yep nice and slow nice and
slow nice and slow so you nice and slow
just really slow just be the tree be the
tree that he clb CLS
on and this is like again this is a
snake that's so thin and so
small there you go there you go nice and
slow just just be the tree let him crawl
around so he's going to try and do all
this
stuff let me see if I can just calm him
down for a sec let me just see he very
active little snake so see like the
snake the other night okay just
come look at this I can see the light
through his body
to me this is an alien MH this is this
strange little life
form his
eyes are 2third of his
head I'm not joking you look at their
skull he's so tiny he's so people
listening there's a snake in Paul's
hands right now and it's
very uh it's long of course but very
skinny very light and and the also for
everyone listening the odds
of that as we're sitting here doing this
podcast that a snake would just be
Crawling by in the jungle might sound
like something that would happen
but uh the density of snakes in the
Amazon rainforest makes this very unique
experience can you tell me a little bit
about the coloration scheme a littleit
brown yeah just to describe this as
we're as we were talking here it's just
a sort of banded white and brown snake
with this tiny little head about the
size of my pinky nail um
2/3 of this snake's head is made up of
its gigantic eyes it's got a small mouth
and
it's it's about about a third as thick
as a pencil it's basically a moving shoe
string it's incredibly incredibly
thin the only thing I am thinking lexo
is that if we have Dan come and just do
some shots of
yeah that's true
Dan so what what are we looking at here
uh the snake that was crawling behind us
in the jungle that I we we were talking
about jungle Keepers and what we could
do and this snake just showed up at that
moment and this is a very active little
snake who's out for a hunt tonight and
wants to find something to eat
so this is a blunt-headed tree snake
totally harmless little literally a
moving Sho
string super beautiful little animal
when you talk about aliens to me this is
this is an alien like what are you
thinking what are you doing right now
what do you think about the fact that we
are handled being
handled by these giant humans and as he
was saying it reaches up to the leaves
yeah snake just naturally knows to go
look you just put him anywhere near
leaves and he's like I got this he just
wants to go right up into that tree
I just want you to try holding him and
uh real gentle just be the tree yeah and
just just kind of do the same thing you
learned last night just nice and
gentle yep and see he's holding on to my
finger right now he's just going up
there you go perfect nice and easy he's
a little erratic he's a little
goofy maybe his camera
shy Maybe being a fan of the
podcast and gigantic eyes relative to
his body size huge oh jeez hello
moth traffic traffic in the jungle and
then for everyone listening as we're as
we're as we're handling the snake that
we
found that was crawling by us like
literally by our shoulders as we're
talking a bat flies through no joke 8 in
from Lex's ear like just Zips past his
head as he's holding a snake while we're
sitting here in the jungle it's just
we're just in it now now he's going to
try and back
up and how do you yeah why don't you why
don't you let's encourage him to come
back this he's he's weaved this way he's
he's okay he's just he's just trying to
back out yeah there release oh release
okay I'm gonna this is what I'm going to
do we're going to say Thank you Mr Snake
thank you Mr Snake thank you Mr Snake
back up into the tree
here we go there you go there you go
there you go and then uh we can res
resume normal podcasting now cuz our we
really are in the jungle we really are
in the
jungle that's one of my favorite snakes
that's one of my favorite little aliens
on this planet
mhm look at
that and it's going on some long journey
it's to the canopy
carry the rest of the
night so that little snake is one of the
million of life forms hard beasts that
you're trying to
protect exactly
um to me
I after almost 20 years down here the
people here have become my friends the
the Cayman on the river the the monkeys
I when I fall asleep at night I think
about all the different heartbeats all
the different Little Creatures here that
that when they bulldoze this Forest when
they when they chop down these trees
that they that they vanish that we we we
take away their world and in that very
evolutionary historical sense of
remembering the the primordial soup it's
like this these this little creature is
surviving out here somehow and we have
the chance to save it and even if you
don't care about the little creature on
the pale blue
dot each of these little creatures
contributes to this massive orchestral
hole that
creates climactic stability on this
planet and the Amazon is one of the most
important parts of that and each of
these little guys is playing a role in
there so one of the other fascinating
life forms is other humans but living a
very different kind of life so
uncontacted tribes what do you find Most
Fascinating about
them what I find Most Fascinating about
the uncontacted tribes is that while me
and you are sitting here with
microphones in a light somewhere out
there in that darkness in that direction
not so far away as the crow
flies there are people sitting around a
fire in the dark probably with little
more than a few leaves over their
heads who don't even have the use of
stone
tools who only have metal objects that
they've stolen from nearby communities
they're they're
they're living such primitive isolated
nomadic lives in the modern world and
they're still living naked out in the
jungle um it's truly incredible it's
truly remarkable and I think that it's
because they can't advocate for
themselves they can't protect themselves
it's sort of like well we can let them
get shot up by loggers and get their get
let their land get bulldozed while they
hide they have no idea that their world
is being destroyed um but they're
they're they're sort of the scariest and
Most Fascinating thing out there right
now in the jungle what do you think
they're because you spoken about them
being dangerous what do you think their
relationship with violence is I think
why is violence part of their approach
to the external world so from the best I
understand it that at the turn of the
century Industrial
Revolution we had sudden immense need
for rubber for hoses and gaskets and
wires and tires and and the War Machine
and the only way to get rubber was to
come down to the Amazon rainforest and
get the local people who knew the jungle
to go out into the jungle and and cut
rubber trees and collect the latex and
Henry Ford tried doing ford landia tried
having rubber plantations but Leaf
blight killed it and so you had this
period of horrendous extraction in the
Amazon where the rubber Barons were
coming down and just raping and
pillaging the tribes and making them go
out to tap these trees and the
uncontacted tribe said
no they had their 6ot long long bows 7
foot long Arrows with giant bamboo tips
and they moved further back into the
forest and they said we will not be
conquered and since that time they've
been out there and it's it's confusing
because in a way they're still Running
Scared a century later and their
grandparents would have told them you
know the outside world everyone you see
in the outside world world is trying to
kill you so kill them first so can you
blame them for being violent no is this
River still wild because loggers were
scared to go here for a long time for
almost a century late that's why this
Forest is still here yes and so is it a
human rights issue that we protect the
last people on Earth that have no
government no no affiliation no language
that we can explain we don't know what
their medicinal plant knowledge is we
don't know their creation myths we know
nothing about them and they're just out
there right now with bows and arrows
living in the dark surviving in the
jungle naked without even spoons forget
about the wheel forget about iPhones
they got nothing and they're making it
work we don't know their creation
myths so they have a very primitive
existence but but do you think their
values first of all do you think their
nature is similar to ours and how do
their values differ from
ours this is complicated because the the
Anthropologist in me wants to say that
they have a a historical reason for the
violent life that they have you know
they experienced incredible generational
trauma some time ago and that and
because they've been living isolated in
the jungle that has permeated to become
their culture they've become culture of
violence but yet the the the contacted
modern indigenous communities that we
work with that are my friends that work
here just the other day we were speaking
to one of them who was pulling spikes
out of your hand while he was explaining
that he tried to help them the brothers
Los armanos he tried to help them he
tried to give them a gift and what did
they do they shot him in the head yeah
he said there are brothers
and he tried to give him
a bananas mhm plantains plantains boat
full of plantains and they shot at him
they shot three arrows at him and one of
them actually hit him in the skull and
put him in the hospital and he got hel
helicopter evacuated from his
community and so he's brave for
surviving but he's uh he's a lucky
Survivor they they are incredibly
accurate with those bamboo tipped arrows
and those arrows are 7 feet long so when
you get hit by one they come at a
velocity that can rip through you and
the range on a shotgun is way shorter
than the range on a
longbow you're talking about a couple
hundred meters on a
longbow and they're deadly accurate they
can take spider monkeys out of a tree
and so there's stories of loggers and
I've seen the photos of the bodies of
loggers who attract who attacked one of
the tribes and the tribes hadn't done
anything but these loggers came around a
Bend they started shooting shotguns at
the tribe and the tribe scattered into
the forest and as the loggers boat went
around a Bend they just started flying
arrows took out the boat driver boat
skitted to the side and then everybody
was standing in the river and you can't
run and the tribe just descended on them
and just porcupine them full of
arrows shotgun versus bow there's a
shotgun shell here by the way yeah from
the from the loggers
mhm yeah we picked that up yesterday was
that yesterday
that was I don't know I don't know one
of the things that happens here is time
loses
meaning in in some kind of deep way
that it does when you're in a big city
in the United States for example and
their schedules and meetings and all
this kind of stuff it transforms the
meaning your experience of time your
interaction with time the role of time
all of
this I've forgotten
time and I forgotten the existence of
the outside world and how does that
feel it feels more honest it also puts
in perspective like all the busyness all
the uh it kind of takes the ant out of
the ant colony and says hey this you're
just an ant this is just an ant colony
and there's a big world out there
yeah it's a it's a chance to be grateful
to celebrate this Earth of ours and the
things that make
it worth living on including the simple
things that make the individual life
worth living which is water and then
food and the rest is the rest is just
details of course the friendships and
social interaction that's a really big
one
actually that one I'm taking for granted
cuz I didn't get a chance yet to really
spend time alone
when I came here I've gotten a chance to
hang out with you and there's a kind of
camaraderie there's a friendship there
that if that's broken that's a that's a
tough that's a tough one
too you spent quite a lot of time alone
in the jungle you ever get a loan out
here yeah yeah I mean the first 15 years
we were doing this we there would be
times that JJ would be busy in town with
his family and I would for sheer love of
the rainforest I would have to come
alone out here and we didn't have
running water I didn't have running
water I didn't have lights all I had was
a couple of candles in the darkness and
a tent and I was 20s something years old
living in the Amazon by myself your boat
sunk and yeah it's incredibly lonely I I
had to learn through experience because
I thought there was a period I think
when you're you know you're
young as a young man I I I had this
thing like I wanted to prove that I
could be like the Explorer I wanted to
prove that I
could handle the elements that I could
go out alone that I could have these
these deep connective moments with the
with the jungle and it's like I did that
and that's
great and you know what the kid from
into the wild learned right before he
died in that bus that if you don't have
somebody to share it with doesn't
matter but uh U some kind
of like even just
deep human
level like even if you have somebody to
share it
with you ever just get a alone out here
just like this sense of like existential
dread of like what you know the jungle
has a way
of uh not caring about any individual
organism it just kind of
churns it's like it makes you realize
that life is finite quite
intensely yeah for for me it's
comforting being out here because I find
the the rat race the national narrative
the the the the need to make money the
to worry about war to to be outraged
about the newest thing that that
politician said and what that actor did
and and it it just there's always just
this just unending sort of media storm
and and and and everyone's worried and
everyone's trying to optimize their
sunlight exposure and find the solution
and buy the right new thing
and to me coming out
here first of all I mean something out
here because I can help someone I can
help people I can help these animals and
so I find my meaning out
here but
also you know there's the losing the
madness over the mountains it's it's
Nature has always and for many people
been where things make sense and to me I
think I'm a simple analog type of person
that it makes sense that when it rains
you get in the river to stay warm and
and you you know you wait for the Dawn
and you see a little tree snake and and
you say it just it just it makes it
makes more sense and I think that the
the the
overwhelming teeming complexity that is
inside the the ant mound of society can
be dizzying for some people and I think
that maybe it's the dyslexia maybe it's
just that I love nature but
um now if I when I land in JFK
I I feel like a frightened animal on
like like it's it's as if you as if you
release like a like
a some animal that had never seen onto
like into Time Square and you can just
imagine this dog with its ears back
running away from taxis and just just
cowering from the noise and it's just
hustle and bustle and people are brutal
and how much you want it for
get in the car you screaming over the
intercom and just everything everything
sensory changes and let's get home okay
let's go you got a meeting you got to
get to the next place you got to give a
talk you got to sign out out out here
when we finish up here what are we going
to do we're going to eat some food maybe
go catch a crocodile go walk around the
jungle at night like it's slower it
makes sense and and there's that again
there's that deep meaning of of of that
here where we can be the Guardians for
good we can we can be we can hold that
candle up and and know for sure that
we're protecting the trees from being
destroyed and it's that simple thing of
just this is
good there you go it's simple in society
I feel like everyone's always losing
their minds and forgetting the most
basic of fundamental truths and out here
you can't really argue with them you
know when we needed water it was like
shit if we don't get water we're fucked
and that and that's to me that's where
the camaraderie comes from because no
matter what we'll be we could go to the
most fancy ass restaurant through the
biggest most famous people in the world
doesn't matter we still remember what
was like standing around in the jungle
going fuck we're scared we don't have
water we got reduced to the simplest
form of humans and that's and that's
something and we survived and that's and
that's cool and you take all the all
those people in their nice dresses in
their fancy restaurants you put in those
conditions they're all going to want the
same thing this water
yes it's all the same thing all the
beautiful people how's your view of your
IM mortality evolved over your
interaction with the jungle how often do
you think about your
death well I don't anymore cuz the I've
come to believe that there is a
benevolent God Spirit Creator taking
care of us
and I don't I don't think about my own
death we have a little a little bit of
time here and we clearly know nothing
about what we're doing here mhm and it
seems like we just have to do the best
we
can and so I just it doesn't it doesn't
scare me I've come close to dying a lot
of
times and uh I just don't think you
don't want to have a bad death first of
all you don't want to you don't want to
you don't want to be a statistic you
don't want to find out you don't want to
like try out a be the first to try out a
new product and oops it crushed you you
know that that's that's a terrible way
to go or the people that used to you
know in the gold rush they were using
mercury and they were all getting uh or
lead it was lead poisoning and it's like
oh you know few million people died that
way and it's like you want a you want a
good death you know you want a staring
down the eyes of a tiger hanging off the
edge of a cliff saving somebody's
something something something worthy
Warrior's death MH but riding a 16 foot
black cayman just boots on screaming
yeah um that would be fun that'd be a
good one a lot of people say that you
carry the spirit of Steve
Iran in your heart in the way you carry
yourself in this world I mean that guy
was full of
joy if I have a percentage of Steve
Irwin I would be honored but that guy
that think I think there's only one
Steve I think that he was he occupied
his own strata of just Shining Light
every everything was positive enthusiasm
love and happiness and save the animals
and do better and let's make it fun and
and and that was so infectious that that
it sort of
transcended his TV show it transcended
his conservation Work It transcended
Business and Entrepreneurship it just
through sheer magnetism and enthusiasm
he just I mean everyone knew who Steve
was everyone loved Steve we still all
love Steve and so it's uh it's just it's
just amazing what one Spirit can do so
if anybody you know makes that
comparison I I get I get really
uncomfortable because to me Steve Irwin
is like just just the goat and
so I'm okay with that well I at least
agree with that comparison uh having
spent time with you there's just an
eternal flame of
joy and Adventure
too just pulling you
uh a dark question but do you think you
might meet the same end giving your life
in some way to something you
love that is a dark question but I I I
think most likely I'll get whacked by
loggers I think that loggers or gold
miners will take me out I don't I don't
picture myself going from animals but um
that would be heartbreaking too yeah it
would but yeah at the same time though
like the KK Cobain value of that if I
died doing what I love to protect the
river I'd be so worth so much more a lot
like we'd get the 30 million if I died
tomorrow for sure so we've already we
already talked about this my friends I'm
like if I get whacked yeah do the
foundation make the documentary protect
the river protect the heartbeats call it
the heartbeats jungle keeper the
heartbeats you know be ready for it
because these these things do happen
people get pissed if you get in their
way and as many happy people as and who
whose lives were changing there's also
going to be some jealous shitty upset
people who are mad that they can't make
prostitutes out of young girls and keep
destroying the planet and so they might
just uh erase you
me well I hope you um like a cleint
Eastwood character just just impossible
to kill I like how you squinted your
eyes on Q uh who do you think will play
you in a movie God somebody with the
right nose yeah somebody who can live up
to this old yeah all right Italian yeah
it's funny do you think of yourself as
Italian or human American that's the
thing I don't you
know my my life has been the United
Nations of of whatever like I just every
to me I I just I don't that's the other
thing you go back to society and
everyone's obsessed with with race to me
I'm like look leopards have black babies
and yellow babies one mother like
they're all leopards and and
I'm I'm so color blind and race blind
and everything else I've lived in India
my friends are Peruvian my family we got
Italian Filipino just everything and so
I've I'm so immersed in it that that
when I I find it very jarring and um
disconcerting how much time we spend
talking
about uh different religions and just
the differences in humans I'm like dude
we're we're talking about whether or not
our ecosystems are going to be able to
provide for us us we're talking about
nuclear war we're talking about there's
some pretty serious shit on the table
and we're over here arguing over like
Shades of Gray of of it's it's so
trivial and that shit drives me crazy
and and as does the outrage where it's
like no you you you have to care I've
been I've been criticized for not caring
enough about that and I'm like I'm gonna
I'm
gonna who cares what the hell I am who
gives a shit what the hell I'm a human
we're all human yeah it's not that easy
but it's kind of fun sometimes and
and we're at a better time in hit like
when you think about like the Middle
Ages like even if you were a king you
still didn't have it that good you
didn't have pineapples in the winter you
didn't even know what the fuck a
pineapple was we have pineapples
whenever we want them
MH we can fly on planes to other
countries by the let's clarify we you
mean a large fraction of the world you
know what I mentioned to you one of the
biggest uh things I've noticed when I
immigrated from from the Soviet Union to
the United States is the how plentiful
bananas and pineapples were the fruit
section the produce section of the
didn't have to wait in line at the
grocery store could just eat as many
bananas and pineapples and cherries and
watermelon as as you want that's not
everybody has that uh no that's true not
everybody has that but but but everybody
could be that King now but a growing
number of people today can Feast on on
pineapple can Feast on pineapple and
have toasters and new distracting apps
all the way until the grave that's the
thing that uh I also noticed is I don't
think so much about politics while I'm
here or we haven't even talked about it
I haven't don't talk about the
stupid uh differences between
humans except to just kind of laugh at
the absurdity of it on a too busy trying
to survive glaciers and jungles and
avalanches and all kinds of shit
do you think nature is brutal as Warner
Herzog showed it or is it
beautiful I
think the brutality of nature is the
chaos and I think
that we are the only ones in it that are
capable of organizing in the direction
of order and
light so yes there are going to be
hyenas tearing each other apart yes
there's going to be War torn Nations and
poor star children but we as humans have
the
power to work
towards something more organized than
that so there is a there is a force
within nature that's always searching
for
order for good it's kind of a unifying
theory if you think about it I mean all
of the chaos of history and the wars and
and and the chaos of nature we we
through technology and and organization
there's so many people more people today
than every before I think who are so
concerned who realize that the
incredible power like what Jane Goodall
says about you know how you can affect
the people around you how you can do
good in the world how you can change The
Narrative of conservation from one of
loss and darkness to one of innovation
and light like we can we can do
incredible things we are the Masters as
humans and I think that I think that
we're on the cusp of sort of
understanding the true potential of that
like I just think I just think more than
ever people people have harnessed this
ability to do good in the world and be
proud of it and and and just change the
the the darkness into something
else when you uh have lived here and
taken in the ways of the Amazon juggle H
how have your views of God you
mentioned how have you your views of God
change who is God I've come to believe
that again back to that that Christ
wasn't a Christian Muhammad wasn't a
Muslim and Buddha wasn't a Buddhist that
like the
game the game is
love and
compassion and the universe is chaotic
and dangerous and nature is chaotic and
dangerous but we if if this is some sort
of a biological video game our
reality that the test is can we be good
and we go through it every day can you
can you be good to your parent can you
be good to your partner can you be good
to your co-workers can it's so difficult
and we see how people can cheat and
steal and hurt and Destroy
and and the incredible impact that it
has on the world the the
returning
exponential impact that one act of
kindness one act of good can do and
so I see nature as God I see the
religions as different cultural
manifestations of the same
truth the same creative
Force maybe me and you have the same
beliefs and your aliens are my
angels well thank you for
being one of the humans trying to do
good in this world and thank you for
bringing me along for some adventure and
I believe more Adventure
awaits thank you for being enough of a
psychopath
to actually just sign on to come into
the Amazon rainforest in a suit and a
year ago when you told me that you were
going to do this I truly didn't believe
you so for being a man of your word and
for the incredible work you do to
connect humans and to create dialogue
and to do good in the world and for all
the adventures that we've had thank you
so much thank you brother Lex thanks
man thanks for listening to this
conversation with Paul rosley to support
this podcast please check out our
sponsors in the description and now let
me leave you with some words from Joseph
Campbell the big question is whether you
are going to be able to say a hearty yes
to your
adventure thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time