Paul Rosolie: Uncontacted Tribes in the Amazon Jungle | Lex Fridman Podcast #489

0:00 were standing there.

0:01 Everyone is waiting,

0:01 'cause at any moment an arrow could just fly through your neck,

0:05 and there's people holding shotguns.

0:06 And the anthropologist, this little guy, is standing there in the front,

0:10 and he's going, "Enimole." He's going, "Brothers." And then it happened.

0:13 Then you start hearing people screaming, "Mashco!

0:18 Mashco!" And people are screaming and women are lifting children and running

0:22 into the huts and the dogs and chickens are going nuts and—- So fear, fear.

0:27 Fear.

0:27 He's going, "Look there.

0:28 He has a bow.

0:29 He has a bow." And we're looking up the beach and there's just this clan walking

0:33 down the beach with these seven-foot bows

0:35 and they're hunched over and they're pointing at us.

0:38 They're going, "Look at that one.

0:40 Look, there's a gun there." And you can see

0:42 them communicating to each other and the butterflies are

0:44 swirling off the beach and they can hit

0:46 a spider monkey out of the treetops at 40 meters.

0:49 They can sneak up and you will never know they're there.

0:52 And so when that arrow passes through your body,

0:54 you'll only have a moment to realize it before you fall over.

0:58 In order for any of this to make sense, I have to show you this footage.

1:02 And this has not been shown ever before.

1:05 This is a world first.

1:08 The following is a conversation with Paul Rosolie,

1:10 his third time on the podcast.

1:12 Paul is a naturalist, explorer,

1:14 writer and is someone who has dedicated his life to protecting

1:18 the Amazon rainforest and celebrating the beauty of the natural world.

1:23 He has a new book coming out in a few

1:26 days titled Jungle Keeper that you should definitely go pre-order now.

1:30 It tells some intense stories about his time

1:33 in the jungle over the past several years,

1:36 building up to a few epic recent events,

1:40 including a new extended encounter with a non-contacted

1:43 tribe that we discuss in this podcast.

1:45 Both the book and audiobook are great.

1:49 I highly recommend it.

1:50 If you would like to support Paul

1:52 and his team in their mission to protect the jungle, go to junglekeepers.org.

1:58 You can help with donations or by spreading the word or checking out the gala

2:04 that Paul is hosting in New York on January 22nd in a few days.

2:10 They are doing all they can to help raise funds

2:12 for the mission of safeguarding as much of the rainforest as possible,

2:16 and I think it's a mission worth fighting for.

2:20 The Amazon jungle is one of the most special and beautiful places on Earth.

2:23 As an aside, allow me to look back briefly

2:27 and mention something that I've been struggling with a bit.

2:31 For context, I traveled to the Amazon rainforest with Paul a while back.

2:35 It was an adventure of a lifetime, with lots of crazy twists and turns.

2:39 We did record a podcast out there, literally in the jungle.

2:43 Episode 429, if you want to go check it out.

2:48 It was awesome.

2:49 And we also recorded a bunch of disparate footage of the journey just for fun.

2:53 And I would still love to somehow put all that together

2:58 into a cohesive video in case it's interesting to someone.

3:01 But I've learned just how difficult it is to organize

3:06 and edit a pile of chaotically recorded footage like that.

3:09 So, let's see if I can pull it off.

3:13 But in any case, this kind of raw vlog-style

3:17 video is something that I would love to be able to do more of as a way

3:22 to celebrate amazing human beings like Paul and others,

3:25 including everyday people who I meet on my travels.

3:30 So, I'll keep trying, tinkering, learning,

3:33 and I ask for your patience and support along the way.

3:36 Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

3:40 This is the Lex Fridman Podcast.

3:44 To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description

3:47 where you can also find links to contact me,

3:51 ask questions, give feedback, and so on.

3:54 And now, dear friends, here's Paul Rosolie.

3:59 We've survived a challenging time out in the jungle about a year and a half ago,

4:04 and since then, your life has increasingly gotten more intense.

4:08 So, you've achieved the incredible feat of saving

4:13 now more than 130,000 acres of rainforest.

4:17 And the goal that you're working towards is protecting 200,000 acres more.

4:23 And doing so while facing extreme danger from narcos,

4:26 narco-traffickers, so-called Cocaine Mafia in an escalating drug war.

4:31 This is insane.

4:32 These are new developments.

4:34 Illegal loggers, as we've talked about before.

4:36 Gold miners, and the incredible recent encounter with an uncontacted tribe.

4:41 And we'll talk about all of this.

4:44 So your new book, Jungle Keeper,

4:46 opens with the killing of two loggers by the warriors of an uncontacted tribe,

4:53 the Mashco Piro, in August 2024.

4:57 And then you reveal that you had your own dramatic

5:00 encounter with the tribe two months later in October 2024.

5:03 So if I may, let me read the opening of the book.

5:09 "Far out on the western edge of the Amazon rainforest,

5:12 deep in the Peruvian jungle, a pair of loggers plunged their chainsaws

5:17 into the buttressed roots of an ancient ironwood.

5:21 An ironwood, or shihuahuaco, of this size is a giant among giants,

5:26 an emergent sentinel that reaches heights of 160 feet,

5:31 towering over the rest of the canopy." I've

5:33 read that many are over 1,000 years old, by the way, as an aside.

5:37 And you've found ones that are 1,200 years old.

5:42 Incredibly old.

5:43 Anyway, you continue.

5:44 "This particular tree had started its life

5:46 as a tiny sapling in the great jungle,

5:48 a story that began before the Spanish reached Peru,

5:51 long before the United States was even a dream.

5:54 At a time when Leonardo da Vinci was still honing

5:58 his talents in a far away part of the world, through the Renaissance,

6:02 the First and Second World Wars, and the birth of our grandparents."

6:06 This tree was out there slowly charging upward,

6:10 anonymous, just one pillar among the billions of others.

6:14 But on this day, in August 2024, when the two loggers worked,

6:19 this witness of the centuries came crashing down to the canopy

6:23 with such cataclysmic power that it shook the earth.

6:28 And then you go on to talk about how the shaking

6:30 of the earth was felt and heard by the uncontacted tribe.

6:34 You go on to describe how these particular loggers

6:38 were killed by the uncontacted tribe of Mashco Piro.

6:43 What do we know about these warriors of the uncontacted tribe?

6:49 We know that across the Amazon basin there's

6:52 still perhaps thousands of clans of uncontacted peoples,

6:56 people that are living in nomadic isolation in what remains

7:01 of the intact Amazon basin and want to remain that way.

7:06 And so, what happened with these loggers was that local people told them,

7:11 "Don't go out there.

7:13 Don't go into these territories." And what

7:15 happens is that people that aren't from...

7:17 There's this thing with the jungle,

7:19 people don't believe that it's as wild as the legends say.

7:24 And so when they say there's calatos out there, there's wild people out there,

7:29 these loggers from another region go, "Yeah, that's just some story.

7:33 We're fine.

7:34 We'll go.

7:35 We have shotguns." They don't realize you're dealing

7:38 with a civilization of people that is still nomadic,

7:42 still uses bamboo-tipped arrows, still lives naked in the Amazon rainforest,

7:46 has knowledge of medicines that we've yet to encounter or may never discover,

7:51 and that they can hit a spider monkey out of the treetops at 40 meters.

7:56 And so while you're using a chainsaw,

7:58 they can sneak up and you will never know they're there.

8:01 And so when that arrow passes through your body,

8:04 you'll only have a moment to realize it before you fall over.

8:07 And we're looking at something you posted on your Instagram-...

8:11 which are the arrows that they use, which are bigger than you.

8:15 So they're like six or seven feet.

8:16 Six, seven feet.

8:17 More like seven feet.

8:18 And that's-- Look how sharp that is.

8:20 incredibly sharp.

8:20 They cure it over the fire and they have a way of sharpening it.

8:23 That edge of bamboo becomes incredibly knife-sharp.

8:25 You can cut meat with it easily; I've done it.

8:28 These arrows...

8:29 Look at that.

8:29 I mean, I'm 5'9".

8:31 That's easily a seven-foot arrow.

8:34 Yeah, so for people who are just listening, this "arrow" is really a spear.

8:38 Some people would think it was a spear,

8:40 but they're shooting this thing with a gigantic bow.

8:43 That's crazy.

8:45 Yeah, and so to be holding that...

8:47 Look at that, they even twist the fletching so the arrow spins in the air.

8:51 They have incredible craftsmanship,

8:52 and then you see all the little string on there is plant fibers they've woven,

8:56 and then this is them.

9:01 Yeah, the warriors of the tribe.

9:03 The warriors of the tribe.

9:04 And so the fact that we're sitting here talking on microphones,

9:07 and that we have airplanes and cell phones

9:09 and all the things we have in the modern world, and there's still...

9:12 We still live in this age where there's, right now at this moment,

9:16 people living out in the jungle who have been there since before history,

9:21 is an incredible thing.

9:24 Let me look this up on Perplexity:

9:26 what are the technologies we modern humans have that the Mashco Piro do not?

9:33 It's just interesting to think about

9:35 the kind of technologies we take for granted.

9:38 Energy and power, obviously all the electricity generation,

9:42 grids, batteries, solar panels, and electric motors,

9:45 metals and materials, mass-produced steel, aluminum, advanced alloys,

9:49 plastics, composites, glass, concrete, all of those things.

9:52 All of those things.

9:53 Tools, of course, and machinery.

9:55 The infrastructure of roads and bridges and buildings,

9:59 and the weapons of war—everything but the spears

10:02 and arrows that they have—and the medicine and biology.

10:05 Of course they probably have complicated medicines that they've

10:10 developed for their own— ...that are available within the jungle.

10:14 I mean, that entire list is no.

10:16 No.

10:17 I mean, metal, I think you have to be

10:19 able to excavate into the earth and forge metal.

10:23 These people don't even...

10:25 As one of the local anthropologists said to me,

10:27 a Peruvian anthropologist, he said, "You know,

10:30 people think of them as Stone Age tribes." And he was like,

10:33 "They don't have stones." He's like,

10:35 "They don't..." So they don't know that water...

10:37 They see water that they drink.

10:39 They don't know that water freezes, because they've never seen it.

10:42 They don't know that water boils, because they don't even make clay pots.

10:45 They just have their bamboo and their string.

10:48 And so they're living an incredibly simple life.

10:50 So all of that, I mean, even a camera is a miracle to them.

10:55 You have to bend your mind to even understand how far back they are.

10:58 It's like looking into thousands of years ago, like the Stone Age.

11:04 When they hear the sounds of the chainsaws,

11:06 the sounds of machinery in the distance- ...I

11:09 wonder how they can possibly comprehend what that is.

11:13 I think they view it as a demonic destructive force.

11:17 And when I show you the encounter that we had, we got a few takeaways.

11:23 We left with more questions than answers, but one of the things they were

11:27 able to communicate across the language barrier was,

11:30 "Why are you cutting down the trees?" They don't like it.

11:34 Yeah.

11:35 That represents to them the danger

11:38 and destruction that the outside world brings.

11:42 They see us as the destroyers of worlds.

11:46 So tell me about this encounter in October of 2024.

11:52 So, in order to tell you about that encounter I

11:54 think we need to orient people into where we're talking about.

11:57 We're talking about this river that runs through the western

12:00 edge of the Amazon rainforest that you know well now,

12:04 after spending time there with me.

12:06 It's a high tributary of the Amazon where you have

12:09 the main river channel and then smaller and smaller and smaller tributaries.

12:13 And the smaller you get, the less trafficked they are.

12:17 And so this river has remained wild through the centuries.

12:21 And even during the '90s when there was

12:24 a mahogany boom where people went out for it,

12:26 trees, there were very few people going up this river.

12:32 20 years ago when I first got to the region

12:34 and people told me there were uncontacted tribes out there,

12:37 it was always in the realm of something...

12:39 You know, it's like people say, "There's Bigfoot," or, "Don't go there,

12:43 it's haunted." It was like a tall tale almost.

12:47 And even the Peruvian government at the time I first went to Peru,

12:50 which was 2006, their official position was that the tribes are a myth.

12:55 There's no such thing as the tribes.

12:57 That was the official position.

12:59 And you just...

12:59 You would hear these stories of people that got shot.

13:02 You'd meet someone high up a river, four days upriver,

13:05 deep in the Amazon, that had an arrow.

13:07 And you'd look at this thing and it had this, you know, mega gravity.

13:12 And so as we've created Jungle Keepers

13:15 and now we're protecting 130,000 acres of this river,

13:18 we're protecting the plants and the animals and the ancient trees,

13:21 and trying to preserve the ecosystem,

13:23 and counting the butterflies and conducting ecological surveys,

13:26 and what we've inadvertently found ourselves the caretakers

13:30 of, is the fact that these people,

13:33 in order to continue living, have to remain isolated, want to remain isolated.

13:38 That's their one mandate as a civilization: the tribes of the Mashco Piro.

13:44 And so, in October, as Jungle Keepers now,

13:50 we're working with the indigenous people.

13:52 What we do is we take loggers and gold miners

13:54 and make them into rangers and give them better jobs,

13:57 and we try to protect the forest.

13:58 And those people who live up in the remote indigenous community,

14:03 they called us on a satellite phone and they said,

14:06 "Directors, you've been working with us and telling us you wanna help us.

14:10 The tribes are coming out.

14:12 What do we do?"- So, even they don't really know,

14:15 when the tribes emerge from the deep jungle-...

14:18 what to do?

14:19 They were terrified.

14:20 What was your thinking when you got the phone call?

14:23 When we got the phone call, it was a mix of...

14:26 because we're over here trying to get

14:27 land concessions and doing all this important work,

14:29 and part of me was like, "That can't be real,

14:32 so we're gonna keep our heads down."- Bigfoot is emerging-...

14:35 from the forest.

14:36 Like, yeah, sure.

14:37 And then we hung up and we said, "Okay,

14:39 maybe tomorrow if they're still there or something." And then it was crazy

14:43 because it was probably about noon and we had an important day of meetings.

14:46 We had a meeting with the police, we had a meeting with the landowner,

14:49 we were trying to do all this stuff for the conservation work.

14:52 And then I got together with the core team of directors, JJ, Mohsin, Stéphane,

14:55 and we said, "Wait, if this is real, we have to get there now.

15:00 Like now, now." And so we dropped what we were doing,

15:03 canceled the meetings, and put other people on them.

15:07 We got a boat and we called Ignacio, our most hardcore ranger.

15:13 Who has been shot.

15:14 Who in 2019 was shot in the head by an arrow and still bears the scar,

15:20 and he barely survived.

15:21 And we said, "Look, this is going down." He said,

15:24 "I already know because the whole river knows." We said,

15:26 "Can you get us there by tomorrow morning?" And he said,

15:29 "Look, it's a two-day journey by boat.

15:31 So, no." And we said, "Is there any way you can you get us there?" And he went,

15:35 "I'll get you there." And so we got a couple of sacks of rice,

15:38 a couple of cans of tuna, our dry bags, our tents.

15:41 We got on a boat by 6:00 PM

15:44 and we started riding up the river- Through the night?

15:47 ...through the night.

15:48 And so a two-day boat journey that we're trying to flex into one night.

15:51 And so I was at the front with the headlamp— ...with the torch.

15:55 And so the first few hours it was clear, and that comet...

15:58 Remember that comet— ...that was going?

16:00 There was that comet in the sky.

16:01 I remember looking at it and going, "This is it." I knew this was it.

16:05 And the first few hours were clear and the stars were out and it was beautiful,

16:09 and then it clouded over and the lightning started,

16:11 and then it just apocalypse downpoured.

16:14 And from midnight until 8:00 AM it was

16:16 just the front of the boat with the light, and it was just a Star Wars vision

16:21 of raindrops and galaxies and moths flying in my eye.

16:26 People don't realize you can get hypothermia in the tropics,

16:29 but as you're going at night, even if it's 80 degrees outside, in the rain,

16:32 in the wind at night, in a lightning storm, you're freezing.

16:36 And so by 2:00 AM I'm convulsively shivering,

16:40 and we're using the caiman eyes on the side of the river

16:44 because it was so dark we couldn't see where we were going,

16:47 so those shine back at you.

16:49 So I'm finding the caiman eyes and then

16:51 motioning with the light to Ignacio where to go,

16:54 and he knew how to find the channel and we had to jump the waterfalls.

16:57 We did the two-day boat ride in one night.

17:02 And we arrive at this community where...

17:04 And it's morning now and the howler monkeys are calling over the jungle,

17:08 and the little naked children are all by the side and everyone's scared.

17:12 And we get a hug from this guy, Bacho, who we know, and they're like,

17:16 "Come in, come in, come in." And they're like, "The tribe came out yesterday.

17:19 We saw a few of them on the beach

17:21 and they're gone now." And so we collapsed, we fell asleep.

17:26 Rained the whole day.

17:27 That night we went out and we looked for them and there was

17:30 this crazy moment where we're standing

17:33 on this beach and their footprints were there.

17:36 And the local indigenous anthropologist was standing there,

17:41 looking out into the Amazon beyond, and there's just all this wreckage.

17:46 It looked like something very Cormac McCarthy:

17:49 just dark sky, iron clouds, and we're standing there.

17:52 Everyone is waiting,

17:53 'cause at any moment an arrow could just fly through your neck.

17:57 And there's people holding shotguns, and the anthropologist, this little guy,

18:00 is standing there in the front and he's going, "No mole." He's going,

18:04 "Brothers." There's only a few words

18:06 that intersect between the languages and he's going, "Brothers, we're here.

18:09 We don't want to hurt you." He's speaking in the Yine language.

18:12 And he's saying, "Come out." And you can tell

18:15 by their footprints—the trackers explained this—that you could see...

18:18 it was just the balls of their feet.

18:19 So right as we pulled up to the beach, they ran.

18:22 So they were there listening to us, and he's going, "Nomole, come out.

18:26 It's okay.

18:27 Lay down your arms.

18:28 We'll lay down ours.

18:29 Nomole." He just kept saying, "Nomole." And nothing happened.

18:32 And we went back to the village and went to sleep.

18:34 We wake up the next morning, and it's 5:00 AM.

18:38 And again, we're trying to save the jungle.

18:42 We're in a race against time to get these land concessions.

18:44 And so my team, like Mohsin and JJ—Stefan couldn't come because

18:48 he was in town signing paperwork and interviewing loggers and landowners.

18:52 And also, he didn't think there was any chance this was

18:55 gonna be real because in his entire 50-something years in the Amazon,

18:59 he's never seen them.

19:00 And so we're getting ready to leave in the morning.

19:04 We had tents on the boat,

19:05 and Ignacio comes up to me and he goes, "You're my director, right?

19:08 You're my boss?" And I went, "Yeah." He goes,

19:10 "I need to talk to you like a friend." I was like, "Yeah, shoot.

19:14 Go." And he goes, "You'd be an idiot to leave right now." He goes,

19:18 "They're coming." And so he convinced us to stay.

19:20 We pull our tents off the boat.

19:22 Stefan and Mohsin go off with their cameras.

19:24 They start shooting, you know, people.

19:26 These are monkey eaters and fishermen—the community that we're in.

19:30 And everything's quiet.

19:31 And I opened my laptop, and I was working, just writing my book.

19:37 And then it happened.

19:39 Then you start hearing people screaming, "Mashco,

19:42 Mashco!" And people are screaming and women

19:45 are lifting children and running into the huts,

19:47 and the dogs and chickens are going nuts.

19:49 And I mean—- So fear.

19:50 Fear.

19:51 Fear.

19:52 Because we should say, the obvious thing is,

19:55 as far as anyone remembers, any minimal, small encounters with these tribes—...

20:00 have been violent.

20:02 Extremely violent.

20:03 These tribes have remained alive because of their violence.

20:06 Like the Spartans or the Comanches,

20:08 they seem to have adopted violence as a first response to contact.

20:12 Maybe you can correct me on this, but I read that in the late 19th century,

20:17 early 20th century, there was documentation of encounters

20:22 with these tribes by the private armies of the rubber barons.

20:27 And those encounters were, from the rubber barons' armies' perspective, violent.

20:33 And so maybe the lesson the uncontacted tribes learned is that any interaction

20:38 with the outside world is gonna have

20:40 to be violent because they have to defend themselves.

20:43 Yeah.

20:43 You had colonial missionaries in the 1600s and 1700s.

20:46 Then you had the rubber barons, late 1800s into the 1900s,

20:49 just periods of extraction and domination and cruelty.

20:53 And these tribes—their grandparents must have told them,

20:55 "When the outside world comes, you shoot first.

20:58 That's the only thing that's gonna keep you alive."- Do you think the memory

21:02 of those violent encounters is defining to how they think about the world?

21:07 Yeah.

21:07 Because even in my lifetime there,

21:08 in the 20 years I've spent in the Amazon, Ignacio was shot in the head.

21:13 My friend Victor survived a violent encounter

21:16 where they murdered somebody on a beach.

21:18 They've shot numerous people.

21:20 They've even shot people who were trying to help them,

21:23 people who were trying to give them clothing and bananas.

21:26 They call it porcupining them, where they find a body on the beach

21:29 with so many arrows that when they fall over, all the arrows are sticking up.

21:33 And they'll do it out of curiosity too.

21:36 It's like, "Hey, you're wearing a suit.

21:38 That's weird.

21:38 We've never seen anybody in a black and white suit."

21:41 The way Teddy Roosevelt would shoot a bird for science.

21:44 They just want to look at you.

21:47 And so they're operating on a different...

21:49 They don't have the moral system that we have or understand.

21:52 They're truly wild.

21:56 How does Ignacio think about them?

21:57 Because they almost killed him.

21:59 Yes.

21:59 It depends on the mood you get him in, because if you ask him...

22:03 One day I asked him, "If you could see the people who shot you in the head,

22:07 what would you say to them?" And he

22:09 looked at me with that Ignacio look and said, "I wouldn't say anything.

22:12 I would kill as many of them as I could." He also had a time

22:16 where he was in a really remote

22:18 guard station working for the Ministry of Culture,

22:20 and they showed up and he knew that they were going to kill him.

22:24 So he climbed into the peak of the little structure there.

22:28 And just like a dog in a car,

22:30 that greenhouse effect in the top at midday with the sun beating down,

22:34 he was huddled over a mattress while they were walking on the deck—

22:38 ...moving pots and pans and looking at our items and artifacts.

22:41 And he knew that if he was found, they'd kill him.

22:45 But if he stayed up there, he was literally frying.

22:48 He said he was soaking the mattress.

22:49 He could feel himself dying.

22:51 For two hours he had to stay there.

22:53 And he was constantly making this decision: "If I come out, I die.

22:56 If I stay, I probably die." He's like,

22:59 "Probably die is better than definitely die." So he was terrified.

23:03 And as they're screaming, "Mashko," everybody's running,

23:05 Ignacio comes and finds me.

23:06 You can see in his eyes,

23:08 you can see when somebody has that PTSD response, he's breathing heavy.

23:13 He's moving behind trees.

23:16 He's keeping me close to him and going, "Look there.

23:18 He has a bow." "He has a bow." And we're looking up the beach,

23:22 and there's just this clan of naked men

23:24 walking down the beach with these seven-foot bows,

23:27 and they're hunched over, pointing at us.

23:29 They're going, "Look at that one." "Look,

23:31 there's a gun there." You can see them communicating to each other.

23:34 The butterflies are swirling off the beach.

23:36 In these moments you go,

23:38 "Am I entering a moment that is— is this a one-way door?" "Is

23:42 this an irreversible situation?" Because there's

23:44 an unfolding situation where they're coming towards us.

23:47 Are they going to attack?

23:48 What do they want?

23:50 Is there going to be a...

23:53 I mean, I am soaked in chills right now talking about it,

23:58 because I remember standing there, going,

24:00 "There's no way this is real life." It's burned into my memory,

24:03 them walking down the beach with the bows.

24:06 And of course, you know,

24:07 Stefan is up there firing off pictures and Mohsin is down getting video.

24:11 And the community that we're with, people had...

24:15 You hear shotgun shells loading home.

24:18 They're getting ready.

24:19 And there's this one guy, this anthropologist named Romel,

24:22 who has been the only person who has communicated with them peacefully.

24:29 He did it in 2013, where he stood on the beach and spoke to them.

24:33 He knows enough of the local dialect that overlaps

24:36 with theirs that he can speak to them.

24:38 And as they're coming down the beach,

24:40 the butterflies are flying up, and we're all waiting.

24:43 And again, shotgun, you're talking, you know, how many meters?

24:46 30, 40 meters?

24:47 I don't know accurate.

24:48 For an arrow, you loose a seven-foot arrow that weighs nothing,

24:52 you're talking about 300 meters easy.

24:54 They can shoot you from across the river.

24:56 So Ignacio was pulling me and he was like, "Down.

25:00 You go down." "You stay behind this tree.

25:02 Watch them from there.

25:03 Watch out, he has an arrow." He was

25:05 watching everyone because you could see, he's like,

25:07 "This is how it happens."- Did you think this might

25:10 be the last day you have on this earth?

25:13 Were you afraid?

25:15 I was, yeah, of course I was afraid.

25:17 You're with- I'm with my two best friends

25:20 and people that I work very closely with.

25:22 You're in the middle of nowhere, there's no help coming,

25:25 and you're with- ...26 people and there's 50 of the tribe that you can see,

25:30 and you know they're surrounding us.

25:32 There are men on the other side of the river.

25:35 And then we had guns looking back towards

25:37 the jungle because we knew we were being surrounded.

25:40 And so, again, this is always the story of someone's uncle,

25:44 brother, or cousin telling a story that happened, and now it's happening.

25:49 Not in the shadows, not in the middle of the night.

25:52 It's happening in broad daylight.

25:53 They're walking out onto the beach.

25:55 It's like the first time they saw the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

25:59 You're going, "There's no way."- And you are walking on the knife's edge.

26:04 And it's funny you say this, about taking pictures.

26:07 Because there's two ways to think of this situation.

26:10 This is fascinating, or this is extremely dangerous.

26:13 It's both.

26:14 It's a knife's edge.

26:16 So you could approach it one of two ways.

26:18 "If I die, I die.

26:20 I'm going to take some good pictures."- But that was also our mission.

26:24 As the directors of Jungle Keepers,

26:26 we work with this community to ensure their lifestyle can continue,

26:29 and they're saying, "Hey, that's great,

26:32 but as an indigenous community, we're dealing with people that raid our stuff,

26:36 try and steal our women, and kill our hunters.

26:39 Now they're coming out.

26:40 We want you to see it." Documenting it is part of our job.

26:44 We have to show what happened that day.

26:47 And so those guys were shooting.

26:49 And very seriously, it's actually...

26:53 Mohsin's wife and I always joked, "If the tribe ever comes out,

26:57 you stand in front of him, you take the arrow.

27:00 He has kids." And that day,

27:02 we were strategically positioning ourselves, being like, "You, down.

27:07 You cannot get killed." In those moments, you start to go,

27:11 "Okay, where will I be safe from arrows?

27:14 Where can I run to the river if they come over?" And you start planning,

27:19 "Okay, if I jump into the river..." I was going, "Okay, I got my bag.

27:22 I have a can of tuna.

27:23 I have a flashlight." I was like,

27:25 "If I jump into the river and float down and I live,

27:27 I'm still days upriver." And so you start going through all these things.

27:32 And of course, the Mashco Piro people

27:34 are thinking exactly the same thing, probably.

27:37 Well, the interesting thing is that they're initiating the contact, right?

27:40 They are the ones coming out of the jungle and confronting us.

27:45 And fundamentally, that contact is- they're at least giving peace a chance.

27:50 They're trying the peaceful contact first, correct?

27:53 Or was there a violent element?

27:56 Like, what did you sense in the caution of them emerging to the beach?

28:02 Fear.

28:02 As they came out, you could see fear

28:05 on them because the way they were hunched over,

28:09 the way they had their bows ready, they were worried.

28:12 And so they came and Romel is standing there closer than any of us at the edge,

28:17 on one side of the river.

28:18 And it was like shirts versus skins.

28:20 It was two tribes looking at each other

28:23 with a thousand years of civilization between them.

28:26 And Romel's going, "Put down your bows.

28:29 Put down your bows and we can talk." And he's saying,

28:32 "Namole, Namole." He kept saying, "Brothers, brothers,

28:34 please put down your..."- So Namole means brother

28:36 in a language that they might be able to understand?

28:39 Namole means brother in a language that they do understand,

28:42 and it seems like they refer to themselves as the Namoles.

28:47 The brothers.

28:49 So potentially, that's what they call themselves as a tribe, Namoles?

28:54 Exactly.

28:54 And actually, the anthropologists that we've been speaking

28:57 to post-event have been explaining to us that- you know,

29:02 Piro is the group that they're from, these various nomadic tribes.

29:07 And Mashco basically means "wild Piros." One

29:09 thing we know they call themselves is Namoles.

29:12 So we might converge towards the name

29:14 of this tribe being Namole versus Mashco Piro?

29:17 The Namoles, yeah.

29:18 It seems like the most current self-appointed identity is the brothers, Namole.

29:24 Anyway, there's these shredded warriors on the beach.

29:28 They're gigantic.

29:29 With seven-foot arrows, and we're all standing there.

29:32 And so the first thing, again,

29:34 you just think of like the peace pipe in the old stories.

29:38 And the first thing is,

29:40 "Let's make them an offering of peace." So they got a canoe with no motor,

29:44 and we piled it with plantains,

29:47 just full of plantains, 16 feet of endless green bananas.

29:52 And then, I mean, the balls on this guy,

29:55 the anthropologist- he gets into the river, takes the canoe,

29:58 and it's the dry season,

30:00 so the river's only about three or four feet deep at the channel.

30:03 And so he walks this thing out,

30:06 this one man walking in the face of all these warriors.

30:09 He takes the boat and he pushes it towards them.

30:12 And they rush out, and they start grabbing the bananas, and they're not going,

30:17 "Okay, we will unload these bananas and use them later." They're my bananas.

30:22 And they're fighting, yelling, and they're all grabbing 'em,

30:26 and then they push the boat back and he talks to them a little bit.

30:30 It's not a perfect translation, so he's saying, "Where have you come from?

30:33 What do you want?

30:34 Who's your leader?" And he's trying to establish these things,

30:37 and they all sort of talk at the same time, like a flock of birds.

30:41 It wasn't like one man speaks.

30:43 And there were no women.

30:45 The women were nowhere to be seen.

30:48 And actually, at one point as we were preparing,

30:51 I think it was while we were preparing the second canoe of bananas,

30:55 there was a moment of absolute panic.

31:00 It happened when there was a noise behind

31:02 us and you just hear shotguns swing behind us.

31:05 And, you know, Mohsin goes down.

31:07 I go running away from the river because

31:09 I want to see if there's an attack coming.

31:11 And I'm standing, me and this guy were sharing a tree as cover,

31:15 and he's got a shotgun and he's looking back into the forest.

31:20 And what was happening was the women of the tribe had come silently,

31:24 and they were just pulling yucca out of the ground

31:27 and taking the banana plants and ruining the farm completely.

31:30 They were raiding the farm behind us while the men were talking up here.

31:35 So again, were they peacefully contacting us or were they like,

31:38 "Hey, go make a diversion and take the food out the back"?

31:43 So I mean, you really were surrounded.

31:45 We were completely surrounded.

31:47 So they could have murdered all of you, probably.

31:51 Easily.

31:51 We were outnumbered five to one at the least.

31:55 Yeah.

31:55 And maybe they wanted peace,

31:56 but part of the reason is they didn't know how deep this goes.

32:01 They didn't know if you had backup.

32:04 They don't know if we have backup.

32:06 They also had questions.

32:08 Some of their questions were incredible: "How do we tell the difference between,

32:12 how do we know who the good guys and the bad guys are?" Because to them,

32:17 all you outsiders are the same.

32:20 So why, who were the ones cutting down the trees?

32:22 And those are the ones they know are the bad guys.

32:25 Well, the big trees seemed to have incredible significance to them.

32:29 They're significant to us in a different way, but to them,

32:32 it's offensive on an almost religious level to cut a big tree,

32:38 as if you're killing their gods.

32:40 So there's a spirituality to the trees to them.

32:43 It seems like that.

32:44 And so whoever's cutting them down is

32:45 a source of destruction on a spiritual, existential level.

32:51 spiritual, existential level.

32:52 They ask, "Why would you destroy our home?"- In a deep sense,

32:56 the uncontacted tribes represent the deep jungle.

33:00 And so if they're threatened,

33:02 that means the jungle, the deep jungle is threatened.

33:07 They are the human voice of the jungle

33:09 and they're asking questions and they're also demanding.

33:12 You know, they're clapping at us and they're waving and they're saying,

33:15 "Send more bananas." And so they loaded up

33:18 another boat and they pushed another boat out,

33:19 and this time they gave them some rope.

33:21 They all had rope tied around their waists, penises tied up.

33:25 But they love rope and some of them were wearing rope that they had made,

33:29 which is brown or reddish.

33:30 And then some of them were wearing rope that they had clearly

33:34 pillaged from logging camps or the communities

33:36 because it was modern nylon paracord.

33:38 And they had this wound around their waists like a thick belt.

33:42 And they took the second boat and they had

33:44 some rope and they had some plantains on there.

33:47 So, some of these guys might have been the ones that murdered the loggers.

33:51 Could be.

33:52 From a couple of months before that.

33:54 Absolutely, could be.

33:55 But what Ramal said as he was talking to them, he turned to us and he said,

33:59 "The other groups call me the Grandfather." He said,

34:02 "This group, I don't know any of these." He said,

34:04 "This is first contact." He said,

34:05 "This is the first time this group is talking to us." And you

34:09 saw people from maybe 12 years old to what looks like 40-something,

34:16 like a banged-up 40.

34:18 And no really old people and no women.

34:22 So this is a particular clan of the uncontacted--

34:24 It's a particular clan,- a tribe who they've never contacted.

34:28 Is there, just from your memory,

34:30 interesting aspects about the way they were trying to communicate?

34:33 Like you said, clapping.

34:35 I think it's, from an anthropology perspective,

34:37 from a human perspective, fascinating.

34:38 How do you talk to people from an uncontacted tribe like this?

34:43 So clapping, yelling.

34:44 It's interesting to know that there's not

34:46 a hierarchy where there's a leader that represents.

34:48 Or is that something we know for sure?

34:51 Before even coming to talk to you about this, we

34:53 passed this through anthropologists and ethicists and we said,

34:56 "Look, is it even okay?

34:58 Can we talk about this?" Because if you talk

35:01 about this, and you tell people there's these uncontacted tribes,

35:04 people have misconceptions.

35:05 They go, "They're the last free people on Earth.

35:08 We need to go join them.

35:10 We want to see them." There's all this bad stuff that happens,

35:13 and all these people want to be left alone.

35:15 So the last thing we want to do is kill

35:18 the thing we're trying to protect and tell the world.

35:20 But at the same time, they're speaking out.

35:22 They're saying, "Stop cutting our trees.

35:25 Leave us alone." And so if we're not successful

35:28 in the greater Jungle Keepers' mission of protecting this river,

35:31 they cease to exist.

35:32 And so advocating for these people requires us to have this conversation.

35:37 It requires us to have this footage and to show the world,

35:40 and then leave them alone.

35:43 In order for any of this to make sense, I have to show you this footage.

35:46 And this has not been shown ever before.

35:50 This is a world first.

35:51 I mean, up until now...

35:52 You know, we're sitting there this day and- the only thing you've ever seen are

35:55 these blurry images of them from someone's cellphone

35:57 from 100 meters away of the uncontacted tribes.

36:00 And we're sitting there with 800 millimeters

36:02 with a 2X teleconverter and, you know, R5s.

36:05 And so, this is as we're looking through the vines,

36:11 anticipating the tribe coming.

36:12 I'll put a little bit of volume so you can hear it.

36:16 And then you can see, this is the moment.

36:18 This is us running when they're like, "They're out.

36:21 They're coming down the beach."- Oh, wow.

36:27 Oh, wow.

36:31 You see how many thousands of butterflies?

36:33 But look at the way they move.

36:35 Look at the way they point.

36:37 Look at him with his bow.

36:41 Wow.

36:45 There it is.

36:49 They're trying to figure out what they're looking at.

36:54 And they didn't know the cameras were there.

36:56 So this was the guys looking out the back.

36:57 So he's going, "There's something back here."

36:59 He could- hear the women in the farm.

37:01 And I'm looking in every direction because I'm going,

37:04 "Which way is the arrow coming from?" But see, he has his shotgun.

37:07 This is just like a farm shotgun.

37:08 Even if he shot it, you have to use a stick to bang out the shell.

37:11 But see, as they come closer, they start laying down their...

37:15 See, he's laying down his bow and arrow.

37:19 They understand.

37:22 So these are warriors, and the way they were at first moving,

37:25 it really looked like they're ready for violence.

37:28 And now they're all standing in a relaxed- And they're smiling?

37:32 Are they smiling?

37:34 Smiles come at some point.

37:36 I would say that one of these guys seemed like he was in a leadership position.

37:41 He did most of the talking.

37:43 What's with the different hand gestures?

37:46 This, the holding your hand up to the face.

37:49 All of this means something.

37:51 All of this means something.

37:52 Some had red smeared on their faces.

37:54 Some had yellow.

37:55 Did you have a sense of hierarchy at all, like the boss?

37:58 Again, there were just these two dominant guys.

38:00 And, like, this guy and one other guy

38:01 who looked almost like him, like his brother.

38:07 A lot of gesturing.

38:12 Wow.

38:14 This is incredible, Paul.

38:22 Yeah.

38:23 You see the rope?

38:26 Some of that rope is...

38:31 Yeah, I can kind of tell who the bosses are.

38:34 Right?

38:35 All right, so a few of But see,

38:40 even that, as he's pointing- what are you pointing at?

39:02 You guys are nuts.

39:04 You guys are nuts.

39:07 You see, though, they're rushing in.

39:08 There's this desperation.

39:09 They're hungry.

39:10 They also—- Is that in the water, or is that Ramo in the water in that case?

39:15 The, in this particular video, it's a guy named Liner.

39:19 But see these guys?

39:20 They're fighting over it.

39:21 It's not that we're all going to share it later.

39:23 It's, "I get mine, you get yours." And so what does that mean?

39:27 Yeah.

39:28 But here, they're in peaceful mode, for sure.

39:31 Now, after we'd given them,

39:33 after we'd given them several boatloads of bananas, things did calm down.

39:37 Ramo said to them, "Look, we've given you what we can give you.

39:40 We gave you sugarcane.

39:42 We gave you boatloads of plantains." And so then there

39:48 came a time where things were a little more relaxed.

39:50 They were walking around.

39:51 We had a great moment where we'd given them the plantains.

39:56 We'd given them the bananas.

39:58 And he'd said, "Look, that's it." He said, "We've given you what you asked for.

40:04 You asked for bananas.

40:05 We don't— we don't cut the trees here.

40:07 All of us here are not tree-cutters.

40:09 We're indigenous people." And he couldn't explain who the hell we were,

40:13 but they were like, "We don't cut the trees.

40:15 We're not the loggers." And they're like, "Okay." So then at some point,

40:18 Ignacio went out and sort of like started, you know,

40:22 he'd go like this and they'd go like this.

40:24 And he'd dance a little bit, they'd dance a little bit.

40:27 And then there was this human moment of just joking.

40:30 So even Ignacio warmed up.

40:32 Even Ignacio warmed up.

40:33 Once he realized no one was going to die that day, things did calm down.

40:37 It was a false sense of security.

40:40 Here, I'll show you.

40:41 There's a couple more things that are relevant here, though.

40:45 Yeah, this is just them interacting with the boat.

40:48 This is truly incredible, man.

40:51 But then they don't have boats.

40:52 They don't have stone tools.

40:54 They don't...

40:54 Imagine if you showed them ice.

40:57 You know, they wouldn't...

40:59 This is historic.

41:03 I mean, it's the...

41:05 you hear of Percy Fawcett encountering the tribes.

41:08 We've heard of anecdotal accounts.

41:09 This is the first time that the tribes have been filmed,

41:13 that we can hear their voices—

41:15 ...that there's a documented interaction happening.

41:17 I mean, look how comfortable he's getting.

41:20 He's so close.

41:21 They asked him for his shirt.

41:22 He gave his shirt.

41:24 This is incredible.

41:25 They asked him for his pants.

41:27 He gave his pants.

41:28 He was in his underwear.

41:29 You see this?

41:30 The shirt that's over his shoulder?

41:33 Ignacio took off his JungleKeeper shirt and threw it to the anthropologist,

41:37 and then the anthropologist walked off and threw it to them.

41:40 So over the shoulder of that uncontacted naked

41:43 warrior is a JungleKeeper shirt with the logo showing.

41:47 That's great.

41:47 So their, like, their second shirt and they're...

41:49 You just upgraded that guy's status in the tribe.

41:51 He's going to be the new boss with that shirt.

41:54 He's got a dope polo.

41:56 And he didn't even have to order it.

41:59 But yeah, this is in the aftermath when things were calm.

42:03 And then my moment with this that really stuck with me was when Ramo said to me,

42:09 "You know, they're asking about you." And I said,

42:13 "What are they asking?" He goes, "Yeah, they're asking about you." And again,

42:17 I'm not tall but compared to the people in the village,

42:20 I was a little bit taller and had big shoulders.

42:23 And he said, "They said you look like a warrior.

42:25 Could you come forward?

42:26 Show them that you don't mean any harm.

42:29 Show them your palms." And so he pulled me up onto the beach,

42:33 right before they left.

42:35 I hold up my hands.

42:41 Listen.

42:42 And they sang back.

42:46 They're singing.

42:48 They raised their hands.

42:49 I raised my hands.

42:59 Wow.

43:08 And then we were left watching them walk off the beach

43:14 into the jungle with everything that we'd given them, and they were gone.

43:19 And so we went downriver the next day and the community said to us,

43:23 "Okay, now you understand this is real.

43:25 This is terrifying.

43:26 You felt that fear.

43:27 You have a duty, if you're gonna protect this river,

43:29 to protect us from them and to help us figure out what future they want.

43:35 If they want to come to us, if they want to learn farming, if they...

43:39 whatever it is, that's fine." But they were like,

43:43 "We need protection from you guys." And then in this video in the beginning,

43:47 I'm narrating to the camera and walking

43:50 around right as they're coming up the beach.

43:55 But you see this guy, right there in the blue shirt?

44:00 That's George.

44:01 And he was very friendly, very confident with this.

44:03 He said, "Don't be scared.

44:04 They're not going to hurt us." And the next day,

44:07 we went back to town—long journey back to town.

44:09 We go to sleep, we wake up in the morning,

44:12 and we find out that the following early morning,

44:15 our friends in the community had said, "Okay, the tribe is gone.

44:19 We gave them sugarcane, bananas, and said, 'Please come back,

44:23 you're welcome here anytime.'" And George was

44:25 driving a boat with people on board,

44:28 and as they were going upriver, 200 of the tribe ran out,

44:32 surrounded the boat, and they started firing arrows.

44:34 Everybody else hit the deck and got under

44:37 the benches and hid behind bags of rice.

44:40 George was driving as fast as he could, leaning back while driving.

44:44 And one arrow came in just above his scapula and came out by his belly button.

44:49 And so he had that seven-foot arrow tip through him.

44:53 They pulled him out, and I saw the boat afterward,

44:57 and there's just horrific amounts of blood all over the boat.

45:01 He had to be medevacked out, and somehow he lived.

45:04 And we were able to help getting him a helicopter, getting him evaced, all this.

45:09 But again, you just go, "What..." you know,

45:12 these people came out of the jungle and they asked for bananas.

45:16 We gave them bananas and we, in every way possible said, "We mean peace.

45:20 We want friendship with you." And then the next day, they attacked.

45:28 What do you think happened?

45:29 Why do you think their mind turned?

45:31 Or maybe this has to do with the role of violence in their society.

45:39 Maybe it's so integrated into how they interact with the world

45:43 that they don't even see that as a fundamental shift in the interaction.

45:50 I don't know.

45:51 I don't know what to make of it.

45:52 And the only thing I can think is that the way they hid the women from us,

45:55 you don't know for them, maybe we're not allowed to see their women, you know?

45:59 Because the one thing that we got was that as George—

46:02 George's boat and this other boat were going upriver,

46:05 which is how they live—it's not like they were doing anything wrong.

46:08 These people live in a community days into the Amazon, they were going fishing.

46:12 And so they came around a bend and I think they spooked the tribe.

46:16 The tribe might have just acted defensively and said,

46:18 "We don't know who this is." The motors could have set them off, we don't know.

46:22 But they shot him.

46:24 And then the other thing is the thing with the necklace.

46:29 I've asked anthropologists about this, and their answer

46:32 was that at this point they said, "You know more than we do." Because two

46:41 of them had the exact same item around their necks,

46:45 and it seems to be a Brazil nut and then some sort of casing around the side,

46:50 and it looked like animal teeth positioned in there.

46:53 And it's like, what are you carrying?

46:54 Are you carrying medicine?

46:55 Are you carrying some sort of a totem?

46:57 But both of them...

46:58 and it's not a comfortable thing to wear around your neck— you know,

47:02 grapefruit-sized or bigger.

47:04 Do you have a sense if that's a container or is it just like a totem?

47:09 It seems like a container.

47:10 If they didn't let it get wet, they cared for it.

47:13 The guy in this picture, he's got this...

47:15 this is a piece of tree fiber that he has it on him,

47:18 and then he's gotten his hands on Brazil nut sacks,

47:21 plastic sacks from one of the farms across the river.

47:24 And so they just take, they take.

47:26 And one of them got a machete and he was walking.

47:28 As they were leaving, again, during that period where they got friendly,

47:31 he was leaving and he had the machete,

47:33 playing with it and swinging it at butterflies.

47:35 And one of my friends, this guy Bacho,

47:37 he goes, "Oye, deja mi machete." He's like,

47:39 "Drop the machete." And the guy just looked at him and was like, "Yeah,

47:42 come and get it." You know, it's like, "Yeah,

47:44 you cross the river and see what happens."- Do you think he figured out,

47:48 or they later figured out, how to use a machete?

47:51 Oh, they know the machete.

47:52 They understand the machete?

47:53 Yeah, they do raids for machetes.

47:56 They understand the power of sharpened metal.

47:59 It's an Excalibur sword to them.

48:02 But yeah, that one has stuck with me because I wonder,

48:06 what were they carrying in there?

48:08 So what are some of the questions?

48:09 Like if you could know everything you'd want to know

48:13 about them— Maybe in the space of communication and language,

48:16 that's really interesting.

48:17 You mentioned that there's all kinds of calls, animal calls.

48:21 So they obviously know how to fake animal calls.

48:25 Yeah, they can use animal calls with enough

48:29 complexity that they can do basic commands.

48:31 They can speak in Capuchin; they use Tinamou calls.

48:35 Some of our rangers were upriver a few months ago.

48:39 This is recently, they were upriver and they found a Nomole trail,

48:45 a Mashco-Piro trail, and it was Ignacio, of course.

48:50 He made a secret whistle out into the jungle and he's listening,

48:57 and they whistle back.

48:58 So he and everybody on the team just ran back to the boat and got out of there.

49:03 But at least they answered.

49:04 They didn't just shoot.

49:05 He whistled, they whistled, and they said, "Out," and he got out.

49:09 But we don't know, where are the old people?

49:13 Do they not survive?

49:15 What are the marriage rituals?

49:17 How is reproduction handled?

49:19 There are one or two children in the Amazon that I know of who

49:25 have washed downriver on a log and been rescued by communities and raised.

49:30 They either learn the native dialect or Spanish,

49:32 and then, at some point, somebody will go and ask,

49:35 "What was it like when you lived with them?" The answer is always the same:

49:40 "I forget." They don't talk about it.

49:46 So maybe we know that they value secrecy.

49:49 I mean, when you're afraid of the outside world,

49:52 part of that is confidentiality.

49:55 They all sign NDAs.

49:57 Yeah, there are some really good NDAs.

50:01 It's an understood NDA.

50:02 There are no lawyers.

50:04 There's only one way to execute the law.

50:08 Yeah.

50:08 It's either a really strong NDA or that it

50:11 is savage living out there in the jungle,

50:14 where you're eating monkeys and turtles and you're hungry for days on end.

50:19 Your wife might get stolen by another tribe.

50:22 Your baby might get stolen—imagine the botflies

50:25 and the things that they must put up with.

50:29 It's just...

50:29 I mean, what we experienced in three days of living with modern camping gear,

50:35 headlamps, and a sense of direction—they're doing none of that.

50:39 Put us out there naked, a very different story.

50:43 Yeah, the brutality of nature— Werner Herzog comes to mind.

50:46 They have to live in that.

50:49 But then there's something about the jungle

50:52 that serves as a catalyst for spirituality,

50:55 so they must also have a religious component,

50:59 a spiritual component that probably unifies them.

51:02 There must be an ideology they operate under.

51:06 Oh, there must be.

51:07 There's many things they must have.

51:09 They must have a belief system.

51:11 They probably have amazing origin stories.

51:13 It would be amazing to know what things

51:16 they have accurately and inaccurately guessed about us, about the outside world.

51:22 I mean, they've never heard of the country they live

51:26 in or of World War II or any of it.

51:29 And so seeing them come across the beach

51:32 was surreal because it's like this aperture into history.

51:37 By the way, you do have a certain look,

51:39 so you realize like— as I'm speaking to you,

51:41 your face is carved in some wood somewhere,

51:44 And there's a few of them gathering around and like still singing

51:48 about the great gringo with the—- The full beard and the big nose.

51:52 They probably drew this like,

51:53 "He's got hair all over his face and a huge nose, and they tell their children.

51:58 Yeah.

51:58 And it could be anything.

51:59 They— To the children, they say,

52:00 "This is the monster you should be afraid of," or this could

52:05 be the most beautiful encapsulation of the outside world.

52:09 It could be everything in between.

52:11 You don't get to control the myths.

52:13 You don't get to control the myths.

52:15 Yeah, God only knows, but- That's so interesting.

52:18 So now, in that 130,000 acres that we have,

52:20 we know—and this is what we sort of have

52:23 to come out with— we are now protecting these people.

52:28 And the only way to do that is to make sure that they're not contacted,

52:33 let alone that they don't get machine guns shot at them by the narcos,

52:37 or that crazy hippie gringos don't go down there

52:41 thinking they're going to join the coolest commune on Earth.

52:46 So how much of the land that they move about is

52:50 within the 130,000 acres of rainforest you've been able to save?

52:54 And how much of it is not?

52:57 How much of it is in the extra 200,000 acres that you're trying to save?

53:01 Most of the rest, most of that 200,000 that we're

53:04 still trying to protect is territory that is theirs.

53:07 And in order- People always ask me this.

53:10 They're like, "How could you buy the Amazon?" They're like,

53:13 "That doesn't make sense." And it's like, well, I have bad news for you.

53:17 Somebody already owns it and we have to buy

53:19 it from them so that they don't log it.

53:22 And so these landowners are going to sell

53:25 their forest to the logging companies because

53:28 owning 10,000 acres of the Amazon doesn't

53:30 help you if you're a third-generation jungle man.

53:32 And now it's just something that's up there and you live in the city,

53:36 and so they're going to contract either the narcos,

53:38 the loggers, or the miners to go out there and use it,

53:41 and they'll get a little money.

53:42 And when those people see these people, they will kill them.

53:46 That's for sure.

53:47 And shotguns and machine guns in the end will win, not to mention the germs.

53:53 So all the money you're trying to raise

53:55 and all the land that you're trying to save,

53:57 it's all towards that: protecting the deep jungle.

54:00 So when you buy up the jungle, you just want to let it be,

54:04 let the natural ecosystem come back to life in the cases

54:08 when it was logged or just flourish- ...if it hasn't?

54:12 Again, we're talking about the last great jungle.

54:15 I always called it the last endless

54:18 forest because this place is so incredibly remote.

54:21 And then the other question I always get is, "Well, why is this river so,

54:26 so important?" And for my whole career,

54:29 20 years in the Amazon, it's been that it's massively intact forest.

54:33 Places like the ancient forest where the trees have never been cut,

54:37 growing since the dawn of time.

54:39 Thousands of species can be on a single shihuahuaco tree,

54:42 and it's Avatar on Earth.

54:44 You can see the sweat come off your skin

54:47 and rain down and then drink it out of the river,

54:49 and you're part of the chemical physical reality there.

54:53 It's one of the last places that's untouched.

54:58 This changed everything because we realized

55:01 that along with the butterflies and the monkeys and the jaguars and the trees

55:05 and the ecosystem—there's also a human culture that will,

55:10 in the next few years, cease to exist,

55:13 that will be exterminated if we don't protect them.

55:16 And when you look back at what happened to indigenous

55:19 cultures all over the world over the past few centuries,

55:21 that they've been wiped out, we collectively now,

55:25 because we know this, have a chance to undo all

55:29 the injustices of the past by at least doing one right,

55:33 by saying these people want one thing: to just be left alone.

55:37 Imagine if we just protected the river.

55:41 And then it's not that they're this thing that's vanishing from reality,

55:45 but they get to continue living that way.

55:46 And if they want to come out and contact us, great,

55:49 and if they want to continue living like this for 10,000 years, they can.

55:52 And that's what we're working with now.

55:55 It's become so much more important than just,

55:58 you know, trying to protect the environment.

56:01 It's like, no, we're trying to protect things like Yellowstone

56:04 and Yosemite and the sequoias that occur nowhere else on Earth.

56:08 You protect the things that are unique and special, the crown jewels,

56:13 and in both a biological way and an anthropocentric way,

56:18 this has now become a river with global historic significance because

56:25 this story is going to play out in the next 18 months.

56:30 You're trying to save more and more rainforest.

56:34 And the mission is clear because there's just this deep jungle...

56:40 ...that's full of this incredible life.

56:42 And now we know with uncontacted tribes, there's a lot of interests that don't

56:46 care about the jungle they're pushing into...

56:49 ...and want to cut it down, want to destroy it.

56:51 And the mission is pretty clear.

56:53 You just want this whole territory to be preserved.

56:57 Yeah.

56:57 And that's what makes it so beautiful is that this is one of those crown jewels.

57:00 This is one of those special places on earth

57:02 where it's like a time capsule for nature,

57:04 for human culture, for biodiversity, for climate services, for everything.

57:11 I think people get overwhelmed when you say, "We have to save the environment.

57:15 We have to save the ocean." This is one watershed.

57:20 It's 300,000 acres, and we're already at 130,000.

57:24 We've shown we can do it.

57:26 The loggers are happy to turn into rangers.

57:28 People all over the world have become Junglekeeper supporters.

57:32 We have several thousand people that every month

57:35 give us between five and a thousand dollars,

57:37 and that keeps the rangers going, that employs the local people.

57:40 So it's not just drawing a line and making a park and saying,

57:44 "Everybody stay out." It's like, no, you have the Nomoles,

57:47 you have the indigenous people,

57:48 you have a future for the indigenous people where

57:51 their kids don't have to worry about eating monkeys.

57:56 They can be park rangers.

57:58 I get blowback when I say,

58:00 "People can even come see it through the treehouse." People go, "Oh,

58:03 are you going to bring tourists into the wildest place on earth?" And it's like,

58:07 look at that jungle.

58:08 In those 300,000 acres, if you're talking about a football field,

58:11 we're talking about two blades of grass that we access so people can see it,

58:16 which makes a huge difference.

58:17 The fact that we can share it with people...

58:20 I mean, the amount of people that listen, look,

58:24 since the first time I came here and spoke to you,

58:29 the amount to which you've made it possible for us to protect this place,

58:33 the amount of spider monkeys, jaguars, and giant anteaters,

58:37 and those ancient millennium trees that you've

58:40 made it possible to protect is monstrous.

58:44 Thank you, brother.

58:45 No, thank you.

58:45 It's been an honor of a lifetime to be able to watch you.

58:48 I tell this to people, there's certain people I'm glad exist in this world,

58:55 because you've educated me and millions

58:57 of people about the beauty of the jungle,

59:01 and how important the fight to save the jungle is.

59:05 So if you're listening to this, you absolutely must go.

59:08 Please donate, post about it, and share it with friends: Junglekeepers.org.

59:13 You're also doing a gala in New York at the end of January.

59:19 So if you can, please go and donate to help save the jungle.

59:25 Yes, please do.

59:26 And because our first conversation led to the first surge where people

59:32 realized what Junglekeepers was— and because we got this surge of support,

59:36 we were able to expand our work, protect more acres, a lot of our major donors,

59:40 a lot of our small scale donors came in because of that.

59:43 So these are people that went, "Wait, if Lex thinks it's a good idea,

59:46 then we'll do it." I think based on your trust they came in.

59:49 And so...

59:50 I guess also I should say it's not enough

59:53 to speak and communicate the importance of saving the rainforest.

59:57 You actually have to have incredible people there making it happen.

1:00:00 And we have talked and we'll talk more about

1:00:03 the dangers and the complexities involved on how to navigate everything.

1:00:07 And one of the things, and the reason I'm really excited about what you're

1:00:12 doing is I just got to meet the team, and it brings a smile to my face— several

1:00:18 of the people I know who are extremely competent.

1:00:21 Stefan, somebody we've talked about— Yes,

1:00:24 he likes to take pictures of stuff but primarily,

1:00:29 the thing he does incredibly well is run everything,

1:00:34 organize everything to make sure that stuff

1:00:37 happens and happens quickly and efficiently,

1:00:39 all the kind of things that are required

1:00:43 to make stuff like this happen in the complex

1:00:47 environment that the jungle operates in, the sometimes

1:00:51 lawless environment— that the jungle operates in.

1:00:54 So the team is incredible, which is why when you sort of connect the money,

1:01:00 how does the money lead to the solution of the problem?

1:01:04 It's the team and the team makes it happen.

1:01:08 I didn't know that people like Stefan existed.

1:01:11 Yeah, me neither.

1:01:11 You know, because I—- When I met him— He was a beautiful, wonderful human being.

1:01:16 I just...

1:01:17 I'm, you know, again, I can use a machete to catch a fish.

1:01:21 But his systems knowledge and his ability...

1:01:24 I mean, his bandwidth is the size of a country.

1:01:27 It has its own area code.

1:01:28 It's...

1:01:29 He's...

1:01:29 You know, just like JJ opened the door

1:01:32 of the Amazon and gave us that local indigenous perspective.

1:01:36 I mean, yeah, okay, I told some stories about it,

1:01:38 but Stefan came in and went, "Okay, you guys have good ideas,

1:01:42 but you're both jungle guys." "You're not

1:01:44 helping each other." And running those systems

1:01:46 and making the website and making it possible to connect the people that care

1:01:50 with the indigenous ranger program and make

1:01:52 sure the rangers have shirts and cans

1:01:54 of tuna and that there's a person running the ranger team— I mean,

1:01:57 these are things I couldn't dream of organizing.

1:01:59 I can't even organize my...

1:02:01 I can't even make my bed.

1:02:03 I can't even get that far.

1:02:06 Caveman want fish.

1:02:07 Caveman want fish.

1:02:09 Watching you hunt for fish with a machete

1:02:13 is one of the most awesome things I've seen.

1:02:15 You were literally able to catch a fish with a machete.

1:02:19 That's what you're good at.

1:02:20 And Stefan is good at everything else.

1:02:22 Everything else.

1:02:22 You remember the meme of the most interesting man in the world?

1:02:25 Where they say, "He once had an awkward moment just to see how

1:02:28 it felt." It's like Stefan's to-do list doesn't exist because it's already done.

1:02:32 It's just incredible.

1:02:35 Quick pause.

1:02:36 Bathroom break.

1:02:37 Oh, 100%.

1:02:39 Yes, sir.

1:02:41 And we're back.

1:02:41 One thing I forgot to ask you is about the diet of the uncontacted tribes.

1:02:47 You mentioned potentially monkeys and turtles, maybe eggs?

1:02:52 So, what do we know about what they eat?

1:02:55 What's the source of protein?

1:02:56 Do they eat monkeys?

1:02:59 Their primary sources of food would be monkeys, turtles, turtle eggs,

1:03:04 and small game like paca, the large rodent that's the size of a beagle.

1:03:10 Capybaras.

1:03:11 Stuff they can shoot.

1:03:12 They don't really fish.

1:03:14 And we know these things because

1:03:17 our indigenous trackers and rangers find their camps.

1:03:21 They'll find some of those little thatch structures they make on the beaches,

1:03:26 and we see the bones.

1:03:27 There'll be tapir bones, there'll be turtle shells,

1:03:30 which seem like their closest thing to a bowl.

1:03:33 The day that we interacted with them, they did find a bowl.

1:03:37 We saw them walking away with it in one of the farms,

1:03:41 and then days later we found it destroyed.

1:03:43 So they didn't seem like they saw much utility in the bowl.

1:03:48 A temporary container.

1:03:50 It's temporary.

1:03:50 They make a fire.

1:03:51 They must be amazing at making fire.

1:03:53 I don't know how they do it out there.

1:03:56 It's very difficult because everything is wet.

1:03:59 I don't know how they do it.

1:04:01 And I'm a really good firestarter.

1:04:02 And it's tough in the jungle.

1:04:03 It's almost impossible most of the year because everything is wet to its core.

1:04:09 So you think they cook the meat?

1:04:12 They have to be cooking their meat from a parasite standpoint, ...everything.

1:04:16 We know that— ...they're cooking their meat.

1:04:17 We see it.

1:04:18 You know, there's not a lot of excess berries.

1:04:21 Things like berries and nuts and fruits,

1:04:24 that the monkeys and the birds are— ...and the bats are getting to those first.

1:04:27 I mean, that's what fruit does, right?

1:04:29 A tomato is green until its seeds are mature, then it turns red to advertise,

1:04:35 "Eat me," so that you eat it and your gut transports that somewhere else.

1:04:39 It gets free transportation.

1:04:41 In the jungle, that happens so quick that we're never getting produce.

1:04:45 In the book, you have a picture of a native girl on the Los Piedras...

1:04:49 ...having monkey for lunch.

1:04:53 Yes.

1:04:54 It looks really strange when you have— The monkey kind of looks— It

1:05:02 looks a little bit like cannibalism because it looks like a small human.

1:05:08 I don't know what it is about monkeys.

1:05:12 There's a human— ...element to them.

1:05:15 In their eyes, in their form factor,

1:05:18 but even in the warmth they bring to the interaction.

1:05:22 Yeah, I was babysitting her.

1:05:24 She was six at the time, Dira,

1:05:27 and her parents went out and we were left at camp.

1:05:30 They said, "Keep an eye on her.

1:05:32 Make sure nothing eats her." She was like, "Hey, I want lunch." I said,

1:05:36 "Great, what is there?" And she pulls out this monkey head.

1:05:39 She was like, "It's ready," and she starts pulling at the ear.

1:05:43 She's like, "Can you help me?" So I pulled off

1:05:46 the ear with my teeth— ...and then I gave it to her.

1:05:48 We just shared this monkey head back and forth.

1:05:51 We're sitting there and I took a few pictures of her as she's eating.

1:05:54 I have this video where I go, "What's your favorite food?" She said,

1:05:58 "Monkey." I said, "Not cake?" And she was like,

1:06:02 "Monkey." She was pulling its lips off and, like

1:06:04 you said— ...you see the teeth and the eyes.

1:06:07 It's sort of grilled in static agony.

1:06:09 It looks like a tortured human, and she was just enjoying it.

1:06:12 Let me look it up on Perplexity.

1:06:16 How many people in the world eat— monkey?

1:06:20 Does it taste good?

1:06:24 If it were prepared right, it would taste good,

1:06:28 but they just throw it over the fire.

1:06:31 And even if you took a perfectly good

1:06:32 chicken and did that, it wouldn't taste great.

1:06:34 There's no reliable global count of how many people eat monkey meat,

1:06:37 but available data suggests many millions regularly or occasionally

1:06:41 consume primate bushmeat— ...especially in parts of Africa,

1:06:47 Latin America and Asia.

1:06:48 I mean, she looks like that is her favorite meal— is monkey.

1:06:53 Yeah, we had a great time.

1:06:55 Who are we to judge?

1:06:56 Who are we to judge?

1:06:58 I mean, have a tuna sandwich or a monkey face, whatever.

1:07:03 She's loving it.

1:07:04 That's awesome.

1:07:04 That's a good picture there.

1:07:06 And she's adorable.

1:07:06 Yeah.

1:07:07 Now that some time has passed, when you look back at that encounter,

1:07:11 which I really do think is historic,

1:07:14 with the uncontacted tribe, what do you think about?

1:07:18 What lingers with you?

1:07:19 Honestly, I'm still processing it.

1:07:21 I'll still find myself just staring off,

1:07:22 sort of remembering it or looking at the footage.

1:07:27 But it felt like the voice of the jungle was speaking.

1:07:34 You know, these people are...

1:07:37 there's that separation between humans and nature where we go,

1:07:41 "We have to protect nature." You know?

1:07:43 It's like explaining what water is to a fish.

1:07:45 We're part of it.

1:07:46 We depend on it.

1:07:48 And these are people that depend on it 100%.

1:07:50 And as we sit here surrounded by technology,

1:07:54 concrete and civilization, they're still out there right now.

1:08:00 And the fact that we've been trying to protect their home without

1:08:04 even really knowing that they were in it because they're so elusive,

1:08:09 it gives you perspective on where we came from and how far we've come.

1:08:14 You know, I look at simple things.

1:08:17 You board an airplane or you take a picture and you go,

1:08:20 "This is a miracle." And I think having

1:08:23 that perspective of having interacted with them where you go,

1:08:26 "How much work does it take to make this?" If

1:08:32 you and I were standing in the jungle and somebody said,

1:08:34 "You have to make this," how many years before we came up with this?

1:08:39 How many rubber trees, and where would we get the metal,

1:08:42 and what would we use as dye?

1:08:43 How do we make the spring mechanism and figure out how to make it rotate?

1:08:47 I don't know.

1:08:48 And it's like they are working with the bare essentials.

1:08:51 And so it's an interesting reference point to start at in terms

1:08:54 of how incredibly at in terms of how incredibly privileged we are.

1:09:00 You know, the other thing is we

1:09:02 have written text—so many different types of text.

1:09:05 We have code, and we have language, and we have music,

1:09:08 and we can communicate in all these different ways.

1:09:10 And they have spoken word.

1:09:13 They have oral tradition, and that's it.

1:09:16 And so they're operating the way our ancestors did through the power

1:09:23 of what operated and is persisting in modern And so I think, for me,

1:09:29 I come back to the world and it moves very fast

1:09:33 when I see it because I'm still stuck on, you know,

1:09:38 whether or not me and you can drink out of that puddle.

1:09:41 Thinking about that.

1:09:42 The big questions of life.

1:09:44 The big questions of life.

1:09:45 Yeah.

1:09:46 I mean, you're right from the perspective of the uncontacted tribe.

1:09:51 Going from the technological world to the jungle, you realize the majesty,

1:09:57 the magic of the biological system that is the jungle, that is nature.

1:10:02 But from their perspective,

1:10:03 also there is a majesty and magic to the technological world.

1:10:08 The human-created technological world of the pen and the computer,

1:10:15 and the light bulb, that too is magical.

1:10:19 So sometimes we- Absolutely- don't give enough credit to both:

1:10:25 the magic of the technological world,

1:10:26 all the incredible things humans have been able to build,

1:10:30 and the magic of the natural world.

1:10:34 I mean, what we've been able to achieve,

1:10:37 I think you and I and people that spend large amounts of time in the wilderness,

1:10:43 especially somewhere as remote and fundamental as the Western Amazon,

1:10:47 have a different perspective on it.

1:10:49 Because I think that when you're born in it,

1:10:51 you don't necessarily have the framework to appreciate how far we've come.

1:10:57 You go, "Yeah, I got on the train today.

1:10:59 I checked my phone.

1:11:00 I FaceTimed my mom," and you're like,

1:11:02 "This is all normal." And it's like we found a way to take things

1:11:07 out of the ground and mix them together into magic devices that can do anything.

1:11:11 And it's mind-blowing.

1:11:14 There's a deep optimism to that.

1:11:15 You write in the book, which I really like,

1:11:17 I think somewhere in the beginning, quote,

1:11:19 "Given all the death and destruction I've witnessed,

1:11:22 it would be easy to slip into the popular anti-human narrative that we

1:11:26 are a plague on the planet and there's nothing that can be done,

1:11:31 but my career in conservation has given

1:11:33 me a glimpse into an alternate narrative.

1:11:35 I've met people who are proving more and more that something can be done.

1:11:41 I'm talking about real heroes,

1:11:42 people who have dedicated their lives to redeeming the evil

1:11:46 that is capable of being waged by the human soul,

1:11:49 people who are guarding the flame amidst the storm,

1:11:52 proving every day what so many have forgotten.

1:11:56 There is still hope." And that speaks against the cynicism and apathy,

1:12:04 and the view that humans are a destructive force in the world.

1:12:08 That speaks to the fact that humans,

1:12:11 with all the technological elements that we have created,

1:12:15 can actually do a lot of good.

1:12:17 I wrote in my notes here a quote from the great Jane Goodall:

1:12:24 "The greatest danger to our future is apathy." So caring about the world,

1:12:29 having optimism for the world,

1:12:31 having a hope for the world is the way to help have an impact, help save it.

1:12:38 But on that, I have to ask you about Jane.

1:12:42 She passed away on October 1st.

1:12:44 Some humans in this human civilization of ours can

1:12:48 open our eyes to the beauty of the world, and she is one of the best of them.

1:12:55 And she's had an impact on your life.

1:12:59 Maybe can you speak to the impact that she's had?

1:13:03 I mean, when I grew up, you know, my parents...

1:13:07 Being dyslexic, I couldn't read for a very long time.

1:13:09 And so my parents read to us every night,

1:13:13 which was amazing considering how hard they were working.

1:13:16 But they'd find the time to give us an hour of reading every night,

1:13:19 whether it was Lord of the Rings or Sherlock Holmes or Jane Goodall.

1:13:21 And so I grew up with Jane being this figurehead

1:13:26 of conservation and of adventure and sort of a living historical figure,

1:13:31 this legendary person.

1:13:33 And so then one time,

1:13:35 right around the time that I'd been going to the jungle for a few years,

1:13:38 I got to go see Jane speak, I think it was at NYU.

1:13:42 And, you know, sitting in the crowd, watched her, completely amazed.

1:13:47 And I had, at the time,

1:13:48 my cousins had been telling me that I should write down my stories,

1:13:51 the stories of taking care of an anteater and stories of catching anacondas.

1:13:54 And they're like, "Write, you know?

1:13:56 These are such good stories." And so I'd been

1:13:58 writing them down and I just remember after the talk,

1:14:02 she did at least an hour on stage and then hundreds of people lined up,

1:14:11 and she sat there and each of those people wants a moment with this legend.

1:14:17 And so she has to take a picture, shake their hand, they say,

1:14:20 "You mean so much to me." She says,

1:14:22 "Thank you." And then they move on and they say,

1:14:24 "We'll send you the picture." "Okay,

1:14:25 great." So then I got my moment and we waited in line

1:14:28 and I gave her this manila envelope with two chapters in it.

1:14:31 And one chapter was "Lulu the Giant Anteater" for Mother of God,

1:14:35 and the other chapter was me, JJ and Pico out on the river catching anacondas,

1:14:39 and just talking about how amazing the jungle was.

1:14:41 And I said, "I'd love it if you could endorse my book

1:14:44 that doesn't exist yet." And I felt like such a loser doing that.

1:14:47 And I felt so stupid because I feel like

1:14:50 everyone was probably asking something of her, and I,

1:14:52 you know, it's incredibly draining to talk to that many people,

1:14:55 even if it is for a good reason.

1:14:58 And 48 hours later, she got back and she said, "You know, this is incredible.

1:15:03 I would love to write a recommendation for your book as soon as you find

1:15:07 a publisher." And what happened with that is that Jane—the way I think of it is,

1:15:13 you know, she waved her very powerful magical wand in my direction,

1:15:17 and she had the incredible compassion and presence to actually—I mean,

1:15:23 after talking to that many people and being

1:15:25 on the road 300 days a year and being Jane Goodall,

1:15:28 this living legend scientist,

1:15:31 to actually do something so mundane as look at some kid's writing.

1:15:36 And of course, when I went to publishers, they said, "Jane who?

1:15:40 Who said that they would endorse your book?" Because everyone had said no.

1:15:44 Every publisher in New York had already said no.

1:15:47 And then after that, HarperCollins took me on and they said,

1:15:49 "Well, if Jane Goodall thinks it's a good idea,

1:15:51 then we think it's a good idea." And it became

1:15:54 Mother of God and then because of that, Jungle Keepers,

1:15:59 Dax, everything else stemmed from that.

1:16:01 So had Jane not been the legend that she is truly in every moment,

1:16:07 my whole career would never have happened,

1:16:09 which also means that those thousands of heartbeats and thousands of acres

1:16:12 in the Amazon wouldn't be protected

1:16:14 because we never would've started Jungle Keepers.

1:16:17 And she did that not because you're special; she did that to everybody.

1:16:22 And now just imagine the scale, the impact she's had because of that.

1:16:27 And guess what?

1:16:28 You have a bit of that responsibility now as well.

1:16:31 There's young people that walk up to you in that way,

1:16:35 and you have that responsibility of seeing them, of giving them a chance,

1:16:38 of seeing the potential in every single human being that walks up to you.

1:16:45 It definitely...

1:16:46 I would say that with Jane, we could do four hours on just Jane:

1:16:50 what she did for humanity, for science, for women, for wildlife,

1:16:54 the amount of other people that she inspired

1:16:57 and gave careers to, everything she did for me.

1:17:01 But to me, that presence of mind when you reach that level,

1:17:04 to not be worried about your own travel and your own schedule and busy

1:17:08 with getting some rest—and that she actually

1:17:11 looked at it—has informed how I operate.

1:17:14 And indeed like you say, at this point, as strange as it is,

1:17:18 people will stop me on the street and say,

1:17:21 "Hey, I watch your videos every night with my kids." Or someone will say,

1:17:25 "How do I get your job?

1:17:27 I've been watching you for years and I'd

1:17:29 love to help conservation." So it's made it so

1:17:33 that I follow her example where it's like

1:17:36 you stop what you're doing and you pay attention.

1:17:39 Because you don't know,

1:17:40 that might be the next kid that's out there saving a river,

1:17:43 or the next person that makes an innovation

1:17:45 that makes it possible to clean rivers,

1:17:46 or whatever it is, whatever their dream is.

1:17:49 Jane was in the hope business.

1:17:51 She always said it: you know,

1:17:53 that not losing hope was key to staying in the fight.

1:17:58 And that we live at a time when, apathy is a poison peddled by the darkness.

1:18:06 It's— they're trying to make you feel disoriented, apathetic, and scared.

1:18:11 And fighting back against that and having conviction and passion and fire

1:18:15 and hope are the only way that we're gonna fight that.

1:18:19 She understood that and spent her whole life spreading it,

1:18:22 guarding the flame against the storm,

1:18:25 and tipping her candle to others to light them.

1:18:28 I mean, that was her whole thing.

1:18:31 What advice would you give to young people on how to do that?

1:18:36 Those young Pauls sitting there—and your life

1:18:38 story is just incredible in that way.

1:18:41 You've taken a leap into adventure, into the unknown.

1:18:46 What would you recommend they do?

1:18:49 I think the thing that I try to communicate to them— and again,

1:18:53 my inbox is filled with people.

1:18:55 "I'm from Finland.

1:18:55 I'm from Spain.

1:18:56 I'm from Georgia." People saying, "How do I get your job?

1:18:59 How do I get out there and do it?" And it

1:19:02 really is just that: you throw yourself headfirst into adventure.

1:19:06 You just do it.

1:19:08 I remember hearing people say, "You know, if I can do it,

1:19:12 you can do it." And I remember how hollow that sounds 'cause I'm like,

1:19:14 "Yeah, you're on a talk show or you just wrote a book..." You know,

1:19:19 these titans of their industries and innovators saying, "Oh, if I can do it,

1:19:24 anybody can do it." But now that we're protecting all this rainforest,

1:19:27 and that I've lived with the animals and met the tribes,

1:19:32 and it's becoming this global movement.

1:19:35 You know, I didn't have a PhD.

1:19:38 There's that quote that someone less qualified than you is

1:19:41 living your dream life and has your dream job right now,

1:19:44 and I am the poster child for that because I went

1:19:47 there when I failed out of high school and started taking unmatriculated

1:19:51 college classes and going to the jungle with my friend JJ

1:19:53 and just doing it for the sheer love of it for years,

1:19:57 almost a decade before anything surfaced.

1:20:00 And the other thing is there's not even a path.

1:20:04 There was no path ahead of us.

1:20:06 There was no, "Okay, you go to school.

1:20:08 You get trained in this, and you're gonna become

1:20:09 a this." I went there and it was like, "You're never gonna be a conservation

1:20:13 biologist 'cause you don't have the grades.

1:20:14 You don't have a PhD.

1:20:16 You don't have family money.

1:20:17 You're not gonna be able to protect rainforests." So I said,

1:20:20 "All right, well then, selfishly, I just wanna see it." And then I

1:20:23 ended up getting trained by the indigenous people,

1:20:26 and like what happens so many times—you could

1:20:29 use a restaurant example as the best one, where you might start washing dishes,

1:20:34 but at least you're in the restaurant, you know?

1:20:36 And then at some point,

1:20:38 the manager's gonna need you to help with restocking and so on.

1:20:41 And after a few years, you're gonna be helping the new guy,

1:20:45 and after a few years you might end up being the manager,

1:20:48 and at some point you might end up starting your own restaurant.

1:20:51 That's the only way to do that.

1:20:53 You can't just search it on a computer.

1:20:55 You have to go sweat and bleed and do it.

1:20:58 And that said, especially if you fall in love with the journey,

1:21:02 the path you take is full of difficult periods.

1:21:05 I think you said somewhere this just seems to be the nature of it.

1:21:11 That there's going to be pain and suffering along the way.

1:21:14 You have a really nice post...

1:21:16 ...that I recommend people watch about just this.

1:21:20 When people ask for advice: that the hardship,

1:21:25 the suffering— —and I've seen how much you care.

1:21:29 When I've seen you, just in your face,

1:21:32 when you see a tree being cut down or you see the fires,

1:21:39 there's real pain there in your heart and you have to carry that.

1:21:44 And so the post is, "How honest can I be?

1:21:48 What do I tell these kids who message me asking how they can do what I do?

1:21:53 It's not David versus Goliath.

1:21:55 There's no sword or sling that can hold back a dragon this big.

1:21:58 You're going against the current of global economic entropy and human apathy.

1:22:03 Swimming against the current is tiring, a great way to drown.

1:22:07 Every day we don't win, we lose, and when we do, worlds burn.

1:22:12 The more you know, the more it bleeds.

1:22:15 The heartbeats all stop when the flames come through.

1:22:18 Constellations of species turn to ghosts, and we're the only ones saving them.

1:22:24 Cupped our hands around a candle in the howling

1:22:28 darkness." And people want to be inspired.

1:22:31 Keep that social media going, keep it up.

1:22:34 You're doing great.

1:22:35 They want to know we're winning,

1:22:36 and we've done a lot of winning, but not right now.

1:22:40 We're getting slaughtered.

1:22:42 We're at that part of the story.

1:22:44 We're almost at the end game.

1:22:46 We can think positively, as positively as we want.

1:22:50 Thoughts and prayers won't stop a chainsaw,

1:22:53 and the motor that's carrying us against the current towards

1:22:56 the miraculous goal only works when there's gasoline in it.

1:23:00 As soon as that stops, we drown.

1:23:03 We drown.

1:23:04 We can take the warm light from all of those who help and not let

1:23:09 it bother us that there are people who could buy a planet, claiming to care.

1:23:13 At some point you realize what's really

1:23:17 happening." "As a kid you'd rather be Aragorn.

1:23:20 You don't want to actually carry the ring,

1:23:22 not when you learn what it's going to cost, even if you make it.

1:23:27 How can you explain to Sam why you can't get on the boats?

1:23:31 Whatever it takes, whatever it takes.

1:23:34 It's that time of year again.

1:23:36 Here come the flames.

1:23:38 Whatever it takes, it's coming." And people should

1:23:41 watch the video that goes along with this.

1:23:43 But that speaks to the pain, the difficulty, the challenge,

1:23:47 the suffering involved— when you're faced with the possibility of destruction.

1:23:52 And that's the other side of the sword of caring for something deeply.

1:23:57 Yeah, we've watched a lot of forest burn.

1:23:59 We've pulled a lot of animals out of the flames.

1:24:02 Yeah, I wrote that at a time where we were just getting hammered.

1:24:08 Funding wasn't coming in.

1:24:09 There were miners.

1:24:10 It was just months and months out in the jungle alone, and yeah,

1:24:15 that— it's a Thom Yorke track that I'd just been

1:24:18 listening to again and again, and it was so low.

1:24:21 There was then a huge new invasion where

1:24:25 they just— burned the whole side of the river.

1:24:30 And you know, it's never going to come back.

1:24:34 And it's part of the forest that I loved,

1:24:36 and I knew the animals there and it's, it's gone.

1:24:38 And so we have to live through that on a weekly basis,

1:24:44 at least a day-to-day basis.

1:24:46 And when you take on responsibility for something

1:24:49 like this, you— you go to sleep thinking, "If we don't do it then worlds burn.

1:24:56 If we don't save it,

1:24:57 then..." Every time you said the sadness that surrounds a happy moment— well,

1:25:01 it's like, how am I supposed to go

1:25:03 to a party and talk with people about anything,

1:25:06 or how am I supposed to go to sleep when

1:25:09 if we don't succeed at what we're trying to do,

1:25:14 if we don't outrace the chainsaws and the roads, then those trees die,

1:25:18 those millennium trees, and we're the only ones out there protecting them.

1:25:22 When you see that black scorched earth with nothing left,

1:25:25 it's just ashes on the ground and the cacophony of life is silenced,

1:25:32 and it's just this horrible, violent silence.

1:25:35 It makes you sick.

1:25:37 And so, yeah, there's a lot of weight

1:25:40 that comes with that where we're not theoretically doing something.

1:25:48 We're black and white, practically doing it.

1:25:52 So that's the other side of the advice to young people.

1:25:55 Oh, yeah.

1:25:56 It's not gonna be easy.

1:25:58 No.

1:25:58 When they say, "How do I get your job?" it's like, "Well, you don't want my job.

1:26:02 You don't want the botflies, and you don't want the dengue,

1:26:05 and you don't want—don't even inquire what a normal life

1:26:09 looks like." I lived out of a backpack for 20 years.

1:26:13 You know how many monkey faces I had to eat because there was no other food?

1:26:18 Like, seriously.

1:26:20 Just that shot, being alone on the boat

1:26:22 in the river and how many days the motor didn't work.

1:26:25 And you sleep out there,

1:26:26 and you get rained on because you don't have any protection,

1:26:29 and you have some leaves over your face.

1:26:31 And then you go home, and everyone's got a job,

1:26:33 and everyone's got kids, and everyone's happy.

1:26:35 And they're like, "What are you doing down

1:26:37 there?" "I'm trying to save the rainforest." They're like,

1:26:41 "Sure." And now we're at this point where,

1:26:45 I've cared a whole lot for a long time.

1:26:48 We've had rises, and then we've had falls,

1:26:50 and we've had wins, and then we've had failures.

1:26:52 And the last few years, we've had this rolling success of people

1:26:56 finding out about our work and coming in.

1:26:58 And we start to go, "Wow, if we protected 130,000 acres,

1:27:01 we might actually be able to do this." And so,

1:27:04 there's that moment in 300 where they show Leonidas,

1:27:06 and they say, "Even the king allows himself a moment

1:27:09 of hope that this might be okay," right before they get slaughtered.

1:27:13 And someone very dear to me recently said,

1:27:17 "In celebration of where we've gotten to, that if

1:27:20 it happened in any harder of a way, it would have actually killed you.

1:27:24 And if it had happened in an easier way,

1:27:26 it wouldn't have been so divine." And that slapped

1:27:31 me in the face because it was like,

1:27:33 "Man, it has been so hard, but look where we are.

1:27:38 We might actually do this."- It just has to be that way.

1:27:44 Speaking of which, another complexity in all of this, you

1:27:50 write about in the afterword of the book,

1:27:53 about the narco-traffickers that have moved into the river basin.

1:27:58 They are not the loggers that we've spoken about anymore.

1:28:04 They're growing coca for cocaine, and they're building airstrips.

1:28:10 So tell me how this came to be.

1:28:14 Like you said, the loggers...

1:28:16 our whole life on this river,

1:28:17 when loggers come in, JJ and I would walk up to them and say, "Hey,

1:28:21 what's up?" Sit down with them and have a beer or share a meal and talk

1:28:25 to them and ask who their father was and if we know them and then hire them.

1:28:29 And they're friendly.

1:28:33 They are, in a way, brothers, JJ.

1:28:36 They're the same.

1:28:38 They come from the same people.

1:28:40 They're simple local people.

1:28:41 They're not evil.

1:28:42 They're just people who usually have a kid and a wife,

1:28:44 and they're looking for work.

1:28:46 And so they work with the chainsaw because that's what they know.

1:28:49 And they work for, you know, $30 a day,

1:28:53 if that, in very challenging, harsh environments.

1:28:56 And so when we see clearings,

1:28:58 I would always go with the drone and fly it over clearings.

1:29:01 We'd get some intel, and then we'd go bring that to the police.

1:29:04 And the police, you know...

1:29:06 Jungle Keepers supports the police at this point because

1:29:08 the Peruvian government has a hard time with resources,

1:29:13 trying to manage Amazonia.

1:29:15 And when you're three days from civilization,

1:29:18 getting cops out there is not the easiest thing.

1:29:20 So sometimes we'll lend boats or gasoline or logistical support.

1:29:25 There was a moment in March, several hours upriver from, you know, home base.

1:29:31 And I'm with JJ on the boat, and I fly the drone,

1:29:34 and there's this big new clearing,

1:29:35 and I flew the drone over, and we lower the drone.

1:29:37 And a few times, I've had people come out and wave at the drone or say like,

1:29:41 "Get away." And we're out in the middle of the river just sort of idling,

1:29:46 staying in one place, and I lower the drone.

1:29:48 And I see the, these little huts, and we're saying,

1:29:50 "Okay, this is a big clearing." I'm snapping images, snapping images.

1:29:53 There are people on the boat with us,

1:29:55 these visitors who had flown in, and I have my local team,

1:29:59 and all of a sudden, people come running out of the houses.

1:30:02 And they run straight to their boats,

1:30:05 and we're already above where their boat is.

1:30:07 So home is in downriver direction.

1:30:09 They get in their boats and start chasing us,

1:30:13 and we start driving, and we're going at full speed.

1:30:15 We have a 60 horsepower.

1:30:17 They had a 40, and we're driving up these...

1:30:20 We're just doing this chase now,

1:30:22 and our guests, who are gonna be potential funders.

1:30:25 At one point, the father looked at me, and he goes, "Hey,

1:30:28 this whole running from the Pirates of the Caribbean thing," he's like,

1:30:31 "It's getting scary.

1:30:32 You're scaring us." He was like,

1:30:35 "Can we..." I'm like, "What are we doing?" He goes,

1:30:37 "When are you gonna put the drone down?" And I go,

1:30:40 "I'm flying the drone at full speed to keep up with the boat." And I

1:30:43 just crash-landed the drone on the side of the river near a big tree.

1:30:45 I just said, "Forget it.

1:30:46 We'll get it later." And I was like, "Fine.

1:30:48 This happens all the time." "They get mad.

1:30:50 They chase us.

1:30:51 It's no big deal." And I smiled at him, and JJ's smiling.

1:30:53 He goes, "This is so bad." And he's smiling.

1:30:55 And JJ looked at me, and the smile fell off him like a mask,

1:30:58 and he looked at me, and he was like,

1:31:01 "This is not good." And we kept going upriver and luckily,

1:31:06 there was a camp of police that we've worked with quite a bit.

1:31:09 And I went to a friend of mine, and I remember we got off the boat.

1:31:14 I shook his hand.

1:31:15 He said, "What's going on?" I said, "Look downriver,

1:31:17 and there's a boat tearing upriver towards us." And he did three things.

1:31:21 He got the rest of the guys, they armed up, they got on the boat with guns.

1:31:26 They put ski masks on.

1:31:27 They got ready for combat.

1:31:28 They told us to get down.

1:31:30 He also said, "Hey, turn on the sat-link.

1:31:32 Call for support back home." We turned our boat around.

1:31:35 And as soon as the narcos, which we didn't even realize were narcos chasing us.

1:31:41 We thought we were looking at loggers.

1:31:43 When they saw the guns and they saw us face them,

1:31:46 they turned their boat around, and they went back downriver.

1:31:48 So we got escorted downriver,

1:31:50 and I remember shaking his hand, my friend, and saying,

1:31:54 "Thank you for saving us today." And telling the other guys they did a good job.

1:31:59 I said, "Get back upriver." We'd been brought home safe.

1:32:02 This is hours later.

1:32:03 I said, "Good job.

1:32:04 Thank you so much." And they went and then that night,

1:32:08 I'm sitting at the station that you know.

1:32:11 know.

1:32:11 And I get a phone call from Stefan.

1:32:14 And he He goes, "Pick up the phone." I go,

1:32:17 "I'm in the middle of a conversation." He goes,

1:32:20 "Pick up the phone." And my friend, whose hand I had just shaken,

1:32:26 they went back upriver,

1:32:27 and as they were unloading their boat and washing off in the stream,

1:32:30 the narcos did a drive-by and shotgun straight to the chest,

1:32:34 shot him in the chest.

1:32:35 And so all of that enthusiasm,

1:32:37 and "We're protecting the biodiversity" and "This is

1:32:40 so great," there's people from around the world...

1:32:43 it's like that scene in the movie where there's

1:32:46 a montage of success and hope and acres and winning—gunshot.

1:32:53 And I could still feel his hand in my hand.

1:32:55 I just shook his hand.

1:32:56 I said, "No." I said, "Well, is he okay?" He said,

1:32:59 "He took a shotgun straight to the chest." And they're like,

1:33:02 "He's dead." I said,

1:33:03 "Okay." And so I had to go out to dinner and not show the guests anything,

1:33:10 and just smile and laugh and talk to them

1:33:12 about whatever and keep that in, which felt very, very difficult to do.

1:33:17 And so what happened, as you said,

1:33:21 the threat level escalated and we didn't know it.

1:33:25 The narcos had come in and started realizing that there's so

1:33:28 much wilderness here that they can operate and there's no police.

1:33:31 And then when we flew the drone, they got mad.

1:33:34 So we realized this.

1:33:38 We communicated with the police and they said, "Oh yeah,

1:33:41 these are narcos." Now we realize this is part of the serious drug mafia.

1:33:46 And then I had gone back—with the incident

1:33:48 you're referring to at the end of the book, I had gone back to New York, again,

1:33:54 to speak to donors to try and get this work to continue.

1:34:02 You know how it works.

1:34:03 We're at the station, then you go to that little logging town,

1:34:06 and then there's a road.

1:34:07 And so our pickup truck had come in on the road,

1:34:10 and JJ was supposed to come down, get in the truck and drive back to the city.

1:34:17 JJ was on the river and went,

1:34:18 "I forgot I was supposed to get more stuff at the city." He goes,

1:34:21 "You know, I'll go tomorrow." He went back up and sent the boat driver down,

1:34:28 and told our driver, Percy, who was waiting with the pickup truck,

1:34:31 "JJ's not coming today." "Go back and come back tomorrow." Percy starts

1:34:34 driving down the road and he sees a tree across the road.

1:34:39 This is a single-lane road through the jungle; there's nowhere else you can go,

1:34:43 and men with guns come and stick the pistols in through the open windows,

1:34:46 gun against his head.

1:34:48 They pull him out and they go,

1:34:50 "Where's JJ?" And "¿Donde está el gringo volador?" They said,

1:34:53 "Where's that shithead gringo that flew the drone?" And if

1:34:56 either of us had been in the car that day,

1:34:58 if either of us had been in the car that day,

1:35:00 they would have killed they took his phone, our driver Percy's.

1:35:03 Thank God, they didn't hurt him, driver, Percy.

1:35:06 They, thank God, they didn't hurt but they sent a message to us.

1:35:10 They said, "Let them know." They said,

1:35:12 "We missed you this time, but we'll get you next time.

1:35:15 We're gonna get you." And so when JJ called me, he was howling.

1:35:23 He just had that adrenaline and that emotion of that it almost happened.

1:35:33 And so that was...

1:35:34 that changed everything.

1:35:35 And so since then we've been, you know,

1:35:37 it's not counting butterflies and taking ecological surveys,

1:35:41 it's that there's a drug war being fought on our river.

1:35:44 And now when these roads come in, we can't just

1:35:48 go out and meet these people anymore and talk to them,

1:35:50 'cause they are actively looking to shoot us.

1:35:53 They know our names, and then...

1:35:55 as if all these other things weren't enough indication,

1:35:58 the police intercepted a phone from someone they arrested, and on the phone,

1:36:01 in the WhatsApp chat, it said, "If you see JJ or the gringo,

1:36:05 anyone in our network, please kill them.

1:36:07 You'll be rewarded." So we both have a hit

1:36:10 out on us and life on the river has changed.

1:36:14 At the moment, we don't...

1:36:16 we can't...

1:36:16 I can't just go out walking around, swimming and driving my boat.

1:36:21 You have to be looking over your shoulder at all times.

1:36:24 You can get as trained as you want

1:36:26 with a pistol and sleep with it under your pillow,

1:36:29 but the way these people work, they'll catch you when you're least expecting it.

1:36:33 They'll wait till you're at a cafe in town.

1:36:35 They'll wait till your motor doesn't work on the side of the river.

1:36:38 It'll just be a quick one and they'll go.

1:36:41 And so that feeling,

1:36:42 on top of the weight of- of protecting the ecosystem and the animals,

1:36:47 and the race to tell people about it and do all

1:36:50 this, it's like now we're actively being hunted when we're there.

1:36:54 And this is very directed at you and JJ?

1:36:59 So they really don't care about the others.

1:37:04 They understand.

1:37:05 Are you afraid?

1:37:07 What's it been like living with this, with the real

1:37:15 fear of being murdered at any moment?

1:37:21 I wish I could say I handled it better than I've been handling it.

1:37:24 I wonder how people in war zones do it.

1:37:28 I wonder how some of my soldier friends that I

1:37:30 have immense respect for did it when they were deployed,

1:37:33 'cause for me, once this happened, it was, every phone call now I think,

1:37:38 "Did something happen to JJ?" Every time I go to sleep,

1:37:44 my dreams are that I'm being shot.

1:37:49 And it really threw me.

1:37:51 It really affected me.

1:37:52 When JJ called me, the way he was just shouting...

1:37:55 I don't even remember what he was saying.

1:37:57 He was just shouting, "They almost got us!

1:37:59 They almost got us!" He was so, terrified and angry and, so yeah, it's...

1:38:06 There was a day not long ago that I was swimming in the river.

1:38:10 And I was just in the river, you know,

1:38:12 right in front of the stairs at the station, and a boat came around the bend.

1:38:16 And I remember thinking, "Do I run?

1:38:19 Do I go underwater?

1:38:20 Do I hide?

1:38:21 What the hell do I do?" I didn't have a gun near me.

1:38:24 The security people were up the stairs.

1:38:25 You go, "Holy shit." And it's not the danger of, "if I jump on an anaconda,

1:38:31 it might kill me," or "if I climb this, I

1:38:33 might fall." These are people who want to kill you.

1:38:36 And on top of it, you have the, you know...

1:38:41 When you see what your friend looks like

1:38:46 after three days of floating in a river,

1:38:48 what a body looks like of a person you used to know,

1:38:51 that's very viscerally terrifying because there's the tragedy

1:38:56 of that, that person lost his life, who was younger than I was.

1:39:02 He was a kid.

1:39:03 He was in his 20s.

1:39:04 And it's just very hard, it's very hard to do anything because...

1:39:09 I mean, like right now, my hands are sweating.

1:39:12 It affects me.

1:39:13 And even in the daylight, if I can go, "You know, it's fine.

1:39:16 This is part of the thing," you know?

1:39:17 This is the adventure, people deal with this all over the world.

1:39:20 You can talk yourself tough and then, in those quiet moments,

1:39:24 you wake up at 4:00 AM and you go, "Fuck." You know, "Why am I sweating?

1:39:29 Why did I just have those dreams?

1:39:30 Why is my heart racing?" It sinks its way

1:39:34 into your subconscious and it's just not what we signed up for.

1:39:40 We wanted to just protect this beautiful

1:39:42 place and this is this whole new threat.

1:39:44 We're not trained for this.

1:39:46 We're not a police or military force and it's like we've

1:39:52 now seen violence on a scale that we were very unprepared for.

1:39:59 And so, just two days ago,

1:40:01 I was on my way to you and my phone rang at nine o'clock at night and it was JJ.

1:40:05 And my heart was jackhammering.

1:40:07 I had to pull over because I was going, "What news now?" You know?

1:40:12 "Did we lose another bunch of acres?

1:40:15 Is it a new road?

1:40:17 Did somebody die?" It really scatters you.

1:40:20 In some sense, it's a twist that you didn't ask for and it

1:40:23 doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the fight you're fighting,

1:40:27 which is protecting the rainforest.

1:40:29 But because of it being pristine and quiet and away from civilization,

1:40:35 it also becomes a place where, you can have airstrips.

1:40:41 It becomes lawless in a certain way because it's so far away from civilization.

1:40:46 Yeah.

1:40:46 It's the only place that they can operate with impunity.

1:40:49 There's no police out there.

1:40:51 And so they saw us helping the police and they went,

1:40:56 "Cut the head off the snake." And, you know,

1:41:00 Chico Mendes, Dorothy Stang—the list of environmental defenders

1:41:03 that are assassinated in the Amazon every year is huge.

1:41:09 There are endless examples of it.

1:41:11 It's staggering.

1:41:12 I forget the exact numbers, but every year we lose local leaders who are

1:41:19 trying to stop an oil company or a drug cartel,

1:41:21 and they just shoot them because they know

1:41:23 that one person who's able to rally that support,

1:41:26 who has that voice, if you just shoot them,

1:41:29 usually it ends the thing and then they can

1:41:31 go back to doing whatever the hell they want.

1:41:34 And so right now, we're working very closely with the Peruvian government.

1:41:39 People assume that, you know,

1:41:41 a Latin American government is automatically corrupt,

1:41:43 but we found that these are really good people that want to help their citizens.

1:41:50 And the police have been working very hard to stop the narcos,

1:41:54 to protect the local indigenous people

1:41:57 because with the narcos comes human trafficking.

1:42:01 With a team of male narcos that are out in the woods making drugs,

1:42:07 they want prostitutes.

1:42:08 And how do they get prostitutes?

1:42:10 They go steal girls from indigenous communities that don't know any better.

1:42:15 Then there's reports that the narcos

1:42:16 have made contact with the uncontacted tribes.

1:42:19 And of course, they're gonna shoot machine guns at them.

1:42:21 They're not gonna have a shotgun where it's a fair fight.

1:42:24 They're gonna mow them down and the uncontacted tribes are gonna have no idea.

1:42:28 That's why I posted a video of me in the rain saying,

1:42:32 "This is endgame," because there was a new road that was

1:42:35 coming off the north of our territory above the ancient forest.

1:42:39 They had jumped over 'cause we stopped it at the ancient forest.

1:42:42 They've gone above the ancient forest.

1:42:43 Now, they're trying to cut down to a new area.

1:42:47 And so it looks like this, like that.

1:42:55 ...Trans-Amazon...

1:42:57 Stefan made this map, of course.

1:42:58 But you see the area that we're trying to protect loosely,

1:43:01 so that we don't give away anything...

1:43:04 Loosely, the area that we are protecting.

1:43:06 So, the light green is the 130,000 acres— ...and then this metastasizing

1:43:10 network of roads just reaching out and trying to get in.

1:43:13 And so they're trying to come in from the north where that arrow is,

1:43:17 they're trying to come down.

1:43:18 And so the police are fighting them along

1:43:21 this— ...and it's a full-on drug war right now.

1:43:24 And so, stopping that, securing this northern boundary.

1:43:28 And again, just the power of what we have.

1:43:31 When I posted this, I asked Stefan to make,

1:43:34 show people the road and where it's going to go.

1:43:37 We posted this video and said, "We have to protect this 100,000 acres right

1:43:41 now." And all up here is uncontacted tribe territory.

1:43:44 And just from that one post,

1:43:47 we got $150,000 in 48 hours and we bought this concession.

1:43:51 We stopped that road.

1:43:53 But now they're up here— ...and they're trying to come down.

1:43:57 And this is the thing: it's great.

1:43:59 Yes, you get to be an adventurer and live in the jungle, sure.

1:44:03 But it's like this Mission: Impossible thing where you might get lucky

1:44:08 enough to pull off your psychotic mission.

1:44:10 You know, jump your motorcycle off the train and parachute

1:44:12 down and stop the bomb before it goes off.

1:44:15 Great.

1:44:15 How many of those do you get?

1:44:18 And we're having to do it every month.

1:44:21 These amazing people that are supporting the rangers allow us

1:44:27 to patrol and protect this because once we have this land protected,

1:44:30 the interesting thing is that the police can

1:44:32 go into any of the light green areas.

1:44:35 If anybody's there, just arrest them.

1:44:37 They're on Junglekeepers' land, they're out.

1:44:39 And eventually that land will become national park if we're successful.

1:44:43 The problem with the land that's not is it's a gray area.

1:44:46 It's the middle of the Amazon, are they allowed to be here?

1:44:50 Do they really have cocaine?

1:44:51 Because they'll plant papaya for acres and a little bit of cocaine behind it.

1:44:55 You know, they'll put the sacks...

1:44:57 They're sneaky.

1:44:57 And so they have to build a case,

1:44:59 and it takes time, and then the road comes in...

1:45:01 You know, and in that time, they'll knock off a police officer.

1:45:04 And it's like if we were just able to get this tomorrow,

1:45:09 the whole problem gets solved.

1:45:12 We could give the police two more boats,

1:45:14 and then they could do all the patrolling they need.

1:45:17 So the mission is clear.

1:45:18 The mission is very clear.

1:45:20 The problem is that right now we've been playing defense and sustaining losses.

1:45:24 And either we need to inspire enough people

1:45:27 that the donor program goes through the roof,

1:45:30 and instead of having several thousand donors, we have,

1:45:33 you know, 50,000 donors and we will raise...

1:45:36 We need $20 million to save the rest of the corridor.

1:45:40 We'd raise $20 million overnight with enough people.

1:45:42 Or we need one of these people that has

1:45:46 the resources to come in like Batman and just go,

1:45:49 "I want the park named after me and I'm just gonna come

1:45:52 in and give you the $20 million." And then we do it tomorrow,

1:45:55 and then we make a documentary about how we saved

1:45:57 a river and the tribe and the monkeys and the...

1:46:00 But right now, we're...

1:46:05 you know, begging on the side of the road for enough

1:46:07 change to buy bullets so that we can stay alive.

1:46:12 So these narcos, they're...

1:46:14 There's a kind of distributed network where

1:46:17 a bunch of them are pretending to be farmers.

1:46:19 So they're holding onto the land and then

1:46:23 maybe they start planting cocaine on the land- ...slowly,

1:46:28 and they build the airstrips.

1:46:30 Are they trying to stay under the canopy with the airstrip?

1:46:34 It's brilliant.

1:46:35 First what they do is they subsidize the poorest people and they say,

1:46:41 "Go up this river, turn left at the tree

1:46:45 and just start there." And they're like,

1:46:47 "Here's a few grand." And these people are like,

1:46:49 "I never had a few grand before." They're like, "Buy gasoline.

1:46:51 Here's a chainsaw.

1:46:52 Go clear some land." They send these people up there,

1:46:54 and then when they show up a year later

1:46:56 and these people have made an illegal farm out in the jungle,

1:46:59 they go, "Hey, we need a safe house.

1:47:00 Remember that time we gave you gasoline and now you live here?

1:47:04 You're gonna work for us now." And so they're kind of a friend

1:47:07 of the people like that, and they have safe houses all over the jungle.

1:47:10 And then when the bosses come to collect what they're growing out there...

1:47:14 I mean, the police busted a narco operation

1:47:17 that was in the middle of the jungle.

1:47:20 I mean, hiking to the ancient forest days into the jungle.

1:47:23 These people are going on foot with sacks and stuff.

1:47:27 And the way they do their airstrips is you think

1:47:30 the canopy of the rainforest is 150 or 160 feet tall.

1:47:33 And if you clear the interior of the landing strip,

1:47:37 the trees are still meeting overhead.

1:47:39 And so you can't fly over and see down— ...which is the same

1:47:43 reason we didn't know about the road that was going to the ancient forest,

1:47:46 because overhead the trees are meeting,

1:47:47 so you're not going to see it on satellite

1:47:49 and you're not going to see it from a plane.

1:47:51 And these bush pilots fly in and they'll just duck in under the canopy,

1:47:54 land their plane, load up, and then they fly out.

1:47:58 I mean, expert pilots.

1:48:01 So it's impossible to detect.

1:48:03 It's almost impossible to detect.

1:48:04 We're working with people now.

1:48:06 You know, it's this arms race.

1:48:08 They've been going okay.

1:48:09 There are drone programs.

1:48:10 I talked to someone that has a different type of drone,

1:48:13 a 16-foot drone that uses the thermals to climb up and has

1:48:18 solar panels on the wings and flies for two weeks at a time.

1:48:21 It's like a glider- ...that recharges itself.

1:48:23 And it'll keep constant imagery,

1:48:25 so we'll get almost up-to-the-moment data on disturbances in the canopy.

1:48:29 And it's like, well, that'll be a first-hand alert system,

1:48:32 but then we've gotta get the police out there which,

1:48:36 as you know, is a two-day expedition by boat, and it's the only way.

1:48:40 And so the local police force there may be dedicated,

1:48:44 but putting people on a multi-day expedition to go get shot

1:48:46 at in the jungle is nobody's idea of a good time.

1:48:50 Have you researched into this whole other world of Drug trafficking,

1:48:54 cocaine trafficking?

1:48:55 How big is the operation?

1:48:57 Looking at Perplexity— ...a multi-thousand ton,

1:49:02 multi-billion dollar global industry?

1:49:05 I mean, globally it's a monster.

1:49:07 Colombia, Peru, Bolivia.

1:49:08 And they move north and east through the Americas,

1:49:13 the Caribbean, and the Atlantic to reach major consumer markets.

1:49:17 This is a machine fueled by a lot of money and a lot of brutality.

1:49:27 Number of cocaine users worldwide is about 25 million people.

1:49:32 Users.

1:49:33 Users.

1:49:34 So there's a market.

1:49:35 And when there's a market, you're going to find the way.

1:49:39 Quick pause.

1:49:41 Bathroom break.

1:49:42 All right, and we're back.

1:49:47 Me, as somebody who is afraid of heights,

1:49:51 and I've had a chance to interact with you a bunch,

1:49:54 you're in some sense fearless and I've watched you climb a lot of trees.

1:50:00 You've helped me climb a tree.

1:50:02 And there's this wonderful part of the book where you talk about

1:50:06 finding the tallest tree in the forest you knew at the time,

1:50:09 and that was something that you passed and thought was impossible to climb.

1:50:13 And you talk about climbing it.

1:50:15 You take us through the experience of that.

1:50:17 And that leads you to seeing the Mist River in the rainforest as the sun rises.

1:50:23 I was wondering if you could talk through the story of that, both for me,

1:50:29 but even for you at that time,

1:50:31 the terrifying process of climbing a tree like that for the first time with J.J.

1:50:38 at the bottom cheering you on, and what it felt like to see the Mist River.

1:50:44 That tree, you've met that tree.

1:50:46 She's a good one.

1:50:47 Her base is at least as big as this room,

1:50:52 and she's probably about 160-something feet tall.

1:50:55 And so when you're looking at these giant buttress roots going up,

1:51:00 which I'd been doing for 18 years at that point,

1:51:03 I always said, "Man, if I could just climb it." I'd never had the rope skills,

1:51:08 and I'd developed as a rock climber.

1:51:10 I was working on strength, and I trained for it.

1:51:13 It's like most things.

1:51:15 You can't just do it.

1:51:16 I'd climb up 30 feet and go, "No way." The trunk of the tree goes vertical

1:51:22 for about 70 feet before branches even come out,

1:51:25 so there's just this one big vine.

1:51:27 And J.J.

1:51:28 and I did it at, I want to say like 4:00 AM, really early.

1:51:34 The howler monkeys had just started.

1:51:37 And you start climbing with the rope up this vine, and you have to...

1:51:44 It's not technical.

1:51:45 It's a strength climb.

1:51:46 You gorilla up this vine, and it's all back strength.

1:51:49 And so I did it no shirt, no shoes, straight up, and J.J.

1:51:53 had the belay device.

1:51:54 And so every 30 feet or so, I would put in a piece of webbing and a carabiner.

1:51:59 You go up another 30 feet, and you don't know what you're gonna find.

1:52:03 And you're going up in the dark.

1:52:05 So when you say a lot of strength is involved,

1:52:08 there are very few places to rest.

1:52:10 You're essentially just lifting the whole time.

1:52:12 So it's extremely exhausting.

1:52:14 Extremely exhausting.

1:52:14 I really trained for a long time, and there is no rest.

1:52:18 The only rest you get hurts.

1:52:20 You have to cling to the tree and your feet are smeared against the bark.

1:52:25 You're holding on with your toes.

1:52:27 And if you fall, you know, if you're climbing up—this is basically trad

1:52:31 climbing—if you're climbing up and you put

1:52:34 a safety—a piece of rope with a carabiner—and you put my rope through that...

1:52:39 It's dangerous because if you fall, you fall.

1:52:42 Right before you put the next one, you're going to fall double.

1:52:46 If you climb 30 feet, you fall 60 feet.

1:52:48 And your head's going to smack the tree.

1:52:51 As you climb, you don't know if you'll reach a wasp nest or a venomous snake.

1:52:56 And there's a lot of those in those trees.

1:52:59 A lot of those.

1:53:00 It took me over an hour just to get to the branches the first time.

1:53:03 It's full exertion, everything I had.

1:53:05 And then you get to where the branches are above you,

1:53:08 each the size of a mature oak tree.

1:53:10 They're just these huge branches.

1:53:14 Thick as a minivan.

1:53:15 You're climbing up this straight tree that's like the World Trade Center.

1:53:20 It's huge.

1:53:20 Then I had to traverse the tree on vines,

1:53:23 and finally I get up into the crown of this tree.

1:53:26 From there, I called down to J.J.

1:53:28 and I just see this little speck of light, 85 feet below me.

1:53:33 Then I climbed up to about 120 feet, which is up here, and I sat there.

1:53:39 And you're doing all this still in darkness.

1:53:42 We're doing all this in the pre-dawn light.

1:53:44 And so when I got up there,

1:53:46 now the howler monkeys are going and the jungle's starting to vibrate.

1:53:50 You can hear the first macaws starting to chirp;

1:53:52 everything's starting to turn on.

1:53:53 And in the east, the sun is coming over the jungle, and so the sun,

1:53:58 when the first rays get line of sight to the canopy of the jungle,

1:54:02 it starts lifting the mist off the canopy.

1:54:04 All of that moisture starts coming up,

1:54:06 and I'm sitting on this branch at 100-something

1:54:08 feet above the ground with dark jungle below me,

1:54:11 and all of a sudden I see the river.

1:54:15 I see the Mist River I'd always heard about.

1:54:16 They say that there's a river above the Amazon,

1:54:20 an invisible river that has more moisture and that more water

1:54:23 is flowing above the Amazon than is flowing in the Amazon.

1:54:26 And I'd heard this my whole life and you think, "Okay,

1:54:28 the fact that there's a molten core of the Earth or that black

1:54:31 holes theoretically exist." It's just like the, one of those things,

1:54:34 you're never going to see it." And in this moment on this tree,

1:54:37 sweating and just ripped apart and bleeding,

1:54:39 I was sitting up there and I saw the Mist River and it

1:54:43 was flowing over the canopy in the golden rays of the morning,

1:54:47 and the macaws start taking flight and there

1:54:49 were monkeys below me that were looking up.

1:54:51 And you could tell they were confused.

1:54:53 They were looking at me going,

1:54:54 "What is that?" And I just had this absolutely incredible moment.

1:54:58 I wanted to...

1:54:59 You know, it felt like you're seeing God.

1:55:02 I wanted to share it with everyone.

1:55:04 You know, I felt, I felt guilty afterwards for having had a moment like that.

1:55:10 But it felt like I had done this insane risk and risked

1:55:16 falling out of the tree or getting strung up on the ropes,

1:55:19 and of course it's just me and J.J.,

1:55:21 so if something goes wrong, no one's going to help you.

1:55:23 And being out there on that branch felt suicidal because even then,

1:55:27 if you fall, it's a giant swing back to the tree.

1:55:30 But the beauty that I saw up there was so intense that it,

1:55:36 you know, it sucked the air right out of my lungs.

1:55:40 I had tears in my eyes and I'm

1:55:42 just watching this incredible process flow over the Earth,

1:55:46 this legendary thing that I'd heard about, that scientists described,

1:55:49 and now I'm seeing it with my own eyes.

1:55:52 It was...

1:55:53 it felt like the gift of the tree.

1:55:56 And you write, "Now, in the branches of the greatest tree in the jungle,

1:55:59 I watched as the Mist River caught the morning rays,

1:56:02 illuminating golden currents,

1:56:03 swirling as it rushed over the canopy like a stream from heaven.

1:56:07 In the troughs and basins in lower areas, the river was deep blue.

1:56:13 But then, as it flowed up and over the taller trees,

1:56:16 slow rapids washing over the canopy, the Mist River became ignited,

1:56:21 electrified in the gold magnificence of the sunlight.

1:56:24 Scores of birds flew up, in and out of the churning currents.

1:56:30 The life and breath of the Amazon was flowing from north

1:56:33 to south along the basins of Las Piedras over the jungle.

1:56:37 My God.

1:56:38 My God.

1:56:39 I thought of everyone I loved,

1:56:42 of every creature contained in the leafy distance.

1:56:45 The jungle itself was like a great being,

1:56:48 a monstrous leviathan of warm green might.

1:56:52 I wanted to call down to JJ and tell him to find a way up.

1:56:56 I wanted my mother to see it.

1:56:58 I wanted the world to see it.

1:57:00 The light filled my eyes, and I found myself wiping away tears." You know,

1:57:05 I should take the small tangent of saying the obvious,

1:57:10 but the thing that needs to be said is you're a great writer.

1:57:16 Thank you.

1:57:16 I mean it, come on.

1:57:18 I'm just describing what happened, but...

1:57:20 All right.

1:57:21 You mentioned macaws as part of the process of The Jungle Waking Up.

1:57:25 I read that when you first start in the jungle,

1:57:28 that's kind of your job is studying those.

1:57:31 And me as a fan of monogamy and birds...

1:57:35 So macaws are beautiful, but they're also monogamous creatures.

1:57:39 They scream at each other quite loudly.

1:57:42 What are some interesting things about them?

1:57:44 Among which, by the way,

1:57:46 you write how important the ironwoods are to— ...their wellbeing, to their life.

1:57:53 Yeah, I mean, when I went down there, like I said,

1:57:57 for young people, if you want to get out there, go do it.

1:58:00 I agreed to stay at the station

1:58:01 and do six hours of macaw research every morning.

1:58:05 So you'd wake up before dawn and go sit and just stare at the side of the river.

1:58:09 And the macaws would show up- ...and like you said,

1:58:11 they all scream and bicker at each other.

1:58:13 It's just how they talk.

1:58:15 It's very, very loud, and very, very harsh.

1:58:18 But they do love each other.

1:58:21 They're always...

1:58:22 You can actually hear when you walk through the forest;

1:58:24 I know what the sound of macaws giving affection is.

1:58:26 They make a certain kind of sound when they're just preening

1:58:30 each other's feathers and taking care of each other and just nuzzling.

1:58:34 And then there's a different call altogether

1:58:36 when they're yelling at other macaws or saying,

1:58:38 "Let's go." And you start to learn macaw language.

1:58:42 What have you learned about relationships and successful marriage from listening

1:58:47 to macaws screaming at each other in nuanced different ways?

1:58:53 Well, I guess...

1:58:55 Never mind, you can skip that question.

1:58:56 Yeah.

1:58:57 It's interesting to see two animals sticking

1:58:59 by each other's side raising a chick.

1:59:01 And at the bottom of the stairs at the station,

1:59:03 there is a macaw nest in an ironwood.

1:59:06 And the relationship that you mentioned is that in the jungle,

1:59:09 there's a limited amount of macaw real estate.

1:59:11 And those are all ancient ironwood trees, at least 500 years or more.

1:59:15 So they have to be thick.

1:59:19 Car-thickness or bigger.

1:59:21 And when a branch falls off,

1:59:24 it creates a hollow and the macaws use that to reproduce.

1:59:26 And because there's only so many nest sites in the forest,

1:59:29 only about 17 to 20% of the macaw population reproduces in a given year.

1:59:34 given year.

1:59:35 So they have a slow replacement rate.

1:59:37 And macaws are one of the things that people come to the jungle to see.

1:59:42 And so along with gold mining and logging and all these extractive things,

1:59:46 in our region, ecotourism has been great.

1:59:49 It's given the local people jobs as guides, cooks, and chefs and carpenters.

1:59:53 And so macaws are a huge part of that because it's one

1:59:58 of the last places where you can see these flying rainbows over the canopy.

2:00:01 Or when you're on a branch from one of these trees and the macaws fly under you.

2:00:07 And again, they'll fly by.

2:00:09 You just hear the wind in their feathers.

2:00:13 And they just look at you over their shoulder,

2:00:17 like, "What?" And just keep going.

2:00:19 Just loud, and they'll just keep going.

2:00:21 Then they'll join up with other macaws and they fly across the horizon.

2:00:24 And it gives you this sense like

2:00:26 you're seeing something from the dinosaur times.

2:00:29 It just looks like wild jungle, and there's nothing human in sight.

2:00:34 There's just this savage canopy to the horizon

2:00:37 and just these beautiful birds flying over.

2:00:39 It's just...

2:00:40 they're just magical.

2:00:43 You have this Instagram post with an anaconda around your neck.

2:00:47 There's a million questions.

2:00:48 Maybe you can talk about that experience, but also, how did you not die?

2:00:54 So as you know, we've been studying

2:00:56 the habits of Eunectes murinus for quite a while.

2:01:01 The lowland green anaconda is the largest, heaviest snake on earth.

2:01:06 And I've been practicing a lot for a long time,

2:01:10 and this is the biggest one we've ever physically caught.

2:01:13 This was just under 20 feet.

2:01:16 It was 19 feet something.

2:01:18 And you can see she's in the middle of shedding.

2:01:21 And the other interesting thing with her is that she

2:01:24 had blue eyes because she was in the middle of shedding.

2:01:28 The scale over their eyes turns blue right before it comes off.

2:01:32 And so I've never caught a blue-eyed anaconda before.

2:01:34 But if you look at the size of my head and the size of my hands,

2:01:37 you start to imagine that thing's head is bigger than a Great Dane's.

2:01:41 It's huge.

2:01:42 And the power on that—when we tried to lift

2:01:46 her to measure her, we wanted to bring her up

2:01:48 out of the stream and get her over to the side

2:01:50 so we can straighten her out and measure her.

2:01:52 We're just trying to take some simple data points and then release her.

2:01:55 And she, at one point, just decided to flex her body,

2:01:58 and you just see 10 people fly this way,

2:02:00 and then she's flexing the other way and 10 people fly this way.

2:02:03 And every time that mouth would open, she would try to...

2:02:06 she'd just reach back and be like, "Just let me do it." And you know

2:02:10 that if she gets purchase— once they get purchase,

2:02:12 they wrap you so quick and they'll just crush

2:02:16 the life out of you like you're a bag of chips.

2:02:19 And if you've ever seen a mouse in a mousetrap,

2:02:21 when the trap goes down and the eyes come out?

2:02:23 And when snakes—anybody that's owned snakes and fed them

2:02:26 mice knows this—that sometimes if they catch it right,

2:02:29 the guts will either come out the back end or the front end.

2:02:32 So, I'd imagine that the same thing will happen with a snake that's that big.

2:02:36 That's bigger than I am around.

2:02:39 So, they have a process.

2:02:40 When you say purchase, they want a bite just to hold and then they— It's good.

2:02:44 So...

2:02:45 But again, all she wants is to be let go.

2:02:47 In her defense, this massive snake—we named her Millie for the data

2:02:53 entry—she just wanted to go on her way down the stream.

2:02:58 The comments on this are hysterical.

2:03:01 People are like, "This is the worst example

2:03:03 of white people shit I've ever seen." I mean, Snoop Dogg shared it.

2:03:07 So, one guy goes, he goes, "Congratulations, you've touched enough grass.

2:03:11 Go back inside."- Yeah, somebody said, "Interesting use of free will." Yeah,

2:03:19 and I saw Killpopper007 commented— and maybe you can tell me if this is correct:

2:03:26 "Anacondas are ambush predators.

2:03:27 If you approach them,

2:03:29 they will usually try to flee and will not register you as food.

2:03:33 There's other reasons too." This is in response

2:03:36 to how Paul possibly didn't die from this.

2:03:39 "There's other reasons too, but this is the main reason.

2:03:43 They're pretty much apex at that size, so their fear isn't as prominent.

2:03:47 He was calm, so the snake was calm.

2:03:50 It's insane to do and still risky,

2:03:53 but he might actually be the most qualified anaconda handler on Planet Earth.

2:03:58 Paul is one interesting cat." Hugging emoji.

2:04:02 Is that accurate?

2:04:05 Yes.

2:04:05 At that size, they're apex, so they're really not thinking about defense.

2:04:09 They're just like, "Get off me." If I was to hurt her—like

2:04:13 if I was to touch you in the arm with a needle—you'd react.

2:04:16 If I was to do anything that hurt her, which I'm not doing,

2:04:20 she would turn around and bite me to say,

2:04:22 "Go away." But they also don't want to bite

2:04:25 because their recurved teeth make it very difficult to detach.

2:04:27 And also, they're putting their head at the source of the danger.

2:04:31 It's not a good calculation.

2:04:33 And so these giants— and I've had the privilege of interacting with four

2:04:38 or five anacondas in the 20 to 26-foot

2:04:42 range—all of them have been very Leviathan-like.

2:04:45 And they just don't wanna move.

2:04:48 They just wanna keep going.

2:04:50 And he's 100% right on all of that stuff.

2:04:54 I've caught 90-something anacondas at this point,

2:04:57 and many of them have been massive.

2:04:59 Then there's the one that JJ and I didn't get at the Floating

2:05:01 Forest because it was bigger than— bigger than we could tackle,

2:05:04 bigger than my hands.

2:05:05 I couldn't touch fingers.

2:05:06 But every single one of them has chosen flight over fight.

2:05:11 Only the little babies and the smaller males get snappy.

2:05:15 They'll come back at you like a normal snake,

2:05:16 and if you grab their tail, they'll try and bite you and then go.

2:05:19 But these big females, you know, they're like dragons.

2:05:22 They're like these big, legendary things that live in swamps,

2:05:25 and the only reason they've gotten that big is because they

2:05:27 have a reliable prey source in a secluded place away from humans,

2:05:32 and they've been there for decades just

2:05:35 pulling things down to hell and eating them.

2:05:38 And the other thing...

2:05:39 I mean, look, I have a team with me.

2:05:42 You know?

2:05:42 So...

2:05:43 So, there's people holding the—- Yeah.

2:05:45 Let's be real here.

2:05:46 I would never do this.

2:05:47 If I was out in the jungle by myself at night,

2:05:50 doing this would be suicide, 100%, because for every second that I'm going,

2:05:55 "Oh, I'm in this water and she's over my neck," if

2:05:58 JJ wasn't there to jump in and unwrap her— ...then I die.

2:06:03 100%.

2:06:04 Because she's continuously wrapping.

2:06:07 She's on her back saying, "Come in here," "and let me arm bar you.

2:06:13 Let me squeeze the guts out of you." She's just going,

2:06:16 "Let it happen."- And moving slowly.

2:06:19 Moving really slow—- Conjuring- with that assurance of power

2:06:21 where she doesn't need to try and tap you quick.

2:06:24 She's going to get you eventually.

2:06:25 Although, to push back on something you just said,

2:06:27 having known you long enough, let's be honest.

2:06:29 You're saying I wouldn't be insane enough to do it.

2:06:33 I think you would be.

2:06:36 I mean, there's...

2:06:38 There's a line of insanity, and you,

2:06:41 my friend, walk that line masterfully so far.

2:06:47 I think when you're able to sense the animal,

2:06:51 whether it's crocodiles, caiman, or anacondas,

2:06:54 and maybe radiate a sense of calm— I've seen

2:07:01 you be able to go into some dangerous situations,

2:07:06 and make it seem like it's not dangerous at all.

2:07:09 And maybe when you become one with the ecosystem,

2:07:13 maybe you're not a threat to it, and maybe that's why you can survive?

2:07:18 I haven't been able to make sense of it, really.

2:07:21 Look, I would say this.

2:07:23 In the case of elephants, if we ever end up in Africa together,

2:07:28 I can get incredibly close to elephants

2:07:30 because I've spent enough time with them where,

2:07:33 time with them where, so far, it's always been a mock charge.

2:07:38 And you can be one with the elephant

2:07:42 and learn their language enough that you respect their boundaries

2:07:46 and you also show them that, this better be

2:07:49 serious because you're either going to have to kill me,

2:07:51 or just turn around and go back to eating.

2:07:53 And you can have that exchange with them.

2:07:57 With smaller snakes, I'll be careful.

2:07:58 I can tell you with this that when you

2:08:01 have both of your hands around an anaconda's neck...

2:08:04 I truly...

2:08:05 I mean, I've been known to surprise myself with the decisions I make,

2:08:11 but this alone would lead to death, 100%.

2:08:16 It's like laying down in front of an 18-wheeler with it in neutral.

2:08:19 "It's going to roll over you." This is

2:08:22 going to turn into anaconda handcuffs with this thickness,

2:08:26 and then that is going to wrap you with this thickness,

2:08:29 and then six more of those are going to go around

2:08:31 your body and you will get squeezed and you will turn into goop.

2:08:36 Just like that guy said, she probably is in defense mode and not food mode,

2:08:40 so she'll probably just neutralize the threat and then go back to sleep.

2:08:47 I have to ask you about the floating forest.

2:08:49 And you write about Santiago, once again, beautifully in the book,

2:08:54 of the time when he told you the stories

2:08:57 and when your mind and eyes were still fresh

2:09:00 and maybe skeptical and more leaning towards the Western

2:09:04 world point of view versus the jungle point of view.

2:09:07 "Santiago's eyes were glowing in the darkness.

2:09:10 He watched the orange ember spark upward to join the celestial river of stars

2:09:15 that arched across the night sky as if the memories were written there.

2:09:19 He squinted, his face as wrinkled and weathered as an old map of the world.

2:09:25 Vast experience whispered in the firelight,

2:09:27 as ephemeral as the breath that spoke the words,

2:09:31 but powerful enough to latch on and sink down

2:09:34 into some deep part of me." This is Pico saying,

2:09:38 "Papa, tell me about the anaconda on the blackwater stream." And, He tells

2:09:45 a story of that, and he talks about it being big and having horns.

2:09:50 And you write once again masterfully about you at that time having doubts.

2:09:55 It sounds like bullshit, but now more and more of the things you've seen

2:10:00 in the jungle and the things you sense you have not seen yet,

2:10:07 all of those stories seem to be true.

2:10:10 The one he was referring to was maybe 36 feet long, this big.

2:10:15 He says that, "The floating forest is the place you need to go, Gringo,

2:10:22 if you want to be liberated of your doubts and skepticism."

2:10:26 So tell me about the anacondas you've encountered in the floating forest.

2:10:32 Well, the thing he's describing there is that he's

2:10:34 saying they found an anaconda that had horns.

2:10:37 And in that moment, we were all hanging out by the side of the river and I said,

2:10:41 "That's enough." I stood up.

2:10:42 I was like, "Come on, there's no anaconda that has horns." And if I've

2:10:46 learned anything in 20 years of living with the indigenous people in the Amazon,

2:10:50 it's that they're not wrong.

2:10:51 You know, if they say there's a tribe of naked people with arrows out there,

2:10:56 they're right, they're right.

2:10:58 And they know what an anaconda looks like.

2:11:00 So if he says he saw an anaconda with horns,

2:11:03 he saw something that ain't a normal anaconda.

2:11:07 And a smaller version of this played out recently where

2:11:11 one of the people that works at the tree house, he came and he said,

2:11:16 "I found a snake and it was in the water tank." And he goes,

2:11:20 "And it had green spikes on it." And I said,

2:11:24 "There's no snake that has green spikes." I said,

2:11:26 "Congratulations, you're an idiot." I made fun of him.

2:11:29 And I said, "I know all the snake species that are here.

2:11:31 None of them have spikes.

2:11:32 There's no snake that has spikes coming off of it." And he said,

2:11:35 "No, it had long spikes." He said,

2:11:36 "The snake is this big and had spikes this long on it." And I said,

2:11:39 "There's no snake with spikes." Until finally he came

2:11:42 and he got me in the night and he goes,

2:11:45 "The snake with spikes is there." And I said,

2:11:46 "Well, I'll get out of bed for that.

2:11:48 Let's go." And I said,

2:11:50 "I guarantee it's not gonna be there." And we got to the water

2:11:53 tank and I shined my flashlight down and sure as shit,

2:11:56 there's a snake in there and it's got

2:11:59 thousands of green spikes coming off of it.

2:12:01 And I could see the snake head and then

2:12:06 the spikes are coming completely perpendicular out from its body.

2:12:08 And for a second, I really was having this out-of-body experience.

2:12:11 And then the snake saw us, got scared and swam,

2:12:14 and all of the the spikes collapsed onto its body and became smooth.

2:12:20 And then I realized the snake had been living in the stagnant

2:12:22 water for a while and developed algae that was growing off of it.

2:12:26 So when it was sitting still, all the algae would settle out.

2:12:31 And so if you look straight down on it,

2:12:33 it's a water snake that has algae growing on it.

2:12:35 And so it does look like a snake with spikes.

2:12:38 He's not wrong.

2:12:39 It was a water snake.

2:12:41 It was some sort of Helicops.

2:12:42 But there's always an answer like that.

2:12:44 Amazing.

2:12:45 They're not wrong.

2:12:46 So when they tell you something like,

2:12:48 "There's an anaconda with horns," and multiple people

2:12:50 have seen it— ...you make an expedition there.

2:12:54 If somebody said there's giant ground sloths in this valley,

2:12:56 I wouldn't be like, "They're extinct." I'd be like,

2:12:59 "Where?" You start to listen.

2:13:01 I mean, after, after the tribe walked out of the forest,

2:13:04 you could tell me anything.

2:13:05 That day, if a Tyrannosaurus rex walked out behind them,

2:13:08 I would've been like, "Makes sense."- Let's go to the floating forest.

2:13:11 Do you ever think about what creatures are in there?

2:13:14 I just had a conversation with Michael Levin at Tufts University.

2:13:20 He's this biologist who creates biological life forms in the lab,

2:13:25 but he also studies all kinds of weird,

2:13:28 what he calls unconventional intelligences on Earth.

2:13:31 And he speaks about that from a perspective of just

2:13:36 understanding the incredible intricacies and weirdnesses of biological systems.

2:13:41 So the soup of organisms that's there

2:13:45 in the floating forest is probably incredible.

2:13:48 Do you ever think about what kind of weirdness is there?

2:13:54 Yeah.

2:13:55 Along with giant snakes,

2:13:57 there are animals existing in an ecosystem that's isolated, right?

2:14:03 And so the tepuis...

2:14:05 In the movie Up, those Venezuelan cliff

2:14:07 jungles with the straight walls, like Angel Falls?

2:14:10 Up there you have this allopatric speciation occurring where

2:14:13 these isolated communities are departing from whatever's down there.

2:14:18 So on the floating forest,

2:14:20 you have this very unique ecosystem where animals are living

2:14:24 on grassy islands and in the tops of palm trees.

2:14:27 In that nightmare soup that exists beneath the rafts,

2:14:31 there are probably insects and, I mean,

2:14:34 I've seen lizards there that we have been unable to identify.

2:14:37 There are things there in the...

2:14:40 I can't imagine the...

2:14:43 decay is probably not happening.

2:14:45 There's not a lot of oxygen in that water.

2:14:47 I've brought a few scientists there and they've all just been like, "This is...

2:14:51 this is..." you know.

2:14:52 Yeah.

2:14:52 How do you even- "How did this form?"

2:14:54 We've brought hydrologists there and they're like,

2:14:55 "How the hell did this thing form?" And then

2:14:59 trying to study what creatures live under that is amazing.

2:15:04 But the big anacondas,

2:15:06 it's interesting because they truly are the apex, so they're unbothered.

2:15:10 They're not really using their power for anything.

2:15:14 No, and I'm sure if I bit her, she'd turn around and kill me.

2:15:17 Yeah, but in a bored kind of way.

2:15:19 Like, it wouldn't even...

2:15:20 It would just slowly kill you.

2:15:22 I wonder though, once she killed you, if she'd just be like-- Just take a bite?

2:15:28 I mean, would she bite?

2:15:30 They swallow, right?

2:15:30 Well-- Once you collapse your shoulders,

2:15:33 it's like if you killed a perfectly good

2:15:35 hamburger and it was like in your hands dead,

2:15:37 you'd be like- "Maybe I'll try it."- I mean, they need the calories.

2:15:43 Yeah, and then take a six-month nap.

2:15:47 Yeah.

2:15:48 They're truly incredible, majestic creatures.

2:15:52 Yeah, I love this picture.

2:15:54 Just, again, look at the size.

2:15:58 I want you one day to feel them.

2:16:00 And again, the wild ones are not like the captive ones,

2:16:03 which are soft from sitting in a cage.

2:16:05 These guys have been flexing every day.

2:16:08 It's like you're hitting steel cables.

2:16:11 It's just wild.

2:16:12 And even if it's just being chill,

2:16:13 you can probably get a hint of the power it's capable of, right?

2:16:18 The one good thing about those really big ones is that when they do strike,

2:16:21 it's like it's like being in a fight with a big fat guy.

2:16:25 It's like that, that haymaker comes from way back here and you're like- ..."Oh,

2:16:28 good." You're like, "I'm gonna duck." And you get down.

2:16:31 Because they open their mouth and they start accelerating.

2:16:37 And it's pretty easy to either get out of the way or, you know,

2:16:41 catch it before it hits you.

2:16:43 ...usually.

2:16:43 Again, if you ever mess that up,

2:16:45 just like the haymaker from the big guy, it's over.

2:16:49 Your level of knowledge and comfort with snakes is incredible.

2:16:52 I think they- Play with them a lot.

2:16:53 ...sense that.

2:16:54 I mean, I've seen you with snakes and they must sense it,

2:16:57 because they must sense in you the camaraderie.

2:17:01 You have a way of speaking to animals

2:17:06 and about animals like there's zero danger.

2:17:09 Well, from my outsider perspective, it seems like a lot of them are full

2:17:15 of danger if you're not communicating to them correctly.

2:17:18 With snakes, I think it's more of a highway analogy:

2:17:24 it's dangerous, but you can drive safely.

2:17:28 I know what I'm doing,

2:17:29 so if I'm working with a snake that can't envenomate me and is small,

2:17:32 I can allow it to freak out.

2:17:34 And then if I can get it into my hands and it goes,

2:17:37 "Ooh, it's nice in here." And of course, like you said, I'm not scared.

2:17:41 They are very sensitive to that, so he's going,

2:17:43 "Okay, this isn't so bad." You can chill him out.

2:17:46 But I don't think snakes have any camaraderie.

2:17:49 I think that whales, monkeys, elephants, I think they can sense.

2:17:53 They can say, "Okay, this person's trying to help" to get me out of this net.

2:17:57 I'm gonna relax and not kill them." In those cases, you have that dynamic.

2:18:01 Speaking of an animal that does have camaraderie,

2:18:03 there's this incredible video on your Instagram

2:18:06 that people should go watch where incredible