00:00:00
This Burmese python wants to know what
00:00:02
is inside the diary of a CEO.
00:00:05
>> Oh my god.
00:00:05
>> Beautiful. Now, what are you feeling
00:00:07
right now?
00:00:07
>> Wondering why I do this for a living.
00:00:09
>> Have you ever done a podcast with a
00:00:11
10-ft snake across the table before?
00:00:13
>> No, this is my first.
00:00:15
>> Awesome. And then we'll bring out the
00:00:16
next friend.
00:00:17
>> Don't bring it over here.
00:00:18
>> Just don't move.
00:00:20
>> Paul, what have you spent the last 20
00:00:22
years of your life doing? living out of
00:00:24
a backpack in the Amazon rainforest
00:00:26
barefoot with a machete to help the
00:00:28
indigenous people save the Amazon
00:00:30
whatever it takes which means crocodile
00:00:32
bites snake very rare diseases hunted by
00:00:34
the narot traffickers with a picture of
00:00:36
that guy that scar is because he was
00:00:38
shot in the head by a 7ft arrow while he
00:00:40
was trying to make peaceful contact with
00:00:41
the unconted tribes and this is actually
00:00:43
a very important story I think I have a
00:00:46
video of this
00:00:46
>> yeah this is world first footage so
00:00:49
tribe isolated so deep in the jungle
00:00:50
that they've never heard of a spoon or
00:00:52
the wheel or Jesus was coming out to
00:00:54
make contact. So, we do a 2-day boat
00:00:56
journey in one night through the worst
00:00:58
thunderstorm I've ever seen. They were
00:01:00
scared. We were scared because these
00:01:01
tribes kill people all the time. And
00:01:03
they had one question. How do we tell
00:01:05
the bad guys from the good guys? You
00:01:07
see, these people are being hunted by
00:01:08
traffickers and gold miners and loggers
00:01:11
and boxed in by deforestation. But if
00:01:13
our oceans of rainforests are vanishing,
00:01:15
life on Earth is not possible. Now, it's
00:01:17
not too late, but we're the last
00:01:18
generation that can save it. Paul, young
00:01:20
kids are growing up attached to screens
00:01:22
and loneliness is at an all-time high.
00:01:24
Is there anything that you learned in
00:01:25
those 15 years that a westerner like me
00:01:27
would find useful?
00:01:28
>> 100%. So, let's start with purpose.
00:01:34
>> Listen, my my team gave me a script that
00:01:36
they asked me to read, but I'm just
00:01:37
going to ask you um in the nicest way I
00:01:39
possibly can. Thank you first and
00:01:41
foremost for choosing to subscribe to
00:01:42
this channel. It is um it's been one of
00:01:44
the most incredible crazy years of my
00:01:46
life. I never could have imagined. had
00:01:48
so many dreams in my life, but this was
00:01:49
not one of them. And the very fact that
00:01:51
these conversations have resonated with
00:01:52
you and you've given me so much feedback
00:01:54
is something I will always be
00:01:55
appreciative of. And I almost carry away
00:01:57
a sort of burden of uh responsibility to
00:01:59
pay you back. And the favor I would like
00:02:01
to ask from you today is to subscribe to
00:02:03
the channel if you um would be so
00:02:05
obliged. It's completely free to do
00:02:06
that. Roughly about 47% of you that
00:02:09
listen to this channel frequently
00:02:10
currently don't subscribe to the
00:02:12
channel. So if you're one of those
00:02:13
people, please come and join us. Hit the
00:02:14
subscribe button. It's the single free
00:02:16
thing you can do to make this channel
00:02:17
better. And every subscriber sort of
00:02:19
pays into this show and allows us to do
00:02:21
things bigger and better and to push
00:02:22
ourselves even more. And I will not let
00:02:24
you down if you hit the subscribe
00:02:25
button. I promise you. And if I do,
00:02:27
please do unsubscribe, but I promise I
00:02:28
won't. Thank you.
00:02:34
Paul, you live an extraordinary life. A
00:02:37
very atypical extraordinary life. What
00:02:40
have you spent the last 20 years of your
00:02:42
life doing? trying to find a way to
00:02:45
explore the wildest parts of the Amazon
00:02:48
and figure out a way to save them.
00:02:51
>> The Amazon, for a lot of people that
00:02:53
don't know anything about this part of
00:02:54
the world, they'll they'll think of it
00:02:55
as a bunch of trees where lots of wild
00:02:58
animals live. What is the sort of
00:03:00
central misunderstanding of the true
00:03:02
nature of the Amazon?
00:03:03
>> I think it's a it's a problem of scale.
00:03:05
People don't understand the importance
00:03:06
of the Amazon. This is one of the most
00:03:08
crucial things on our planet. It's one
00:03:09
of the most physically defining features
00:03:11
of our planet. If you look at Earth from
00:03:13
space, you see this giant green belt
00:03:16
over most of South America. That's the
00:03:18
Amazon rainforest, and that's where
00:03:20
1ifth of our fresh water is contained,
00:03:22
and another fifth of our oxygen is
00:03:24
produced. This system is irreplaceably
00:03:27
valuable to all life on Earth.
00:03:30
>> And you live in the Amazon.
00:03:32
>> For the last 20 years, I've lived mostly
00:03:35
in the Amazon. I've slept more nights
00:03:37
outdoors than I have in in my adult life
00:03:40
because I befriended the indigenous
00:03:42
people of the upper Amazon rainforest.
00:03:45
And that's that's what the book is
00:03:46
about. It's I went down there at 18
00:03:48
years old because I needed adventure.
00:03:50
And then the quest for adventure led for
00:03:52
this call to meaning. And then that led
00:03:54
to the discovery that we were the only
00:03:57
ones who could do anything to stop the
00:03:59
bulldozers and the chainsaws from
00:04:00
destroying the thing that we loved.
00:04:03
A lot of people have clicked on this
00:04:04
conversation for whatever reason. What
00:04:07
are we going to talk about today that
00:04:09
you think might be interesting to them
00:04:11
in their lives and what is the wide
00:04:13
variety of things from the conversations
00:04:14
you have every single day that compels
00:04:17
people cuz I want to give them a bit of
00:04:19
a tlddr before we get into the detail.
00:04:21
>> I think that what people are going to
00:04:23
find and this is what I tried to write
00:04:25
about was that I didn't know where I was
00:04:28
going at first. I just knew what I
00:04:30
loved. And so over the last 20 years,
00:04:32
it's been following a dream in a
00:04:34
direction. And that dream was finding a
00:04:36
way to relieve the the incredible stress
00:04:40
that I felt over the the state of the
00:04:42
environment. We live in these times
00:04:43
where people feel like the world is
00:04:45
ending. There's nothing we can do. Our
00:04:46
oceans are collapsing. The rainforests
00:04:48
are vanishing. Elephants are being
00:04:49
hunted to extinction. And I wanted to
00:04:51
know, are there solutions to these
00:04:53
problems? Is there a way to change the
00:04:54
narrative of conservation and come up
00:04:56
with an alternative reality where
00:04:58
everything's okay? And do you think your
00:05:00
message is more timely now than ever
00:05:02
with everything that's going on with
00:05:03
technology and AI and this sort of great
00:05:05
transition we're in?
00:05:07
>> I think that this message is timely now
00:05:09
because whether we like it or not, we're
00:05:10
alive at the most important moment in
00:05:12
history. And the reason that that's true
00:05:14
is because never before as a global
00:05:16
society have we been all faced with the
00:05:20
same problem. If our ecosystems
00:05:22
collapse, life on Earth is not possible.
00:05:24
And we are the last generation in
00:05:26
history that's going to have a chance to
00:05:27
restore those ecosystems. and those
00:05:29
sacred cycles before it's too late.
00:05:32
>> And as it relates to mental health,
00:05:35
young kids are growing up attached to
00:05:37
physical to screens and to technology
00:05:39
and all these things. You've lived
00:05:41
almost the opposite life. It appears for
00:05:43
the last 20 years. I'm wondering if
00:05:46
there's anything, you know, cuz you said
00:05:48
today on your way here that you like
00:05:50
didn't know how to get out of the Uber
00:05:52
and
00:05:52
>> Yeah. No, it was a it was a mess getting
00:05:54
here. I almost got run over by a guy who
00:05:56
recognized me and said and said, "Get
00:05:57
out of the road, Anaconda guy." And then
00:05:59
I'd never opened uh I guess I'd never
00:06:01
opened a door with a button before, but
00:06:02
I couldn't figure out how to get out of
00:06:03
out of the Uber. And then uh I had I had
00:06:06
a whole adventure in the bathroom that
00:06:07
should have been filmed. Um but no, I
00:06:10
mean I have lived uh we used to we call
00:06:12
it the barefoot machete days. You know,
00:06:14
a lot of my early learning in the Amazon
00:06:17
took place under the toutelage of
00:06:19
indigenous experts. And these are people
00:06:21
that like JJ, who I meet when I first go
00:06:23
down to the Amazon, he didn't have shoes
00:06:25
until he was 13 years old. So he lived a
00:06:29
life where if you want to fish, you have
00:06:30
to go to the river.
00:06:31
>> And if you want to eat, you have to go
00:06:33
out into the forest, not to the
00:06:34
supermarket. And so when you see kids
00:06:36
today that are only using their thumbs,
00:06:40
it's not too surprising when people are
00:06:42
disconnected and disoriented and sort of
00:06:44
don't know what's real and what's not
00:06:46
real anymore. Because you go to the
00:06:48
mountains and the rain and the sky and
00:06:50
the rocks, we'll teach you what's real
00:06:51
real quick and you all have to agree on
00:06:53
it or else you'll die. And the jungle is
00:06:55
the same thing. It's sort of when you
00:06:57
find yourself with these chemical
00:06:58
physical boundaries,
00:07:00
life makes a lot more sense.
00:07:03
>> Have you been able to make sense of the
00:07:06
life that someone like me lives
00:07:09
more because you've spent time in the
00:07:12
Amazon?
00:07:13
>> Like, do you look at us differently? I
00:07:14
know that sounds like a crazy thing to
00:07:15
say,
00:07:16
>> but in the same way that people might
00:07:18
look at the way you choose to live your
00:07:19
life and say, "This is very, very
00:07:21
strange." Do you look at people that,
00:07:23
you know, like me that work seven days a
00:07:24
week behind a screen and think that's a
00:07:26
very strange life?
00:07:27
>> I just know that I couldn't do it. I I I
00:07:31
depend almost almost
00:07:35
I'm so reliant on nature. I have to be
00:07:37
around trees. I fall asleep to frogs. I
00:07:40
I mean even even being in a city, I go
00:07:42
seek out a place where there's a lot of
00:07:44
trees. I am like a forest creature. If
00:07:46
you take me out of my environment, I
00:07:48
start to stress and die. And there's a
00:07:51
part of me that yes, that starts to die
00:07:53
if you keep me locked in concrete or if
00:07:55
you were to if you were to relegate me
00:07:57
to a a I was just in a hotel last week
00:08:01
on the book tour and I realized nothing
00:08:05
in the room with me was natural. The
00:08:08
carpet, the table, the windows, the
00:08:11
television, everything that was in this
00:08:12
room with me was composite materials.
00:08:17
And I couldn't even open the window to
00:08:18
get to the outside air. And I it did
00:08:20
occur to me. I said, I wonder if other
00:08:22
people feel this type of of of societal
00:08:25
claustrophobia where to me it's I have
00:08:27
to have my feet in a river at some
00:08:29
point. I have to I have to every night
00:08:32
before I fall asleep, I have to look up.
00:08:34
It's a ritual. I have to look up and and
00:08:36
look at the stars. How else can you
00:08:38
pray?
00:08:40
And so for me, being in a city has
00:08:42
become a very different reality to what
00:08:44
I'm used I mean, just taking a shower. I
00:08:46
mean, trust me, it's not as much fun
00:08:48
standing in a cold tile box and spraying
00:08:50
water on yourself as it is running
00:08:52
through the jungle, diving into the
00:08:54
river and swimming and the whole river
00:08:56
rushing around you. It's a whole
00:08:58
different experience. And so, when I
00:08:59
come back, I get a little bit, you know,
00:09:01
I miss my I miss the frogs and the birds
00:09:03
and and sort of my neighbors of of of
00:09:06
the jungle.
00:09:07
>> Do you think there's like a collective
00:09:08
delusion in terms of the way we live our
00:09:10
lives? Do do you think we're we've gone
00:09:11
a bit crazy? Kind of like the frog in
00:09:13
the frying pan. It's happened so
00:09:14
gradually, the sort of technological
00:09:17
>> creep of our lives that,
00:09:20
>> you know, and we're looking at young
00:09:21
kids that are more anxious and depressed
00:09:22
than ever before. Loneliness is at an
00:09:24
all-time high.
00:09:25
>> More people are taking anti-depressant
00:09:27
medications than ever before.
00:09:30
>> I think that yes is the simple answer to
00:09:33
your question. That that that sort of
00:09:35
we're a species perpet we're a fish
00:09:37
perpetually out of water. that as humans
00:09:39
because we've taken ourselves away from
00:09:41
forests and away from deserts and away
00:09:43
from mountains and the ocean. I mean, we
00:09:44
used to be fishermen and we used to be
00:09:46
farmers and and now the life that we
00:09:48
live is so incredibly different than
00:09:49
that. If you ask kids where does their
00:09:52
meat come from, there are kids that will
00:09:54
say the grocery store. You know, they
00:09:56
don't know that chickens exist before
00:09:58
it's in the package. And and so, you
00:10:01
know, for for there was that generation,
00:10:03
which I think that you and I are both a
00:10:04
part of, where it was like we were the
00:10:06
bicycle generation. We might be the last
00:10:07
one where it was like you went out in
00:10:09
the morning and you were on your bicycle
00:10:11
or you were running around with your
00:10:12
friends and you would come home for
00:10:13
dinner and I was incredibly lucky to
00:10:15
have, you know, on the weekends I would
00:10:17
go to the woods. I would take a steak
00:10:20
and I would take one match and I'd take
00:10:22
my golden retriever and we would go get
00:10:24
lost up the side of a mountain and uh
00:10:27
we' just go camping. My rule was no
00:10:29
shelter, one match, one stake dog. So
00:10:32
you couldn't mess up the match.
00:10:33
>> At what age?
00:10:34
>> Uh I would say 12 or 14. I was doing
00:10:36
this. I had a little, you know, hello
00:10:38
hunting knife on my side.
00:10:39
>> Not typical for a 12-year-old,
00:10:41
>> but I needed it.
00:10:42
>> Why?
00:10:42
>> I don't know. I needed adventure. I
00:10:45
think because being being stuck in a
00:10:47
desk and being told you can't get up and
00:10:49
you can't even go to the bathroom, and
00:10:51
you you look down, do what we say, just
00:10:53
being controlled was so counterintuitive
00:10:55
to my essence. And so, I grew up with
00:10:57
this need for adventure. And then
00:11:00
somewhere along the way, the fact that I
00:11:01
couldn't drink the streams that I was
00:11:03
exploring or the fact that even when I
00:11:05
was deep, deep, deep in the forest, I
00:11:07
knew that if I really hiked for another
00:11:08
4 hours, I'll come out the other side. I
00:11:10
wanted to experience wilderness. I
00:11:13
wanted to experience wilderness where it
00:11:14
never ended. I wanted to see the really
00:11:16
wild places on the planet. And for some
00:11:18
reason, that was inside me since I was
00:11:19
very young.
00:11:21
>> So, how did you go from there? from
00:11:23
being that 13 year old to setting off at
00:11:26
what 17 years old with your Amazon
00:11:28
research in Peru.
00:11:30
>> You did go to university. You
00:11:32
>> you were actually really really smart. I
00:11:34
I hear
00:11:35
>> I was smart enough that they had me both
00:11:38
suspended and in in detention and in
00:11:40
American Mensa. I was I was I was really
00:11:44
all over the place. And and the thing is
00:11:45
they make you feel stupid when you can't
00:11:47
do the assignments. So I'd say, 'Why are
00:11:49
you failing math and why can't you read
00:11:51
this book and you didn't do your
00:11:52
homework? But I was like, I know I'm
00:11:54
smart and in the forest I was good at
00:11:55
tracking and I could survive and I could
00:11:57
make it through a weekend and I could
00:11:58
build shelter. And so I always just
00:11:59
gravitated towards that. And so I spoke
00:12:02
to my parents. I dropped out of high
00:12:03
school. You can take your GED and get
00:12:06
out two years early with a with a with a
00:12:09
with a one-day test. And I did that. The
00:12:11
rule was I did have to go to university.
00:12:13
So, I had to start taking semesters, but
00:12:15
in between semesters, I was free to go
00:12:17
to the Amazon rainforest. And so, I
00:12:19
booked the most remote position that I
00:12:22
could at a place where it took 2 days by
00:12:24
boat from the nearest city to get to
00:12:26
this tiny little research station. And
00:12:28
it was run by this Peruvian guy and his
00:12:29
partner. And his name was JJ.
00:12:32
And that's the guy that opened the
00:12:34
Amazon for me.
00:12:35
>> He opened the Amazon for you?
00:12:37
>> Well, JJ grew up in the Amazon as an
00:12:40
indigenous person. And so what he was
00:12:42
learning, he the the first chapter in
00:12:43
this book is called the rarest of
00:12:45
species because he's the only unicorn in
00:12:48
the Amazon rainforest.
00:12:50
He's an indigenous person. So he's been
00:12:52
learning from his grandfathers,
00:12:54
grandfathers, grandfathers, grandfathers
00:12:55
all the way back.
00:12:56
>> And indigenous means
00:12:58
>> indigenous means his family is from the
00:13:00
jungle. Their heritage, their lineage
00:13:02
going back, they are jungle people.
00:13:04
They're from the Seaha tribe. And so his
00:13:08
father, Don Santiago, there they knew
00:13:11
the medicinal plants. They knew how to
00:13:13
fish for piranha. Then he can cut a
00:13:15
piece of callus off of his foot and put
00:13:17
it on a hook using himself as bait to
00:13:19
catch a bait fish. He can mash up a
00:13:22
barbasco route and put it in a stream
00:13:23
and then all the fish float to the
00:13:25
surface. He can track a deer. He could
00:13:27
track a jaguar. He could track a person.
00:13:29
So these people know everything about
00:13:30
the forest and they're the people that I
00:13:32
came in with. And because I knew about
00:13:35
snakes, he knew every He knew everything
00:13:36
about the forest, the medicines, the
00:13:38
habits of the animals, the systems. The
00:13:41
only thing I knew was I said, "I know
00:13:42
how to handle snakes." And he said, "I'm
00:13:44
scared of snakes." And I said, "I could
00:13:46
teach you snakes." I said, "You teach me
00:13:47
everything else." And he goes, "You like
00:13:48
snakes?" He goes, "Come with us." He
00:13:50
said, "We go on a family hunting trip
00:13:52
once a year where we go on this
00:13:54
expedition 10 days into the jungle where
00:13:56
no one's allowed to go, only people with
00:13:58
indigenous status." He said, "You're our
00:14:00
guest. You come with us." And so there I
00:14:02
was going up the river into parts of the
00:14:04
world that have yet to be named into the
00:14:07
wildest places in the Amazon rainforest
00:14:10
and learning from these guys through
00:14:11
experience how to catch fish out of the
00:14:14
river, how to navigate through difficult
00:14:16
parts of the of the stream when the
00:14:18
storms are coming, how to survive them.
00:14:20
And then we found anacondas. And so it
00:14:22
was like this I had this very very in
00:14:24
unorthodox training and introduction
00:14:26
into the jungle. How big is the Amazon
00:14:30
rainforest? Trying to get my head around
00:14:32
the scale of it.
00:14:34
>> I'm bad with numbers. What I do know is
00:14:36
that it's larger than the lower 48
00:14:38
states.
00:14:39
>> Wow.
00:14:40
>> It's it's absolutely tremendous. It's
00:14:41
the largest contiguous rainforest on
00:14:43
Earth.
00:14:44
>> And are there parts of it that people
00:14:45
have never been to?
00:14:46
>> 100%. There are still parts of the
00:14:48
Amazon rainforest that are unexplored.
00:14:50
There's parts of the Amazon rainforest
00:14:51
that no one's ever been to. And if you
00:14:53
really want to blow your own mind, the
00:14:55
canopy of the Amazon rainforest is about
00:14:58
150 160 ft up above our heads, which is
00:15:00
far.
00:15:02
>> And half of the life in a rainforest
00:15:05
exists in the canopy. So you're talking
00:15:06
about the most mega biodiverse biome
00:15:10
that has ever existed. There's never
00:15:11
been more terrestrial wildlife anywhere
00:15:14
on Earth than in the Amazon rainforest.
00:15:16
And right now in the entire fossil
00:15:18
record, we we're at the apex, the climax
00:15:20
community of the Amazon rainforest. It's
00:15:22
that brilliant. Where the Andes,
00:15:24
rainforest, cloud forests meet the
00:15:26
lowland tropical Amazon. There it is.
00:15:29
That's the most life we know of in the
00:15:31
entire universe.
00:15:33
>> And in terms of human life,
00:15:35
>> Mhm.
00:15:36
>> I hear there's lots of human life there
00:15:39
that we've never contacted.
00:15:41
>> There are various tribes living through
00:15:44
the Western Amazon. And you have the
00:15:46
Seaha and the Machenga and you have the
00:15:48
Yin and and then further out beyond all
00:15:50
of these there were always rumors that
00:15:53
there were uncontacted tribes
00:15:57
and and for the first many years that I
00:16:00
was there, it was always someone's
00:16:01
uncle, someone's brother, someone's
00:16:04
cousin would would come back with these
00:16:06
crazy stories that someone had seen the
00:16:08
tribes and that they were that they were
00:16:10
tall and naked and they still hunted
00:16:12
with bows and arrows and they would and
00:16:14
then every now and And somebody would
00:16:15
come back with a 7ft arrow, a spear
00:16:19
tipped with bamboo, huge bamboo tip this
00:16:21
big, razor sharp, like a machete. And
00:16:25
that was the only proof we had that they
00:16:27
existed
00:16:29
until the day we met them.
00:16:35
>> When did you meet them for the first
00:16:36
time?
00:16:39
So, in order to explain how we met them,
00:16:41
we should probably explain why what
00:16:43
where we got to in how the how the
00:16:47
18-year-old researcher became the
00:16:49
director of of of a major organization.
00:16:51
But,
00:16:51
>> please
00:16:53
>> Okay. Well, some somewhere along the way
00:16:55
as we as we
00:16:57
as we did these expeditions through the
00:16:59
Amazon and I became closer and closer
00:17:01
with the indigenous people, you know, JJ
00:17:04
as a teacher kept telling me and that's
00:17:06
and that's what the the first chapter of
00:17:07
the book is about is, you know, him just
00:17:09
teaching me the incredible
00:17:10
interconnectedness. There's this there's
00:17:12
this moment that I write about where
00:17:13
he's going, "Look at this beach and tell
00:17:16
me the news." And I said, "What?" And he
00:17:18
said, "Yeah." He said, "Every day the
00:17:19
ground is like last night's newspaper.
00:17:21
It tells you what happened." So, I look
00:17:23
at the beach and there's jaguar tracks
00:17:25
and there's like a mess of jaguar tracks
00:17:27
and some Jaguar scat and I made no sense
00:17:29
of it. And he was like, "This is where
00:17:31
she came yesterday to drink.
00:17:34
That's where she pooped. This is where
00:17:36
she came today to drink. You can see the
00:17:37
newer tracks." And then he's like, "And
00:17:39
what you didn't notice, you didn't see
00:17:41
the vultures above us." And I look up
00:17:43
and there's vultures above us. And he
00:17:44
goes, "Notice they're not looking at us.
00:17:47
They're looking at the jaguar." And so
00:17:48
they're looking that way. Jaguar had a
00:17:50
fresh deer kill. and had continually
00:17:53
been eating and then coming to the river
00:17:54
to drink. And so he can decipher all of
00:17:56
these incredible things. And so as he's
00:17:58
taking me through these worlds of
00:18:00
butterflies and interconnected species
00:18:02
where there's a mist river flowing over
00:18:04
the rainforest, this this avatar on
00:18:06
Earth
00:18:08
and then we then they burned it down.
00:18:10
>> Who burned it down?
00:18:11
>> The loggers.
00:18:14
And so the first time I saw ancient
00:18:16
forest,
00:18:17
a place that I love with trees
00:18:19
significantly bigger than this room,
00:18:22
vanished. There's this cacophony of
00:18:25
life, this orchestra, this symphonic
00:18:27
roar of life that you get in the mo,
00:18:29
especially in the morning in the Amazon.
00:18:32
And then at night, there's the night
00:18:33
chorus. And when you hear that silenced,
00:18:37
it's one of the most horrific things
00:18:38
that you can experience because places
00:18:40
that we loved, trees that had been
00:18:42
standing for a thousand years, species
00:18:44
that had never been described by science
00:18:46
were all incinerated.
00:18:49
And I said to JJ, I said, "How do we
00:18:52
this this this can't be allowed? This
00:18:54
can't this can't possibly be something
00:18:56
that's permitted." And I said, "Isn't
00:18:57
there somebody that we can call?" We
00:18:59
were standing on the side of the river,
00:19:00
and he he leaned forward. And he looked
00:19:02
this way and he looked that way and he
00:19:03
goes, "Do you see anybody?" He goes,
00:19:05
"Cuz I don't see anybody." He goes, "You
00:19:07
have to do something." I said, "I have
00:19:09
to do something." I said, "I'm 19, 20
00:19:11
years old." I said, "What am I going to
00:19:12
do?" I said, "I don't have a PhD. I
00:19:13
don't have a trust fund. I don't have a
00:19:15
media presence. I don't have anything."
00:19:17
I had a machete and I had bare feet. We
00:19:19
both had machetes and bare feet. And so
00:19:21
that was the start of the journey where
00:19:22
we said, "The thing we love is being
00:19:24
destroyed." We could see the smoke on
00:19:25
the horizon. The trees that we had
00:19:28
explored and become to love were laying
00:19:30
smoldering on the ground in front of us.
00:19:32
And we said, "Okay, now we have to
00:19:33
figure out a way to change the
00:19:34
narrative. The wildest place on earth is
00:19:36
about to be destroyed, bulldozed, and
00:19:38
burned. How do we save it?" And so
00:19:41
that's where when you ask the question
00:19:43
of how does life in the jungle sort of
00:19:45
translate to what your listeners are
00:19:47
going to find interesting, it's taking
00:19:49
on a task that's so gigantic that at the
00:19:51
start of it, we couldn't even come up
00:19:53
with we couldn't even conceptualize how
00:19:55
it could be possible even with the right
00:19:57
tools
00:19:58
>> to save the Amazon
00:19:59
>> to save the Amazon rainforest, let alone
00:20:02
for two guys with zero qualifications,
00:20:04
bare feet and machetes. And so we
00:20:07
started behind zero and today we're at
00:20:10
the point where we've turned loggers and
00:20:13
gold miners into conservation rangers.
00:20:14
We're protecting 130,000 acres of the
00:20:17
river. We're on the cusp of creating a
00:20:19
national park. Me and JJ are the
00:20:21
directors of Jungle Keepers and we're
00:20:24
about to make history because we're
00:20:25
going to save the entire watershed and
00:20:27
all the trees and animals and heartbeats
00:20:29
that are left. And that's the story that
00:20:31
I'm trying to tell. That's the whole
00:20:32
reason for my existence. That's why I
00:20:34
that's what I wake up and do every day.
00:20:37
>> And you've really taken on that
00:20:38
responsibility in a very personal way. I
00:20:40
can tell.
00:20:41
>> Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a point
00:20:43
where, you know, I remember cuz you grow
00:20:47
up I was born in Brooklyn and then we
00:20:49
you know, I grew up in Jersey for a
00:20:50
while and then we moved to the Hudson
00:20:52
Valley. But when you start you start
00:20:54
going to the Amazon for months and
00:20:56
months and months out of the year and
00:20:58
you come back with scars and stories
00:21:00
where a jaguar is breathing on your neck
00:21:02
and you you go out on a solo and you
00:21:04
come back and then suddenly standing and
00:21:06
making conversation at a barbecue feels
00:21:09
different.
00:21:11
It's it's almost like I imagine I have a
00:21:14
lot of veteran friends and sort of you
00:21:16
you almost get addicted to the action
00:21:18
and then you also get addicted to the
00:21:20
the the the team, you know. Uh Sebastian
00:21:22
Younger writes about this about the the
00:21:25
addict the the the the need for
00:21:27
community the tribe and sort of the the
00:21:30
mission and I think that that's one
00:21:31
thing that people are missing today
00:21:32
where they they they don't know you know
00:21:34
we've been disassociated from religion
00:21:36
and community and and and immediate sort
00:21:39
of connection with other humans. And so
00:21:41
then well then what else is there? How
00:21:43
do how do you where where to what do you
00:21:45
more your existence? What do you what's
00:21:48
your what's your purpose? What do you
00:21:50
wake up and do every day? And so I
00:21:52
think, you know, in the old days it was
00:21:53
like, you know, we have to we have to
00:21:54
defend ourselves from the outside world,
00:21:56
from waring communities, you know, or
00:21:58
even just providing for your family. We
00:22:00
have to bring water every day. We have
00:22:02
to chop wood every day. We have to
00:22:04
figure out how to survive. And like
00:22:05
today, I mean, when I'm here, I wake up
00:22:07
and I go, "Well, there's there's water
00:22:10
in the fridge, so I don't have to do
00:22:11
that." And I'm like, "The air
00:22:13
conditioner is on and the I'm like, I
00:22:16
guess I'll check my phone, you know."
00:22:19
And so I, you know, I think we have,
00:22:21
like you said, become somehow we've gone
00:22:24
really far away from what we are built
00:22:26
for.
00:22:28
And one of the beautiful things that
00:22:29
happens when you go into the wild, and
00:22:31
this can be any wild, is that it starts
00:22:32
to change you. And so you go into the
00:22:34
wild and you start picking up logs and
00:22:36
throwing them. You start splitting
00:22:37
firewood, and the first day you're going
00:22:39
to have calluses on your hands, but then
00:22:41
after a few weeks, you're going to have
00:22:42
tough hands. You start walking barefoot,
00:22:44
same thing. The sun starts to make your
00:22:46
skin thicker and tanner and more
00:22:48
resilient and then the rain will hammer
00:22:50
that home and you start to get your eyes
00:22:52
start to get sharper and you start to
00:22:53
pay more attention to what you're
00:22:54
hearing. And so you start going through
00:22:56
this whole transformation where you
00:22:58
start to be almost become a different
00:22:59
animal. You become the jungle version of
00:23:01
yourself. You become the mountain
00:23:02
version of yourself. Your legs start to
00:23:04
get strong again. And so so the wild
00:23:07
puts you through this gauntlet of
00:23:09
transformation and you become connected
00:23:12
to your environment. And then that
00:23:14
feeling of disassociation tends to
00:23:17
alleviate a little bit.
00:23:19
>> I heard about this particular part of
00:23:21
the brain that changes as well. You
00:23:23
talked about transformation.
00:23:24
>> Yeah.
00:23:25
>> Um they discovered something not so many
00:23:28
years ago called the anterior midsulate
00:23:30
cortex.
00:23:31
>> Mhm.
00:23:32
>> Andrew Hubman and I heard him say that
00:23:33
he thinks it was one of the most
00:23:35
important discoveries in neuroscience of
00:23:37
the last
00:23:38
>> century. The anterior mid-s singular
00:23:40
cortex is a part of the brain sitting
00:23:42
between your emotional brain and your
00:23:44
executive control center that
00:23:46
essentially grows when you do hard
00:23:47
things.
00:23:48
>> Not when you do things that um
00:23:51
specifically when you do things that you
00:23:52
don't want to do but you do them anyway.
00:23:55
So not running a marathon because you
00:23:56
enjoy it. Things you don't want to do
00:23:58
and you do it anyway. And it went
00:23:59
through some of the studies I saw said
00:24:01
that younger people that have been
00:24:02
brought into this sort of doom scrolling
00:24:04
generation have smaller ones. If you are
00:24:07
um obese, it's smaller. Um athletes have
00:24:10
bigger ones and people who live longer
00:24:13
have even bigger ones. And it's they
00:24:15
kind of call it like the muscle of the
00:24:16
brain of doing hard things. And so when
00:24:17
you were talking about that physical
00:24:18
transformation, I weirdly thought about
00:24:20
I think it was Roosevelt who
00:24:22
>> after losing his mom and his wife on the
00:24:24
same day.
00:24:25
>> Yes.
00:24:26
>> After his baby girl was born, he went
00:24:27
out to the Badlands and spent two years
00:24:29
doing pretty much what you said,
00:24:31
>> putting himself in intentional
00:24:33
discomfort.
00:24:34
>> Yeah. and he came back and all of his
00:24:35
friends described him as being
00:24:36
transformed. He went on to become the
00:24:38
youngest president in American history.
00:24:40
He got shot and carried on doing the
00:24:41
speech. He led the charge um uh I think
00:24:44
it was the Spanish crusades or something
00:24:46
like the Spanish war.
00:24:47
>> And the Rough Riders.
00:24:48
>> Yeah, the Rough Riders. And they all
00:24:49
pointed at the moment when he went out
00:24:51
to the Badlands. They said it shaped him
00:24:52
into becoming a completely different
00:24:54
man. That that discomfort.
00:24:56
>> Yeah, 100%. And and that's that's why
00:25:00
Native American cultures for the
00:25:02
initiation of their young men would have
00:25:04
vision quests where they would send them
00:25:05
out into the wilderness. And there's
00:25:06
still different there's all different
00:25:08
types. Aboriginal cultures have similar
00:25:10
things. And I wanted to put myself
00:25:11
through that. And so I went out on
00:25:13
that's what I described in my first book
00:25:14
is going out on that's where JJ taught
00:25:16
me enough to survive in the jungle. And
00:25:18
then I started going out on 10day solos
00:25:21
into place. I'd have people bring me to
00:25:23
the last place that had a name. Like I'm
00:25:26
talking about poachers. And then I would
00:25:28
start hiking and I would go so deep in
00:25:30
the Amazon rainforest that I was just
00:25:32
off the map and I would try and survive
00:25:34
out there. And so I had a lot of
00:25:36
adventures that I should not have
00:25:37
survived. But it was very important to
00:25:39
me to put myself through that because I
00:25:41
grew up with that discomfort. I grew up
00:25:43
with the overwhelming crushing stress of
00:25:46
being told that we're at the end of
00:25:49
days. We are losing I mean I saw it at
00:25:52
the Bronx Zoo. They said, you know,
00:25:54
we're losing our rainforests. And they
00:25:56
had the sound of the chainsaws and you
00:25:58
see the trees going over and they said
00:25:59
we're losing elephants. You'd see
00:26:00
somebody shoot and the elephant goes
00:26:02
over and they just said everything that
00:26:04
you for me everything you love is being
00:26:07
destroyed and pretty soon we're not
00:26:08
going to be able to drink and
00:26:09
everything's going to be polluted and
00:26:10
our fisheries are being destroyed. And I
00:26:12
said wait so wait a second. I said I
00:26:15
have to know if it's really that bad. So
00:26:16
when I got old enough don't it's not
00:26:18
just that I was inspired to go out on a
00:26:20
mission. And it was that I wanted to
00:26:22
find out for myself cuz I'm I don't like
00:26:24
finding out through a screen. I don't I
00:26:26
don't want other people filtering my
00:26:27
information. I wanted to find out for
00:26:29
myself. Is it really that bad? And so I
00:26:32
was going out on a quest to understand
00:26:34
what the reality was.
00:26:36
>> If I sat 18-year-old you at this table,
00:26:39
he sat there
00:26:41
>> and you know this version of you at what
00:26:43
37
00:26:44
>> 38
00:26:44
>> 38 you were sat there. So 20 years
00:26:46
difference.
00:26:47
>> What would the notable differences be
00:26:48
between these two men?
00:26:52
Um, well, he didn't know how to fish
00:26:54
with his feet. Um, that's for sure. His
00:26:57
machete skills would be terrible. But
00:26:59
the the noticeable difference would be
00:27:01
that that 18-year-old, his greatest
00:27:03
dream was to alleviate the environmental
00:27:07
stress that he grew up with, escape the
00:27:10
world of rules, find purpose in life,
00:27:14
and to just have adventures. My my
00:27:16
greatest dream was to see the Amazon
00:27:19
rainforest. I looked at people like
00:27:21
Teddy Roosevelt and Jane Goodall and I
00:27:23
said, "Man, they had such incredibly
00:27:26
like extraordinary lives." And I said,
00:27:28
"How come my life can't be like that?
00:27:30
I'm over here in detention." You know,
00:27:32
I'm over here being told I didn't do my
00:27:34
homework. And I'm like, "I want to chop
00:27:36
wood and carry water. I want to go to
00:27:38
war. I want to be scared. I want to be
00:27:42
challenged." And so for me it was I I
00:27:44
was that would be the difference is that
00:27:46
I would be hungry for all of that.
00:27:47
Whereas the person sitting across from
00:27:49
you today, my body is a Jackson Pollock
00:27:52
painting of scars,
00:27:55
crocodile bites, tiger bites,
00:27:57
infections, times that I've been almost
00:27:59
crushed to death by elephants. I've been
00:28:01
hunted by the narot terrorists. And at
00:28:04
this point, the responsibility at that
00:28:07
kid got to see all the things he wanted
00:28:09
to see. We found the biggest anacondas.
00:28:11
I lived through the amazing adventures
00:28:13
and that's great.
00:28:15
The person sitting across from you today
00:28:17
is responsible for protecting millions
00:28:20
of animal lives. And my job is to
00:28:23
explain to people that we that everyone
00:28:26
reading this message or listening to
00:28:28
this message has the chance to help the
00:28:30
indigenous people save the Amazon before
00:28:32
we lose it forever. And so that's the
00:28:35
main difference is that at that age I
00:28:37
was just I just wanted some
00:28:38
swashbuckling adventure. And now I found
00:28:41
that adventure became meaning. I found
00:28:44
it along the way. And then now I'm on a
00:28:46
whole other journey. Now it's now it's
00:28:48
can we bring it home? Now it's can we
00:28:50
achieve something that we thought was
00:28:52
impossible and change the narrative of
00:28:54
how it's done.
00:28:56
>> And I guess this kind of brings us back
00:28:58
to this question about the unconted
00:29:01
tribes. You said you and JJ were talking
00:29:03
about how you might go about saving the
00:29:06
Amazon.
00:29:07
Was highlighting the unconted tribes in
00:29:11
the Amazon part of the mission there?
00:29:13
>> No. Very much no. That's a great
00:29:15
question because what we started doing
00:29:17
was we looked at this river basin and we
00:29:18
said, "Okay, we we we love this this one
00:29:21
really wild river and now we said why
00:29:23
why has this river been so wild?" You
00:29:26
know, so you think of the Amazon as a
00:29:29
tree of rivers. You have the main Amazon
00:29:31
channel and then all these millions of
00:29:32
branches. And so the upper Amazon, the
00:29:35
uppermost branches of the Amazon
00:29:37
rainforest, those tip tip tops, people
00:29:39
are only just getting to them now. You
00:29:41
know, the main Amazon channel is a
00:29:42
shipping port and then you have these
00:29:44
huge tributaries going off of it. And
00:29:46
you can get in as far as Aquitos with a
00:29:48
steam ship. Like you can go all the way
00:29:50
through Brazil thousands of miles and
00:29:52
get all the way to Aikitos, Peru
00:29:54
>> to the almost the back end of the
00:29:56
Amazon.
00:29:56
>> I've been there.
00:29:57
>> And and it's beautiful.
00:29:59
>> We are at the southern edge in the
00:30:01
tributaries down there. There's one
00:30:03
tributary.
00:30:04
>> What's a tributary?
00:30:05
>> A tributary is is an offshoot from a
00:30:07
larger river.
00:30:08
>> So a stream is a tributary of a larger
00:30:10
stream which goes into, you know, then
00:30:12
eventually you reach the Hudson River.
00:30:14
>> And so this is a tiny little tributary.
00:30:17
And the we what we discovered is that
00:30:19
the reason people hadn't developed this
00:30:22
tributary, the reason other indigenous
00:30:25
communities hadn't formed was that for
00:30:28
hundreds and hundreds of years, this
00:30:30
particular river had been protected by
00:30:33
the violent, mysterious, Mashkopiro,
00:30:37
nomadic, uncontacted tribes. And that
00:30:40
had kept it wild. They were the original
00:30:41
jungle keepers, but by the time I got
00:30:44
there, there was sort of just a myth.
00:30:46
And so they were something that they
00:30:47
said they lived really far up river past
00:30:50
the last indigenous community. And I
00:30:51
when I say indigenous community I mean
00:30:53
people that we can talk to, people that
00:30:55
we can interface with that I can speak a
00:30:56
little Spanish to and they'll understand
00:30:58
me.
00:30:58
>> I think that's an important distinction.
00:30:59
>> Yes.
00:31:00
>> Because can you make that distinction
00:31:01
between indigenous and these tribes?
00:31:05
>> Yes. So within Peru, you have Lima and
00:31:09
and you know Michelin star restaurants
00:31:11
and all this amazing food and then you
00:31:13
travel down to Cusco where you have
00:31:14
Machu Picchu and you have the Andes and
00:31:16
all of that incredible culture and then
00:31:18
you go down to the jungle and it's a
00:31:20
little bit like going to the back end of
00:31:21
Alaska. That's where it's like you are
00:31:23
very far away from LA or New York like
00:31:25
but it's the same country and out there
00:31:28
you'll reach these communities where
00:31:30
they are indigenous and so in the
00:31:33
reserve that we currently protect as
00:31:34
jungle keepers there's two indigenous
00:31:37
communities there and we work with them
00:31:39
to sort of support them because as these
00:31:41
loggers and narot traffickers and gold
00:31:44
miners come in they see them as as a
00:31:46
mark they'll go in and say oh there's
00:31:48
these helpless indigenous people how can
00:31:50
we exploit them
00:31:51
>> how can we get their trees, their fish,
00:31:54
they'll go and take those things from
00:31:56
them or they'll or they'll sell them
00:31:57
something that's not worth what what
00:31:59
they think it is. And so we've been
00:32:01
working with these indigenous
00:32:02
communities to say, "Do you want the
00:32:03
loggers to come in and cut down all of
00:32:04
your trees?" And they go, "No." And they
00:32:07
go, "But at the same time, we need a
00:32:08
little bit of gasoline because what if
00:32:09
we're having a baby and we have to get
00:32:11
our daughter to a hospital in town?" And
00:32:13
so we've been working with them to
00:32:15
provide sustainable jobs as rangers
00:32:18
protecting their own land. And it's such
00:32:19
a simple solution whereas otherwise they
00:32:22
would go and be loggers to get that
00:32:23
cash. And so we were working with these
00:32:26
communities and now they're rangers and
00:32:28
boat drivers and guides and handymen.
00:32:32
And they called us about a year ago and
00:32:34
they said something incredible is
00:32:36
happening and it's going to be
00:32:38
dangerous, but you are the directors and
00:32:40
you're part of this family and you're
00:32:41
part of this story and we need you here
00:32:43
for this, but the tribes are about to
00:32:45
come out of the forest.
00:32:48
And we were in town and where what you
00:32:49
know what we do now is you know we and
00:32:51
we can explain this later but we raise
00:32:53
money and we bring it to the Amazon
00:32:54
where we the local people have the
00:32:56
opportunity to set aside huge acreage of
00:32:59
of the Amazon to protect it. We're we're
00:33:01
changing the narrative of destruction
00:33:02
where we just protect it before they get
00:33:04
to it. And so we were in town with JJ
00:33:06
who's now the director of this major
00:33:08
organization and we're talking to our
00:33:09
lawyers and we're in the office and we
00:33:11
get this call that the tribe is out.
00:33:13
>> The tribe is out.
00:33:14
>> The tribe is out.
00:33:16
>> What does that mean? It means the
00:33:17
mythical unconted tribe that when I
00:33:20
arrived in Peru, the president of Peru
00:33:21
had been saying these are a myth. They
00:33:23
don't exist and it's just it's the
00:33:25
boogeyman. It's been made up as a story
00:33:27
to scare the loggers. So, their
00:33:30
existence was contested. They were
00:33:32
almost on the fringes of imagination.
00:33:35
>> Could we not have flown a plane over
00:33:37
there or something? Is that you know,
00:33:39
this sounds like a dumb question, but
00:33:40
presumably we have satellites and we can
00:33:42
zoom in.
00:33:43
The BBC did do a piece where they were
00:33:45
flying a plane and they were looking at
00:33:47
an unconted
00:33:49
tribe from miles away and they said,
00:33:51
"We're being very careful not to disturb
00:33:53
them, but there is a tribe in the
00:33:55
rainforest that has no contact with the
00:33:57
outside world." And you could see these
00:33:59
people bending and they're looking at
00:34:00
the plane, but the plane's not close
00:34:01
enough to really scare them or to cause
00:34:03
them any distress. And so, we have done
00:34:06
that. But then on our river out in the
00:34:09
middle of nowhere where no one's heard
00:34:10
of the BBC,
00:34:13
you just hear stories from loggers
00:34:14
who've come down river from three weeks
00:34:16
up river. You can go for three weeks up
00:34:18
the river and hit nothing. There's
00:34:20
nothing human. It's like the last
00:34:22
endless forest. And so when the
00:34:24
community called and they said there's
00:34:27
arrows on the beach, the tribe is coming
00:34:29
out. It's the first time in 10 years
00:34:30
that the tribe seems to be coming out of
00:34:32
the jungle to make contact. And so they
00:34:34
got they got the directors of Jungle
00:34:36
Keepers up there. We had to we had to
00:34:38
rush to be there. They begged us to be
00:34:40
there so that we could see it because
00:34:42
they were worried that we wouldn't
00:34:43
believe them.
00:34:46
And so we got there and we went all
00:34:48
night. And when you go up a river at
00:34:50
night, we do a two-day boat journey in
00:34:52
one night.
00:34:54
And so the guy right there, the picture
00:34:56
with the guy who has the scar on his
00:34:57
forehead, that's Ignasio. He that scar
00:35:00
is because he was shot in the head by a
00:35:02
7-ft arrow while he was trying to make
00:35:04
peaceful contact with the unconted
00:35:05
tribes. He was trying to give them a
00:35:07
gift and they got spooked and they
00:35:09
scared and they shot him in the head and
00:35:11
he almost died from that when we heard
00:35:14
that this was happening and he's now one
00:35:16
of our best jungle keepers rangers. We
00:35:18
said, "Can you do a two-day boat journey
00:35:19
in one night?" And he went, "Yes, sir."
00:35:22
and he put on a headlamp and he got in
00:35:23
the back of the boat and we took an open
00:35:25
top canoe and we drove from 6:00 p.m.
00:35:27
until 9:00 a.m. the next day through the
00:35:30
worst thunderstorm I've ever seen. I was
00:35:32
on the front of the boat with a
00:35:33
flashlight using the crocodile eyes, the
00:35:35
Cayman eyes on the side of the river to
00:35:37
navigate cuz they shine. The eyes shine
00:35:39
comes back. The the the storm was so bad
00:35:42
that I we couldn't see anything. We
00:35:43
couldn't see the side of the river and
00:35:45
because of the light igniting the
00:35:46
raindrops, you can't you can't even see
00:35:48
what's in front of you. So we were using
00:35:50
the the croc eyes to to navigate where
00:35:52
the edges of the river was. So I was
00:35:53
spotting and telling him which way to go
00:35:55
and he drove and we did that all night
00:35:57
long. Got to the indigenous community
00:35:59
and said, "Okay, so what's going on?"
00:36:01
And they said, "Oh yeah, they left.
00:36:04
Tribe's gone."
00:36:07
The only thing that they had was that
00:36:08
one guy the previous day had been shot
00:36:10
by an arrow
00:36:12
and he had been fishing and he had seen
00:36:15
the tribes. So he said, "And they had
00:36:17
shot an arrow at him." The first thing
00:36:19
they had done was shot one of these 7-ft
00:36:21
arrows at him and the way it had hit the
00:36:23
boat ricocheted and then hit his thick
00:36:26
leather belt and blunted the tip of the
00:36:28
arrow and he had the arrow.
00:36:32
And so he says, "So there are there are
00:36:34
people here." And then a native
00:36:36
anthropologist from another region
00:36:37
showed up and he said, "I they know me
00:36:39
as the grandfather. I can speak to these
00:36:41
people. I speak a little bit of their
00:36:42
language." And so we stayed another
00:36:45
night, two days deep in the jungle. And
00:36:48
the following morning we said, "Okay,
00:36:49
we're getting out of here. There's
00:36:51
obviously nothing here but, you know,
00:36:53
stories and footprints and arrows and we
00:36:55
have important work to do back in town."
00:36:57
>> And did you believe them?
00:36:59
>> I've learned one thing working in the
00:37:00
Amazon. Always believe the locals.
00:37:03
Always. There's there's if they say it's
00:37:06
there, they're not wrong. And that's
00:37:09
part of the reason that I've gotten to
00:37:10
go on these adventures. You know, when
00:37:12
JJ Tell told me there's places you can
00:37:14
go that are so wild that it's like the
00:37:16
Galopagos. the animals don't know a
00:37:18
human, but you have to go for days on
00:37:20
foot to the topmost reaches of the
00:37:22
rivers to find this. Well, that's why I
00:37:24
went on these these solos. And so I
00:37:26
write that's what that's as a writer
00:37:27
that's what I do is try and take people
00:37:29
on these adventures through the Amazon.
00:37:31
And so when they said the tribe is
00:37:33
coming, Ignasio, the guy who'd been shot
00:37:35
in the head, he said, "Listen to me." He
00:37:36
said, "You're" He said, "You're my boss,
00:37:38
right?" I said, "Yeah." He goes, "I need
00:37:39
to speak to you like a friend." I said,
00:37:41
"Speak, speak, speak." And he said,
00:37:43
"They're coming. You'd be an idiot to
00:37:45
leave." And so we posted up, we waited.
00:37:48
How he knew?
00:37:50
>> Yeah, I'm wondering how he knew.
00:37:52
>> He just knew, man. They just know. It's
00:37:54
like they can they can tell. And then,
00:37:56
you know, I mean, these are guys who
00:37:57
know when there's a jaguar close by the
00:38:00
sound of the birds. They know when a
00:38:02
storm's coming before the storm is
00:38:04
audible. You know, they they have higher
00:38:06
tuned senses than we do. And and so he
00:38:09
said, "Look, the tribe is coming.
00:38:10
There's the arrow. They're in the
00:38:12
region." And he goes, "And when they
00:38:13
come this close, they generally they
00:38:14
want to talk." And I said, "But this is"
00:38:17
and sure enough, you hear Mosk go and
00:38:19
everyone starts screaming. And it was
00:38:21
just this moment of absolute panic where
00:38:23
women were lifting babies and chickens
00:38:25
are flying around and dogs and we're in
00:38:26
this tiny little indigenous community on
00:38:28
the side of a river with hundreds and
00:38:30
hundreds of miles of jungle around. And
00:38:32
we run to the edge of this, you know,
00:38:33
the edge of the river where this cliff
00:38:35
is. And across the river, we see them
00:38:37
coming towards us. and they're walking
00:38:39
out of the jungle and they're naked from
00:38:41
head to toe. They just have some string
00:38:43
tied around their waists, penises tied
00:38:45
up to their bellies. They all have seven
00:38:47
foot long bows and arrows and they're
00:38:49
crouched over and they're looking at us
00:38:50
and we're standing there and you go
00:38:54
you sort of like you go I I just I I
00:38:56
wanted I wanted to see this and now I'm
00:38:58
not so sure I want to be here cuz there
00:39:00
are warriors coming out of the jungle
00:39:03
and they're from a thousand years ago.
00:39:06
So I asked the anthropologist, I said,
00:39:08
"They're like stone age people." And he
00:39:10
goes, "They don't have stones." He said,
00:39:12
"They're still in the bamboo age." He
00:39:14
said, "These people are living such a
00:39:16
primitive lifestyle. They're hunter
00:39:18
gatherers.
00:39:19
And they've been isolated so deep in the
00:39:21
jungle for so many centuries that it's
00:39:23
like a time capsule. So there was a
00:39:25
thousand years between us. We're
00:39:27
standing on either side of the river
00:39:28
with a thousand years between us. And
00:39:30
this aperture into the history of what
00:39:32
humankind used to look like. And these
00:39:34
people came out holding their bows and
00:39:36
arrows that they had made out of the
00:39:38
jungle and they held up their hands and
00:39:41
they were talking to us across a river.
00:39:43
And it was sort of shirts versus skins.
00:39:45
We were just two tribes separated by a
00:39:48
little bit of water and they wanted to
00:39:50
communicate.
00:39:52
>> With what language?
00:39:54
>> With their language. They I mean it's we
00:39:56
don't even know really what to call
00:39:58
them. For a while they were calling them
00:40:00
the Mashkapiro, which means the wild
00:40:02
piro people. And then um more more
00:40:05
recently and partly because of our
00:40:07
encounter they held up their hands and
00:40:09
the first thing they said was no mole.
00:40:12
We are the brothers. Brothers and so
00:40:15
then our side said the same thing. The
00:40:17
anthropologist said no mole brothers.
00:40:19
And then this this this exchange began
00:40:22
and it's like you know I as a Spanish
00:40:24
speaker when I've been in Italy I can
00:40:26
use my Spanish to kind of get through in
00:40:28
in Italian. And I feel like it's like
00:40:31
that the Yin people can speak to the
00:40:33
Mashkapiro and it is an approximate
00:40:35
translation.
00:40:37
And the first thing that they said after
00:40:39
coming out of the jungle a thousand
00:40:40
years late to civilization was
00:40:43
send us bananas. They said send us food.
00:40:47
And they demanded that we send them
00:40:49
plantains as an offering. And our side
00:40:51
said you put down your weapons. We will
00:40:54
talk to you but we do not want this to
00:40:56
end violently. We want this to be
00:40:58
peaceful. If you want to talk to us, put
00:41:01
down your bow and arrows because a
00:41:02
shotgun, a shotgun only goes how many
00:41:04
meters? You know, it's not even going to
00:41:06
go 100 meters, 50 m, maybe buckshot.
00:41:11
A longbowow arrow is going to go 300 m.
00:41:14
It's going to go far
00:41:16
>> and they're needless to say, they're
00:41:17
very good with those arrows.
00:41:19
>> They are very good with those arrows.
00:41:20
These things will fly. Um, and so even
00:41:23
standing on the other side of the river,
00:41:25
we were not safe. And so we were all
00:41:27
standing behind trees. We were watching.
00:41:29
Ignasio, who'd been shot before, was
00:41:31
watching with the binoculars. And he's
00:41:33
going, "Whenever you see them walking,"
00:41:35
he said, "they let you see them, and
00:41:36
then they clever girl you in the forest
00:41:38
where there's one watching you from the
00:41:39
shadows." And he he would grab me by the
00:41:41
shoulder and go, "Look, there's one."
00:41:42
And you would just see this, you know,
00:41:44
red face paint in the shadows of the
00:41:46
forest. And he'd have the bow trained on
00:41:48
us. And so while some of them in the
00:41:49
front were putting the bows down, there
00:41:51
was others of them in the shadows that
00:41:52
were making sure that they still had
00:41:55
support. But we asked the guys in the
00:41:57
front to put down their arrows. The
00:41:59
anthropologists got in the river and
00:42:01
gave them an offering of bananas.
00:42:04
>> I think I have a video here of this.
00:42:06
>> Yeah, this is world first footage.
00:42:10
>> I'll let you um You know how to use an
00:42:13
iPad, right?
00:42:17
Um, there we go. Yeah. So, this is this
00:42:20
was this is just a random moment from
00:42:22
the earlier days, but this is that
00:42:23
moment where everyone starts screaming,
00:42:25
"Mosh, go and we're all running." And
00:42:27
this is what I was talking about where
00:42:28
they are moving across the beach. And
00:42:30
you can see the sort of the posture
00:42:32
they're using there. I mean, he's got
00:42:35
they have their bows and arrows in hand
00:42:37
and then they showed up and see they're
00:42:38
pointing. They were worried that our
00:42:40
cameras were guns and so they were
00:42:42
asking to put down the cameras. They
00:42:44
were curious about various members of
00:42:47
our tribe and they were all talking at
00:42:49
the same time and so it was very
00:42:51
difficult to understand what they
00:42:52
wanted.
00:42:53
>> What's he doing with his finger there?
00:42:55
He's doing
00:42:55
>> this.
00:42:56
>> Yeah.
00:42:56
>> I don't know. This is the moment that we
00:42:58
gave them the bananas. And what's
00:43:00
haunting about this is the desperation
00:43:03
that you see on them where they're all
00:43:05
rushing to get the bananas and they're
00:43:06
not necessarily taking them like they're
00:43:08
going to share later. They're taking
00:43:10
them like I get my bananas, you get your
00:43:12
bananas. You see this? They're all
00:43:13
rushing
00:43:16
to get this little boatload. And these
00:43:18
are people that don't have boats. And as
00:43:20
they're doing this, they're all talking
00:43:22
at the same time. It was like a flock of
00:43:24
parrots. It was just a cacophony of of
00:43:26
sound.
00:43:28
And they're all fighting over these
00:43:29
plantains. And and then once they get
00:43:32
them, each person held their own. They
00:43:34
have rope and plantains. And this
00:43:36
interaction went on for several hours.
00:43:38
And we negotiated with them. And this is
00:43:41
just the footage. This is the footage
00:43:42
that we're allowed to release right now.
00:43:44
And this is them moving back off into
00:43:46
the jungle. There's a lot more that
00:43:48
happened. And again, that's where that's
00:43:50
why that's why we're releasing this now.
00:43:52
I should say that that's why we waited a
00:43:54
while to release this footage because
00:43:56
footage like this is incredibly
00:43:57
sensitive for a number of reasons.
00:44:00
A, you don't want people to think that
00:44:02
we went out and contacted these people
00:44:04
that want to be left alone. You also
00:44:07
don't want to encourage other people to
00:44:09
indulge their misconceptions. People go,
00:44:11
"Oh, these are the last free people on
00:44:13
earth. They live perfectly in balance
00:44:15
with nature." No, people will go looking
00:44:19
for them. Whereas, for hundreds of
00:44:21
years, these people have asked for one
00:44:22
thing and one thing only, to be left
00:44:24
alone. And they've enforced that kind of
00:44:26
like the Comanches with arrows. And on
00:44:30
this day, they said, "Please give us
00:44:31
food. Please give us rope." And they had
00:44:34
one other question.
00:44:37
They said, "How do we tell the bad guys
00:44:39
from the good guys?" And we said, "What
00:44:40
do you mean? Who are the bad guys?" And
00:44:43
they said, "Some of you shooted us with
00:44:44
the jiu-jitsu, with the fire sticks,
00:44:48
the guns." And we were going, "Who who
00:44:50
does that?" We said, "We are not the bad
00:44:52
guys." And they said, "No, you also,"
00:44:53
they said, "We know you cut down our
00:44:55
trees." They were speaking to all of us.
00:44:56
It was not there's no like, you know,
00:44:58
white guy, brown guy, Peruvian,
00:44:59
foreigners, none of that. It was just
00:45:01
all of you outsiders,
00:45:03
stop cutting down our trees. Our trees
00:45:06
are our gods. It was sort of like, you
00:45:08
don't do that.
00:45:10
And then when they left just a few weeks
00:45:12
ago, we learned that the narcot
00:45:14
traffickers view them as a threat. And
00:45:16
there was actually a mass grave found of
00:45:18
a similar clan. And so these people are
00:45:21
being boxed in by deforestation and
00:45:24
hunted by narot traffickers and gold
00:45:26
miners and loggers. And so I think that
00:45:28
them coming out of the forest was their
00:45:30
way of saying, "Hey, we're trying to get
00:45:32
a read on what's going on in the outside
00:45:34
world. Who is it? Who are the good guys?
00:45:36
Who are the bad guys? They don't know
00:45:38
that Jungle Keepers is protecting the
00:45:40
land that they live on.
00:45:42
>> They've never heard of a spoon or the
00:45:44
wheel or Jesus or World War II or the
00:45:48
country of Peru. And so so they're
00:45:51
coming out with so many questions. And
00:45:53
the only way to care for these people
00:45:55
and to give them the the the rights that
00:45:57
they deserve is to protect the forest
00:45:59
they live in.
00:46:01
>> Do you know why some of them seem to be
00:46:05
touching their nose?
00:46:06
>> It's funny. I didn't notice that. I
00:46:08
think this is this is this is going to
00:46:09
be your discovery to anthropology. I did
00:46:11
not notice that, but it does. You see
00:46:13
this a lot of them are doing this.
00:46:16
>> Yeah.
00:46:16
>> And the the outfit um
00:46:19
>> the outfit
00:46:20
>> What is this outfit? This it looks like
00:46:21
there's kind of rope tied around their
00:46:23
midrift with their penises out.
00:46:25
>> Mhm. Yeah. The the the head of the penis
00:46:27
is covered by rope.
00:46:28
>> Oh, they've got the penis up into the
00:46:30
rope.
00:46:30
>> No, the head of the penis is up and
00:46:32
protected. And and that makes sense
00:46:34
given the jungle where there's
00:46:36
mosquitoes and bot flies and sand flies.
00:46:38
That that's a smart move. And then rope
00:46:41
seems to be I mean what is it goes like
00:46:43
fire rope ladders like I think it's like
00:46:45
man's second invention.
00:46:46
>> They are obsessed with rope. That's how
00:46:48
they make their bow strings. That's how
00:46:50
they make their arrows. That's how they
00:46:52
lash things together to make the the the
00:46:54
limited structures that they make. And
00:46:56
some of what we know about them is, you
00:46:58
know, we find their camps after they
00:47:00
leave. So we know what they eat. They
00:47:01
eat primarily turtles and monkeys. They
00:47:03
don't fish. They don't have fish hooks.
00:47:06
>> They They don't eat humans, do they?
00:47:08
>> They do not eat humans. They are not
00:47:09
cannibal tribes.
00:47:11
>> That's a rumor people have talked about
00:47:12
before. People have said,
00:47:13
>> "Yeah, there's even a couple versions of
00:47:15
my voice in AI saying that on the
00:47:17
internet, but it is not true."
00:47:19
>> And their haircuts, they all seem to be
00:47:22
have the sort of mullet style haircut
00:47:25
from
00:47:25
>> It seems like they all grab the front
00:47:27
and just find a way to cut it. There
00:47:29
might be like one guy with a machete who
00:47:30
just does the haircuts.
00:47:32
>> And for a lot of them, this is the first
00:47:33
time they've seen a human.
00:47:35
>> So, actually, this was first contact.
00:47:37
The anthropologist who came to the
00:47:40
scene, who managed this interaction,
00:47:44
he said he had met an unconted tribe
00:47:46
before in the region. He said none of
00:47:49
these were men that he'd met. And the
00:47:51
other thing, notice they're all men.
00:47:53
>> Yeah.
00:47:54
>> The women were hidden hidden in the
00:47:55
forest. And while the men were making a
00:47:57
distraction in front of us, the women
00:47:59
were raiding the farm behind us.
00:48:01
>> Raiding
00:48:02
>> raiding the farm.
00:48:03
>> Your farm?
00:48:04
>> The indigenous people's farm. Our
00:48:06
community's farm.
00:48:06
>> So the women went to steal while they
00:48:08
were distracting you.
00:48:09
>> That's right.
00:48:10
>> And did you catch the women on tape?
00:48:12
>> No. No. No. No. No. No. Everyone was We
00:48:14
were all huddled up very, very close. I
00:48:16
mean, this was an incredible encounter.
00:48:18
But let me explain. The prevailing
00:48:21
emotion during this entire thing was
00:48:23
fear on both sides. They were scared. We
00:48:27
were scared. The indigenous people
00:48:29
naturally have shotguns anyway. Everyone
00:48:31
had their shotguns out. They all had
00:48:34
some of them had put their bows on the
00:48:36
beach, but they had other they had
00:48:37
archers waiting. And so everyone was
00:48:40
sort of, you know, it was like, "Put
00:48:41
down your guns and we can talk." But
00:48:43
nobody really wanted to put down their
00:48:44
guns.
00:48:45
>> And how do you know the women were
00:48:47
stealing from your farm?
00:48:50
Because after this was all over and we
00:48:51
went to the farm, everything had been
00:48:54
pulled up. All the yuka, all the
00:48:56
plantains, all the sugarcane, the entire
00:48:58
farm was ruined.
00:49:01
>> How'd you know it was the women?
00:49:03
>> The women in the village told me it was
00:49:04
the women. They was the women. Also, you
00:49:07
see the smaller footprints. These men
00:49:08
have wide big men. They're from walking
00:49:12
barefoot their whole lives. Their feet
00:49:14
get ancho. They get really thick. And
00:49:17
so, and I have jungle feet like that
00:49:18
now, but these guys have almost duck
00:49:20
feet at this point. Like big, fat,
00:49:23
calloused feet that get wider. You ever
00:49:25
see a farmer's hands?
00:49:26
>> Yeah.
00:49:27
>> But they just they just grow.
00:49:28
>> Yeah.
00:49:29
>> Like that.
00:49:30
>> They're all young as well.
00:49:32
>> Where's Where are the older people?
00:49:34
>> We'd love to know.
00:49:36
We don't know. There's some tribes in
00:49:38
the Amazon where the elderly people have
00:49:41
more permanent settlements. There's been
00:49:44
rumors of some extreme tribes where the
00:49:46
elderly people if they can't keep up are
00:49:47
just left to perish. Uh but we saw
00:49:51
people between the ages of probably 12
00:49:54
and 45. I don't think anybody looks like
00:49:56
they're in their 50s.
00:49:59
So we left with more questions than
00:50:01
answers. They on that day they did get a
00:50:03
pot that they they stole from a from you
00:50:06
know the community you know they have
00:50:07
their their farm and so there there was
00:50:09
also a machete at the farm. Somebody
00:50:11
just whacked it into a log. And so as
00:50:13
they were leaving, one of the best
00:50:14
things that we caught on video that we
00:50:16
have we're not able to share yet is that
00:50:18
one of these guys, and this was at the
00:50:19
end after while everybody was going
00:50:21
home, the anthropologist held up his
00:50:24
hands and he said, you know, no mole
00:50:25
brothers, go in peace. And these guys
00:50:27
actually asked about me. I was the only
00:50:28
person there with a big beard. And they
00:50:30
said,
00:50:32
they said that one. They said, show us
00:50:33
that one. And so I came forward. I stood
00:50:35
at the edge of the river, which my heart
00:50:37
was pounding. And the anthropologist
00:50:39
said, he said, hold up your hands. Show
00:50:40
them that you don't mean any harm. I
00:50:42
held hel held up my hands like this and
00:50:43
they held up their hands and they sang.
00:50:46
They said no more. They knew that I
00:50:48
wasn't from the indigenous community.
00:50:51
And that was an incredible moment of we
00:50:54
couldn't communicate but it was just
00:50:55
sort of that basic I acknowledge you and
00:50:58
they said I acknowledge you and we just
00:51:00
had this thing across the river in about
00:51:02
a thousand years and just and then that
00:51:03
was it. And as they left, you know, one
00:51:06
of the guys had a machete and he was he
00:51:08
showed it to us over his shoulder like
00:51:10
this. And one of my friends was going,
00:51:11
"Oh," you know, in the local language he
00:51:13
was saying, "Put down the machete. Leave
00:51:14
the machete." And the guy just smiled
00:51:16
and looked at us like, "Yeah, come and
00:51:17
get it. Come and get it." And then at
00:51:20
just as they left, one of the warriors
00:51:22
walked out to the beach, put an arrow on
00:51:24
the string, smiled at us, and just shot
00:51:27
it. Was like, "Ha!"
00:51:29
>> Up into the air,
00:51:30
>> just at us in general, just to spook us.
00:51:33
And then they all turned left and left,
00:51:35
you know. So they have a sense of humor.
00:51:37
We saw them smile, you know. We
00:51:38
exchanged a little bit of that with them
00:51:40
as well.
00:51:42
>> They look cold.
00:51:44
They are cold. I mean, it's it's it's
00:51:47
95° on that day. The other thing is it
00:51:49
was cool as they're coming. If you go to
00:51:51
the part where they're coming across the
00:51:52
beach, there was millions of
00:51:54
butterflies. That beach was covered in
00:51:57
just millions of butterflies. And so as
00:51:59
these people are walking out, the
00:52:01
butterflies are just swarming around
00:52:02
them. Go back to the beginning. The that
00:52:04
right there. If you just notice, we
00:52:06
don't notice it at first, but as they're
00:52:08
moving, look at that. The world is
00:52:09
swirling with leapid lepodopter in
00:52:11
colors. Just just absolute
00:52:14
>> insanity how how beautiful this scene
00:52:16
was. And I mean, when you see this, you
00:52:18
know, if a if a Tyrannosaurus Rex walked
00:52:20
out behind them, I wouldn't have been
00:52:22
surprised. It was such a strange
00:52:24
literally unbelievable thing to see
00:52:26
because
00:52:28
you know these these literally are the
00:52:30
last people on Earth that are still
00:52:31
living in this way where society we have
00:52:33
planes, trains, automobiles, iPhones,
00:52:34
all of this technology. We're talking
00:52:36
about going to other planets.
00:52:40
They don't have metal,
00:52:44
even a knife, unless they get it from
00:52:46
someone else. And so it's just it's just
00:52:47
an incredible, you know, the other thing
00:52:49
is they do have medicinal technologies.
00:52:51
They're able to stay infection-free
00:52:53
living in the tropical wet jungle.
00:52:57
That's pretty incredible
00:52:58
>> cuz they're they're virtually naked.
00:53:00
>> I mean, essentially naked. I think
00:53:03
that's that's how they carry their rope.
00:53:05
I don't think that's so much of clothing
00:53:06
as we need rope and that's how we carry
00:53:09
it. It's very it's very very complicated
00:53:12
because the loggers
00:53:14
shoot at them, the narcos shoot at them.
00:53:18
People shouldn't be getting into the
00:53:21
places that they live. And if you think
00:53:23
about in the last few centuries, how
00:53:26
many indigenous cultures have been
00:53:27
annihilated by the outside world coming
00:53:29
in these there's no shortage of these
00:53:32
stories. And in this particular case, in
00:53:35
2026, when we have the communication and
00:53:38
people are able to hear this story, this
00:53:40
is why we're releasing this footage
00:53:42
because the only hope these people have
00:53:44
is if we protect them. They can't come
00:53:47
on a podcast. They can't address the
00:53:49
United Nations. They can't write a pet
00:53:50
petition. The only hope they have is if
00:53:53
we are able to protect the forest that
00:53:55
they live in. That's it. And that's why
00:53:58
we released this footage now. Cuz for a
00:54:00
long time we said we can't release it.
00:54:03
We said, "What if what if crazy hippie
00:54:05
people go down there thinking that these
00:54:07
are the last free people and they want
00:54:08
to go live with them? That will kill
00:54:10
them. The outside pathogens that you and
00:54:12
I carry on us every day, the common cold
00:54:14
that we have immunity to, could wipe out
00:54:16
an entire tribe." And how many tribes
00:54:19
like this do we believe are in the
00:54:21
Amazon rainforest?
00:54:23
>> Several thousand little tribes, little
00:54:25
clans that move nomatically through the
00:54:27
Amazon.
00:54:28
>> Were they tall?
00:54:30
>> They looked like they were at least, you
00:54:33
know, 5'9, 510. They were pretty tall,
00:54:36
especially because the the Peruvians and
00:54:38
the indigenous communities that we work
00:54:40
with tend to be on the smaller side.
00:54:42
>> They they they are taller than the
00:54:44
average uh some of the other tribes.
00:54:47
There's another tribe that we ran into
00:54:49
down there called the Nawa. And those
00:54:50
people were were absolutely tiny. They
00:54:53
were s like below five feet. All of
00:54:55
them. Um
00:54:57
these guys were tall. Yeah.
00:55:00
And is there a leader here? Is someone
00:55:02
in charge?
00:55:03
>> Another great question. It seems to be
00:55:05
that there's two, they look like
00:55:06
brothers. There seems to be two guys who
00:55:07
do most of the talking. One in
00:55:10
particular who seems to be doing the
00:55:12
most gesticulating and he was
00:55:14
communicating more forcefully. He He had
00:55:16
a smile. That guy, he had a smile on his
00:55:18
face at certain times.
00:55:19
>> This one?
00:55:20
>> Yeah, I think so. And And he was the one
00:55:23
that would walk the furthest out into
00:55:24
the river.
00:55:26
Yeah. And he seems well muscled,
00:55:29
healthy.
00:55:30
>> He's the biggest as well in size by the
00:55:32
looks of it.
00:55:32
>> Yeah.
00:55:33
>> Okay.
00:55:36
These tribes have been known to kill
00:55:38
people.
00:55:39
>> These tribes kill people all the time.
00:55:42
The the day after this happened, we went
00:55:45
down river and one of the people who had
00:55:47
been maintaining the peace during this
00:55:50
negotiation across the river was my
00:55:52
friend George. And George kept saying,
00:55:55
"Don't worry, it's going to be okay.
00:55:57
Don't worry, no mole." And he would say,
00:55:59
"Let's get them more bananas." And he
00:56:00
said, "You stay behind the tree. Say,
00:56:02
hey, please put down your camera. They
00:56:04
don't understand that it's not a gun."
00:56:05
He was making sure that everyone was
00:56:07
calm. Well, George was driving the day
00:56:10
after this in the river as he does every
00:56:13
day and he rounded one riverbend and the
00:56:17
tribe was out again. They were further
00:56:18
up river and usually when they leave
00:56:20
they go deep into the jungle but on this
00:56:22
day they had been walking up the river
00:56:24
which nobody expected and so when his
00:56:26
boat came around the river they hadn't
00:56:28
expected it and they open fired.
00:56:32
Everybody else on the boat was able to
00:56:33
get down under the the benches which is
00:56:35
made out of heavy thick wood. As he was
00:56:38
driving, he caught an arrow over the
00:56:40
scapula,
00:56:42
came out by his belly button.
00:56:45
So, it collapsed his right lung and cut
00:56:46
through his whole body
00:56:49
and he had to be helicopter evacuated
00:56:52
out of the indigenous community. And
00:56:54
somehow he lived.
00:56:57
But he's never going to be the same. And
00:56:59
there's there's a hundred stories I
00:57:01
could tell you of people that have been
00:57:02
killed by them.
00:57:05
But now and more and more there's
00:57:06
stories of that they are also being
00:57:08
exterminated. So their violence is in
00:57:10
response to the fact that the outside
00:57:12
world has been cruel to them. And the
00:57:14
only way that they can ensure that they
00:57:15
survive is by keeping the outside world
00:57:17
out.
00:57:19
>> This is a might be a bit of a dumb
00:57:20
question, but there's no consequence to
00:57:23
that is there from the Peruvian
00:57:24
government or anything. the proving
00:57:26
government aren't trying to um you know
00:57:29
if they if this uncontacted tribe kills
00:57:31
somebody they're not necessarily going
00:57:33
to go there and try and
00:57:36
enforce any kind of like law. That's
00:57:39
actually a great question because it
00:57:40
illustrates something that I think a lot
00:57:42
of people fundamentally don't understand
00:57:43
about this is that you know if this
00:57:47
banana is the last town
00:57:50
and then you imagine just our river is
00:57:53
the size of a football field.
00:57:56
>> Mhm.
00:57:56
>> Right.
00:57:58
How are you going to get to the other
00:58:00
side of it in the jungle? It takes you
00:58:02
about about an hour to cover half a mile
00:58:06
through through dense jungle. If me and
00:58:08
you were going with machetes right now
00:58:09
through dense dense jungle, about an
00:58:12
hour for every half mile. That's with no
00:58:14
trail. With trail, you can go a little
00:58:16
faster. With a boat, you can go a little
00:58:17
faster. But the police have no
00:58:19
jurisdiction outside of the city. The
00:58:21
only reason the police have power is
00:58:24
because everyone has agreed that there's
00:58:25
a government and that they have power
00:58:27
and that there's a but it's all made up.
00:58:30
And when you go out in the jungle, you
00:58:31
realize that there is no law in the
00:58:33
wild. It's just whatever happens. It's
00:58:35
who has a bigger stick.
00:58:38
And so they're still playing by that
00:58:39
game. They've never heard of a law. And
00:58:42
so they they've been known to find
00:58:44
something interesting just the way and
00:58:46
you know today if we're interested in a
00:58:48
bird, we take a picture of it and then
00:58:49
we study it or we can capture it. We can
00:58:51
study it. You know, sometimes people
00:58:53
will criticize Teddy Roosevelt for being
00:58:55
a hunter, but a lot of the species, if
00:58:57
he saw a new species, he would shoot it
00:59:00
so that he could study it. That was what
00:59:02
they did back then. But they do this
00:59:04
with humans. They'll be like, "That's an
00:59:06
interesting pair of pants."
00:59:09
They seem to think about life and death
00:59:11
very differently.
00:59:13
>> And I was watching something um a
00:59:17
podcast that you did where you said that
00:59:18
they also speak the same language. some
00:59:21
of these unconted tribes is the monkeys.
00:59:23
>> Yes. Um so what they do is they will
00:59:26
emulate capacin calls, bird calls, the
00:59:29
unrelated tinn tinimu goes.
00:59:33
Um the capachens I can't do their call
00:59:35
but these guys have it down perfectly.
00:59:37
>> Capagins being
00:59:38
>> capagin monkeys
00:59:43
and they'll use those sounds. And JJ's
00:59:45
father Don Santiago had told us years
00:59:47
and years ago he said we thought he was
00:59:48
just trying to scare us. He said, "If
00:59:50
you're ever in the forest and you hear
00:59:53
the animals sound a little off, if you
00:59:56
ever just feel like something's not
00:59:58
right about the way the He" He said,
01:00:00
"They've surrounded you and they're all
01:00:01
watching with their bows and arrows."
01:00:03
>> The tribes have.
01:00:04
>> Yeah. And so they'll go
01:00:06
and you'll go and he'll go and you go,
01:00:10
"Wait, wait a sec." You don't hear three
01:00:12
tinus in a row. That's not how it works.
01:00:15
That one tineu talks to the other tineu
01:00:17
and all of a sudden I got five tinus
01:00:18
around me. Uh-uh. And then you know you
01:00:20
got the tribe around you. And so this is
01:00:22
where the local people know how this
01:00:23
stuff works. And to anyone from the
01:00:25
outside that goes, there's no such thing
01:00:26
as unconted tribes and they don't
01:00:28
communicate. Yeah, they do. And one of
01:00:30
my friends was in that exact situation
01:00:33
where they were communicating with
01:00:35
animal calls in a circle while he was in
01:00:37
a stream with his father
01:00:39
and unfortunately they shot his father
01:00:41
in the stomach and his father died. And
01:00:44
then he ran for it and he lived to tell
01:00:47
the tale. And the next day the his
01:00:49
community, our friends came back and
01:00:51
they found
01:00:53
this guy who had just bled out through
01:00:55
his stomach. And why they killed him, we
01:00:58
do not know.
01:01:01
>> So they pretend they're animals. Um but
01:01:04
well, they they use animal sounds to
01:01:06
communicate with each other.
01:01:08
>> Yes.
01:01:09
>> Because then the prey, which in this
01:01:11
case might be a human,
01:01:12
>> Yeah.
01:01:13
>> won't know that it's
01:01:14
>> exactly.
01:01:15
>> Okay. So, if I'm going if we go, okay,
01:01:17
let's split up and surround. We're we're
01:01:19
we're unconted tribes now. And we go,
01:01:21
okay, there's loggers over there. Let's
01:01:23
split up, surround them. We'll see how
01:01:24
many of them there are.
01:01:25
>> And use the monkeys language to
01:01:27
>> use the monkey language. They don't
01:01:28
think anything of it. They'll just keep
01:01:29
doing what they're doing. And then when
01:01:31
we give the go-ahad, everybody, we just
01:01:33
slice them with seven foot arrows and
01:01:35
they're all going down.
01:01:40
I was I was going to ask about
01:01:41
happiness, but I don't even know the
01:01:42
context in which to ask the question
01:01:43
about their happiness.
01:01:45
>> No, I think I think that there's some
01:01:47
some Coror Mc McCarthy quotes that would
01:01:51
probably do better justice to their
01:01:53
reality than the idea of happiness. I
01:01:55
think that they are living in a world
01:01:57
where they're more concerned with
01:01:59
calories. They're more concerned with
01:02:01
how much blood does it cost to walk a
01:02:04
mile. They're more concerned with
01:02:06
stealing the women from other tribes.
01:02:08
They're not concerned with happiness.
01:02:10
It's more apocalyptto than uh Downtown
01:02:13
Abbey. You know, it's it's they're
01:02:16
they're
01:02:18
in a state of desperation. You could see
01:02:20
it in their face.
01:02:22
And that's where there's a further
01:02:24
anthropological question of what happens
01:02:26
in the future for these people. But one
01:02:28
thing that we know for certain is that
01:02:30
rapid contact destroys them. It's
01:02:33
happened before. All of this has
01:02:34
happened before. You know, when the
01:02:36
outside world reaches an unconted tribe,
01:02:38
the pathogens kill them. When the
01:02:41
outside world reaches even an indigenous
01:02:43
community, alcohol, outside pathogens,
01:02:47
money can destroy an indigenous culture
01:02:49
and take away their language in a single
01:02:51
generation. So, so these types of of
01:02:54
severely isolated cultures, if they want
01:02:59
to come out and make contact with the
01:03:00
indigenous communities that are their
01:03:02
neighbors, that has to happen over time.
01:03:06
And and they have to have the agency to
01:03:08
do it, which means their forest needs to
01:03:11
be protected.
01:03:13
And so that's that's and that's all we
01:03:15
know. You know, we don't know what their
01:03:17
birth rates are, what their infant
01:03:18
mortality rates are, where their old
01:03:20
people are, what what what what are
01:03:22
their creation myths, what are their
01:03:23
beliefs? We have no idea.
01:03:25
>> Do we even know where they live in terms
01:03:27
of do they live in huts, houses? Do we
01:03:28
know that?
01:03:29
>> No, they don't. In fact, at this very
01:03:31
moment right now, uh I would imagine
01:03:33
that there's several of them hunched
01:03:35
around a campfire in the darkness
01:03:37
beneath 160 ft of canopy. You know,
01:03:39
because when you're in the jungle,
01:03:40
there's there's these these pillars
01:03:42
going up, but then it's a it's a 4D
01:03:44
environment because it's just you're
01:03:46
walking. It's like you're walking along
01:03:48
the bottom of the ocean. You're this
01:03:49
tiny thing. And above you is all of this
01:03:51
slithering life and frogs and things
01:03:53
moving through the branches. And so
01:03:55
they're they're huddled down there in
01:03:56
the and below the Amazon rainforest. And
01:03:59
somehow they figured out how to make
01:04:01
fire,
01:04:03
which if I handed you a lighter and a
01:04:06
full cup of gasoline and said, "Have all
01:04:09
the sticks you want in the jungle," you
01:04:11
still couldn't make me a fire right now.
01:04:13
>> How do you know they can make fire?
01:04:14
>> Because we see them cook stuff. We find
01:04:16
their camps.
01:04:19
But it's also conceivable because they
01:04:22
don't have pots.
01:04:24
It's conceivable that that they some of
01:04:27
these people haven't seen water boil,
01:04:30
right? They just drink water and it
01:04:32
falls on them from the sky. They
01:04:34
certainly don't know that water freezes.
01:04:38
On this point of happiness, you said you
01:04:39
saw desperation in their faces, but does
01:04:42
that mean that you think they're not
01:04:43
happy,
01:04:44
>> or do you just think that
01:04:46
>> that isn't even a sort of a paradigm
01:04:48
that they even consider? It's all about
01:04:51
survival.
01:04:52
>> I think that we have we're inbuilt to
01:04:54
enjoy moments of joy. I think that
01:04:56
humans enjoy moments of interaction,
01:04:58
moments of play. And not just humans, I
01:05:00
think that animals in general. You look
01:05:01
at, you know, two puppies chasing each
01:05:03
other. They're having fun. You know,
01:05:05
even on even on this day with shotguns
01:05:07
loaded and bows cocked and we still
01:05:10
found the time to smile a little bit at
01:05:11
each other. Give me that machete. Yeah.
01:05:13
Yeah. Come and get it. And we kind of
01:05:15
like, you know, it was kind of like
01:05:16
you're just as scared of us as we are as
01:05:17
you. And it was it was a it was we were
01:05:19
on the same level for that smile,
01:05:22
>> you know? And I was like, oh, okay.
01:05:24
Yeah. None of us want to do that.
01:05:26
>> Um, and so there's there is happiness
01:05:28
there. But I'm saying, you know, uh
01:05:31
knowledge comes with benefits. You know,
01:05:34
there's a lot of things that they may
01:05:35
believe that I I remember when I was in
01:05:37
college reading about an anthrop
01:05:39
anthropologist group that got to
01:05:40
somewhere in New Guinea and all the
01:05:42
people were hiding in trees cuz they had
01:05:45
they'd gotten to a point in their
01:05:46
civilization where that where they
01:05:48
believed that everything that bad that
01:05:49
was bad came from magical spells. You
01:05:52
know, if I fall and break my leg, it's
01:05:53
cuz you set a magical spell on me and if
01:05:55
I get sick, it's because of a magical
01:05:56
spell. And everybody was so scared of
01:05:57
upsetting each other that they'd all
01:05:59
just started living in the trees and
01:06:00
hunting and they were living in this
01:06:01
constant fear state.
01:06:04
>> And so, you know, you at times like
01:06:06
that, you need someone to go, "Okay,
01:06:07
guys, look, here's what, you know,
01:06:09
here's what's happening. Let's get let's
01:06:11
get let's get on the same page." And
01:06:12
they may maybe they would be helped by
01:06:15
having a small plantation of plantains.
01:06:17
And so, if they have a bad week of
01:06:18
hunting,
01:06:20
they can just come in and they can they
01:06:22
can take some of their own make get some
01:06:24
of their own food. They don't need to
01:06:25
start being agricultural. They can still
01:06:28
be nomadic hunter gatherers, but maybe
01:06:30
having some supplemental food out there
01:06:32
in locations that they know about would
01:06:34
help. But these are things for the local
01:06:36
people and for anthropologists to figure
01:06:38
out over time.
01:06:40
>> I heard you say that children from the
01:06:41
tribe who were raised by outside
01:06:42
communities claim to remember nothing
01:06:44
about their time in the tribe.
01:06:46
>> It's haunting.
01:06:51
>> What do you mean by that? I mean that a
01:06:53
child washed down river on a log to one
01:06:56
of the very very remote communities in
01:06:57
the Amazon rainforest and was adopted by
01:07:01
an indigenous community, people that
01:07:02
speak an indigenous language as well as
01:07:06
Spanish. And when he was old enough to
01:07:09
be asked questions, someone said, "Hey,
01:07:11
by the way, when you were living with
01:07:12
Los Kalatos with the with the naked
01:07:14
people, that's what they call them. Um,
01:07:18
what was it like?" and he just went, "I
01:07:21
don't remember." And walked away. But I
01:07:22
mean, when he came down, he was 8 years
01:07:24
old.
01:07:25
You can't tell me you don't remember
01:07:27
anything. And but it was a it was a it
01:07:29
was a it was a guarded I don't remember.
01:07:31
It was a I don't remember. No. Access
01:07:34
denied.
01:07:36
It doesn't I mean, you got you know, and
01:07:39
that's what people get wrong where they
01:07:40
go, "Oh, these people still live, you
01:07:42
know, in communion with nature." And
01:07:44
it's like, yeah, and there's a lot of
01:07:45
rape and murder and warfare and probably
01:07:49
needless death from infections and
01:07:51
disease and and and they're living a
01:07:53
very different lifestyle, but
01:07:56
it certainly is fascinating that they're
01:07:58
out there. And I think that it only goes
01:08:00
to illustrate that we what we're
01:08:02
protecting here is truly that wild.
01:08:04
Because a lot of people will say to me,
01:08:06
well, how come you guys are so focused
01:08:07
on protecting this river? There's
01:08:09
thousands of tributaries in the Amazon.
01:08:11
Why protect this 300,000 acres right
01:08:14
there? It's like, well, this is the
01:08:16
wildest part. John Mirror took Teddy
01:08:18
Roosevelt on a camping trip when he
01:08:20
wanted him to protect the Yusede Valley
01:08:22
and the Sequoia trees. And he said, you
01:08:25
have to see this. And so, he took
01:08:26
Roosevelt and showed him how amazing it
01:08:29
was. I mean, sequoia trees like that
01:08:31
exist nowhere else on Earth. They're the
01:08:34
biggest trees on the planet. If he if
01:08:36
they hadn't protected them, they'd be
01:08:37
gone.
01:08:39
And so them having the foresight to
01:08:41
protect those trees, then we still have
01:08:43
sequoia trees. And so that's what we're
01:08:45
doing on this river. It's like by
01:08:46
protecting 300,000
01:08:49
acres of forest, we ensure that those
01:08:52
millennium trees, those skyscrapers of
01:08:54
life continue to have monkeys, reptiles,
01:08:57
amphibians, birds, mammals, that these
01:08:59
tribes continue to live out in the far
01:09:01
reaches. And then again to use the
01:09:03
football field analogy in this vast
01:09:05
expanse of wilderness, we found a way to
01:09:08
use just like a little pin prick to
01:09:11
actually bring people and let them see
01:09:13
this amazing place. And so we, you know,
01:09:15
the whole 99.99% of the thing is wild.
01:09:18
And we that's why we built that
01:09:19
treehouse to let you know some of our
01:09:21
donors, some of our people, cuz now
01:09:23
people from all over the world are
01:09:24
helping us save this river. and the
01:09:26
treehouse. That was a dream.
01:09:29
You know, there's a there's a mist river
01:09:31
that flows above the Amazon that's
01:09:32
invisible and it's larger than the
01:09:34
Amazon River itself.
01:09:36
There's an invisible mist river above
01:09:38
the Amazon that's larger than the river.
01:09:40
>> Mist.
01:09:41
>> Mist.
01:09:42
>> Okay.
01:09:43
>> And so the first time I saw it, I had
01:09:46
climbed the tallest tree in the jungle,
01:09:48
which took hours, and I was standing on
01:09:50
a branch at dawn, and I saw the sun
01:09:52
illuminate the mist river going across
01:09:54
the canopy.
01:09:56
And I went, I have to share this with
01:09:58
people.
01:09:59
And so we built that treehouse on a
01:10:01
promontory at the edge of the terrairma
01:10:03
looking out over the jungle so that
01:10:06
people can see the reserve, see all the
01:10:08
forest that they're protecting. Because
01:10:10
at this point, the way we've see this
01:10:11
and see that picture below it, that's
01:10:13
the wasteland. That's what happens when
01:10:15
you don't protect the Amazon.
01:10:18
Are you at all on some level jealous
01:10:23
of how these unconted tribes live? Is
01:10:27
there any part of you that wants to go
01:10:29
and experience their world for a day or
01:10:33
wishes you could
01:10:35
spend some time living how they live?
01:10:37
>> No.
01:10:38
>> No,
01:10:38
>> no. I really enjoy hanging out with my
01:10:40
native friends like when spending a day
01:10:42
piranha fishing. Um, but I also really
01:10:45
love my camera roll and doing
01:10:47
photography and having modern medicine
01:10:48
and being able to FaceTime my mom when
01:10:50
I'm in the jungle. Like, you know, I I
01:10:52
don't I don't I don't I no romanticism
01:10:55
about their state. That that seems like
01:10:57
stress and destiny. I don't I don't need
01:10:59
to I don't want I certainly don't want
01:11:01
to do that now. Is there anything that
01:11:02
you learned or gleaned from them that I
01:11:06
know a westerner like me who's spending
01:11:08
a lot of time on I know screens and
01:11:10
stuff and the way we live our lives
01:11:12
might find useful.
01:11:14
>> I don't think that that we're at the
01:11:16
point where they're imparting lessons. I
01:11:17
think we're we're at the point where
01:11:18
we're learning which questions we want
01:11:19
to ask. That was first contact.
01:11:23
And so at this point our job is to
01:11:25
figure out how do we how do we move
01:11:27
forward? What do we what do they need?
01:11:29
How do we ethically
01:11:32
proceed in protecting this forest?
01:11:36
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01:13:42
>> What do you got?
01:13:45
I mean, in so many of these photos,
01:13:47
you're holding massive snakes. And when
01:13:49
I say massive snakes, I don't mean the
01:13:51
snakes you guys listening are thinking
01:13:53
about. I mean, anaconda sized snakes
01:13:56
like, oh yeah, this was this was me and
01:14:00
JJ's first first big anaconda that we
01:14:03
big anaconda we caught. It was only
01:14:04
about 12 feet. And uh yeah, that one
01:14:08
that one this was a great snake because
01:14:10
I'd never caught a big snake before. I'd
01:14:13
always been, you know, you catch a small
01:14:14
snake and I'd learned from Steve Irwin,
01:14:16
you know, you catch a catch a snake by
01:14:17
the tail and it's it might try to bite
01:14:19
you. If you don't get it by the tail,
01:14:21
snake's going to run away every time.
01:14:22
Snakes are not never going to attack
01:14:24
you, period. So, I learned you catch a
01:14:26
snake by the tail and then it's once you
01:14:28
get it by the tail, it's going to come
01:14:29
back at you and try and stop you from
01:14:31
grabbing its tail. Great. And if you
01:14:33
need to, you can get it by the head and
01:14:34
you got control of the snake. But if you
01:14:36
have the head, you have the snake. So
01:14:37
that first snake, I mean, I'm talking
01:14:39
about a 12ft snake that's, you know,
01:14:41
that's at least as thick as my leg. And
01:14:44
I ran in there and I said, "Jay, you
01:14:45
come from that side. I'm going to come
01:14:46
from this side. We get the snake. We're
01:14:48
going to measure it." Just because we
01:14:49
thought it was so fascinating. I ran in
01:14:51
and I dove and I grabbed the snake by
01:14:53
the head. Big mistake. Wraps around my
01:14:57
arms. And the first thing that I
01:14:58
realized was I had an anaconda
01:15:00
handcuffs. Now I couldn't I couldn't
01:15:03
release the snake if I wanted to because
01:15:04
it was around my wrists. And then the
01:15:06
second coil came around my shoulders.
01:15:09
And now I'm feeling the I can actually
01:15:11
hear my collar bone start to flex the
01:15:14
way a stick sounds right before it
01:15:16
snaps. And JJ grabbed the snake by the
01:15:18
tail and pulled the tail off. And then
01:15:20
his other brother, they got to me right
01:15:21
as I was about to I mean literally the
01:15:23
eyes were going to come out of my head.
01:15:24
It was going to crush you. That's what
01:15:26
happens.
01:15:27
And so he pulled that right off at the
01:15:29
last second. So that was about as close
01:15:30
as I came to knowing what it feels like.
01:15:34
But that's not even a big one.
01:15:36
>> I think you came a little bit closer.
01:15:39
>> Yeah. No, that's that that's a
01:15:43
>> Explain this to me. So, for anyone that
01:15:44
can't can't see, I would highly
01:15:46
recommend you look at the screen now.
01:15:47
>> Um,
01:15:48
>> please look away. Look away. Don't
01:15:50
listen to him.
01:15:51
>> This is a an absolutely crazy story.
01:15:53
What What's going on in this photo? And
01:15:54
why did you do that?
01:15:55
>> Sure. This is actually a very important
01:15:59
story. You know, you hear these people
01:16:02
talk about how if you're going to
01:16:04
succeed at anything, you have to become
01:16:07
very familiar with losing. You almost
01:16:09
got to learn to love it.
01:16:12
And and so as we set out on this journey
01:16:14
to explore the Amazon and to build
01:16:18
relationships with the indigenous people
01:16:19
and to study anacondas and to find a way
01:16:21
to protect this place, at around 24
01:16:24
years old, I got approached by Discovery
01:16:26
Channel. And they said, "Kid,
01:16:30
we've never seen one like you. Let's do
01:16:32
a show where we take people into the
01:16:33
Amazon rainforest and show them
01:16:35
anacondas." And I said, "That'd be
01:16:36
amazing." I said, "I would love to do
01:16:38
that. I could teach people about the
01:16:40
forest. Let's let's go." They said,
01:16:41
'Great. The only thing is they said, you
01:16:43
know, it's not a good enough show if we
01:16:45
just show them the science that you're
01:16:46
going to do. Because we wanted to use as
01:16:48
the apex predators of the ecosystem,
01:16:50
they're, you know, if there's mercury in
01:16:52
the system, they're bioaccumulating
01:16:54
there. Any toxins that are in the
01:16:55
Amazon, they're going to absorb. It's
01:16:57
going to get into the fish and then into
01:16:58
the cayman, into the birds, into the
01:17:00
anacondas. They're the apex predator. We
01:17:02
were doing groundbreaking research on
01:17:04
anacondas.
01:17:05
They said that wasn't good enough. They
01:17:06
said, imagine if they said no one's, you
01:17:09
know, reticulated pythons have eaten
01:17:10
people. They said, "No one's ever had on
01:17:12
record an anaconda eating a human." And
01:17:14
I said, "It happens. It happens. I know
01:17:16
a few people whose grandmother or uncle
01:17:18
was eaten by an anaconda. It happens,
01:17:19
but it doesn't happen where people no
01:17:21
one's taking a picture of it." And so
01:17:23
they said, "Well, if we make you a
01:17:24
really expensive suit, will you get
01:17:26
eaten by an anaconda?" I said, "I'll
01:17:28
try." I said, "It's not going to eat.
01:17:29
Snakes are sweethearts. It's not going
01:17:30
to try to eat me." And they said, "But
01:17:33
look, we we'll call the show Expedition
01:17:35
Amazon. Send you out there with a team
01:17:37
of scientists. We'll film the whole
01:17:39
thing." Long story short, I agreed to it
01:17:41
because what I thought at the time was,
01:17:43
I keep seeing forest getting burned. I
01:17:46
keep seeing my millennium trees go down,
01:17:48
all of those monkeys and birds and
01:17:50
snakes and beautiful animals that are
01:17:51
getting incinerated. And they're telling
01:17:53
me all I got to do to get a TV show
01:17:55
that'll reach millions of people and let
01:17:57
me get that message out there. All I got
01:17:59
to do is at the end do this silly stunt
01:18:00
to show people that snakes aren't that
01:18:02
bad. And so we filmed this show for 6
01:18:05
weeks.
01:18:06
>> You agreed to what? I agreed to
01:18:08
potentially be eaten by an anaconda.
01:18:15
>> Okay.
01:18:16
I mean, if it wanted if it wanted to, I
01:18:18
had a breathing tube and I had a um it
01:18:21
theoretically could have eaten me, but I
01:18:23
knew it wouldn't cuz I know snakes. But
01:18:25
the producers were very, you know, these
01:18:27
are people that have never left the the
01:18:29
the office building and have watched too
01:18:31
many movies, and they wanted to see a
01:18:34
guy get eaten by a snake.
01:18:35
>> And you volunteered. Of course, I'd
01:18:37
volunteer. I would have cut off my foot
01:18:39
to save the forest. I'll do anything to
01:18:40
save the forest. And so, when somebody
01:18:42
gives you a chance like this, and it's
01:18:44
funny, I actually spoke to Jane Goodall
01:18:45
about this. I said, there's this chance
01:18:47
I have and I think I could use I think I
01:18:50
can navigate this in such a way that
01:18:52
that at the, you know, we take people on
01:18:53
an expedition through the Amazon, and at
01:18:55
the end, I'll go I'll get in the pit in
01:18:58
a special suit and I'll let the snake
01:18:59
wrap around me and I'll show people that
01:19:01
anacondas are really these, you know,
01:19:02
sweethearts. And she said, I don't think
01:19:04
it's going to go well. For anyone that
01:19:05
doesn't know who Jane Goodall is,
01:19:08
>> Jane Goodall, the famous pimeatlogist,
01:19:10
the earthshattering scientist who
01:19:12
redefined humans from men, the toolmaker
01:19:15
to what we are now, the one who did more
01:19:17
for conservation, wildlife, women's
01:19:20
science than just about anybody else.
01:19:23
>> And she's also the um person that quoted
01:19:26
on the front of your book saying, "On
01:19:27
behalf of the forests that I love, thank
01:19:30
you, Paul, for writing this book."
01:19:32
Clearly from reading through your story,
01:19:33
she's um she's quite a hero of yours and
01:19:35
has been for a long long time.
01:19:37
>> Yeah. I mean, and going from when my
01:19:40
parents were reading us, me and my
01:19:41
sister, they'd be reading us stories at
01:19:43
night, you know, Jane Goodall and Gome
01:19:45
with the chimps and how she she didn't
01:19:48
listen to the rules, she named them.
01:19:50
Even though her her colleagues said,
01:19:51
"You never name your study subjects."
01:19:53
And she said, "They have names. They're
01:19:54
they have personalities. They have
01:19:56
names." She broke all the rules. And and
01:19:59
so I grew up with Jane as sort of this
01:20:01
historical
01:20:02
figure, but she was still like a living
01:20:04
historical figure. And so then when I
01:20:07
when I when I actually met her, it was
01:20:10
so incredible because I I met her at a
01:20:13
talk that she had given. And this this
01:20:15
informed the rest of my life. The the
01:20:17
the grace and wisdom that she showed
01:20:19
changed me as a person because I met her
01:20:22
at a talk that she was giving in New
01:20:23
York City. And I had printed out a
01:20:25
couple of chapters. I'd printed out one
01:20:27
of the chapters that became my first
01:20:28
book where I'm taking care of a baby
01:20:30
giant anteater.
01:20:32
And I had printed out a chapter where me
01:20:34
and JJ were looking for our first
01:20:36
anaconda, this story. And I put those
01:20:38
together with a little covered letter
01:20:40
that's just said, "Hey, I love wildlife.
01:20:42
I've been working in the Amazon for like
01:20:43
5 years and you've always been an
01:20:46
inspiration to me. If I write a book,
01:20:50
would you endorse it?" And so I gave
01:20:52
this to her in the manila envelope while
01:20:54
there was a line of 500 people and you
01:20:55
know we you take the picture and she
01:20:57
said thank you very much. She puts it
01:20:58
aside and I said all right you know I
01:21:01
tried my best and 48 hours later her her
01:21:04
team reached out and said Jane read the
01:21:06
material. She read the chapters and she
01:21:08
thinks that they're wonderful and if you
01:21:10
find a publisher let them know that Jane
01:21:13
will endorse your book. And so then I
01:21:15
went to the publishers and I said I have
01:21:16
the endorsement of Jane Goodall and they
01:21:18
said well that's basically Mother Earth
01:21:19
herself. Mhm.
01:21:21
>> And they said, "So, so that's what got
01:21:22
me in the door to become an author with
01:21:24
my first book was Jane. You know, she's
01:21:27
she was this titan of conservation, this
01:21:29
legendary figure. And her just first of
01:21:32
all, for someone that was on the road
01:21:33
300 days a year, that's an icon of
01:21:36
science and conservation and hope. For
01:21:40
her to have the presence of mind and the
01:21:42
patience and the sense of responsibility
01:21:44
to actually read something that some kid
01:21:46
handed her, that's incredible. That's
01:21:49
magic to me even to this day. And it and
01:21:52
it matters to me and it informs how I
01:21:54
act even to this day.
01:21:56
But without Jane sort of waving her wand
01:21:59
in my direction, I would have no career.
01:22:01
There would be no Paul, no Jungle
01:22:02
Keepers, no book. We wouldn't be sitting
01:22:05
at this desk today. Jane Goodall saved
01:22:07
my life.
01:22:10
>> She's an iconic scientist, as you say,
01:22:12
um known for groundbreaking research on
01:22:14
chimpanzees and her work generally and
01:22:16
globally on on conservation. Um, so you
01:22:19
you decide that you're going to be eaten
01:22:21
by an anaconda.
01:22:23
>> Oh, yeah. That was a tangent. Yes.
01:22:26
>> So, is this a wild anaconda or is this
01:22:29
an anaconda held in captivity?
01:22:31
>> How did you get the anaconda to eat you?
01:22:33
>> So, let me see that next one on the
01:22:35
picture.
01:22:35
>> This one?
01:22:36
>> Yeah. This is a snake called Eleanor.
01:22:38
And we we named her this after my dear
01:22:40
grandmother, who was an incredible woman
01:22:42
and uh and uh the matriarch of our
01:22:46
family. Now, Eleanor is the largest
01:22:48
snake ever measured at the time,
01:22:50
verifiably, scientifically measured. She
01:22:53
was 18' 6 in and over over 100 kilos.
01:22:56
And she was skinny. She hadn't eaten in
01:22:57
a while. But imagine if she'd eaten a
01:22:59
Cappy bar, she would have been, you
01:23:00
know, 200 kilos. But um my team caught
01:23:03
her while we were filming this show. And
01:23:05
again, we were told the show would be
01:23:07
called Expedition Amazon. The call sheet
01:23:09
said expedition EA.
01:23:12
Then when we were done doing our
01:23:13
research in the Amazon, they said,
01:23:14
"Look, fly to I forget if it was like
01:23:17
Kentucky or Louisiana." They said, "L
01:23:18
fly to some state. There's a guy with a
01:23:20
snake. No one will know the difference.
01:23:22
We'll blur it out." And they said, "Do
01:23:24
this little stunt." I said, "We'll put
01:23:26
it the last five minutes of the show
01:23:28
just to show people and then we'll, you
01:23:30
know, we'll hype it up in the news."
01:23:31
They're like, "We got you." A lot of
01:23:32
handshakes, right? And the day before I
01:23:34
was supposed to go on the Good Morning
01:23:37
America show with uh Mr. Matt Lowauour,
01:23:41
who got mad at me for doing push-ups on
01:23:43
the set. Um, the the day before I was
01:23:46
supposed to go on the show, I'm here
01:23:47
again. I'm a kid and I'm going, I I
01:23:48
think I think we got it. I think we did
01:23:50
it. We caught the biggest snake ever.
01:23:52
The footage of us catching that snake is
01:23:53
insane. We're all jumping in the river
01:23:55
and wrestling this kraken and we catch
01:23:57
this snake and we learned from her. We
01:23:59
did, we were, it sounds crazy, but we
01:24:01
were developing field methodology for
01:24:03
studying the species and we learned all
01:24:05
kinds of things about anacondas because
01:24:07
we fed her a transmitter. learned how
01:24:09
she moves through the environment. This
01:24:11
is research that had never been done
01:24:12
before.
01:24:13
>> For context, feeding her a transmitter
01:24:14
is putting a trans an electrical device
01:24:18
>> basically in her throat that she eats,
01:24:19
she consumes, and it stays with her till
01:24:20
she dies. So, you can see what she's
01:24:22
doing.
01:24:22
>> It stays with her until she defecates
01:24:24
it, which for snakes that thankfully is
01:24:26
months.
01:24:27
>> Okay?
01:24:27
>> And so, we're doing this groundbreaking
01:24:29
research. We caught this tremendous
01:24:31
snake. We' survived a six week
01:24:32
expedition in the Amazon. We had all
01:24:34
this incredible footage.
01:24:36
And the night before I'm supposed to go
01:24:38
out on the morning shows,
01:24:41
they showed me the film. It had none of
01:24:44
the science.
01:24:46
It had none of the conservation message
01:24:48
that I was promised would be in the
01:24:50
show. And instead, they focused on the
01:24:53
stunt at the end. And they changed the
01:24:55
name of the show to eaten alive. And
01:24:58
then they sent me out the door to do the
01:25:00
shows.
01:25:02
And the public was mad because I didn't
01:25:04
actually get eaten and they felt like
01:25:05
they were lied to. PETA was mad because
01:25:07
they felt like I had put a a snake's
01:25:09
life in danger somehow. Somehow somehow
01:25:12
the animal rights people were furious.
01:25:14
And then the scientists were mad because
01:25:16
they said, "Okay, you're just a you know
01:25:18
a a
01:25:19
shock person. You're just in in this for
01:25:21
the thrill and you're not really a
01:25:22
conservationist." So it put me out of
01:25:24
work for years.
01:25:25
>> Really?
01:25:25
>> Yes. It set me back about 10 years.
01:25:27
>> Really? I tried I took a big swing
01:25:30
because I thought it would help my
01:25:32
forest and I hit my head on the ceiling
01:25:35
and fell down hard. The next day the
01:25:37
news I mean you know all of the late
01:25:40
night shows were making fun of it. Jimmy
01:25:42
Kimmel was like you for your next stunt
01:25:43
you should try having sex with a hippo.
01:25:45
I mean people the comments were just I
01:25:47
went to India and lived with the herd of
01:25:49
elephants for a while. I mean I had to
01:25:50
get out. I couldn't I literally
01:25:52
couldn't. I said my dream of being a
01:25:53
conservationist is over. I was told by
01:25:55
one prominent conservationist not even
01:25:58
to come to South America.
01:26:01
And and again, the thing you have to
01:26:03
remember through all of this is through
01:26:04
the barefoot machete days, through going
01:26:06
to the Amazon,
01:26:08
the first
01:26:10
15 years of my 20-year journey, I had no
01:26:12
support.
01:26:13
>> So, I was living out of a backpack,
01:26:15
living out of a boat in the Amazon
01:26:17
barefoot with no paycheck, no health
01:26:19
insurance, no security, no pathway
01:26:23
forward. Um, so it it was it was very
01:26:26
uncertain times. You know that you
01:26:29
actually I think it may have been on
01:26:31
your show. There's this great quote
01:26:32
where I think it was Alex Hormosi was
01:26:34
saying that confidence comes from giving
01:26:36
people irrefutable proof that you are
01:26:38
who you say you are. And when I heard
01:26:41
that quote I thought that's great. And
01:26:42
then the next thing I thought was well
01:26:44
but you have to start building that
01:26:46
proof in a direction. And for a lot of
01:26:48
people, I think they find themselves
01:26:51
standing on a high hill looking at a set
01:26:53
of mountains and you have to choose
01:26:55
which direction you're going in. And for
01:26:58
me, I was a high school dropout who was
01:27:02
never going to be a conservation
01:27:04
biologist.
01:27:05
And I was trained by the local people
01:27:07
and sort of adopted by their tribe. And
01:27:11
so I knew how to survive in the jungle
01:27:13
and work with snakes and do all these
01:27:14
crazy things. And I tried I tried to to
01:27:20
take that message to television and I
01:27:22
got Hollywood hard. I got lied to and I
01:27:25
got taken for a ride. But that failure
01:27:28
ended up being the best thing that ever
01:27:30
happened because what it did was it sent
01:27:31
me right back to the drawing board. Said
01:27:33
you're not ready yet. And so sometimes
01:27:35
the things that you want are not the
01:27:37
things that you need. And it's this
01:27:39
beautiful thing where life sort of moves
01:27:40
aside I know I know I know you want that
01:27:43
but I'm I'm going to give you what you
01:27:44
need, not what you want. And so this was
01:27:46
a case where I really I took it hard. I
01:27:49
mean, at the time it was a devastating
01:27:50
loss
01:27:52
and it was the best thing that ever
01:27:53
happened because it it was the slap on
01:27:55
the head that sent me back out into the
01:27:57
jungle for years and years and years of
01:27:59
of more experience. Double down. What do
01:28:01
you really care about saving the forest?
01:28:03
Well, if you care about saving the
01:28:04
forest, how the hell are you going to do
01:28:05
that? And we had to develop a system to
01:28:09
do that. We had to develop a new
01:28:10
technology as a way to save the forest.
01:28:13
What actually happened here?
01:28:16
>> So, we didn't I know you don't want to
01:28:17
It sounds like you don't you don't don't
01:28:18
want to talk about it.
01:28:19
>> It's just wasted air time to talk about
01:28:21
it because we we rolled around on in the
01:28:23
mud with a 16 ft anaconda and nothing
01:28:25
happened.
01:28:27
>> A lot of people will probably want to
01:28:29
know why nothing happened. And I think
01:28:30
part of that is because of what you're
01:28:32
wearing.
01:28:33
>> No, the reason nothing happened is
01:28:35
because they had snake handlers wrapping
01:28:36
the snake around me while I was in this
01:28:38
ridiculous suit. Um, I mean, the things
01:28:41
I will do, the things I will do to
01:28:43
protect this forest, that snake, if it
01:28:46
was left on its own, would crawl off.
01:28:47
Any snake would would, if there was, if
01:28:50
I had a black mamba in my hands right
01:28:51
now and I put it on this table, it would
01:28:53
slide off the table and find the darkest
01:28:55
spot in the room and it would go hide.
01:28:57
If I had a spitting cobra, same thing.
01:29:00
No snake wants to deal with you. They
01:29:02
just want to go hide. They want to go
01:29:04
back to sleep.
01:29:05
>> Most people are terrified of snakes.
01:29:06
>> Most people are terrified of snakes. And
01:29:08
that's why I think you're going to like
01:29:09
what I have for you.
01:29:10
>> What do you mean?
01:29:11
>> I brought a friend today.
01:29:14
>> You brought a friend?
01:29:14
>> I did bring a friend and I want you to
01:29:16
meet him.
01:29:20
Now, this
01:29:22
is a very, very small ball python. This
01:29:27
is a baby. And one of the first things I
01:29:30
try to impress upon people when they
01:29:32
meet a baby snake is remembering that
01:29:34
even if you're scared of snakes, you're
01:29:36
the large apex predator. And this is
01:29:39
just a tiny little reptile that is all
01:29:43
alone in the world. They're born and
01:29:45
they have to fend for themselves.
01:29:48
And for some reason, ever since I was a
01:29:50
little kid, I was fascinated with
01:29:51
snakes. I thought they were beautiful. I
01:29:53
love the way they moved. I thought the
01:29:55
way they can hold up their bodies and
01:29:56
flick their tongues. I find snakes
01:29:59
calming and beautiful and fascinating.
01:30:02
>> Is that snake dangerous?
01:30:05
>> You could hand this snake to a baby.
01:30:08
This snake is so harmless. I mean, the
01:30:10
worst thing that this snake could do if
01:30:12
I was to, let's just say, pinch her and
01:30:15
hurt her. She could bite me, but even
01:30:18
that would barely break my skin.
01:30:21
This is a snake that's going to look for
01:30:22
baby mice, little birds, maybe a frog,
01:30:25
and try and grow to a larger size. Now,
01:30:29
have you ever held a snake before?
01:30:30
>> No.
01:30:30
>> You've never held a snake?
01:30:32
>> I don't think so. No.
01:30:33
>> Oh, wow. That's wonderful. Well, this is
01:30:35
such an easy one to start with, and I'll
01:30:37
give you a few pointers.
01:30:38
>> My hands are sweating over.
01:30:40
>> So, a few things is that even a baby
01:30:43
baby snake is going to interpret your
01:30:46
inner state a little bit. if you're very
01:30:49
nervous and jittery and the snake is
01:30:52
gonna pick up on that. But you see how
01:30:53
she's sort of just fitting to my hand.
01:30:55
Yeah, she's done a few things here.
01:30:56
She's got her anchor. She's got her tail
01:30:58
around these two fingers. And the next
01:31:00
thing is she's flicking her tongue to
01:31:02
sense what's going on. She's she's
01:31:03
looking around, but she's also
01:31:06
she's not excited.
01:31:07
>> She doesn't mind sweat.
01:31:08
>> She doesn't mind sweat. My hands sweat
01:31:10
quite a bit as well. And so I'm just
01:31:12
going to place her in your hand nice and
01:31:15
easy. And what you want to do is let her
01:31:17
sort of grab on now. Now, what are you
01:31:21
feeling right now? Let's just see what
01:31:23
she does.
01:31:23
>> I feel a little bit tense.
01:31:24
>> That's okay. You can feel tense. Now, if
01:31:26
you feel tense, the thing is she's
01:31:28
probably going to return to me because
01:31:30
she probably knows I love her.
01:31:33
And
01:31:33
>> I think she's right.
01:31:34
>> Yeah. And that's okay. Why don't we just
01:31:36
let her do that? And then you can get a
01:31:38
sense for how she moves. And I'm going
01:31:39
to give her a little hole to crawl
01:31:41
through like that. And so what they do
01:31:42
is they have all these muscles
01:31:44
>> running along their body and you can
01:31:46
feel that, right?
01:31:46
>> Such a beautiful animal, I do have to
01:31:48
say.
01:31:48
>> Yeah. They're called ball pythons. They
01:31:51
also call them royal pythons for that
01:31:53
that beautiful black and gold.
01:31:56
>> It's Can I Can I touch it with my thumb?
01:31:59
>> You can. They don't love being pet.
01:32:01
That's one thing about snakes. They
01:32:02
don't A lot of people when they come
01:32:04
around to suddenly loving snakes, they
01:32:06
go, "Well, I want to pet it the way I
01:32:08
want to pet a dog." And snakes will
01:32:10
retract from that. So if you do it,
01:32:12
touch her with your with your thumb. See
01:32:14
how she moves away?
01:32:15
>> She moved away. Yeah,
01:32:16
>> she moves away. She doesn't like that.
01:32:17
So usually with snakes, my my my rule is
01:32:21
you you sort of have to be the be the
01:32:22
tree.
01:32:23
>> Okay. And is she a baby?
01:32:26
>> Absolutely. These are these this is
01:32:28
quite small. And so in the jungle on
01:32:31
cold days, I'll find snakes like this
01:32:33
and literally warm them up in my hands.
01:32:36
I'll put them in here. And just if you
01:32:37
can just look at that. Just look at how
01:32:39
sweet she is. She'll just stay like
01:32:40
that.
01:32:41
>> She likes that.
01:32:41
>> She likes that. She likes the warmth
01:32:43
there. We are endtherms. They are
01:32:45
ectotherms. Like all reptiles, they
01:32:46
depend on their environment for their
01:32:49
body temperature. And so on the cold
01:32:51
days, see that? See that? I move my hand
01:32:53
closer.
01:32:54
>> She got a little spooked. She went back
01:32:56
into the Again, this is just a tiny
01:32:58
baby. There's another one that is a
01:33:02
similarly awesome example.
01:33:06
This is her larger
01:33:09
relative. Same species, right? So, this
01:33:12
is a small ball python and this is a
01:33:14
larger ball python. And notice that both
01:33:17
of these, there's no risk, right?
01:33:19
There's no there's no danger here. It's
01:33:20
not like I can't put these near my face.
01:33:22
Again, both of these are sort of the
01:33:24
golden retrievers of snakes. These are
01:33:26
these are snakes that have been handled
01:33:29
by responsible snake owners. So, will
01:33:32
that small one grow into the big one or
01:33:34
you saying they're the same sort of
01:33:35
cousins?
01:33:36
>> Yeah, this is a larger ball python. This
01:33:38
is a smaller ball python.
01:33:40
>> So, this one will eventually be the
01:33:41
size.
01:33:42
>> Absolutely. And this one could could
01:33:43
grow to be double that size. Really?
01:33:45
I've seen ball pythons be double that
01:33:46
size.
01:33:48
Now, this one
01:33:50
slightly different game for holding.
01:33:54
But see, like that. Look who's scared
01:33:56
here. Me. Well, and and him.
01:34:01
And so, look at that. He's beautiful.
01:34:02
So, look, I'll just give you a sense of
01:34:04
look at the power in a python.
01:34:08
You think pull-ups are hard. He's
01:34:10
holding on with no no legs, no claws,
01:34:14
just strength.
01:34:16
And he's just going to climb back up on
01:34:17
onto my arm.
01:34:26
So, what I'd like you to do is hold out
01:34:28
your wrist.
01:34:30
Yeah, you got this.
01:34:33
Just straight across the table. Hold
01:34:35
that. Right like that.
01:34:37
>> Now, remember, if he does bite,
01:34:39
>> you mean if he doesn't
01:34:40
>> I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Just hold him
01:34:41
up high enough that he's not touching
01:34:43
the table. Yeah. And then I'm just going
01:34:45
to coax him up. He's okay. You're okay.
01:34:47
You're okay. You're all right. You're
01:34:48
all right. There we go. There we go. So,
01:34:50
he's just gonna just just feel that
01:34:52
power as he moves, which he will
01:34:56
eventually.
01:35:00
But, see, you can feel the power on this
01:35:02
snake. It's a little bit more of a
01:35:04
>> a little bit more musculature.
01:35:06
>> They are stunning.
01:35:12
You see that? That's it. He's like,
01:35:14
"Okay, cool. You're holding me here."
01:35:17
They're pretty relaxed animals. So,
01:35:19
he'll go and eat a small prey item, go
01:35:22
back into his burrow, and then digest
01:35:25
for a week before going back out. And
01:35:28
now you Now, if you want, you can take
01:35:31
your other hand and put it under him to
01:35:33
support him. And then he'll start to
01:35:34
move over both of your hands. Why don't
01:35:35
you try that? Put your other hand very
01:35:37
gently right under his coil right there.
01:35:41
He got scared of that. That's okay.
01:35:44
Or you could put a thumb through the
01:35:46
through the loop.
01:35:47
>> Could do, couldn't I?
01:35:48
>> Yeah, you could do that. You're loving
01:35:50
all these suggestions.
01:35:52
All right, now watch. Let's see what
01:35:54
happens when you put him on the table.
01:35:55
Cuz I bet you anything he doesn't enjoy.
01:35:58
You feel that power? You feel that
01:35:59
little bit of power there?
01:36:00
>> Yeah.
01:36:00
>> Now, that's a snake this big. Wait till
01:36:02
you see like with an anaconda or
01:36:04
something.
01:36:05
Now, a table's sort of unfair. There's
01:36:07
nothing for him to see this. He's going
01:36:10
to he's going to flop a little bit.
01:36:11
There's they're not supposed to be on a
01:36:13
table. So, this is what I'll do. I'll be
01:36:14
the
01:36:16
I'll be the ground cuz then see look now
01:36:20
he's pushing with all those little belly
01:36:22
scales. See how he can cruise
01:36:25
that incredible snake locomotion. Now
01:36:28
watch if I take away his look. He's
01:36:30
holds on. They don't want to. Now he's
01:36:32
got nothing to push off of. So he's
01:36:33
gonna he's going to do the inchworm
01:36:35
thing.
01:36:36
But you get a sense of how snakes move.
01:36:38
They need that. They need the ground.
01:36:40
They need pebbles. They need rocks. Now
01:36:42
you Now catch them.
01:36:44
Oh, come on, Mike. Catch him now. No,
01:36:47
seriously. Not by the head. Start by the
01:36:49
tail. Just right here. Just pick him up.
01:36:51
And then once you pick him up, you can
01:36:53
give him to me and then we can be done.
01:36:55
But but Stephen, you have to catch the
01:36:56
snake.
01:36:57
>> Pick pick him up here.
01:36:58
>> Just pick him up.
01:36:59
>> He's not going to do anything
01:37:00
>> now. Nice and slowly, too, cuz he's a
01:37:01
friendly snake. You don't want to offend
01:37:02
him.
01:37:03
>> He seems to be tense.
01:37:04
>> I mean, he is side eyeing you right now.
01:37:06
>> That's what I mean. He seems like I'm
01:37:07
side eyeing him. He's side eyeing me.
01:37:09
But I'm telling you that the snake, all
01:37:12
you got to do is just pick them up.
01:37:14
>> And then when I pick him up, what do I
01:37:15
do?
01:37:15
>> Just pick them up and hand them to me.
01:37:17
That's all you got to do. And then this
01:37:19
is all over.
01:37:20
>> Oh my god. I can't believe this.
01:37:25
>> Oh my god.
01:37:25
>> Beautiful. Right up up up up. Amazing.
01:37:30
Wonderful. Now I'm going to take him.
01:37:35
>> All right. And then I have one more
01:37:37
snake that I really need you to meet.
01:37:39
Come here. You can't hold on to that.
01:37:42
This
01:37:44
This is a different story. And this is
01:37:46
sort of the closest thing that we're
01:37:48
going to get
01:37:50
to an anaconda.
01:37:52
I think the easiest thing I could do
01:37:53
here is just let her get around my neck.
01:37:56
>> What the [ __ ] is my life?
01:37:57
>> So now what you don't want snakes to do
01:38:00
is to close that gap, right? You don't
01:38:03
want them to wrap around your neck.
01:38:05
>> Could she kill you? She could.
01:38:08
>> Then don't bring it over here.
01:38:09
>> Well, I thought I thought you wanted to
01:38:10
meet her, too.
01:38:12
>> But what what if she does something to
01:38:14
me?
01:38:14
>> No, no. So, this is a different type of
01:38:16
snake. This is a Burmese python.
01:38:18
And when you talk about large
01:38:20
constrictors, those are small
01:38:22
constrictors, the the ball pythons. This
01:38:24
is a larger constriction constrictor.
01:38:27
And Burmese pythons get to be big. These
01:38:29
can go up to 18 ft long. And now what I
01:38:32
think you're going to really appreciate
01:38:35
is the power that these things have when
01:38:38
you feel that power. And now just don't
01:38:40
move. Yeah. Now give her your hand. Take
01:38:44
her take her with your hand. Good.
01:38:48
Very good. Now hold this hand out. Good.
01:38:52
Just like that. Now be the tree. Just be
01:38:55
the tree. That's great. Yep. You want to
01:38:58
come this way, girl? Come here. Her tail
01:39:02
is hot.
01:39:03
>> Yeah.
01:39:04
>> Why? Why is the tip hot?
01:39:06
>> Maybe she likes you.
01:39:08
>> Okay, now she's just going to move
01:39:10
behind your head. And I just want you to
01:39:12
feel the muscles of that snake.
01:39:14
>> What was that?
01:39:15
>> Oh, yeah. That's great.
01:39:16
>> Is she hissing?
01:39:17
>> She's breathing. That's just her
01:39:18
breathing cuz she's holding on. She's a
01:39:20
ground snake. She's not really a tree
01:39:21
snake.
01:39:23
Now, Burmese pythons, they grow to be
01:39:25
18t long. They can take down deer.
01:39:28
And so what you have right now is this
01:39:31
beautiful granite Burmese python
01:39:34
crawling on your shoulders. And you're
01:39:35
doing great, by the way. You look very
01:39:36
calm. Breathe. Don't forget to breathe.
01:39:37
>> And she can kill a deer.
01:39:39
>> No, no, she'll grow. She's still a baby.
01:39:41
She's still small. She'll eventually be
01:39:43
able to kill a deer. Now I just I don't
01:39:45
want her to. Now, here's the thing. I
01:39:48
think she likes you.
01:39:50
And so when I try to take her,
01:39:52
>> the strength.
01:39:53
>> The strength. Yeah.
01:39:54
>> She could like break my pinky finger
01:39:55
off.
01:39:56
>> Yeah. So, let's just see what we do. So,
01:39:59
we know a few things. We know that she's
01:40:01
not going to hurt us. We know that she's
01:40:03
not going to eat that banana. I know
01:40:05
she'd like to probably Come on. You want
01:40:08
to come up, girl? Yeah. See, I think
01:40:10
they come to me. I think they know.
01:40:15
You hear that? You hear that breathing?
01:40:18
Have you ever done a podcast with a
01:40:21
with a 10-ft snake across the table
01:40:23
before?
01:40:24
>> No, this is my first.
01:40:25
>> This is amazing. It's such a It's such a
01:40:28
joy to be here with a Burmese python
01:40:29
there.
01:40:30
>> So, I really This is the closest I can
01:40:32
get you to an anaconda. I wouldn't bring
01:40:33
an anaconda here. Their personality is a
01:40:35
little different.
01:40:36
>> Their personality is different.
01:40:37
>> Oh, yeah. Different snake species just
01:40:39
like you'd be a little bit more careful
01:40:42
around certain dog species than you
01:40:44
would others. Certain snakes. Now,
01:40:46
notice, look, now I'm I'm I'm pulling a
01:40:49
good deal here and she's not budging.
01:40:50
So, now what you're going to do is just
01:40:52
just massage the tail.
01:40:54
>> What you mean massage? I would like you
01:40:56
to massage the tail.
01:40:58
Just just maybe rub back and forth on
01:41:00
her tail and there's going to be an
01:41:01
instant reaction. Yep. Just keep doing
01:41:03
that. She's not going to love that. Oh,
01:41:06
she's hissing
01:41:09
>> because there might be something back
01:41:10
here that she can't see.
01:41:11
>> Well, exactly. She doesn't want
01:41:12
something interacting with her tail.
01:41:15
>> She seems to be stuck to my the the
01:41:17
diary.
01:41:19
>> The diary itself.
01:41:23
>> Okay, girl. Okay, girl. Okay, girl.
01:41:25
>> She doesn't like that.
01:41:27
>> Well, actually, why don't you just lift
01:41:29
her lift that coil over up onto the
01:41:30
table? You got this. Just like you
01:41:32
lifted the other snake. You're going to
01:41:34
have to do this to get through this.
01:41:35
>> Just lift.
01:41:36
>> No. See the part that's hanging over?
01:41:37
Just lift it up onto the table.
01:41:39
>> Oh my gosh.
01:41:40
>> Yeah.
01:41:41
>> Oh my gosh. It's so
01:41:43
>> How would you describe it?
01:41:44
>> It's like
01:41:47
really soft, but then like you feels
01:41:49
like pure muscle.
01:41:50
>> Pure muscle. Yeah. She's very She's This
01:41:52
is a very very strong snake. It's so
01:41:54
heavy. I can't even pull it up.
01:41:56
>> I I need I need you to try.
01:41:58
>> I think she's resisting.
01:42:00
>> Come on. You're not going to hurt her.
01:42:01
Just right around the edge of the table.
01:42:03
Just up onto the table.
01:42:04
>> I can't. It's too
01:42:06
>> Come on. You got this. You got yourself.
01:42:09
Pretend we're in the Amazon. And this
01:42:10
snake is strangling me to death. And the
01:42:12
only way to save my life is to take that
01:42:14
snake's tail up.
01:42:16
>> But David,
01:42:17
>> she's gripping to just take
01:42:19
>> MY EYES ARE POPPING OUT OF MY HEAD.
01:42:20
>> NO, I'M BEING SERIOUS. SHE'S LIKE, SHE I
01:42:22
can't I can't move her off. She's like,
01:42:24
>> "Yes, you can." Come on. Pull her out.
01:42:26
Bring her around. You got this. Look at
01:42:27
your arms.
01:42:28
>> I know. I know. I'm scared.
01:42:29
>> You got this. You got this. Believe in
01:42:31
yourself. Come on. Get her up.
01:42:34
Just Just do it. There. There is no try.
01:42:37
>> She doesn't want then. I'm going to die.
01:42:40
>> Don't make Don't make me come over to
01:42:41
the other side of that snake and get
01:42:42
her. Come on. You got Yeah. There we go.
01:42:47
There we go. That wasn't so bad.
01:42:49
She's wrapped around the diary again.
01:42:51
She's got inside the diary.
01:42:52
>> Okay, listen. The diary has to remain
01:42:54
intact, girl.
01:42:55
>> So, yeah, this is
01:42:58
>> this is a beautiful, beautiful snake.
01:43:01
But you sort of see how people have a
01:43:03
misconception about snakes. Now, what
01:43:04
she's trying to do right now, even this
01:43:07
snake that knows what what humans are,
01:43:08
she's just trying to say, "All right,
01:43:10
get me out of here." You know, she's
01:43:11
going, "Where can I go rest?"
01:43:13
>> And what what does she eat when she
01:43:15
grows up? What do these
01:43:17
>> Well, Burmese pythons, they get big. So,
01:43:19
she's going to start with rats and birds
01:43:21
and frogs, and they start small. They
01:43:23
start just like the ball python. But
01:43:25
when she gets big, you're talking about,
01:43:26
I mean, Burmese pythons, deer, dogs,
01:43:30
>> humans.
01:43:31
>> Uh, Burmese pythons, I don't think, are
01:43:33
confirmed eating humans. Reticulated
01:43:35
pythons, which is actually the longest.
01:43:37
Interesting fact, anacondas are the
01:43:39
biggest snake on Earth. Reticulated
01:43:41
pythons are the longest and they're the
01:43:43
only ones that are on YouTube
01:43:46
having eaten humans. They're confirmed
01:43:48
maneaters,
01:43:50
but these berms, they're just big,
01:43:52
powerful snakes and they're
01:43:54
>> they're pretty placid.
01:43:57
>> It's such a beautiful animal, even
01:43:58
though it is a little bit scary um for
01:44:00
some reason.
01:44:01
>> Yeah.
01:44:01
>> I think maybe because we've all grown up
01:44:03
watching films like Anaconda that we
01:44:05
think of snakes as being
01:44:06
>> terrifying, but it's such a beautiful
01:44:08
>> I see what you mean with the table.
01:44:09
Yeah, exactly.
01:44:10
>> She's really in there. Yeah. Yeah.
01:44:12
>> All right. Maybe you were right. See,
01:44:13
this is interesting. Anacondas have
01:44:15
bigger.
01:44:16
>> Yeah. They don't like being touched on
01:44:17
the head and they don't like um they
01:44:19
don't like their
01:44:20
>> cloa touched the base of their tail,
01:44:23
their vent.
01:44:25
>> Should people be scared of snakes? Do
01:44:26
you
01:44:27
>> I think people should be respectful of
01:44:28
snakes the same way you're respectful of
01:44:30
heights. Go get Steven. Good girl.
01:44:34
Good girl. Go get him. Go get the diary.
01:44:37
>> Would she eat the banana? No, no, they
01:44:40
are what we call obligate carnivores.
01:44:42
They can only eat uh other animals,
01:44:47
but I mean, whatever they can fit.
01:44:49
Unfortunately, Burmese pythons have been
01:44:51
introduced to Florida and there's no
01:44:54
predators in Florida that can handle the
01:44:56
Burmese python. So, they're eating the
01:44:58
alligators, the birds, the native
01:45:00
wildlife. They've become a terrible
01:45:01
invasive species, which is sort of bad
01:45:04
PR for Burmese pythons. But when they're
01:45:07
in their native habitat of Southeast
01:45:08
Asia, they're just wonderful big apex
01:45:12
predator snakes.
01:45:13
>> Can she bite?
01:45:15
>> 100%. They have big teeth. If she was to
01:45:17
bite one of us right now, it would draw
01:45:19
quite a bit of blood.
01:45:22
I mean, she has to be able to latch on
01:45:24
to her prey, right? So, all the more
01:45:26
credit goes to her for not doing that.
01:45:28
Go get Steven. Good girl.
01:45:31
Good girl.
01:45:32
>> Maybe you should have the head down that
01:45:33
end.
01:45:34
>> I think I think See, now what I'm doing
01:45:35
is I'm massaging the tail because I know
01:45:38
that she's going to go for you.
01:45:40
Good girl. Yeah. Right at him. Right at
01:45:44
him. Now, come on. Come on. Let her go.
01:45:48
Yes. Good girl.
01:45:51
Oh, this is so great.
01:45:53
This Burmese python is wants to know
01:45:56
what is inside the diary of a CEO.
01:46:00
She's trying to hide.
01:46:01
>> Yeah, she is trying to hide. And so, you
01:46:03
know what? We're going to let her do
01:46:04
that. She's been a very good sport. And
01:46:07
I'm going to take her away.
01:46:10
>> That's fantastic.
01:46:11
>> It is a be It's such a majestic animal.
01:46:13
Like I slightly scary, but also
01:46:16
>> going to hand her over the cameras.
01:46:19
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01:47:39
I will speak to you then. What would you
01:47:42
say to a young person who's probably in
01:47:43
the pursuit of a completely different
01:47:44
dream? Are there anything that you
01:47:46
consider to be transferable for anyone
01:47:48
in the pursuit of their dreams that you
01:47:49
learned in those 15 years in your
01:47:50
barefoot machete days?
01:47:52
>> Yeah, I think that that you have to log
01:47:55
your time as a beginner in order to earn
01:47:59
your time as a master.
01:48:02
And there's this beautiful saying that I
01:48:04
start the book with which is that the
01:48:07
master has failed more times than the
01:48:09
beginner has even tried.
01:48:12
And that to me is beautiful. And so it
01:48:14
was like when I went down there and
01:48:16
began
01:48:17
even trying to catch a fish, you know, I
01:48:20
didn't know how to do anything. And and
01:48:22
and I would look at these conservation
01:48:24
biologists and and just think, my god,
01:48:27
I'm never going to be one of them
01:48:28
because I'm never going to have the
01:48:29
grades to be a conservation biologist.
01:48:32
Now, at the point we're at now where we
01:48:33
are, we have this global movement around
01:48:35
conservation. We have this huge
01:48:36
conservation organization that's
01:48:38
fighting to do something historic, I do
01:48:41
get messages from kids all over the
01:48:42
world that say, I I I really want your
01:48:45
job or I want to get out there and I
01:48:48
want to do I want to follow my dreams.
01:48:50
>> What would you say to them?
01:48:51
>> Well, I had a kid recently that he he
01:48:53
messaged me and he said, I really want
01:48:54
to study great whites. And he said, 'But
01:48:56
marine biology is so competitive and and
01:48:58
none of the professors will give me, you
01:49:00
know, you and I said, 'Listen, forget
01:49:02
all that. I said, 'd do your school, get
01:49:04
it done.' I said, 'But go to the dock.
01:49:06
Find out where the preeminent marine
01:49:08
biologists are going to go do their
01:49:10
great white research. Go to that dock,
01:49:13
help them with their bags. Get off your
01:49:15
phone, get off the internet, stop asking
01:49:17
permission, get on your feet and go
01:49:20
there to the waves. And sooner or later
01:49:24
they're going to need help with their
01:49:25
bags. Sooner or later they might invite
01:49:27
invite you on the boat. And after you've
01:49:29
been helping with their bags and invited
01:49:31
on the boat, maybe you take some
01:49:32
pictures of a pivotal moment that they
01:49:34
use to communicate their work to the
01:49:36
world. At some point you can find a way
01:49:38
to make yourself useful to them. And if
01:49:41
you do that for long enough, you might
01:49:43
just end up being somebody that's a core
01:49:45
member of their team.
01:49:46
>> People at those family barbecues must
01:49:48
have asked you if you had a plan B.
01:49:50
>> Are you a fan of plan B's? I think I
01:49:53
actually think that I'm not the example
01:49:54
to follow because I went so I had I
01:49:57
burned the boats. I had no plan B. And
01:50:00
and and now as I'm sitting across the
01:50:02
table from you, it's very easy. I
01:50:04
remember being younger and hearing these
01:50:06
people and you listen to a successful
01:50:08
business person go, you know, if I could
01:50:09
do it, then anyone could do it. If it
01:50:11
could happen to me, then shut up. You
01:50:13
already made it. Like and it's like if
01:50:15
you if you read the pages of that book
01:50:18
and how many times I almost died, had
01:50:20
infections, almost fell off a cliffs,
01:50:22
got bitten by animals. Also, the the
01:50:24
internal struggle of then being 32,
01:50:28
you know, 18, they oh, go follow your
01:50:30
dreams. 25, they're like, yeah, that's
01:50:32
cool. And then something happened when I
01:50:35
was around 32, 33, that was sort of the
01:50:38
the lower point for me, right? My my dad
01:50:41
was dropping me off somewhere one day
01:50:43
and and and my dad would always always
01:50:45
supporting me, bringing me to the
01:50:46
jungle, taking me to the airport,
01:50:47
bringing me home. I didn't have the
01:50:49
money to get myself there with taxis and
01:50:51
Ubers and stuff. And
01:50:54
but there came this moment where, you
01:50:55
know, I'd written my first book.
01:50:58
Harper College. I've gotten a real
01:51:00
publisher. The book came out and it went
01:51:02
nowhere.
01:51:04
So even that I'd tried to be, you know,
01:51:06
on Discovery Channel. I'd tried to write
01:51:09
a book. I wrote a good book. I knew
01:51:11
people liked it. It had a high rating.
01:51:12
Didn't do anything. That didn't change
01:51:14
anything. I'd started an organization. I
01:51:16
started jungle keepers. I'd turned
01:51:18
loggers into and gold miners into
01:51:20
conservation rangers. We protected like
01:51:22
50,000 acres of rainforest, but still
01:51:24
there was some feeling like like it just
01:51:27
wasn't, you know, you're striking Flint
01:51:28
and like it's just not the fire is not
01:51:30
catching. There's something missing. It
01:51:31
wasn't happening. He my dad went,
01:51:35
you know, we love you no matter what.
01:51:38
Ah. And I went, "Don't do this." He
01:51:42
said, "No, no, no. You know, you know,
01:51:43
if you eventually," he goes, "If you
01:51:45
need to jump ship and start over," he's
01:51:47
like, "You know, we'll help you with
01:51:48
whatever you need." And I said, "What do
01:51:49
you mean start over?" And he was like,
01:51:51
"Well, you know, I mean, what are you
01:51:53
going to do this jungle guy thing
01:51:54
forever?" And I went, "Oh, God. Oh,
01:51:57
God." Like, no. And you know, and then
01:52:00
he said, "And if and if you do need to
01:52:01
do that forever, it's okay." And it's
01:52:04
like, but they they didn't they couldn't
01:52:05
conceptualize it. And it was very soon
01:52:07
after that that that on that graph. It
01:52:10
was very very soon after that. It was
01:52:12
actually right at the point that I quit
01:52:14
right before COVID. And this is this is
01:52:16
sort of the the lowest point that I was
01:52:18
supposed to never tell anybody. And I
01:52:20
wrote about it in the book where before
01:52:22
CO when CO hit, I couldn't get to the
01:52:24
jungle. Our whole team had CO. Peru was
01:52:26
the hardest hit country in the world. I
01:52:29
mean all of my staff, my friends, my
01:52:31
family in Peru, they were all on oxygen
01:52:32
tanks. Whose mother whose sister whose
01:52:34
daughter was dying? We bankrupted
01:52:37
ourselves sending money. We the whole we
01:52:39
took the whole ecoourism businesses sent
01:52:41
all the money to Peru to get our friends
01:52:42
oxygen tanks and to keep our family
01:52:44
alive. And
01:52:48
it was also during that time that I
01:52:49
realized I have nowhere to go like in
01:52:51
this world. I was like I don't make
01:52:53
sense in this world anymore.
01:52:56
And I I called my best friend. I called
01:52:58
Mosen my best friend. I said and I said
01:53:00
don't I said don't tell anybody what I'm
01:53:01
about to say but I said I'm going to go
01:53:03
get a job. I said, "I've been doing this
01:53:05
for so long. I tried really hard. I
01:53:08
tried for 15 years." I said, "I'm out of
01:53:11
gas. I I'm out of I'm out of ideas. I
01:53:13
have I have been burning so bright. I've
01:53:16
been making making the fire myself."
01:53:20
I said, "I got nothing. I got no more
01:53:21
ideas." And of course, he said, "You
01:53:24
shut up." He said, "You inspired me. You
01:53:26
started Jungle Keepers. You know, I
01:53:28
don't want to ever hear this from you
01:53:29
getting hung up on me." But I said, but
01:53:31
I told him, I said, "I quit." I said,
01:53:32
"I'm out. I'm done. I'm done. I have no
01:53:34
hope left.
01:53:36
And exactly a week after I made that
01:53:39
phone call where I quit, our first big
01:53:42
funer reached out. A billionaire named
01:53:44
Dax Silva had seen my video of saying
01:53:47
the Amazon is destroying and we have the
01:53:49
people. We have the plan. We have the
01:53:50
infrastructure. All we need is the
01:53:52
funding and we can save this river. And
01:53:55
the week after I quit in the in the
01:53:57
alchemy of the universe, that's when he
01:54:00
called me and said, "You know what?
01:54:01
Green light. Let's do it. How about a
01:54:04
five-year commitment where I fund jungle
01:54:07
keepers and we turn the local ranger,
01:54:09
the local loggers and gold miners into
01:54:11
conservation rangers. We get you and
01:54:13
some of your guys a salary and we make
01:54:15
this whole thing viable. And by the way,
01:54:16
let's protect another 100,000 acres of
01:54:18
forest.
01:54:21
And if we hadn't spent years and years
01:54:24
and years chipping at the same piece of
01:54:27
granite, just just whether or not you
01:54:29
can hammer through granite depends
01:54:30
whether or not you continue to whack the
01:54:33
hammer. And so for me and JJ, for Mosen,
01:54:37
who was sort of the first iteration, the
01:54:39
first person that came and and took the
01:54:40
photos that allowed us to communicate
01:54:43
all of those photos of burning forest
01:54:45
and the wreckage. He was the first guy.
01:54:47
He came in the barefoot machete days and
01:54:48
he said, I mean, that was at a time
01:54:50
where I didn't even know anything was
01:54:51
ever going to happen. And he said, you
01:54:53
know, what you guys are doing here is
01:54:54
special. We have to show it to the
01:54:56
world. And so on that graph, nothing
01:54:58
nothing nothing. And then a little blip,
01:55:01
all of a sudden, we had a funer. And
01:55:03
then once you once you get a funer, when
01:55:05
when you're when you're doing it all by
01:55:06
yourself, nobody's rooting for you. And
01:55:08
then once you once you start once you
01:55:10
start to get a little momentum and a
01:55:11
little notoriety, all of a sudden then
01:55:12
everybody comes. So then then I quit.
01:55:15
And that was the lowest point. And then
01:55:16
all of a sudden he rescued us and we
01:55:18
started going up and then we started
01:55:20
sharing it and then we got to the United
01:55:21
Nations and then we got to and all of a
01:55:23
sudden we started gaining this momentum
01:55:25
and that that that that magic that Jane
01:55:28
had given us with her words also served
01:55:31
as as sort of a blessing that carried us
01:55:34
forward because people said well if Jane
01:55:35
Goodall gave you this Excalibur sword of
01:55:38
her blessing
01:55:40
then then go forth and save the Amazon
01:55:43
and everything changed. How do people
01:55:46
know
01:55:48
in the pursuit of their dreams whether
01:55:49
they should throw in the towel or not?
01:55:51
Like how based on your experience there,
01:55:54
if someone came to you and said, "Look,
01:55:55
I've been I've been doing something for
01:55:56
a long time and I don't know whether to
01:55:58
keep going or not." Is there a framework
01:56:00
or an idea that you might offer them?
01:56:07
I think that
01:56:09
in my case
01:56:11
if I follow the rational advice I would
01:56:14
fail.
01:56:16
If I was giving myself advice as a
01:56:18
rational person I would say after the
01:56:22
first 10 years
01:56:24
cut your losses and stop like what are
01:56:26
you doing? It doesn't make any sense cuz
01:56:27
then even after 15 years what am I going
01:56:29
to do? Go then enter the workforce with
01:56:32
no skills and no resume and no nothing.
01:56:34
I just it was getting more and more
01:56:35
extreme. And I was like, "Okay, well,
01:56:37
I'm just going to be this Jack Sparrow
01:56:38
jungle character." I don't know,
01:56:42
for for everyone, it's going to be
01:56:43
different. But I can tell you this much,
01:56:46
if you're not willing to go allin,
01:56:49
you're not going to win. Like, you have
01:56:51
to take that risk to get that reward.
01:56:54
And so, you go, "Okay, I've been I've
01:56:55
been I've been doing this thing for 10
01:56:57
years, and and I just Well, you're 100%
01:57:00
not going to get it if you stop. But at
01:57:02
the same time, there's this haunting
01:57:04
quote in the in the Razer's Edge, this
01:57:07
book, where they say, "Many are called
01:57:09
and few are chosen." And I think that
01:57:11
goes for whether you're starting a
01:57:12
business or a band or trying to be a
01:57:16
writer or whatever it is. It's you have
01:57:17
to know when it's when it ceases to be
01:57:20
chasing your dreams and becomes sort of
01:57:22
a sad suicide. And then and then you
01:57:25
know at what point I was very worried
01:57:27
that it was going to become my identity
01:57:29
that I was the jungle guy so I'd just
01:57:31
keep being the jungle guy
01:57:32
>> and then there's no getting out of it.
01:57:33
I'd have to do it because I said I
01:57:35
would. And so I think for people maybe
01:57:37
having an option B is a good idea. That
01:57:39
might be one of the things that I
01:57:41
learned is that having some sort of an
01:57:43
option B might be good. This is um as
01:57:46
you've highlighted the great risk of
01:57:48
giving people advice when you've reached
01:57:50
the top of the mountain
01:57:52
>> because it's easy from the top of the
01:57:53
mountain to recite how you managed to
01:57:55
climb. But you you like even when I
01:57:57
think about myself as a podcaster like
01:57:59
if someone came and asked me
01:58:00
>> how do you build a podcast or how do you
01:58:01
build a business whatever
01:58:03
>> I probably won't point at the luck and
01:58:06
the timing and the fortune as much. I'll
01:58:09
point at the things that I did
01:58:10
intentionally. Um, and I'm completely
01:58:12
unaware of the fact that actually, you
01:58:14
know, even with the podcast, like
01:58:15
starting a podcast in 2020 when we first
01:58:17
came to YouTube was like the perfect
01:58:19
timing.
01:58:20
>> Yeah.
01:58:20
>> And at the time, we didn't know it was
01:58:21
the perfect timing.
01:58:22
>> Yeah.
01:58:22
>> We were just out there on the wave and
01:58:24
then as it came into shore.
01:58:25
>> Mhm.
01:58:26
>> And so, but you look at the statistics
01:58:28
and go, look, there's a lot of people
01:58:30
that want to be conservters
01:58:34
or entrepreneurs, whatever.
01:58:35
>> Most of them
01:58:38
don't make it. So, they're not sat here
01:58:40
talking. They're not they're not here
01:58:42
now.
01:58:42
>> Yes.
01:58:43
>> Because they, you know, something
01:58:44
happened, they gave up, they couldn't
01:58:45
make it, the business went bust.
01:58:47
>> And there's a really interesting I'm
01:58:48
probably going to butcher this, but it's
01:58:50
an interesting story I read about these
01:58:52
fighter jets. I think it was in World
01:58:53
War I. And um you might have heard the
01:58:56
story. These fighter jets come back with
01:58:58
holes in them. So everybody sat there,
01:59:00
all these engineers said, "Well, if we
01:59:02
want to figure out how to make better
01:59:03
fighter jets, let's study where the
01:59:05
bullet holes are because then we know
01:59:07
where people are shooting."
01:59:08
>> So they took the jets down. and they
01:59:09
looked at where the bullet holes were
01:59:10
and they said, "We'll reinforce those
01:59:12
sections." An engineer at the back, and
01:59:14
I've forgotten his name, but I'll put
01:59:15
them up on the screen, shouted out,
01:59:18
"Shouldn't we look at where there isn't
01:59:19
holes?"
01:59:21
>> Because where there isn't holes, those
01:59:23
ones didn't come back.
01:59:25
>> And this is the whole the problem with
01:59:27
survivorship bias
01:59:28
>> is actually maybe you should be getting
01:59:30
advice from the people in the graveyard,
01:59:31
not the people that came back. Maybe you
01:59:33
should be looking at where the whole the
01:59:35
bullets didn't hit because that's the
01:59:38
fatal area if that makes sense. And I
01:59:39
think there's a lot it's really in the
01:59:41
last couple of years I've got more
01:59:42
cautious about giving people advice for
01:59:43
the same reasons you said.
01:59:45
>> Yeah. I mean you got to remember every
01:59:46
one of the frozen bodies on Everest were
01:59:49
once a highly motivated rich person that
01:59:51
thought they could succeed
01:59:54
and now they're an icicle. M
01:59:55
>> and so I mean it's surreal to be sitting
01:59:59
here especially today on the day that I
02:00:01
got the news that this book is a New
02:00:02
York Times bestseller
02:00:05
and again now I'm immediately I'm I'm
02:00:07
I'm having that reaction to myself where
02:00:09
I'm going don't give advice because they
02:00:12
they should not do that that I did very
02:00:14
dangerous things there very very
02:00:16
dangerous things including risking my
02:00:18
life not I don't mean risking my life
02:00:20
with anacondas and risking my life with
02:00:22
being hunted by narco traffickers I mean
02:00:25
risk risking spending my life doing
02:00:27
something that would have no benefit.
02:00:30
Risking spending my life simply just
02:00:32
being an adventurer. Great. Okay. Well,
02:00:34
how am I contributing? The whole thing
02:00:36
was that I wanted to have purpose. I
02:00:37
wanted to have a meaning and and change
02:00:39
things. And so I I this is not a
02:00:43
blueprint for people to do what I did.
02:00:45
It's a blueprint of oh look what this
02:00:47
person did. But people have to I mean
02:00:49
that's the whole game, right? That's the
02:00:51
other thing we've become very precious
02:00:52
about, you know, curating our lives and
02:00:55
making sure. But you know what, one
02:00:57
thing that the unconted tribes or
02:00:59
reading about the Comanches
02:01:01
um or watching an animal hunt, you know,
02:01:03
you watch a tiger hunt and in every
02:01:04
single hunt that the tiger goes on, they
02:01:07
are they're they're betting all the
02:01:08
chips. Like a large deer can kick and
02:01:11
split their skull or knock their front
02:01:13
teeth out with a hoof. And that might be
02:01:14
the last hunt that tiger ever goes on,
02:01:16
but sort of betting the house is part of
02:01:19
the game. And so that's part of where I
02:01:21
got to where where I was so many years
02:01:23
in and once once we got to a certain
02:01:26
point once we you know there was that
02:01:27
there was that that dip where I said
02:01:29
maybe I'm not this guy and you have to
02:01:32
choose who you are right it's like you
02:01:34
know the oracle told said to Neo she
02:01:36
goes you know you're not the one you go
02:01:38
okay you know and I I I did that to
02:01:40
myself I went well I'm not this isn't
02:01:42
going going to work but then once then
02:01:45
then a few years later if you talked
02:01:47
even if you talked to me two years ago I
02:01:48
would have
02:01:49
I don't care what happens. I'm just
02:01:51
going to keep riding boats through the
02:01:52
Amazon. It'll be fine. I didn't know
02:01:56
that it was going to go like this. And
02:01:58
that now we're all of a sudden now we
02:02:00
are the ones responsible for carrying on
02:02:02
Jane's message of hope of reminding
02:02:05
people that you can turn around a
02:02:08
seemingly terminal situation where the
02:02:12
entropy of global modernization is
02:02:15
destroying one of the largest ecosystems
02:02:17
on Earth. What could one person possibly
02:02:20
do? Well, we found a way.
02:02:22
>> There is something poetic in the idea
02:02:24
that you were pushed to your edge of
02:02:27
being able to survive
02:02:29
>> and at the moment when
02:02:31
>> you got right to the edge of your own
02:02:32
survival.
02:02:33
>> Yeah.
02:02:33
>> The torch of helping the Amazon to
02:02:36
survive was then passed to you.
02:02:38
>> When I was a kid, you learn these
02:02:39
stories. You hear the old stories where,
02:02:41
you know, the young man goes on an
02:02:42
expedition and along the way he meets a
02:02:44
a beggar and he helps the beggar cross
02:02:46
the bridge and then, you know, he's
02:02:47
going through this way and he meets some
02:02:48
bird that's stuck in a in a net and he
02:02:50
helps the bird and then, you know, then
02:02:51
later on when he finds the princess and
02:02:53
he's trying to fight the dragon and then
02:02:54
all of a sudden the beggar helps and
02:02:56
then the bird gets him out of the thing
02:02:57
and it's like, oh, these people come in
02:02:58
and they help. That was the archetypal
02:03:00
story that I got. And I think that
02:03:02
that's also the archetypal story that
02:03:04
then I ended up living where it's like,
02:03:06
you know, JJ said, "We should I'm local.
02:03:08
We should protect this forest. This
02:03:10
place we should protect." And I was
02:03:12
like, "That's amazing." And I and he and
02:03:14
he had the keys to the Amazon. We got to
02:03:16
go on adventures. And then it was like
02:03:18
Mosen showed up. He's like, "I got the
02:03:19
cameraman. I could show the world what
02:03:21
you do." And then we had this guy Stefan
02:03:23
showed up and other people showed up.
02:03:24
And all of a sudden, you know, you start
02:03:26
to amass this team of Avengers where you
02:03:28
go, "Wait, wait, hold on. These people
02:03:29
are really talented people that have and
02:03:31
we didn't realize, you know, JJ's the
02:03:33
jungle man. Mosen's a photographer.
02:03:35
Stefan came in. He was running teams at
02:03:37
Apple.
02:03:38
>> Jane Jane's the mentor.
02:03:39
>> Jane's Jane's the wizard. Jane's the
02:03:41
Gandalf.
02:03:42
>> Yeah.
02:03:42
>> Jane was the one saying, "This is what
02:03:44
you got to do. You got to get the ring
02:03:45
to Mount Doom." And uh and then suddenly
02:03:49
it happens. But but you can't you can't
02:03:52
tell people that they're going to you
02:03:54
know that that whole thing of in in the
02:03:55
movies where it's like you know there's
02:03:57
10 guys with guns and you go how are
02:03:58
they getting out of this one you know
02:04:00
and it's like I've been in that
02:04:01
situation so many times and I think in
02:04:03
order to have the luck of getting bailed
02:04:06
out you either better be a mega black
02:04:08
belt and have some real good friends and
02:04:11
they better show up when it counts. And
02:04:13
so it's like you don't want to give
02:04:15
people advice to do that because because
02:04:17
then you're telling them to to take
02:04:19
risks they shouldn't be taking. But
02:04:21
coming from someone who took all the
02:04:22
risks, who bet my entire life on
02:04:26
becoming a jungle keeper and saving a
02:04:28
river and who bet my entire life on
02:04:31
going on these expeditions and jumping
02:04:32
on anacondas and running from elephants
02:04:34
when I was in Africa and India,
02:04:36
I happened to have made it.
02:04:39
In my job as a podcaster, I meet lots of
02:04:42
people who have climbed to the top of
02:04:43
their proverbial mountains, whether it's
02:04:44
in comedy or sports or business or
02:04:47
>> as a conservationist. And I think one of
02:04:49
the things they do all have in common.
02:04:50
>> Yeah.
02:04:51
>> Is at some point in their hero's
02:04:54
journey, they took a unusual set of
02:04:57
actions for an unusual period of time.
02:05:00
>> Yes. And so I think about that as a
02:05:02
principle maybe that can be transferable
02:05:05
is if you do want an unusual outcome
02:05:07
whatever that means
02:05:09
unusual behavior of some sort is the
02:05:11
precursor. And actually at moments in my
02:05:13
life where I hit fatigue or
02:05:17
>> things are more challenging. I always
02:05:20
remind myself of that these days. I
02:05:21
always say this is probably like why
02:05:24
most people don't get an unusual outcome
02:05:27
because this was is the logical moment
02:05:29
to like [ __ ] pack throw it in pack
02:05:31
pack up the bags and go. And um when I
02:05:34
look at some of my great mentors in the
02:05:36
different fields that I'm in, that's
02:05:37
exactly what they did. They just
02:05:38
persisted for like an unusual amount of
02:05:40
time.
02:05:41
>> And I think persistence in your story is
02:05:43
such a throughine.
02:05:46
>> Yes. I would say relentlessness
02:05:48
is
02:05:50
the most powerful element if you're
02:05:52
trying to achieve your dreams because
02:05:54
you're going to get knocked down again
02:05:57
and again and you find yourself in the
02:06:00
rain lost in the forest and you can't
02:06:02
even see the trail. I always say that,
02:06:04
you know, we didn't even know where we
02:06:06
wanted to go,
02:06:08
you know, and it's like we just kept
02:06:10
doing it. It's like the painter who just
02:06:12
goes, "I don't even know what I'm
02:06:13
painting, but I'm just going to keep
02:06:14
learning how these colors work, you
02:06:16
know, just just keep going." Because
02:06:18
it's an obsession. And you can't really
02:06:20
you can't really
02:06:23
fake an obsession, right? If you if
02:06:26
you're going to spend 10,000 hours
02:06:27
throwing a basketball through a hoop,
02:06:29
you're doing that because you love it.
02:06:31
And there's work and there's discipline
02:06:33
and there's times where you're going to
02:06:34
feel that dip and that rise. But if
02:06:36
you're really doing it, if you're even
02:06:38
in the game, it's because you love it.
02:06:40
Mhm.
02:06:41
>> So if you can find something that you
02:06:42
love, then you can start building that
02:06:45
irrefutable proof of who you are because
02:06:47
you can go, okay, well, I've logged a
02:06:48
certain amount of time doing this thing
02:06:50
I love.
02:06:51
>> What is meaning to to you in your life?
02:06:55
What is that? Is it responsibility? Is
02:06:57
it something else?
02:06:59
>> Well, there's that thing of that you you
02:07:01
the more meaning you your your meaning
02:07:03
is directly correlated to how much
02:07:04
responsibility you take on. That that
02:07:07
we've all heard a hundred times. But to
02:07:10
me, it's it's I I've I've lived in a
02:07:12
world where things are reduced to such
02:07:16
um an incredibly basic level. It's like
02:07:18
I've lived in the mud with a machete and
02:07:21
if I want to eat, I get a fish. And so
02:07:24
like the truth of the rain and rocks has
02:07:26
become my sort of religion and the way
02:07:29
that I connect with God through the very
02:07:32
simple chemical physical elements of the
02:07:34
universe.
02:07:34
>> Do you believe in God?
02:07:36
>> Absolutely.
02:07:37
>> Absolutely. Absolutely.
02:07:40
>> Have you always believed in God?
02:07:42
>> Uh I think you know everybody goes
02:07:44
through that period in their teens and
02:07:46
20s where you sort of go I I can believe
02:07:48
in whatever I want or I could not
02:07:49
believe in whatever I want. And then I
02:07:52
think as you as you mature I think a lot
02:07:54
of people come back. It's also society
02:07:58
it became very very uncool for a while
02:08:00
to say that. You almost couldn't say it.
02:08:03
You almost had to sneak your ass to
02:08:04
church, you know. Um
02:08:08
the if if the people that wake up and go
02:08:11
all this is very unimpressive to me. I'm
02:08:14
a walking miracle and I think there's no
02:08:16
God and I'm unimpressed. It's like you
02:08:18
you have a lot of delusions my friend.
02:08:21
Um we are floating on a rock through
02:08:23
space right now. Not a single person has
02:08:25
an explanation of what we're doing here.
02:08:27
All these incredible chemical processes
02:08:29
are happening in the rivers in our veins
02:08:31
and in the Amazon. When I dip my hands
02:08:34
into the river and I drink from the
02:08:36
river and you hold your arm up in the
02:08:38
sun and you watch the vapor come out of
02:08:40
your skin, the same moisture that you
02:08:42
just drank and it joins the clouds,
02:08:44
rains back on the jungle and becomes the
02:08:46
river again. And you are part of the
02:08:48
cycle.
02:08:51
You just tend to believe in God
02:08:57
because you feel like it's flowing. The
02:08:59
river and the sky are flowing through
02:09:00
you. And that's the nature version. I
02:09:02
mean, it can also just be hugging your
02:09:04
grandma.
02:09:05
>> I wondered if your deeper understanding
02:09:08
of science and evolution and all these
02:09:11
things might have made you more atheist
02:09:14
or agnostic.
02:09:15
>> No, I think science is the language of
02:09:17
God. I don't think that they're opposing
02:09:19
forces.
02:09:21
>> Do you do you believe in evolution and
02:09:24
natural selection?
02:09:25
>> It's not a matter of believing in
02:09:26
evolution. We have we have we have
02:09:28
animals in transitional forms. It's very
02:09:30
clear through the fossil record that
02:09:31
absolutely evolution is happening. I
02:09:34
just think that everyone I don't I'm not
02:09:35
sure where this black and white argument
02:09:37
even came from. I don't think it makes
02:09:38
sense to me then the wild is the church.
02:09:41
And so when I see trees cut down I I
02:09:43
feel it. I feel like people people are
02:09:47
if we have a role as humans and you said
02:09:49
what's meaning if we have a role as
02:09:51
humans on this planet it is to care for
02:09:53
each other and the other things. Seems
02:09:54
like that's the game right? There's
02:09:56
drugs and addiction and and and and
02:09:59
cheating and stealing and lying. There's
02:10:00
all these there's all these pitfalls
02:10:01
that you can fall into so easily. The
02:10:04
game is rigged so that all these things
02:10:06
feel really good, right? Real good while
02:10:10
you're doing them. But you can literally
02:10:13
lose the game permanently.
02:10:16
You know, you do a little bit of meth
02:10:17
because it felt good. All of a sudden,
02:10:19
you're a methhead and all of a sudden
02:10:20
you're dead. It's like you can very
02:10:22
quickly get, you know, couple of drinks
02:10:24
a day over the course of a couple of
02:10:27
decades and you miss a couple of
02:10:29
birthday parties and all of a sudden,
02:10:30
you know, it's like you can you can very
02:10:31
quickly in the wild it teaches you the
02:10:34
that fidiousness,
02:10:37
you know, if you don't check your boat
02:10:39
every day before it rains, after it
02:10:41
rains, make sure it didn't fill with
02:10:42
water. It's like the line between
02:10:44
survival and death is so small. And so I
02:10:49
think that the meaning I found is that
02:10:51
we are floating on a rock in space and
02:10:54
there's only so many animals and people
02:10:56
here and life is the antithesis to all
02:10:59
of the frigid blackness that is the
02:11:01
universe. And this is the only place
02:11:02
that we know for certain that life
02:11:05
exists, right? And we live at this
02:11:07
moment in history when we're losing
02:11:09
animals like elephants and polar bears
02:11:11
and tigers and the rainforests and the
02:11:14
ocean fisheries, the whales, and we
02:11:16
still have a chance to save them. And if
02:11:19
we save them, then our children have
02:11:22
clean air, fresh water, beautiful
02:11:24
places. The world continues to work as
02:11:26
it always has. And so the relationship
02:11:29
that we have to the people around us and
02:11:31
to the creatures around us and to the
02:11:33
environment around us is incredibly
02:11:34
meaningful. There was a little meme I
02:11:37
saw where it said uh if you're being if
02:11:39
you're overwhelmed by the events of the
02:11:41
world, go outside and look at the birds.
02:11:43
You are as meaningless as a sparrow. And
02:11:46
I went, man, as an ecologist, each
02:11:49
animal plays a crucial role in the
02:11:50
ecosystem. You know, hummingbirds are
02:11:52
transporting pollen and the snakes are
02:11:54
eating the rats and the the the the
02:11:56
predators are regulating all of the prey
02:11:58
animals and the trees are providing
02:12:00
shade and the animals are engineering
02:12:02
the the forest and the forest is
02:12:04
engineering the animals. You are not the
02:12:06
birds are not pointless. Whoever wrote
02:12:07
that was stupid
02:12:11
and the people reading it aren't
02:12:12
pointless either is the point.
02:12:16
Many humans think that we are a
02:12:18
dominant, more important species than
02:12:20
the snake that you just wrapped around
02:12:22
my neck or the sparrow in the trees.
02:12:27
Do you believe that's the case? Do you
02:12:28
believe that humans are more important
02:12:29
than
02:12:31
>> If you were to remove humans from planet
02:12:34
Earth, everything would get better in
02:12:37
like days, just like in CO, like the
02:12:39
national parks, the bears are frolicking
02:12:41
on the trails and everything. Um, if you
02:12:43
were to remove ants from planet Earth,
02:12:45
nature would collapse, right? So, if you
02:12:48
want to talk about ecological
02:12:49
importance, we're not that important.
02:12:51
That you'd have to think more
02:12:52
holistically. We're just one of many
02:12:54
different species.
02:12:56
>> But we were able to, you know, rule the
02:12:58
world because of our intellect.
02:13:00
>> But we are the apex or the human brain
02:13:02
is the most complex thing that we know
02:13:03
of. And so, in that way, we are the
02:13:06
stewards. We are the jungle keepers. we
02:13:09
are the ones that are supposed to be
02:13:11
caring for the rest of this. And so
02:13:13
again, whether or not we can I mean,
02:13:15
there's sort of this this people say
02:13:17
that, you know, there's times are worse
02:13:19
than they've ever been. And it's like I
02:13:20
go I'm down in the jungle, right? So I'm
02:13:22
down there. I miss out on a lot. I come
02:13:23
out I come up here and people are people
02:13:26
are I rate about some new news thing,
02:13:29
right? What someone said to someone or
02:13:31
what someone and I always come up and
02:13:34
I'm like, man, civilizations rise and
02:13:36
fall.
02:13:37
the health of our oceans, the existence
02:13:39
of our rainforests.
02:13:41
We're dealing with a with a a a one-way
02:13:44
door in history right now. You think
02:13:46
World War II was big, the ecological
02:13:49
collapse of our planet is pending, but
02:13:52
it's not too late. Jane was right.
02:13:54
There's still hope, but we're the last
02:13:55
generation that's going to have it. And
02:13:57
so, it's like, first of all, if you feel
02:13:58
meaningless, go put your boots on and
02:14:01
help.
02:14:03
You know, if Churchill the day before
02:14:04
D-Day was going, "Ah, it's probably not
02:14:06
going to work." What would have
02:14:08
happened? And it's like we are alive at
02:14:10
the most exciting time in history. Not
02:14:11
only is there a million things that need
02:14:13
to be done, there's people all over the
02:14:14
world that's doing it. So, one of the
02:14:15
things I've started telling to young
02:14:16
people, the advice that I can give is go
02:14:19
find someone that you admire. Go find a
02:14:22
master who's doing the work that you
02:14:23
want to emulate and put 5 years in
02:14:26
working for them. Don't go try to start
02:14:28
your own project right away. Don't go
02:14:30
try to start saving the world before you
02:14:31
know how it works. Go find the guy
02:14:34
that's tracking the snow leopards that's
02:14:36
up in the mountains.
02:14:38
Find him. Follow him. Learn from him. If
02:14:41
it's a business, go find the person
02:14:43
that's doing whatever it is you want to
02:14:44
do. Learn from them. I've seen pe
02:14:47
brilliant people with great business
02:14:49
ideas that don't have the people skills.
02:14:51
Go learn those people skills. Go work
02:14:52
with the people that have those people.
02:14:54
That easy common touch where they can
02:14:55
just shake your hand and all of a sudden
02:14:56
you feel like they're your best friend.
02:14:58
my whole thing. I mean, us starting an
02:15:00
organization that can protect the
02:15:02
jungle, me and JJ could could could
02:15:05
whack and machete and catch all the
02:15:06
anacas we want. Mosen was taking
02:15:08
pictures up and we had this team that
02:15:10
was like doing, you know, the motor
02:15:13
was going, but it wasn't starting. And
02:15:16
then I mentioned the guy Stefan who was
02:15:17
running teams at Apple. Now, this guy,
02:15:20
this man knows how to run a spreadsheet.
02:15:22
This man knows how to run teams of
02:15:24
people. He knows how to organize things.
02:15:25
So, he came in and wait, what are you
02:15:27
trying to do? you're trying to do this,
02:15:29
why don't you do it this way? You save a
02:15:30
bunch of money by doing it this way. And
02:15:32
he started running the teams. And so we
02:15:33
needed we realized we we we needed
02:15:35
things that we didn't even know existed.
02:15:37
And so again, the relentless, the
02:15:40
relentlessness, you you survived to
02:15:42
another day. But for people going out,
02:15:45
find those people because we learned
02:15:47
things from these people that we meet. I
02:15:49
mean, even from Dax, he came in and
02:15:51
provided the funding. But also, this is
02:15:53
a man that won capitalism. As a
02:15:55
billionaire, he's someone that knows how
02:15:56
to run a business. He said, "Okay, so
02:15:58
this is how you're going to run your
02:15:59
ranger program. Tell me how you're going
02:16:00
to do this." Just as a friend and
02:16:02
consultant, you end up learning so much
02:16:04
from him.
02:16:05
>> The very antithesis of what I saw when
02:16:08
you played the video of the unconted
02:16:11
tribe is some of the things going on in
02:16:14
at the moment in California and Texas
02:16:16
with humanoid robots and AI.
02:16:18
>> Yeah.
02:16:19
>> It's like the opposite.
02:16:21
>> Yes.
02:16:21
>> You know, Elon,
02:16:22
>> we live in opposite worlds. Yeah. I I
02:16:24
wondered if you had any thoughts about
02:16:25
this world we're heading into where
02:16:27
people might have microchips in their
02:16:29
brain and we'll have humanoid robots and
02:16:30
they're forecasting there'll be a
02:16:32
billion um of these humanoid robots in
02:16:33
the future. And AI is now so intelligent
02:16:36
that
02:16:37
>> they're saying within a year or two
02:16:39
there'll be AIs that are smarter than
02:16:40
every human that's ever lived. And even
02:16:42
one example of the humanoid robot
02:16:44
situation that blew my mind is when one
02:16:46
of the robots learns something all of
02:16:48
the robots learn it.
02:16:49
>> And obviously you were just talking up
02:16:51
there about having to learn from
02:16:52
mentors. with humanoid robots and the
02:16:54
future that we seem to be huddling
02:16:55
towards.
02:16:57
>> Um, it seems like they might be the the
02:17:00
apex species. I wondered if you've
02:17:03
thought much about the technological
02:17:05
acceleration of the earth and
02:17:07
the risk of that and because it's the
02:17:10
opposite of everything you're talking
02:17:11
about in so many ways.
02:17:13
>> It is and it isn't. I mean, I like I
02:17:15
love living in modern times. I think
02:17:17
that like heart surgery and and your
02:17:19
iPad and the cameras. I think like I
02:17:22
love so much of modern technology
02:17:25
um flight. My god, how I love flight. We
02:17:28
can go anywhere. Would have taken them
02:17:30
eight months. Um this new obsession that
02:17:33
everybody has it it not a lot of things
02:17:36
get me biblical but it makes me think of
02:17:38
the the you know thou shalt not with the
02:17:40
false idols. Everyone is so obsessed
02:17:43
about AI. Shut up. Go outside. touch
02:17:46
some grass. Don't worry about the
02:17:47
robots. We don't live in Minority Report
02:17:49
yet. And it's like, if it's coming,
02:17:51
first of all, we are the engineers of
02:17:53
our reality, right? It's us. So, where
02:17:56
are these robots going to come from?
02:17:57
Unless we make them. And if they're so
02:18:00
smart, well, then get on your knees and
02:18:02
pray to them. You know, it's like do
02:18:03
whatever. But I I think that as as as
02:18:06
more and more people like
02:18:09
rebel against the AI slop they see in
02:18:12
their feeds, as more and more people
02:18:14
appreciate real human art and what it
02:18:18
takes a person to stare at a wall with a
02:18:21
with some paint and create something
02:18:22
that could move you to tears. I think
02:18:25
that we're going through a period of
02:18:27
delirious adolescence with a new
02:18:28
technology. Just like at Y2K, everyone
02:18:31
was like, "Everything's going to shut
02:18:32
down and nothing's going to work." And
02:18:33
it's like, "Okay, great. I'll be on a
02:18:36
hike. The world's going to continue to
02:18:38
work." And, you know, they've been
02:18:40
saying we're going to have flying cars
02:18:42
for how many years? We still don't have
02:18:44
them. Everyone's like, "We should go
02:18:45
colonize Mars." Like, great.
02:18:48
[ __ ] Mars, though. Yeah. Let's fix this
02:18:50
planet. Prove that we're capable of
02:18:53
managing. It's like the kid going, "I
02:18:54
want to take over the company." And the
02:18:56
father going, "Get your room clean." I
02:18:59
think what you do might be hugely
02:19:00
benefited by everything that's going on
02:19:01
with technology and AI in part because
02:19:05
>> I think people are people's appreciation
02:19:07
for community, for nature, for things
02:19:10
that are irreplaceably human is only
02:19:12
going to increase. Yeah,
02:19:13
>> I have, you know, I have a couple of
02:19:15
like wild hypotheses and one of them is
02:19:18
that people are going to want to in a
02:19:19
world where we no longer need to gather
02:19:21
in cities for um collective labor, which
02:19:24
is basically why cities exist in large
02:19:25
part,
02:19:26
>> they will then want to be out in nature.
02:19:28
Yeah.
02:19:29
>> Because our Maslovian need of being out
02:19:30
in the trees and the oil we get and the
02:19:32
mental health benefits are going to
02:19:34
remain the same even if there is robots.
02:19:36
And actually, if I don't need to be in a
02:19:37
city, where would I rather be?
02:19:40
>> In the beautiful nature.
02:19:41
>> In the beautiful nature. I was saying to
02:19:42
my friends the other day, I think people
02:19:43
are going to start buying up farmland
02:19:45
and natural places because
02:19:48
>> you notice that when everyone sort of
02:19:50
makes it and gets rich enough that they
02:19:51
can do what they want, they go get a
02:19:53
house in the country.
02:19:54
>> Exactly.
02:19:54
>> Where they can raise their kids, breathe
02:19:56
some air, not just traffic exhaust. And
02:19:59
but what I'm what I'm not understanding
02:20:01
though is why everyone's so worried
02:20:03
about it. I mean, everyone's acting like
02:20:05
it's the beginning of Terminator 2,
02:20:07
except no one's catching on, right? and
02:20:10
and but and but but again if you listen
02:20:12
to what's the guy's name who runs
02:20:14
Nvidia?
02:20:15
>> Um Jensen Juan.
02:20:16
>> Yes. His I I listened to him on on Joe
02:20:18
Rogan. It was amazing cuz Rogan has the
02:20:21
ability like most like like which is why
02:20:23
he's so good at it. He asked the
02:20:25
questions we all want to ask. And he was
02:20:26
like when is AI going to take over? And
02:20:28
Jensen was like listen um AI is going to
02:20:31
optimize how effective humans can be at
02:20:33
their jobs. Right? Like he was like I
02:20:35
think he said with radiologists he goes
02:20:37
we thought we'd not need any more
02:20:38
radiologists. He's like it it made
02:20:40
radiologists better at their jobs.
02:20:42
>> And it's like I think that the hysteria
02:20:44
of like robots taking well that's good.
02:20:46
Let's use some robots to deliver
02:20:47
packages like great. But I don't think
02:20:49
that this this this this
02:20:52
anticipatory doom that everyone's
02:20:54
feeling on these fallen times of
02:20:57
everything's about to change again.
02:20:58
Really like literally actually guys go
02:21:01
touch the grass. Like it's I'm serious.
02:21:03
It's like it's not I come back from the
02:21:05
jungle where I'm fighting to save the
02:21:07
trees that make the air that these
02:21:09
people are breathing and I'm I'm a
02:21:12
little bit a little bit shocked by the
02:21:14
the amount of hysteria that I'm seeing
02:21:16
and like I'm down there getting hunted
02:21:18
by narot traffickers and and and and
02:21:21
running from the flames and these people
02:21:22
are like you won't believe what I saw on
02:21:24
the news today and I'm like I got it I'm
02:21:27
going back.
02:21:28
>> Do you consume this stuff? Are you on
02:21:30
social media?
02:21:30
>> No. Do you have apps and social media
02:21:33
apps on your phone?
02:21:34
>> It's funny. I got into a fight. Somebody
02:21:36
I'm sure that we'll get this reaction
02:21:38
for this conversation, but people kind
02:21:39
of get mad at me about this where I go,
02:21:41
I don't I don't want to that sort of
02:21:43
civilizations rise and fall thing. A lot
02:21:45
of people get very offended because
02:21:46
they're very invested in the news cycle
02:21:48
and and they're very hysterical and they
02:21:50
almost want to hold on to their
02:21:52
hysterics, right? And to me, it's very
02:21:54
important. I was just sitting at a table
02:21:56
with people and they said, you know, the
02:21:57
world's going to [ __ ] It's never been
02:21:58
worse. First of all, live at the most
02:22:00
peaceful time in history. There's better
02:22:03
technology. We can save your life. We
02:22:05
can almost, you know, cure so many
02:22:06
different diseases. We've never We've
02:22:08
have this expanding compassion where our
02:22:11
species has learned to be more
02:22:13
compassionate that differences don't
02:22:16
make us less, right? And now we're even
02:22:18
expanding that to understand like, oh
02:22:19
wait, the other creatures on this planet
02:22:21
matter, too. We've never been more
02:22:23
dedicated to compassion. I mean, I was
02:22:26
just at a conservation conference and I
02:22:27
was meeting people who are making period
02:22:29
pads for girls in Africa who don't have
02:22:31
access to them. I know people who are
02:22:33
trying to save cheetahs. I I'm seeing
02:22:35
people doing amazing work all over the
02:22:37
news. And you know what the news is
02:22:39
reporting?
02:22:41
There was, you know, that there's an
02:22:42
assassination in the Philippines. We're
02:22:44
tribal. We're supposed to only know
02:22:45
what's going on in our village. Not doom
02:22:48
scrolling through a thousand tragedies a
02:22:50
day. That's of course it's going to send
02:22:51
your brain on fire. So, I've I have none
02:22:53
of that. I go on to Instagram. I've
02:22:55
curated it so that it's my feed. I see
02:22:58
conservationists rescuing elephants. I
02:23:00
see a couple of artists that I really
02:23:01
like. I have a couple like just all
02:23:04
really cool stuff. I never go to that
02:23:05
like that page that just shows you the
02:23:07
internet. I never do that. Just don't do
02:23:09
it. Just don't do it. It's bad for you.
02:23:12
It's really really bad for you. I watch
02:23:13
people doing it's scary.
02:23:15
>> When I did go to the Amazon, I went with
02:23:17
my now fiance
02:23:19
>> and she wanted to do some plant
02:23:22
medicine. Yes.
02:23:24
>> Um, as I said to you before we started
02:23:26
recording, I couldn't do it because
02:23:27
apparently I hadn't followed the diet
02:23:28
regime properly. Yeah.
02:23:29
>> But, um, I know that you did Iaska and
02:23:31
for anyone that doesn't know, IA is a
02:23:33
powerful psychoactive brew from the
02:23:35
Amazon used traditionally by indigenous
02:23:37
>> cultures.
02:23:40
How did your experience with Iaska
02:23:42
change you?
02:23:43
What happened? And how did it change
02:23:45
you?
02:23:45
>> Oh god. Again, I'm I don't know why I'm
02:23:47
I'm very cuz I'm I'm just I'm just in a
02:23:49
mood today. Um, there's no filter. I
02:23:51
don't I don't know. This is one of the
02:23:52
chapters I didn't know if I should put
02:23:53
in the book cuz I go take people through
02:23:56
the whole thing because the shaman that
02:23:57
we knew was the old shaman. It was JJ's
02:24:01
JJ's old father's best friend. And so he
02:24:04
he's old guy. He was been mixing Iawaska
02:24:07
in the forest for decades and learned
02:24:09
from the the ancient guys.
02:24:13
Now the first time I did it, it wasn't
02:24:16
such a big deal. I saw some geometric
02:24:17
patterns. I threw up. I had a
02:24:19
conversation with a tree. It was okay.
02:24:23
The problem is the old shaman at 80some
02:24:27
fell asleep while he was boiling the
02:24:29
Iwasa
02:24:31
and it became more intense in its
02:24:34
potency. And so when we drank the normal
02:24:37
dosage, we were receiving a mega dose.
02:24:40
And I went on a trip that I would never
02:24:43
ever ask to go on. I'm talking about the
02:24:45
creation of the universe, the big bang.
02:24:48
I mean, I went through worlds. I for a
02:24:49
while I was shapeless in outer space
02:24:52
between solar systems. I mean it was
02:24:53
like
02:24:55
it was horrifying.
02:24:58
And when we woke up the shaman was gone.
02:25:00
You know people drink Iwaska and they go
02:25:02
I'm going to go on a journey. I'm going
02:25:03
to focus on this. I want to I have my
02:25:05
intentions over here and I want to
02:25:10
this was this was just wormholes and
02:25:12
explosions and and and just just
02:25:14
craziness. And in the morning, we found
02:25:16
the shaman and he was laying in a stream
02:25:18
naked like the way they find ET at the
02:25:20
end of the movie. And uh we said, "What
02:25:22
the hell happened?" And he said, "I
02:25:23
overboiled the Iawaska." And he said,
02:25:25
"By the way, I retire." And he retired
02:25:28
as shaman for a whole week.
02:25:32
But but like that was my experience was
02:25:34
that it was so intense that I was just
02:25:35
happy to have physical form again. I
02:25:37
feel I felt like I died and came back.
02:25:40
It is very very powerful.
02:25:41
>> You said in the book I felt changed.
02:25:44
I felt changed in the sense that I had
02:25:46
never, you know, I'd come close to dying
02:25:48
a bunch of times. I'd come, but I mean
02:25:51
to to be removed and, you know, if you
02:25:53
go for surgery, they put you out and
02:25:54
it's black and then you come back. This
02:25:56
was I mean, who the hell even knew? It's
02:25:58
like it's like opening. It's like you've
02:26:02
lived in a gigantic mansion with 3,000
02:26:05
rooms your entire life, but you've only
02:26:08
ever lived in like one.
02:26:10
And then you take this stuff and all of
02:26:12
a sudden you go, "Whoa, there's so many
02:26:14
rooms and you have access to them and
02:26:17
the doors are all open and you're being
02:26:19
sucked through all of them at once." And
02:26:20
so it was like I mean at one point I was
02:26:22
I mean you the jungle vibrates through
02:26:24
you. I took the form of different
02:26:25
animals. I mean it was it was insanity.
02:26:27
I don't I wouldn't recommend it to
02:26:29
anybody.
02:26:29
>> What do the local people think it is as
02:26:32
a compound as a psychoactive? What do
02:26:34
they think is happening? Do they think
02:26:34
it's a religious experience?
02:26:36
>> Absolutely. It's most of them believe
02:26:38
that this is the gift of the gods to
02:26:42
humans and it is link between the spirit
02:26:44
world and our world. And they say that
02:26:48
the Amazon was formed when the anaconda
02:26:52
god slipped out of the mer the milky way
02:26:54
and carved the rivers, right? And if you
02:26:57
take the 40,000 species of trees in the
02:27:00
Amazon and did trial and error to try
02:27:03
and figure out which ones would interact
02:27:05
with each other, it doesn't really make
02:27:06
sense that ancient peoples came to this
02:27:08
by accident.
02:27:10
And so the shamans say that the gods
02:27:13
gave this to humans so that we could
02:27:16
interact with the other side.
02:27:19
What is jungle keepers? We've you've
02:27:22
used the word several times now and you
02:27:24
know it's word on the front of your new
02:27:25
book and I see it's written there on
02:27:27
your chest. But for anyone that doesn't
02:27:28
know what Jungle Keepers is, what the
02:27:30
mission of it is, how they might be able
02:27:32
to get involved and help, what is it?
02:27:34
>> Jungle Keepers is
02:27:36
the method we developed to find a way to
02:27:39
save the Amazon. And what we did was
02:27:42
this. We worked with the local people.
02:27:44
We spent years understanding what the
02:27:46
reality was on the ground. Jungle
02:27:49
Keepers is the system with which we
02:27:51
actually are saving the Amazon
02:27:52
rainforest. It's how we employ the
02:27:55
loggers and gold miners as conservation
02:27:57
rangers. But it's the way that we do
02:27:58
that. What we've done usually
02:28:01
conservation is done through grant
02:28:03
writing and government deals. We've done
02:28:04
this using modern technology using
02:28:07
social media for good. We've used I mean
02:28:10
it was through Instagram that we got our
02:28:11
first big funer. It was through
02:28:13
Instagram and podcasts that we've
02:28:16
reached a lot of our smaller funders.
02:28:17
And today,
02:28:19
Jungle Keepers is the most direct way
02:28:22
for people around the world to help the
02:28:24
indigenous people protect the Amazon.
02:28:27
And what that means is we have a donor
02:28:29
program. People go to junglekeepers.org
02:28:31
and whether it's for 5, 10, 100, some
02:28:34
people do $1,000 a month. They can
02:28:36
directly protect the land and provide
02:28:40
jobs for the local people. And it's
02:28:43
saving more animal heartbeats and
02:28:44
endangered species and those entire
02:28:46
uncontacted tribes all because people
02:28:49
all over the world care and they're
02:28:50
willing to part with the price of a
02:28:53
Starbucks coffee once a month.
02:28:56
>> So if people have been inspired by this
02:28:58
conversation Yes.
02:28:59
>> Um
02:29:00
>> they can go to junglekeepers.org and on
02:29:02
the website I'm on there now.
02:29:03
>> Yeah.
02:29:03
>> That you can give once um in a small
02:29:06
donation or you can give monthly.
02:29:08
anything from, as you said, the price of
02:29:09
a coffee up to bigger donations if
02:29:12
you're able to. And um there's some
02:29:15
superb information and resources and
02:29:17
videos on the website that explains more
02:29:19
about the work being done. I'm certainly
02:29:21
going to sign up to a monthly
02:29:23
subscription.
02:29:24
>> Thank you, John Keeper.
02:29:26
>> No, it means a lot because it's the
02:29:27
shopping cart principle. It's like if
02:29:29
none of us do it, it won't work. If all
02:29:30
of us do it, it will work.
02:29:32
>> We'll make history.
02:29:34
>> Well, I'm going to sign up right now. Um
02:29:36
Amazing.
02:29:36
>> Definitely. and I'll I'll give my
02:29:38
monthly donation and I implore anyone
02:29:39
else that can has the means to to also
02:29:41
do it because it's such an you know it's
02:29:43
such a such an important beautiful part
02:29:46
of the world for all the reasons we've
02:29:48
discussed um in a way that I think is
02:29:49
often unappreciated and not um uh not
02:29:53
thought about enough because in part
02:29:55
these messages don't get out there and
02:29:57
most people don't realize that the
02:29:58
oxygen we breathe comes from this part
02:30:00
of the world and many of the medicines
02:30:02
we've discovered and the research that
02:30:04
we continue to do originates from this
02:30:06
part of the world. I mean, there's so
02:30:07
many I wanted to talk to you about this.
02:30:09
There's so many medicines and um sort of
02:30:12
medical research taking place in in this
02:30:15
ecosystem that is incredible.
02:30:18
Incredible. And I was I hearing I heard
02:30:20
you talk about how one day you got an
02:30:22
infection, antibiotics couldn't touch
02:30:24
>> and someone took you into the jungle,
02:30:26
gave you some sap from a tree bark and
02:30:28
it cured the infection.
02:30:30
>> Yeah. You see this where it looks like
02:30:32
somebody put a cigar out on my arm right
02:30:34
there? Little smooth bit. That was a
02:30:36
very rare disease. I was living in a mud
02:30:38
hut in India trying to track tigers.
02:30:40
There's only 3,000 tigers left. Um
02:30:43
although now it's gone up to five.
02:30:44
Tigers are coming back. So another
02:30:46
success story. But I was living in a mud
02:30:47
hut in India trying to track tigers and
02:30:49
I got this disease called tuleria.
02:30:52
And it's so rare that when I got it, I
02:30:54
brought it back to New York, went to the
02:30:55
infectious disease doctor. when he
02:30:58
figured out what it was and I'd been in
02:30:59
bed for like a month with this horrible
02:31:01
infection in my arm, this deep pocket of
02:31:04
pus and and I was on antibiotics and he
02:31:07
went, "This is so rare." He goes, "Do
02:31:08
you mind if I call in my students, my
02:31:10
fellows?" He goes, he goes, "Guys,
02:31:12
you're never going to see this again.
02:31:13
It's a disease that's tick born through
02:31:15
rabbits and somehow gets into people and
02:31:18
manifests with an infection on the right
02:31:20
elbow." He goes, "This is one of the
02:31:23
rarest ones you're going to see." He
02:31:24
goes, "This is rare. They put me on
02:31:25
double antibiotics. cuz I had already
02:31:27
had a MRSA infection. They were like,
02:31:28
"Look, we got to really kill this
02:31:29
thing." And it was 2012 and my parents
02:31:32
said, "Whatever you do, do not go back
02:31:34
to the jungle with an infection cuz the
02:31:36
jungle's just going to make it worse."
02:31:38
And of course, I went to the jungle. We
02:31:39
had stuff to do. We our station was in
02:31:41
danger of dying, so I had to go back
02:31:43
with JJ and fix it up. And I showed up
02:31:45
and he looked at my go, "Why is your arm
02:31:46
taped up?" And I said, "Well, I have
02:31:47
this terrible infection." I said, "I've
02:31:48
been in bed for two months." I said, "I
02:31:50
have no energy. I'm on all these
02:31:51
antibiotics." And he looked at me, he
02:31:53
went, "This is okay." Hey. And he goes,
02:31:55
"No, no, come with me." We walked out.
02:31:56
He marches out into the jungle, hits
02:31:58
this, hits the tree with the machete,
02:32:00
collects the white sap,
02:32:02
rubs it over this, and now this these
02:32:04
saps have like a latex quality, and when
02:32:07
you heat them, they they they they form
02:32:09
almost like a rubber. So, it formed a
02:32:11
rubber rubber cap over the infection.
02:32:13
Now, if you had pushed on it before, pus
02:32:14
would leak out. He just went like this
02:32:16
until it formed a seal. And then he put
02:32:20
a little bit into a concoction of leaf
02:32:22
juice that he made, made me drink that.
02:32:24
Either way, next day I woke up and the
02:32:26
infection was denatured. It was still a
02:32:30
wound, but it was no longer infected.
02:32:32
Killed the infection in one night. The
02:32:35
antibiotics hadn't been able to kill for
02:32:36
two months.
02:32:38
And so stuff like that where he not only
02:32:40
knew what to do, he knew where to find
02:32:43
it. Recently when I was stung by a
02:32:44
stingray and I was in agonizing pain,
02:32:48
two of my friends collected bark, which
02:32:49
was JJ's nephew and brother. It's good
02:32:51
to be part of an indigenous family. Um,
02:32:54
they connect collected two different
02:32:56
kinds of bark. They boiled it into a pus
02:32:58
and they sucked the venom out of my out
02:33:00
of my foot with plant medicine.
02:33:04
It's incredible. And these are
02:33:05
technologies we don't have. And by the
02:33:07
way, yeah, we're losing physical
02:33:09
animals. We don't want to lose species,
02:33:10
but we're also losing indigenous
02:33:13
cultures. We're losing dialects and and
02:33:15
and and anthropologists like WDE Davis
02:33:18
will say that, you know, each language,
02:33:21
each each culture is a different
02:33:22
manifest. They said he was he has a
02:33:24
beautiful quote where he said other
02:33:25
cultures are not failed attempts at
02:33:27
being you. You know, it's it's each of
02:33:30
these is a different manifestation of
02:33:31
the human
02:33:33
different blossoms on the same vine. and
02:33:36
uh we're losing languages because what
02:33:38
happens is roads come in to these
02:33:41
communities they all learn to speak
02:33:43
Spanish let's say so they stop speaking
02:33:47
you know and the same thing in India
02:33:48
where you guys have seen this happening
02:33:49
where like the kids in the village might
02:33:51
speak a really local language and then
02:33:53
all of a sudden everybody wants to go to
02:33:54
the big city everybody has the internet
02:33:56
and Instagram and Tik Tok and wants to
02:33:58
make a little more money and they go and
02:34:00
these we're losing languages and these
02:34:02
each of these languages is a different
02:34:04
way of expressing ourselves
02:34:06
And so this there's just this very
02:34:07
interesting shift happening in the world
02:34:09
right now where there's a lot of
02:34:10
beautiful things that can still be
02:34:12
saved. And that's why it's like we're at
02:34:14
this amazing time where there's there's
02:34:16
still the old amazing things and we
02:34:18
still have all this amazing new
02:34:19
technology flooding in and more
02:34:21
knowledge at our fingertips than ever
02:34:23
before. And so the feeling of apathy I
02:34:25
don't get. I don't understand how
02:34:26
everybody isn't stoked.
02:34:30
>> I see you've got a a wedding ring on.
02:34:33
>> Oh, this. Yes. I um you know I know
02:34:37
you're recently married
02:34:39
>> like Yes. Two weeks ago.
02:34:40
>> Two weeks ago. One would ask how it's
02:34:43
possible for someone that spends so long
02:34:44
living in the jungle to hold down a
02:34:48
successful romantic relationship.
02:34:50
>> Yeah. Um, I think that the same thing
02:34:54
happened with this that happened with
02:34:57
the career where I said, I think right
02:34:58
around the time where I gave up, I said
02:35:00
it's never going to happen cuz what girl
02:35:02
I said, what girl could keep up with
02:35:05
repeated seven months in the jungle and
02:35:08
and um all the bot flies and infections
02:35:11
and anacondas and then forget now that
02:35:13
we're being hunted by the narot
02:35:14
traffickers and all this stuff. Not
02:35:17
nobody nobody fit into the life. And
02:35:19
then actually it was on a I was giving a
02:35:22
talk about the Amazon
02:35:25
uh in California actually over a year
02:35:28
ago and I met this girl and instantly we
02:35:32
had a connection and and and it was the
02:35:34
same thing. It was like we we we kind of
02:35:36
had both reached that same point where
02:35:37
we both gone yeah it's never going to
02:35:39
work because of our different
02:35:40
lifestyles. Um
02:35:43
and then and then it just and then it
02:35:44
just occurred. You just when you know,
02:35:46
you know. We got to know each other and
02:35:48
then the only way I could know if she
02:35:49
was really the one was to take her
02:35:52
catching. Uh we went crocodile catching
02:35:54
for cayman catching. First night that
02:35:56
she arrived, she came up the river on
02:35:57
the boat and we went out and we caught a
02:36:00
crocodile, held it together. I got to
02:36:01
show her the nictating membrane and the
02:36:03
the spikes coming out of it and it was
02:36:05
this beautiful smooth fronted cayman.
02:36:07
And then as we were floating down the
02:36:09
river up to our necks in the black water
02:36:11
with the Milky Way above us and we're
02:36:13
just sort of holding hands and I just
02:36:14
looked over and I was like, "Oh, I think
02:36:16
this is it." And then I proposed to her
02:36:18
in the treehouse. So on top of the top
02:36:21
of the jungle canopy with all the mist
02:36:22
and all the animals singing. Um but it
02:36:26
that I'm you know that makes me say I'm
02:36:28
so I'm so glad that I waited. You know,
02:36:31
it's like you have to wait until the
02:36:32
time where it makes sense on that thing,
02:36:34
you know. And I think you probably feel
02:36:36
the same where um probably took you a
02:36:38
while to find the right person.
02:36:40
>> Mhm.
02:36:42
And she comes on these expeditions with
02:36:44
you now. Or
02:36:45
>> she's way more than that, man. I mean,
02:36:48
look, there's like I said, there's a lot
02:36:49
of things I'm not good at. Um the
02:36:51
planes, trains, automobiles, the human
02:36:53
world, the Ubers, the fact you have to
02:36:54
push a button, the the the apparently,
02:36:56
like I learned come on my way to you,
02:36:58
the the Tesla handles work differently.
02:37:01
um she knows all that and so she's very
02:37:04
good at keeping me organized and when we
02:37:05
go to the jungle she's very good at
02:37:07
being like hey don't forget to thank
02:37:09
those donors hey don't forget you think
02:37:12
this is normal it is not normal teach
02:37:14
people about those those leaf cutter
02:37:16
ants and it's like she's really good at
02:37:17
you know so she's totally integrated
02:37:19
loves being in the jungle it it's just
02:37:21
incredible it's the it's the most it's
02:37:23
the most wonderful part of the journey
02:37:24
so far
02:37:25
>> I'd love to actually um you just
02:37:26
mentioned leaf cutter ants and I did
02:37:27
watch your video on Instagram about the
02:37:28
leaf cutter ants and that I think that
02:37:30
was the moment I you before we started
02:37:31
recording that I I've really wanted to
02:37:32
go and do some sort of survival
02:37:35
>> um expedition in the jungle.
02:37:36
>> I could make this happen for you.
02:37:37
>> I think you I think you might be the
02:37:39
guy.
02:37:40
>> But uh I did take a moment of pause when
02:37:43
I watched this video.
02:37:45
>> One of the worst episodes yet of why you
02:37:47
think you want my job, but definitely
02:37:49
don't really. Right now, my tent is
02:37:51
being dismantled by leaf cutter ants.
02:37:54
It's about 2:00 a.m. and I've been
02:37:55
trying to sleep and there's about 10
02:37:57
million leaf cutter ants outside of this
02:37:59
tent. And all they are doing is cutting
02:38:02
leafiz holes out of my tent. They are
02:38:05
carrying away the nylon into the night.
02:38:07
And because the leaf cutter ants are
02:38:09
working to dismantle every single thing
02:38:11
that I own, they're opening up holes big
02:38:13
enough for me to put my fist through,
02:38:14
which means everything else in the
02:38:16
Amazon is coming into my tent. And
02:38:18
because of that, I keep turning on the
02:38:20
lights. I just woke up because there's a
02:38:22
leaf cutter ant using its pinser jaws to
02:38:24
bite my ear to try and carry off a
02:38:26
piece. And inside this tent right now
02:38:28
are ants and termites and mosquitoes,
02:38:31
some sort of centipede, hoppers, moths,
02:38:34
and some insects that I can't even
02:38:35
identify. This is one of those times
02:38:37
where, you know, it's four more hours
02:38:39
until morning. If you get out of the
02:38:41
tent, you're going to get destroyed by
02:38:42
mosquitoes. It's raining outside, you're
02:38:44
going to get wet. This is what camping
02:38:45
in the wild is. Sometimes you put your
02:38:47
tent in the wrong place, and the leaf
02:38:48
cutter ants and the gods of the jungle
02:38:50
decide it's going to be the worst night
02:38:52
ever. All I can do is try and get some
02:38:54
sleep and I wake up every few seconds to
02:38:56
try and slap something off my face or
02:38:58
something flies up my nose. This is one
02:38:59
of those nightmare nights, man.
02:39:04
>> I didn't think of ants as being the
02:39:05
problem,
02:39:07
the thing that might derail my journey
02:39:09
to the jungle. But there's a lot of
02:39:12
scary things in the jungle.
02:39:14
>> That quote you read about life being a
02:39:16
moment of stasis among the death amongst
02:39:19
the the churning death march of the
02:39:21
jungle. Everything you see in the jungle
02:39:23
is going to be eaten at some point.
02:39:25
Every jaguar, every butterfly, every
02:39:27
leaf. If the Amazon didn't have fungal
02:39:29
mcelium growing through everything, it
02:39:31
would bury itself in leaves and cease to
02:39:33
exist. It is a recycling machine. And
02:39:35
so, yes, every time a baby is born, they
02:39:38
try to survive. You look at that baby
02:39:39
snake. That baby snake might come out of
02:39:41
its egg. Now, that's a African ball
02:39:43
python, but you say like a baby boa
02:39:45
constrictor comes out of its mother,
02:39:47
starts crawling around the jungle, and
02:39:48
it might just get eaten by a bird. done.
02:39:52
And this is sort of back to what you're
02:39:53
saying about when should people give up
02:39:54
on their dreams. It's like look some
02:39:55
sometimes you get eaten by a bird right
02:39:57
out of the hatch. Like but in the jungle
02:40:00
the ants, the mosquitoes,
02:40:04
the fungus, the infections, it's all
02:40:07
trying to take you down. You are
02:40:09
calories. The leaves, which what which
02:40:12
you don't realize, the jungle is an
02:40:13
energy economy, right? Those trees are
02:40:15
stretching up to 160 ft because they're
02:40:17
trying to reach above the other trees to
02:40:19
get to the light because they want the
02:40:21
sunlight. That tropical sunlight is what
02:40:23
gives them the energy to grow those big
02:40:26
trunks. And then all the other epithetic
02:40:28
plants, the orchids and the lychans and
02:40:30
the and and the pitcher plants, those
02:40:32
are all growing on the branches. And
02:40:34
then down there in the shadows, there's
02:40:36
trees waiting that have no access to
02:40:37
light. Less than 3% of the sunlight in
02:40:39
the rainforest hits the ground. And
02:40:41
they're waiting beneath these titans
02:40:44
and they're waiting for a little bit of
02:40:45
sunlight. And once a day a little bit of
02:40:46
sunlight comes by and they grow that
02:40:48
much. They take them and then when one
02:40:50
big tree falls over and all of a sudden
02:40:51
you have this rush of sunlight capital.
02:40:54
All these trees shoot up and now those
02:40:57
trees shoot up and what's happening? The
02:40:58
leaf cutter ants are taking their little
02:41:00
bits of those leaves that have heavy
02:41:02
chemical compounds to stop the leaf
02:41:03
cutter ants from doing this. But they
02:41:05
take it and they bring it underground
02:41:06
and they farm it. They're one of the
02:41:08
only other species that farms. They farm
02:41:10
fungus off of the leaves that they eat.
02:41:13
But the entire thing is this vast
02:41:15
interconnected matrix of competition for
02:41:18
sunlight energy. You carry so much our
02:41:22
skin. We are these gods of energy. We're
02:41:24
we're a large animal walking through the
02:41:27
forest. So the mosquitoes and the
02:41:29
leeches and and the jaguar and the like
02:41:33
all those things are like man if you
02:41:34
died you realize how many animals you'd
02:41:36
make happy. like the jungle. The jungle
02:41:39
is saying, "Come here. Come to me. I'll
02:41:41
I'll recycle you."
02:41:43
>> Are you scared of anything?
02:41:45
>> I'm scared that people won't wake up
02:41:47
quick enough to save the systems that
02:41:49
keep us alive. But I also am an optimist
02:41:52
and I believe that we're at this point
02:41:54
where people feel very lost and things
02:41:56
look really dire and then it pulls back,
02:42:00
you you know, and I I'm a big believer
02:42:01
in I mean, tigers went from a 100,000
02:42:04
tigers in 1900 down to just like 3,000
02:42:06
tigers now. We're we're coming back up.
02:42:08
We're up around five or 6,000 tigers.
02:42:10
Humpback whales before before whaling,
02:42:13
you think you like 130,000 humpback
02:42:15
whales. They went down as low as a
02:42:16
thousand humpback whales. We almost lost
02:42:18
humpback whales. Then they banned whales
02:42:21
whaling and now humpback whales are back
02:42:23
to almost pre-whaling numbers. Same
02:42:26
thing goes for bald eagles. There's been
02:42:27
so many conservation success. We had a
02:42:29
hole in the ozone layer. Everybody
02:42:31
forgets this. We had a hole in the in
02:42:33
the only thing that protects us from
02:42:34
being incinerated by the sun. And we
02:42:37
found a way to fix it.
02:42:39
So, I'm an optimist. I'm not I'm not
02:42:41
scared. And this is my this is my best
02:42:44
confutation to the darkness. This is my
02:42:46
best way of saying look that that title
02:42:49
when they told me to I didn't come up
02:42:50
with the subtitle, the what it takes,
02:42:52
what does it say? What it takes to
02:42:53
change the world. I didn't come up with
02:42:54
that, but I thought it was too hefty. I
02:42:56
didn't want it. I felt uncomfortable.
02:42:58
Um,
02:43:01
but I do think that that the idea that
02:43:03
that we can change the fate of things is
02:43:07
an important thing to remember in these
02:43:10
times.
02:43:12
>> Jungle Keeper, what it takes to change
02:43:13
the world. This book is about the
02:43:16
profound power of saying yes. Yes to
02:43:18
one's calling. Yes to sticking with your
02:43:20
dream when it comes at a high cost. And
02:43:21
yes to taking a stand to save what might
02:43:23
otherwise be gone in a generation. It's
02:43:26
a story of vocation, connectedness, and
02:43:28
hope.
02:43:30
What a brilliant, beautiful, rare book.
02:43:33
I'm going to link it below for anyone
02:43:35
that wants to continue this conversation
02:43:36
and wants to learn more and go deeper.
02:43:38
Um, you're a brilliant storyteller.
02:43:40
>> Thank you.
02:43:40
>> It's one of your great skills. I don't
02:43:42
know where you learned it cuz I I don't
02:43:43
think they do classes for storytelling
02:43:45
in in the Amazon, but it's certainly one
02:43:47
of your great skills and it's a very
02:43:49
important skill to wield when you've got
02:43:50
a message you need the world to hear.
02:43:52
>> It's a very important story. I think I
02:43:54
learned it from Tolken and from Arthur
02:43:56
Conand Doyle and from Jane Goodall. I
02:43:58
mean, those were the people my parents
02:43:59
read to me growing up. We have a closing
02:44:02
tradition, Paul, where the last guest
02:44:04
leaves a question for the next not
02:44:05
knowing who they're leaving it for. And
02:44:06
the question left for you is, if you
02:44:09
only had
02:44:13
three years left to live,
02:44:17
>> what would you regret not doing? And are
02:44:20
you working on that now? If no, why not?
02:44:26
>> If I had three years left to live,
02:44:30
I would very much regret
02:44:32
not finishing the mission that I
02:44:33
started. And so
02:44:36
whether we like it or not, we're going
02:44:38
to we're either going to win and save it
02:44:40
or we're going to lose. 3 years
02:44:44
would be like just barely able to see
02:44:46
it. I would regret so much coming so far
02:44:50
and then not coming to fruition because
02:44:54
you mentioned before the idea of a wave
02:44:57
and it's like so much has happened and
02:44:58
we have come to this place where so much
02:45:00
is possible but we're still in the
02:45:03
barrel and we're not done yet. So if I
02:45:06
had three years left to go, I know that
02:45:09
all those heartbeats are depending on me
02:45:12
and I would that's that would be my
02:45:13
answer.
02:45:14
>> Paul, thank you. It's um incredible work
02:45:17
you're doing and I'm so glad that
02:45:18
there's people in the world like you
02:45:20
that are doing this and um if anyone has
02:45:23
been inspired by your conversation, I
02:45:24
really do highly recommend you go and
02:45:26
make a donation or pledge support in
02:45:28
some way over on the Jungle Keeper
02:45:30
website because um not all of us have
02:45:32
the means or the ability to go out and
02:45:34
do what you're doing on the front line
02:45:37
of this issue. But um as you say, it
02:45:39
makes a huge amount of difference even
02:45:41
people donating small amounts of money
02:45:42
because it compounds into something much
02:45:44
more bigger and and those small gestures
02:45:47
can save all the heartbeats that you're
02:45:48
describing.
02:45:50
>> Thank God for it. Thank you.
02:45:51
>> Thank you. We're done. Thank you. Thank
02:45:53
you.
02:45:53
>> Very soon you will be in the ice bath
02:45:55
with me.
02:45:56
>> But I don't like the cold.
02:45:58
>> That's cool.
02:46:01
>> Oh gosh.
02:46:01
>> Stay with your breath.
02:46:04
>> Whoff has defied logic time and time
02:46:06
again. He's able to withstand extreme
02:46:08
cold
02:46:09
>> and even ran to the top of Everest in
02:46:11
his underwear.